Last year, I had the great luck of receiving one of those emails. The ones you dream about. Not the ones starting with unfortunately (alas, so common to an emerging writer’s inbox) but with a caps-lock CONGRATULATIONS.
My first reaction was to think there had been a mistake. Why would my story win? It’s been rejected many times before. And next, the doubt was replaced by a flood of emotions – shock, joy, elation, and their synonyms. I’ve written more about this experience here.
The prize included money (yay) and a writing retreat (bigger yay), the former being an opportunity to meet both fledgling and published writers, and take part in creative activities. I left feeling inspired and enlightened, and began work at once on my short story collection and second (unpublished) novel.
And what happened next?
Nothing. Except that I applied to more competitions (chasing that high) and a few months later, received another flurry of rejections.
Then I remembered some advice. Author Sophie Haydock, who is a wonderful champion of new writing, suggested that I apply to competitions not as an entrant, but as a filterer. I’d never thought about it, but of course, every competition requires readers to sift through the entries and pass on longlists. Lots of these are voluntary roles, but I was delighted to be offered compensation from the first competition to reply to my emails.
I can only speak for my experience, and of course, different competitions have different criteria. But here are my insights and reflections having completed my first judging, or filtering, gig.
How did it work?
I was set up with a Submittable team account, and soon 1000 stories dropped into my inbox. My role was to read them all and flag the top 2% according to a colour coding system.
Firstly, I had to filter out all the stories that were:
a) not anonymised
b) over the word limit (in total about 10% of entries)
c) not related to the theme (another 10% of entries).
Next, I was told to maintain a strict approach to stories with typos or non-stylistic grammatical errors (maybe another 10%).
I was also told to look out for any stories that felt too AI-ish, but there weren’t many. Although, bizarrely, I also came across a piece written in almost the exact replica of a published story of mine, down to line-by-line syntax, evidently the product of a ChatGPT request to ‘rewrite this story with different characters’. That also went in the bin. And I double-locked my front door that night.
Once I had filtered these, 700 entries remained, and I began to read in earnest. I surprised myself with how easily I converted into a story critic, having spent my writing life on the other side of the fence. Since I wasn’t giving feedback, my job was simple. What stories stood out to me? Which ones surprised and delighted, or raised the hairs on the back of my neck, or made my eyes water?
But this competition was also themed, and it was easy to notice which stories worked in the key idea as an afterthought.
With such a high benchmark, many well-written stories that didn’t integrate the theme successfully, had to be binned too. Reflecting on my own unsuccessful entries in the past, I found this reassuring, as it reinforced how subjective the whole process can be.
What I most enjoyed about the process was the intimacy I felt; reading the best honed attempts, the tightest versions of characters, plots and ideas, knowing these stories meant a lot to their authors. And it felt raw, in comparison to the professionally polished versions I find on journal websites and in printed short story collections. I felt both beholden, and a strong sense of belonging, to my mini-community of seven-hundred stories, of which I could only pick 10-15 to send on to my judge.
Some entries still pop into my mind, six months later, when I’m chopping vegetables for a curry, and I feel privileged to have been one of their first readers.
But I also began to notice things.
The typical mistakes I made (and still make) in my own work were present, sometimes abundant, in others.
Whilst being perversely reassured that the entire emerging-writer community (except me, as I was an imposter) were not in fact undiscovered Raymond Carvers, the experience of judging made me more alive to my mistakes.
For example, that most typos live in the opening paragraphs, perhaps because they’re the sections we rework the most.
If the story sags, it does so on the second page. That fantasy and crime are the least successfully rendered subgenres, perhaps because they depend on so much world-building and accumulated events to hit home.
The most striking stories were simple and self-efficient, often consider one simple moment in time, or even just one conversation, and these ended mostly with a memorable punch to the stomach, rather than a fading, fizzling-out.
A rowing boat trip when the weather turned, or a traveller who told the wrong stories, an interruption in a church service, or a teacher-parent meeting. On the other hand, too many characters or too complicated an event chronology made the work feel like a creatively-rendered novel synopsis, not a short story.
I also noticed the two most common turnoffs. The first was over-describing (or overwriting), which I smelt when I found myself asking questions. Do I need to know the shape of her nose? Does the weather matter here? Why is this interior decor being described so closely, when soon after we leave this restaurant, never to return?
It led me to forming mini-rules for my own work, like one descriptor per character or place, or I can include a descriptive detail if it reappears or emerges as important later in the story.
The other turnoff was the classic showing-not-telling.
Since most professionally edited stories only ‘show’, I noticed the absence of said showing, by the visibility of telling. Then again, some stories did outrightly tell, with their matter-of-fact, fable-style narrative voices. This worked, but only sometimes. Other times it wasn’t maintained consistently, so the story reverted back to just telling. But when a sentence made me lean forward, or curl my toes, or when I thought yes yes yes, it was working.
At other moments, when faces screamed with anger or if I was reassured that a character was, in fact, very intelligent, I felt there were missed opportunities.
And what did some stories have which others did not?
Out of 700 entries, perhaps 100 carried a truly convincing and captivating narrative voice. An elusive thing to describe, but more easily identified (again) in its absence – if the viewpoint shifted too abruptly, if the vocabulary or dialogue jarred.
The stories I still remember today weren’t necessarily told from a unique perspective (although the pepper grinder was an interesting take). Instead, they set themselves apart by the quality and tone of their narrative voice. Minimal dialogue, minimal description even, and yet lots of emotional weight and tension; an equisitley chosen verb, a devastating comma. And something else, something pulsing alive in their core.
