At the end of our second short story competition, I put together these guidelines based on comments from our readers and administrators about what makes them want to recommend – or throw out – a competition entry. Some of these points may seems obvious but it really is worth checking your entry to see how it measures up.

Practical Things

Read the competition rules before you start, when you finish, and once more as you prepare to send in your entry. Keep a competition check-list, and as you parcel up your precious work refer to the list at every move – format, word-count, required cover-sheet information, closing date, fee, who is the cheque to be made out to? Please do this – we all make a lot more administration errors than we ever know about. Why waste the hours you have put into your work by sending it to the wrong address, misdirecting the cheque or missing the closing date? And don’t expect the readers to make an exception for you because your story is so good – if the entry breaches the rules, it will probably be sidelined by an administrator before it gets to the readers so your brilliance won’t be discovered.

Don’t trust your computer’s spelling and grammar check. We’ve all heard those hilarious stories – ‘I mis-spelled Gabriel and my computer corrected it to Garfield’, ‘it’s turned burglar into bugger,’ etc. It will give the readers a laugh but not a big enough laugh for your story to win the competition. And if you don’t know how to handle punctuation and capitalization, find out. If you let the computer do it for you, it won’t do it well enough. Readers might take on a story that needs correction but it has to be exceptionally good for them to make those kind of allowances. Why set extra obstacles to your progress?

Don’t use fancy fonts, complicated formats or great new gizmos you’ve just downloaded. Whether you are sending paper or e-copy, the easiest format for most people to handle is a Word document (the file tag should be .doc or .rtf) on standard A4 paper with automatic (not hard) returns at line-ends. Anything else makes extra work and risks annoying (or at worst defeating) the competition administrators.

Creative and Style Points

Look long and hard at your title and first paragraph. Readers have a huge pile of work to consider and although they try to look at each one with equal enthusiasm, it’s hard to stay fresh. All our readers speak with delight of those moments when they start a new story and the opening startles them awake. It’s neat, smooth and original, it entices them to read on…. Is your opening that special?

Now look at the ending. It might be happy, it might be tragic or it might point to untold events in an imagined future but it must leave an impression. Don’t let the story just tail off – the reader will get to the end and instantly forget it.

Try to avoid telling the reader too much. Find a way of getting characters and events to unfold your ideas for you. It is much more fun for readers if you lay a path for them to make their own discoveries. Remember that old line from schooldays – don’t tell me, show me.

Introduce a question in the reader’s mind as soon as you can. It doesn’t have to be as obvious as the ‘whodunit’ of a murder mystery but there must be something to suggest that the reader will discover a treasure if they read on.

Read the direct speech of your characters aloud. Ask yourself if those people would really talk like that. Many stories are rejected because the writer has forced the characters to spool out information in an unnatural way. Make sure you have set out the dialogue in a logical and consistent way. For example, if you start out using double quotes for speech and italics for thought, keep it like that. Changing half way confuses the reader and infuriates the typesetter.

Ask yourself what is unique about your story. If there is nothing in the plot, the characters, the setting or the language itself that you believe is new, you can bet there won’t be anything the judges haven’t seen 50 times over.

If your word-count is near the maximum for the competition, look for opportunities to edit. Where two stories are being compared, the shorter, more tightly edited one is likely to be chosen.

Make sure you know why you are writing the story. It may not have a plot but it must have a point. If you know the point, it will be easier to see where you have wandered off the track. Cut irrelevant paragraphs and keep it clean and focused.

Avoid bashing on about the big topic of the moment unless you really have something new to say or an unusual angle on the topic.

Finally, don’t send work that doesn’t impress you. When you’ve finished your story, put it away for a few weeks then get it out and pretend you’ve never seen it before. Read it because you want to enjoy a good read. If you don’t enjoy it, the judges probably won’t. Be really honest with yourself about this. When you read your work you will either get a sinking feeling and start praying for blind luck (you aren’t going to win) or you will get excited butterflies, thinking this really is a special piece of work (you may well be going to win). If you get the sinking feeling, do yourself a favour. Ask yourself – and your best friends if they are honest – do you lack confidence in yourself or do you have doubts because there are faults in the work? If you suspect it is the latter, do take the time to re-think and re-write. When that cheque and/or that offer of publication come your way, you will be so glad you did.

