Forgive the attention-grabbing title – I can’t promise you thousands of pounds in prize money, but since I had the pleasure of judging two short story competitions earlier this year (one of which did award thousands of pounds to the winner) I can offer you some tips for how to make your submission stronger.
As a writer and editor of short stories, I am fascinated by the craft of writing short stories, and what makes for a successful short story, so when I was judging both the Elegant Literature and Leicester Writers’ Club competitions I made a note of my thoughts while I was reading. What immediately struck me was how many chances a story has to impress a reader on its first reading.
1. The Title
I first encountered the stories as titles in Word documents on my screen (without the names of their authors since all the stories were anonymised). Titles that were quirky or had unusual/archaic words in them immediately stood out and made me go Ooh! – some were even brought to the top of my reading pile because they seemed to be about something (an object, hobby or a person) that was of particular interest to me. The stories beginning with ‘A…’ or ‘The…’ made two long lists at the beginning and end of the alphabetically arranged list. My eyes kind of skimmed over them. That’s not to say a story shouldn’t be called ‘The Challenge’ or ‘A Horrible Day’, if that perfectly encapsulates what the story is about, but the goal is to find a title that makes your reader instantly curious while giving them a clue as to what they’re about to read.
2. The Presentation of The Story
No joke, I was once sent a story in a document that had such large page margins that the words occupied a single, narrow column in the centre of the page. At first, I thought this was somehow meaningful to the story, but soon realized it wasn’t. I couldn’t help but get irritated by having to reformat the piece to make it easier on my eyes. Jazzy fonts and densely packed text are also hard on the eyes. An easy-to-read and appropriately formatted short story immediately says “professional” to me and puts me in the right frame of mind for reading.
3. The First Line
There’s lots of advice about how to hook a reader from the very first line, and I would agree that, in a competition, a punchy first line can help a short story stand out. But I don’t think it’s necessary to make it shocking, or for it to be the most beautiful line of prose ever written. To my mind, it just needs to do two things: be clear and make me want to read on. A number of the short stories I read had first lines I stumbled over, causing me to re-read them so that I could properly “place” myself in the story. And that’s not a great start.
A short story is a promise to the reader to take them out of their lives (and cares) for a short period of time. It’s a promise to create a world so plausible that the reader will suspend their disbelief and come along for the journey of co-creating that world. If the reader is immediately confused by the first line, then it might not bode well for the rest of the journey. And you DO NOT want to lose a reader’s trust.
4. The First Paragraph
As long as the writer has made it easy for us to enter the world of their short story through the first line, then the first paragraph can build on that, succinctly adding in information about the protagonist, their situation, and what their particular need, or quest, may be. The key word here is “succinctly”. With a small word count, a writer can’t spend unnecessary paragraphs on lengthy descriptions. Everything has to be reduced down to its very essence. The winning stories did this incredibly well – with just a few, choice words they described a character (or a place) so well that I felt that I knew that person (or had been to that place). Less is definitely more, but it takes skill to cut and cut and cut until you know exactly how to describe something in the least amount of words. (This is where short story writers can learn from poets.)
5. The Middle
Once a writer has welcomed the reader into the world of the story and shown us the plight of the protagonist in such a skilful way that we care about them and want to know what happens next, then the narrative drive needs to be sustained so that we can’t help but be compelled to know more. Will the protagonist overcome their first challenge? Surely the next hurdle will be too much for them? It can be tricky to gauge just how far you need to push the protagonist, but this is where having a good sense of the seven basic plots comes in handy. A reader may never have heard of Christopher Booker’s The Seven Basic Plots, but their brain is pretty much wired to recognise them (and thus react in a positive fashion when encountering one of them).
6. The End
Again, there is lots of advice about the best way to end a short story. Some readers want a happy ending, some prefer a sad ending. Some want everything to be resolved, some appreciate an open ending. Really, this will come down to an individual judge’s taste, but I definitely want to see an emotionally – and intellectually – satisfying conclusion. An ending which seems rushed or contrived or illogical, or somehow emotionally hollow, will leave me feeling disappointed.
Personally, I appreciate an ending that arrives as a result of the protagonist triumphing due to overcoming the shadows in their own psyche and becoming their best self. (In Jungian terms, this is the process of individuation.) Which brings me nicely to my last point.
7. Taste
In both competitions I judged there were a lot of well-crafted short stories. Any of them could’ve won. So how did I pick the winners? When faced with a number of high quality pieces, I chose the stories that I liked not just intellectually, but emotionally – those stories that felt magical because they made me cry or laugh or feel nostalgic for a time long past. Those were the stories that really stuck with me. Unsurprisingly, they all had themes close to my heart (loss, resilience, romantic love) and were set in the kind of milieus I love: forests, academia, cities (historic, futuristic and abandoned). In short, I went for the stories that were to my taste.
As someone who has been writing short stories for a long time, and therefore received hundreds of rejections, I know how upsetting it is to enter a writing competition and to get nowhere. But, ultimately, it comes down to a judge’s individual taste. Subjectivity is all. So don’t get disheartened. One judge might love your story. Another might dismiss it. (Which is why some writers do a thorough job of checking out a judge’s taste in fiction before submitting to a competition. That said, some competitions have first readers, so even if the judge might like your story, the first reader might not.)
In Conclusion
Read short stories. Analyse their structure and what makes them successful. Write short stories on themes that matter to you and know what you want to convey. Edit them down to their very essence. Format them professionally and send them out to the appropriate magazines or competitions. Get rejected. Get accepted. Learn from the experience. Better your writing. Repeat.
I hope this is useful. Good luck!