Chat Log publishes poems, flash fiction, and experimental works written inside video games and submitted as a single image. We do not accept docs, PDFs, or copy that is not visual.
All works should be pictured and legible in an image taken inside of a video game or gaming adjacent space. We accept JPEG, PNG, and the occasional GIF.
Write something inside a video game
A poem. A very short story. A very long story. A single sentence. Something in between. Use whatever the game gives you: a book, a chat window, a painting grid, a sign. The game's constraints are your canvas.
Capture it as a single image
Screenshot or photograph. JPEG or PNG. One image only. Whatever fits in a single frame is your word limit. If you can't screenshot, a photo of your screen is fine. Just make sure it's legible.
Fill out the submission form
Use the form to tell us about your piece and you as a player. Your name or username or gamertag, and how to find you on socials. We'd also like to know the game where your work was written, and any interesting tidbits about its creation. Or just upload the photo. No pressure.
► OPEN SUBMISSION FORM- ✓ Screenshots from video games that have your writing in them.
- ✓ Poems, flash fiction, or something in between. We're not strict about genre inside those parameters.
- ✓ Any game. Surprise us. Stretch the limits of our very limited rules.
- ✓ Photos of screens.
- ✗ Writing about video games. We want writing written in them.
- ✗ YouTube comments, notes apps, Google Docs, images of traditional writing platforms.
- ✗ AI-generated content.
- ► Plain text inside a Minecraft Book & Quill
- ► Chat logs from Old School RuneScape
- ► Words painted on a surface in Rust
- ► Bullet holes in CS2 (braille or otherwise)
- ► Speech bubble in Tomodachi Life
- ► Consecutive lines in a Twitch chat
- ► Your words in a video game somehow, some way
We're not authenticating screenshots. The spirit of the constraint is what matters — if you faked it, you only cheated the poem.
Simultaneous submissions are fine. If accepted elsewhere, just let us know. We'll wipe your save.
Repubs are fine as long as they're rewritten inside a video game.
All submissions are free. We do not charge to read, and we cannot afford to pay you at this time. But if we are ever able to, we will make an effort to pay our contributors.
We encourage repeat submitters. A no on a piece is not a no on you as a writer. Keep trying. If accepted, wait a week or so before submitting again.
All submissions will be responded to within 48 hours.
Works written in ephemeral game interfaces such as chat windows are not considered previously published by Chat Log's editorial standard. Visibility to other players in a live chat context is incidental and uncurated — we don't see it as an editorial publication. We treat these the same way we would a poem written in a notebook that happened to be open on a table.
Works written in private interfaces (Minecraft books, single-player notes, offline canvases) carry no prior visibility concern.
If your work had significant prior in-game visibility, please note that in your submission form. We'll evaluate on a case by case basis.
We'll post your image to the site and share it on Twitter and Bluesky with your byline and a tag to your socials. All rights revert to you on publication. We keep first North American serial rights for the archive.
No payment. Just promo and the archive. That's the deal.