Now, write that winning story and send it in.

Why not send your next entry to us at Earlyworks Press? We usually have poetry and short fiction competitions running and we set occasional specialist genre competitions and web-based challenges. We are story addicts and we are looking forward to a good read!

Congratulations! You’ve plucked up the courage to enter a short story competition. You’ve had a go at a few short stories in the past and you’ve been wanting to tackle a novel for ages, but the idea was way too daunting so you’ve just shoved that to the bottom of your life’s “To Do” list. A short story is a much better idea, isn’t it? It’s just like writing a novel only shorter. Right?

Not exactly!

It’s been said that it’s not that a short story is long, it’s that it takes a long time to make it short. The idea that a short story is just a mini novel is an idea that will mean certain death to the success of your short story, before you’ve even written the first sentence.

There is an art, and a process to writing a short story, just like there’s an art and a process to writing a novel, a non-fiction book or an essay. Success is a matter of knowing the basic principles, and then applying these to write the best short story you’re capable of.

The question is, do you have the stamina to make your story short?

That question is easily answered by walking step by step through the writing process.

1. Planning

No matter what you are writing, you need to have a plan. Would you attempt to build a house without plans? Or would you set sail on the high seas without a map and compass? Writing stories is exactly the same. Set out without a plan and you will undoubtedly become lost in a forest of your own words.

Some simple questions to ask yourself at this early stage include:

* Who is your main character and what is their predicament?

* What do they want? How can they get out of their predicament?

* Who or what is stopping them getting what they want?

* How can you apply pressure to your character to force them into making tough choices in pursuit of their goal?

* What will your character learn over the course of the story?

Answering these few questions at the start will help you know who your character is, what they want, and how they will go about getting it.

2. Writing

Once you have a plan for your story you are ready to write it. When you are writing, you are just writing. You are not editing and you are not planning, you are writing. This specifically means that you don’t stop to wonder if “this way sounds better than that way”. When you are writing you are capturing the essence of the action in your story. You are writing a draft, not a finished product. At this stage don’t even think about your word limit. Just write the entire story as you have planned it. We’ll take care of the word limit in the editing and rewriting stages.

The writing stage is similar to mining a diamond. When a diamond is mined it is a chunk of rock, with a few glimmers to show it is actually a diamond. You don’t mine a beautifully cut and polished diamond straight from the side of a mountain, do you? No, you have an amazing piece of raw material, which you then take to a jeweller who will cut and polish it to show its beauty to its greatest advantage. In the writing process, the jeweller is the editor.

3. Rewriting

Once you have completed the first draft, the very best thing you can do is walk away. It can be difficult to get any distance from your own work, but it is virtually impossible if you try to plan, write, rewrite and edit your story in one sitting. If possible don’t look at it again for at least another day. This allows your story time to rest and “breathe”, and when you return to it you will see it in a fresh light.

When you are ready, re-read it straight through once without stopping, and without making any changes or marks in the margins. Once you’ve finished the first read, ask yourself one question: did I write the story that I set out to write? If the answer is no, don’t panic. It’s amazing how the real story you are meant to write comes out in the writing. At this stage your main focus is to ensure that the intention of the story equals the result. In other words, the story has to make sense, and must flow from beginning to end, with all questions raised at the beginning being answered by the end. It is quite common to do comprehensive rewrites of the first few scenes, as the story you really wanted to write didn’t surface until after you’d really got cracking. That’s ok. Just go back and rewrite any scenes you need to, to make the story flow from beginning to end.

Some other important questions to ask at this stage are:

* Are there any great leaps in time or place? It is generally best to keep these leaps to a minimum in a short story.

* How many characters do you have? It’s never a great idea to have more than three major characters at the most, and I’ve read great short stories where there is only one. Save the huge cast for your novel.

* Does the story continually move forward? It’s very easy to have two or maybe even three scenes showing the same thing about your character. A scene is a unit of change – if a scene doesn’t move the story forward, it needs to be cut or rewritten.

