Top Short Story Competitions – Literary Athletics

The only way to lose is by not taking part

There are short story writing competitions. There are international short story writing competitions. And then there's New York City Midnight Short Story Challenge.

The operative words are Midnight and Challenge, and they mean exactly what they say. NYCM competitions are not for sleepyheads or the faint-hearted.

This year the challenge consisted of three rounds of original writing challenges, set against the calendar and the clock. The challenges were presented, by email, at 11:59 EDT (New York time), which equated to 4:59 the following morning in the UK.

In the first round the 24:00/5:00am start was not too onerous, given eight days to write a story of up to 2,500 words. The second round was slightly more fraught with 3 days to produce a story of up to 1,500 words. Faced, however, with 24 hours to write a 1,000 word story in the final round, every second counted, so a 5:00 start was vital.

The 625 first round writers were placed randomly in 'heats' of 25. Each heat received a genre, subject and character assignment, for example: Comedy (genre), a family reunion (subject) and a pathological liar (character).

The judges chose 125 writers from the first round to progress to the second round. These writers were again placed in heats and given new genre, subject and character assignments.

From these entries the judges chose 25 writers to advance to the third and final round, in which all writers received the same genre, subject and character.

The over all winners were:

1 'Origin Story' by Jessica Zimmerman
2 'What We Left Behind' by Muthoni Kiarie
3 'Secret Sky' by Elizabeth Spencer
4 'After the Plague' by Betsy A. Riley
5 'Shiny, Pink Secrets' by Andrea Hannah

Me? I made it to the final 25, which is not so dusty. Close, as they say, but no cigar.

Perhaps my NYCM-inspired athletic training regime will stand me in good stead for future literary track and field events, who knows?

Whatever, I've submitted my three entries elsewhere. As I observed at the beginning: The only way to lose is by not taking part.

Why Short Fiction Competitions?

Writing competitions are a waste of time: Discuss.

A day or two ago I made an apologetic post on my home writers' circle bulletin board at having only achieved third place in the excellent The Write Idea website's annual Whittaker Prize competition. This drew a post from one of my peers, which said, that: Being absolutely frank, he had never seen the attraction of these competitions, and felt they're possibly a distraction from writing what you really wanted to write (i.e not in response to someone elses brief). He also worried about the quality of the adjudication.

I couldn't resist the following reply, which I'm minded to share with anyone who might wander through these murky backwaters of cyberspace by mischance:

Do you write short stories, Frank? If not, there's probably no way I can explain other than to relate: 1) Why I write short fiction and then, 2) Why I have entered '...these competitions'.

1) Why short fiction?  I have written one novel, and have begun about three more. The 'completed' novel took up a big chunk of my life and I made just about all the mistakes a writer could make - not once, but time and again. Writing that first - unsuccessful - novel took years, if you include innumerable rewrites. I'm getting old and do not have such time to waste anymore.

So, in parallel, I became drawn into short fiction. Besides the fact that I enjoy writing 'tight and short', my reasoning is the same as why genetic researchers have employed the fruit fly, dorosophila, rather than the elephant - a short gestation period. I can experiment and make mistakes on a much shorter cycle, and can also execute the one and only acid test - does my work sell? - more readily.

In addition, there is a worldwide upsurge in interest in short fiction and a sea-change in the means of distribution/marketing the 'product'. The world of short fiction - online in particular - has an exciting 'wild frontier' atmosphere where remarkable things can and will happen (but you also have to watch your back).

2) Why competitions? To be clear, the competition in question, which triggered your enquiry, was the recent Whittaker Prize competition, so I'll address that. The competition involved writers submitting a short story every fortnight over a period of eighteen weeks. Although prompts were provided (three per round) these were only to stimulate creativity (the prompts did not have to be incorporated in the work) so writers were free to write whatever they pleased - not '...to someone elses brief.' - up to the maximum word count.

The main attraction to me is that I have a deadline to work to and a concrete reason to create something new. If I stick to the schedule, I end up with nine new pieces of work I would not otherwise have created. You could even regard the creative output from such competitions as the raw material 'input' to a further on-going process of learning and refinement.

As to the quality of adjudication, who can say? If not always names you would immediately recognise, the judges nonetheless have a standing in writing circles acknowledged by their peers. In this case there were two judges who adjudicated anonymously on alternate rounds, and in parallel on the final round (with interesting comments and results). In Whittaker, the entries are given points/values for nine defined parameters, e.g., Opening, Closing, Voice, Technicalities etc. All literary adjudication must be subjective, but I have found that the Whittaker values, arbitrary as they may seem, have given me clear indication of areas of weakness in my writing. When two judges independently highlight the same areas again and again, a sensible aspiring writer will take notice.

Success in competitions in general can bring your writing to the notice of a wider audience, and success does, it seems, breed success, if my mate Jonathan Pinnock's progress is any guide.

Distraction? Nope. Focus? Yup.

In short: it works for me, Frank.

Oscar