One of the competitions I entered was the newly founded Costa Short Story Competition, run by the Costa Book Awards. This competition was exciting because it was open to all writers, whether they had been previously published or not, had a substantial prize pot and was associated with Costa's very high-profile book awards. Twitter and other social media meant that we hopefuls knew a lot more than usual about what was going on behind the scenes: we knew that several hundred stories had been reduced to a short list of sixty. We knew when the celebrity judges were reading these stories, when they were meeting to decide the shortlist of six, when the decision had been made. We just needed the official announcement. And then the wave of disappointment hit. We didn't (still don't) know who those shortlisted writers were, but we knew it wasn't us.
Reactions varied according to the experience of the writers involved. The comments of some of the competition 'newbies' reminded me of myself when I first started entering writing competitions and made me realise how much I have learned about the process, and about myself as a writer over the years. So I decided take all my experience to date and offer it as a guide to understanding what failing to win a writing competition really means. Here it is.
Why Losing is Not the Same as Failing
So, you’ve written a kick-ass short
story and you decide to enter it into a writing competition. It’s your best
work ever, and while you don’t exactly expect to win, you feel there’s a good
chance of getting on the short list, or the long list at the very least. You
watch the competition’s website, follow them on Twitter, start checking your
inbox every five minutes as the deadline for the announcement approaches.
Finally, finally, the shortlist or winners are announced, and your name’s not
there. Not anywhere.
This leads you to one of two
conclusions: either your story was rubbish and you are no judge of your own
work, or the judges are idiots. Right?
Wrong. Here’s why:
But I wrote such a good story!
Yes, you probably did. But so did
many, many of the other entrants. A small-scale competition will attract maybe
150 to 200 entries. Larger competitions will get thousands. Say, for example, in
a small-scale competition, half of the entries are just not up to scratch –
poorly written, ungrammatical, or disqualified for not adhering to the entry
guidelines. If your story is still in the competition after those have been
eliminated, you’ll still be up against at least fifty other stories and
probably many more. The judges can
award prizes to maybe three of those stories. Does that automatically mean the
other forty-seven or so stories were no good? Of course not.
The best story always wins, right?
No, the story the judges like best
will win. What judges are asked to do is rank stories in order of preference,
and ultimately that is a matter of opinion. This became apparent to me when I
entered a competition where the entrants posted their stories online while
waiting for the judging to take place. We were able to read and critique many
of the other entries, so when the results came in, we could compare the peer-reviews
to the judges’ rankings. Needless to say, they didn’t always concur.
The competition involved some 500
writers, placed into groups of twenty, competing over several rounds, with
competitors progressing according to how many points they accumulated. In the
first round, the top ten stories in each group of twenty writers were awarded
points. If you didn’t make the top ten, you got no points. Now, many of the writers
on the online forum felt that big fat zero against their entry meant the judges
had read their story and thought it was worth... well, nothing. Zero. Nada.
Zilch. But of course, that’s not what a score of zero meant. It just meant that
in that group, there were ten stories that the judges preferred. It’s the same
in any writing competition, although not always as transparent as in this
example.
The crucial lesson is that while
winning a writing competition means you’re doing it right, not winning doesn’t
necessarily mean you’re doing it wrong.
It’s a numbers game
So, how do the judges really decide
who wins? Understanding how writing competitions are judged can help get both
your wins and your losses into perspective.
In smaller competitions, the named
judge or judges will probably read all the entries, but in larger competitions,
the entries will be read first by ‘slush’ readers. The first job of these
readers is to weed out the stories that are ineligible for any reason (word
count too long, requested format not adhered to, theme not followed, etc). Don’t underestimate how important these
details are. Plenty of stories are not even read the whole way through before
being eliminated. An experienced slush reader told me:
‘I reject any that are littered with typos, grammar
or spelling mistakes. If the author can't be bothered to
polish and perfect their story, why should I spend my time reading it?’
Even if your
grammar and punctuation are impeccable and you have adhered to the required
font and formatting, your entry might still end up in the reject heap without
the slush reader making it to the end of the story:
‘An experienced reader can tell very quickly if the
story might be a contender. It needs to grab my attention straight away and
that's largely down to whether there's an engaging voice in the opening
sentences.’