So rewriting is re-seeing and re-sculpting. The main purpose of this stage of the process is to make sure the story makes sense. There is a logic to story, and if there are any great leaps in time or place, you may need to add some small linking phrases. Once you are happy that the story flows in sequence you are ready to move to the final phase: editing.

4. Editing

You now need to step entirely out of your creative right brain and into your logical and analytical left brain, to refine and polish your story.

Firstly, look at your word count. Are you way over, way under, or pretty close to the mark? Never submit a story that is over the word limit. Respect the requirements of the competition and keep within the word limit.

Now read your story again, this time with your red marker in hand and a critical eye on the page. Some questions you need to ask at this stage are:

* When does the action begin? This is where your story begins. It’s tempting to “set the scene” and “show character” but the reality is, you don’t need to. The story always begins where the action begins. If there is anything that needs to be explained you haven’t written your action properly.

* Is all the action on the “spine” of the story? Edit out any superfluous material. Again, save it for your novel.

* Show don’t tell. This means, don’t tell us about someone, show us their character by putting them into difficult situations and let us discern their character by the choices they make.

* Edit out all explanation. As a general rule, ask yourself, “is it an image?” If it’s not it’s probably explanation and needs to be cut.

* Is there a “solution” to the story? Does the story deliver what it promised?

* Now is the time to ask, “is this the best way to say this?” If not, write it again, and say it better.

You may find yourself rewriting, editing, rewriting, editing over and over. This is completely normal! Most good short story authors do at least 15 drafts of their short stories before they are happy with the result.

So, you’ve made it through the process and you’re ready to send your story off to the competition. Make sure you double space it, that the font size is big enough to read easily and that you’ve put enough postage on the envelope!

And good luck!

1. Don’t Read The Rules. As soon as I take a story out of its envelope I can tell if the writer has read The Rules or not. If the pages are not numbered when I’ve said number them; if the story title is not at the top of each page when I’ve said do it that way; if the text is not double spaced or the font size needs either a magnifying glass or has to be read from the far side of the room I know they haven’t read The Rules.

Competition organisers say how they want your manuscript to look for a reason – usually it’s so that the story can be read comfortably, but also so that if the judge should throw a batch of stories up into the air in sheer exasperated frustration the resultant mess can be sorted out reasonably easily if The Rules have been followed.

And another thing: not following The Rules gives a bad impression to the judge and, depending on how the organisers go about rating your story, he (the judge) may well mark you down for it. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking “My story is so good they’ll ignore little things like font size and so on”. Don’t you believe it! It’s even possible that some mean minded judges will put an entry straight into the bin if The Rules have not been followed to the letter.

Lesson: If you don’t want to win the competition – ignore The Rules.

2. Don’t make your story a story, instead make your entry an article or a monologue. What’s the difference? Simple. A story unfolds in real time with dialogue, emotion and description, whereas an article recounts a series of facts by an impartial observer, and a monologue is one person talking about their experience(s). Which is not the same as a story.

If your story sounds like an excerpt from your personal journal, it’s an article.

Here’s one definitions of a monologue: “A monologue is an extended uninterrupted speech by a character in a drama.” Does your story read like that? It’s a monologue.

When I say that “a story unfolds in real time” I’m not saying it should be written in the present tense. It may well be, if you have good reason to do so, but either way the reader, in our case the judge, should be told the story in proper story-telling fashion. Remember you are trying to win a prize and unless the competition organisers have asked for something more cerebral, then stick to a true story format. Here’s Wikipedia’s definition: “A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format.”

Lesson: If you don’t want to win the competition – send in an article or monologue rather than a story.

3. Don’t stick to the theme. If the competition asks you to write a story around a particular theme, then stick to it. Make it clear shortly into the story that you have embraced the theme. Sticking it in right at the end as if it’s an afterthought may not impress the judge. In my experience some entries appear to be stories that have come out of the archive drawer regardless of theme, bunged in an envelope and sent off. Job done.

Lesson: If you don’t want to win the competition – ignore the specified theme.

4. Don’t use the spell checker or have your story read by a friend who can point out spelling errors. The thing to think about here is that the competition organisers may well want to include winning stories in an anthology or maybe publish them on their website. To use a story that has spelling mistakes, bad grammar, words missed out, words duplicated and so on is not going to do their street cred any favours. And remember it’s not their job to proof read and copy edit submissions. The author is supposed to do that.

