#239: Fabulism with Shaelin Bishop

This week’s contest is a special edition, and the return of our ever-popular takeovers. This week, our guest judge is Shaelin Bishop — author and host of the Reedsy YouTube channel. As well as choosing the winner of our $250 prize, Shaelin will give personalised feedback to our top entries! Want to know more? Let's hear it from Shaelin:

This week’s contest is all about bringing a little bit of magic into reality. Fabulism, also known as magical realism, is the inclusion of magical elements in an otherwise realistic story. The catch — and what makes it differ from fantasy — is that here, the magical elements are never explained. They don’t need to be logical, but are instead symbolic: a way to explore themes or emotions by bending (or breaking) the rules of reality. The result is uncanny, strange, dream-like, but also human and tender.

Fabulism asks you to be wildly imaginative, creative, and to dig into emotions and themes that are so profound or bizarre that they can only be expressed through a little bit of magic. The need to be logical is removed, and you can let your imagination run wild. Let this be your chance to write something strange, experimental, or unexpected. Think about possibility, rather than limits. I can’t wait to read your work! — Shaelin

🎥 Check out Shaelin's video guide to this week's contest.

Special update: The results 🏆 

After reviewing the judges' top picks and choosing the winner, Shaelin kindly gave us some feedback to share on this week’s top stories. Take it away, Shaelin!



Reading these stories was such a joy. Each piece not only embraced the spirit of the fabulism theme, but also went above and beyond what I could have imagined—which feels perfectly on brand for the theme of this contest. It was such a delight to see the imagination and creativity, as well as the heart and skillful writing, that went into each submission. Each story was unique and thought-provoking, compelling and exciting in its own way.

Narrowing it down to a winner was therefore extremely difficult. How do you pick a winning story among a pool of such creatively imagined pieces? Several stories stood out to me, both for how they interpreted the prompts in ways I never could have expected, and for the emotions they left me with.

I was once told to never write a story set in a coffee shop—because it’s inherently dull and familiar—but to that I say, read “By God, The Menu’s Edible” by Dakota Smith. This equally fun and hypnotic story is full of striking lines that make use of the fabulist world to create fantastical imagery, such as, “Instead, the moon slams into the sun and disintegrates like a drop of water falling into a hot pan.”

“Pilgrims of Nowhere” by Joshua Doe struck me with its compassionately drawn central relationship. I felt alongside the characters, as a playful story about wanderlust became a tender, tragic piece about loss. The theme of forever seeking those we’ve lost feels like a perfect thematic pairing with the prompt, and it’s impressive how this piece took a concept that is by nature endless, and managed to hone in on something specific and deeply personal.

“Morning Drive” by Maple Ip is a story that kept coming back into my thoughts, like all good ghost stories should. This eerie, gentle piece has beautiful, quiet imagery, and in many ways reads like a poem. I could liken it to a lullaby, despite its haunting subject matter. Each line in this piece feels intentional, each building the winding, dream-like, atmosphere that gripped me from the first sentence and did not let go of my attention.



With so much to admire in each piece, it’s safe to say picking a winner was extremely difficult, but one story really stood out in its use of experimentation and creativity: “Metonymia” by Gem Cassia. This story used what I felt to be the most difficult prompt of the batch to create something brilliantly surreal. This piece is inventive, expansive, and mind-bending, disorienting in the best way, but ultimately, cohesive. While reading, I was gripped at each turn by the story, but also the form. As someone with a love for writing craft and experimental forms, this story is a thrilling example of creating suspense and intrigue through a piece’s shifting format. Despite its spiraling nature, the story excels at being an experimental piece by also maintaining heart and emotion. Poetic, original, strange, and yet still deeply personal, Cassia really embraced the theme on all levels: story, character, structure, and language.