Showing posts with label judging short stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label judging short stories. Show all posts

Tuesday, 23 November 2010

There's No Accounting for Opinions

A student read out two short stories in class and asked which one we preferred. We all plumped for Story 1, which was well crafted and had a v funny twist at the end. Story 2, while well written, lacked focus - and she agreed with us that the real central character was the one the story wasn't ostensibly about.

Then she revealed that she'd entered them in for the same competition and one had been commended. Yup, Story 2, the one we hadn't liked so much. Which shows that...

a) there's no accounting for taste
b) it's all opinion

A story entered for a competition has to get through the initial reading stages. The initial readers may not be writers themselves, they may not even read that much. I suspect this means that in the initial rounds there is a preference for

a) what is perceived as "literary" writing
b) the initial readers don't recognise that easy-to-read writing is actually very hard to write
c) humour is undervalued compared to 'serious' topics - the short list for Wells was surely disproportionally full of death and depression.

So, if you write humour, should you give up entering short story competitions? No, because the humorous short story usually stands out as wonderful relief in a sea of heavy writing. When I was entering competitions I noticed that the 2nd or 3rd prize often went to a comical piece.

I think the only conclusion you can draw is that entering competitions is a lottery because there's no accounting for opinions.

Monday, 27 September 2010

The Judge's Report

What follows is my Judge’s Report for the Wells Short Story Competition

A strong selection of stories with, remarkably, no obvious winners or losers. All the stories had merit, all the stories had flaws. Looking back at my notes the most frequently used phrase is ‘depressing’. A lot of people died along the way. I was also concerned that decrepitude seemed to start early for several writers – the seventy year olds I know are buzzing around with full lives, not waiting to be consigned to the care home.

Characters were often passive, resigned to their fates. I longed for the worm to turn, but alas, it didn’t always. The stories that were most successful had active main characters who moved the story forward. Many main characters were one-dimensional stereotypes who had no existence outside the narrative.

Another phrase that cropped up a lot in my notes was ‘weak ending’. Some stories simply stopped, leaving me checking if I’d missed a page. Others didn’t carry through the promise that they’d started with. A weak ending is damaging because that’s the last thing we read, so that’s what we remember. Satisfying endings are important.

Lacking focus, or confused focus was another frequent phrase. A short story is just that: short. It carries a single idea through to the end like a beautiful pendant on a fine chain, unlike a novel which is a multi-stranded necklace. Some stories had several ideas vying for dominance. Or they would start with one character and finish with another, the first character having been lost along the way. Where was the reader supposed to be looking?

Some stories were based around clever ideas: tricks, or twists in the tail. These made me smile, but an idea is never enough on its own to carry a story through, there needs to be something else – humour, description, prose style, characterisation – to sustain the reader.

So, how to choose a winner? It was hard, as every story had good and bad points. Which should I put higher, the funny tale that was clumsily written, or the beautifully written story that lacked purpose?

In the end I decided to go back to basics. Which stories had I enjoyed reading the most, regardless of any technicalities? And at that point it became clear. My winners are the ones that worked for me as a reader. Another reader would have made different choices and perhaps, on another day, so would I.

Monday, 20 September 2010

The Importance of a Good Ending

Reading the shortlisted competition entries for the Wells Short Story Prize has been a real pleasure. There's been such a variety of subjects I've never once felt, ho hum, I've read this before and choosing the prize winners is going to be difficult. Right now, no one story stands out and I'm in a bit of a quandary.

But the competition is for a short story, and one of the essential elements of a short story is that it is a satisfying tale. And that means the ending has to work. The beginning sets it up, hopefully in such a way that I'm enticed into the world of the short story, and then the ending rounds it off so I put the story down with a satisfied 'ahhhhh'. Ideally what happens is something I don't see coming, but when it happens is exactly right that it couldn't have happened any other way.

What is clear to me that of the twenty of so stories I've read, well written though they are, more than a handful end suddenly as though the word limit was reached and the author just cut the story off. Others just fizzle out. A couple have been obscure enough for me to have to read again to check that I've understood what's gone on.

The ones that stand out in my mind are the ones where the ending is spot on. Think about it - the ending is the last bit you read, of course it's the part you remember most clearly. I haven't made my final decision yet, and everything could change, but I think the deciding factor is going to be not the beauty of the phrasing, nor the cleverness of plotting, but the aptness of the ending. I'm looking for, not the X Factor, but the Ahh Factor.

PS And not a single one has featured a domestic pet, so - phew - no personal factors to cloud my judgement.

Saturday, 18 September 2010

Short Story Judging

Well, here it is. The big envelope has arrived from the Wells Short Story competition organisers stuffed full of short stories ready for me to read. They want it turned round quickly so it's my project for this weekend. Read, make notes, read again. Think. Have another read, making notes as I go along this time. Compare the two sets of notes. Third read.

Then decision time. And this is the most agonising bit of all. Because I know only too well what a boost winning a competition will give to a writer. I may have written about the importance of self-validation yesterday, but the truth is, a bit of outside validation doesn't hurt either.

It's not a decision to take lightly. Writing this now, before I've even looked at the stories, I can feel a cold chill in case I make the wrong decision. Did I say 'in case'? Let's face it, I know I'm going to make the wrong decision. Or rather, it's the right decision when I make it, but if I were to read the same stories in say two months time, I bet I'd make a different choice.

The truth is, reading is a personal thing, and our tastes change according to our circumstances. My dear dog has just died, and my old cat is also ill. If there's an animal story in the batch, I'm pretty certain I'm going to have a stronger reaction to it now than I will in a few months time. So should I try to adjust for this when I judge? Or simply say to myself, this is who I am now, and I'm judging now.

In my opinion, if you're looking for validation, then being on the short list is enough. Don't hold out for the win to make you feel good, because the winning choice may be decided by something you have no control over, like the death of the final judge's dog a month previously.

Hey ho. I shall be opening the envelope this weekend with a mixture of excited anticipation and anxiety. Good luck to all concerned.