Lesson: If you don’t want to win the competition don’t get it spell checked or read by a friend.

One final point. There are some ‘competitions’ that will accept any old rubbish and publish it, so long as they can get your entry fee, and maybe persuade you to buy some copies of the anthology as well. It may even be that the ‘prize’ IS publication in an anthology. Take care that the competition you are entering is genuinely looking for quality material.

Mervyn Love is the Editor of WritersReign, a lively and amusing website for the aspiring writer, which provides help and encouragement as well as many resources, writing competitions listings, markets listings and more. Sign up the F-R-E-E WritersReign Creative Writing Course at: http://www.writersreign.co.uk

A good title should grab the reader and make them wonder what the story is about. A bad title will probably cause the reader to skip the story altogether. This holds true when submitting your stories for publication. Editors are busy people and will pass on the story, often without reading the first sentence, if your title doesn’t capture their interest.

The title of your story will tell the editor a lot about your creativity. If your title is strong, an editor will be more likely to look at your story with a positive attitude.

So how do you come up with a good title? Below is a small list of tips to help you come up with an attention grabbing title.

1. Keep it short, no more than four or five words. Even two or three word titles are generally more than enough. If you can come up with a single word that conveys something about your story, even better.

2. Avoid boring titles. Don’t name your story something like ‘The Monster’ or ‘The Sea’ as these are dull and boring, and too generalized. Instead, try for something that evokes emotion. ‘Under the Bed’ would be a good title for a scary story and ‘High Tides’ works better for a story based on the ocean.

3. Make sure your title fits your genre. Don’t name a whodunit with a title that could be confused with a romance story.

4. Make your title easy to remember. This is another reason to keep the title short. Use your creativity to come up with something catchy that relates to the theme, the action, or the characters of the story. A memorable title allows your readers to recommend your story to others.

5. Research the title you come up with. Although titles are not copyrighted, you don’t want your story confused with another story of the same name. They can be similar without being exact.

So how do you spark your creativity to come up with the perfect title for your story? The following are a handful of ways to awaken your muse.

a. A short line of dialogue or a memorable sentence from your story can sometimes be the right choice.

b. A common phrase or expression can often be found that sums up the theme of your story. Or use a play on words, where only one element of the phrase is changed.

c. Borrow a line from an established work. Look at Shakespeare, the Bible or other well known book, song or movie.

d. Use one your main characters’ names. Think along the lines of ‘Tom Sawyer’ or Stephen King’s ‘Christine’.

e. Likewise, your title can be your setting. Think of Brokeback Mountain, Lost in Space, etc…

f. A good title can convey the main idea of your story. ‘Misery’ or ‘Legends of the Fall’ are good examples.

g. Use word association to link together elements of the story.

h. Allow the action to determine the name. By adding an ‘ing’ to the first word, you can come up with a catchy title. Some examples of this could be Chasing Rainbows or Dreaming Life Away.

Often, you can spend hours coming up with a title only to have the editor change it after accepting the story for publication. Sometimes the new title will make little sense to you. While you may think your title is perfect, the editor knows the publication’s readers well and may think the alternative is a better choice. And while this may irk your ego, knowing the story will be published is its own reward.

However you come up with the title to your short story, remember it is the first impression the editor will have about your writing abilities. Like the logline to a screenplay or the first paragraph of a novel, the title should represent the story they are about to read. At the end of the day, you want the editor to remember your story and place it in the ‘accepted for publication’ stack on their desk.

The short story market is one of the hardest to break into. There are thousands of well-known writers pumping out short fiction, and thousands more just like you, struggling to get themselves published for the first time. But there are several things you can do to set yourself apart from the rest and start working your way to the head of the pack.

Attention to Detail

First things first, make sure your manuscript is professional. Use a plain, 12-point font, times new roman is the norm. Double-line space the entire manuscript and only left-justify your text. Use a minimum one inch margin on both sides of the page, and top and bottom. Put your name, address and contact number in the top right-hand corner of the coversheet, put your story’s title and your byline in the centre of the page. Rights being offered should go on the bottom-left corner and approximate word count on the right. Thereafter, make sure the first three words of the title and the page number appears in the page header on the right-hand side. Place your title about two-thirds of the way down the first page, your byline immediately underneath, and start your story one double-spaced line below that.