So the first cull can be brutal,
and you really need to be at the top of your game to survive it. Even so, each slush
reader will still have a big stack of stories to read in full and winnow down.
How do slush readers decide which
stories to put forward to the ‘named’ judges? Most commonly, they will use a
score sheet. The slush readers will score the stories, and put forward the top
scoring ones for the next stage of judging. The score sheet will list a variety
of qualities that the story should be judged on, and a maximum score available
for each criterion. Points can be awarded for voice, tone, characterisation,
engagement of the reader, plot development, how satisfied the story leaves the
reader, and many other qualities. The balance of these scores is often
reflected in judges feedback, where it is available: stories that fail to make
the grade may be praised for a ‘lovely voice’ but lose out on character or plot
development. Or a story may have a great story arc, but the main characters
feel wooden or lacking. Or the writing might be just sublime, but the story
underdeveloped. In other words, if any crucial element leaves the slush reader
feeling ‘meh’, no matter how strong other elements may be, the story is
unlikely to make it to the next round.
These readers will be well
qualified for the job – they are often writers and editors in their own right.
They will know ‘good’ writing when they see it, and will have the experience to
analyse and score the stories fairly and knowledgably. But, even bringing all
that experience to bear, there is no empirical way of measuring which story is
‘the best’. Judges are readers with opinions and personal taste, just like
anyone else.
The same applies all the way
through the judging process. In a larger competition, there will often be a
panel of ‘high profile’ judges and the final selection will be made by these
judges coming together and discussing their favourite entries until they arrive
a consensus. And consensus can sometimes mean compromise. It is safe to say
that all the stories being considered at this point will be ‘good’ stories.
Yours might well be one of them.
So what do I do with that ‘failed’ story now?
It’s always disappointing when you
send your beloved story out into the world and the result is a resounding
silence. Just bear in mind everything I’ve said above, and remember, it’s not
that your story was no good, it’s just that there were three, or five or
whatever number of stories that the judges liked better. That’s all you can
really infer from ‘losing’ a writing competition.
So what now? Enter your story in
another competition, if you know in your heart it’s a good story. I won a
competition recently with a story that had been entered into at least half a
dozen other competitions over several years and had never so much as been long
listed before. Another story that had been doing the rounds for a while finally
got shortlisted in a competition where the winning and shortlisted stories
(including mine) were subsequently published in an anthology. In that case, the
judge was looking for stories that would work well together as a collection.
Many an excellent story may have not made the cut because it didn’t fit that
theme.
If you are suddenly doubting
whether the story is any good, get other writers to read it and get their
opinion. Don’t ask your mother or your best friend. Join a writing group or
online writers’ forum and get honest feedback. It’s hard to maintain faith in
your writing if you are working in a vacuum, and failure to win competitions is
no way to accurately judge the value of your work. Some competitions will
provide feedback on your story for an extra fee, and this might be worth
considering.
Finally, bear this in mind (and
this applies to all sorts of submissions, be they to competitions, magazines or
publishers): your work is not judged in isolation, but in relation to all the
other entries. The judges may want the winning and short listed entries to contrast
with or compliment each other, to work together in an anthology or to reflect
the style of the sponsoring body. It’s as if they are putting together an
outfit and what they really need to complete it is a nice pair of black boots.
But you’ve sent them a red dress. They already have some red dresses, and one
in particular suits them better than yours. So they politely decline your offer
of a red dress. Does that mean your red dress is any less lovely?
Further reading:
Since I first posted this, I've found or been directed to some other great posts on the subject. I'll add them here as I go along.
- A great post here by Tracey Upchurch on why you are never too small for the 'big' competitions.
- Two fabulous accounts of what it is really like to be a slush reader: Susannah Rickards on Emma Darwin's blog here and Dexter Petley recounting his experience here on Lesley McDowell's blog.
- Feel like giving up after five rejections? Ten? You'll never give up again on a story you believe in after reading this article on submitting to magazines. Success is like getting all the numbers right in a combination lock. Rejection might mean only one number was wrong.