If this manuscript was for a short story competition you would normally need to remove the coversheet and delete any occurrences of your name from the final draft. Though you should always check the competition’s guidelines as some do differ.

If you can submit an error-free, professional-looking document, you will already have beat out all the dreamers who think they’ll get their story noticed if it’s printed on pink paper, bordered with little stars, or hand-written in old gothic. None of these strategies will give you an edge; they will only make you look too eccentric to be worth an editor’s trouble.

Choosing a Title

Though an editor may want to change your title, a title can sometimes make or break your entire submission. Don’t alienate yourself by selecting a title like ‘My Dog Rover,’ or ‘The Story of My Father.’ Instead, go for something mysterious or edgy, like ‘Bark the Dead Down,’ or ‘The Meanest Old Bastard from Here to Melbourne.’

Know When to Take Instruction

Get on-line, not just for e-publishing, but for print publications as well. Find out what your target publishers are looking for in terms of genre and submission criteria, such as format and word length. You would be surprised at how many new writers will attempt to submit a piece that is 3,000 words too long, or is on a topic completely unrelated to the regular content of the publication they are attempting to break into. If you can follow a publisher’s submission criteria to the letter and are sensitive to what their publication is trying to accomplish, you will find yourself pulling even further ahead of the other writers.

However, you don’t always have to listen to the dictates of publishers. Many editors will tell you that if you are submitting a piece to them, do not submit it to any other publisher at the same time. If they find out they have been wasting their time on your piece while you’ve gone with another publisher, they could blacklist you. Although, authors will tell you a different story. Rather than having eager publishers fighting over your work, the truth is that you will probably submit your story, wait for months to hear from the publisher, and then get a letter of rejection. Is your time really that much less valuable than that of an editor? Experienced authors say submit, submit, submit. Just be sure to keep a list of all the places you have sent your manuscript so you can withdraw it if you get lucky.

Writing Competitions

While it may be hard or even impossible for a never-published author to get their manuscript in front of an editor, one strategy for breaking in is to enter short fiction contests. These contests usually come with some prize money and an opportunity to be published. However, beware of scam contests. Any contest that says you’re a winner and then asks you for money is a scam. Any contest that says you’re a winner but wants to publish your work without paying you is a scam. Don’t be fooled – research contests as thoroughly as you would a publisher. A reading or entry fee is pretty much the norm, but again beware, watch out for high fees in return for small prizes.

Get Tough or Get Out

Being neat, professional, competitive and a contest-winner may help to put you at the head of the pack, but these do not make up a never-fail formula for success. The truth is, your stories are going to be rejected a disappointing number of times. Just remember that this does not mean your story is bad, and it does not mean that you will never succeed. It just means that you are going to have to learn to accept rejection. Some of the greatest authors in literary history have been able to paper their walls in rejection slips.

If a rejection contains comments of any kind from an editor, you know you’re on the right track. You made them care enough to want to teach you something, and this is no small feat. Whatever an editor has suggested, consider it carefully. Try making some of these changes and resubmit.

Don’t Forget that this is a Job

Like every other stage of the process, this is hard work. Writing is like any other job, to do it well, you have to work your butt off, and deal with bosses that are going to give you a hard time every chance they get. The biggest mistake a new writer can make is to give up when things stop being easy. As soon as the creative juices don’t seem to be flowing, or they can’t get part of the story just right, they quit. This attitude is all wrong. Writers that are getting published aren’t better than you; they’re just working harder than you. Authorship can offer huge payoffs, but only to those who are willing to quit playing and do some real tough storytelling.

One last thing you can do to advance further ahead of the pack is to do your research. Writers used to depend on annually published directories like the Fiction Writer’s Market to get the scoop on submission criteria and publisher addresses, but today the Internet is the place to be for the short story writer. The new frontier when it comes to short story publishing is on-line. The form is ideally suited to on-line publications, websites and as a downloadable for hand-held devices. So warm up your mouse and start pounding that keyboard, you’ll never know unless you give it a go.