Wednesday 8 October 2014

A Couple of Competitions for You...

In the last few days I've received notification of a couple of competitions: the Words with Jam 'Bigger Short Story Competition', and another running with Shortlist.com that has a great prize for the winner- 12 months coaching with Chris Wellbelove of Greene & Heaton literary agency.

Shortlist.com Fiction Competition

The winner will receive 12 months coaching, which includes four face to face meetings, and interim reports by email. If the winner doesn't live in London, it can be done by Skype.

There will be ten shortlisted entries which will be assessed by an expert panel of judges (from Shortlist, and Greene & Heaton) and published online.

So here's the basic stuff.

You must be U.K resident and over 18.

Send the opening 500-1,000 words of your novel to online@shortlist.com and it must be 'written and formatted on a Word document only'. Entry is online only.

Closing date 5th December 2014.

Do make sure you read the rules completely.

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Words with Jam: Bigger Short Story Competition 2014

This has 3 categories.

Short story up to 2500 words on any theme; shorter story up to 1,000 words, and the shortest story category for up to 250 words.

Closing date is the 31st October- the end of this month.

There's cash for 1st-3rd place winners in each category, and 5 runners-up in each category receive £10 and will be published in their anthology- and receive a copy.

The judges for the respective categories are: Emma Darwin, Sam Jordison, and Debbie Young.

Entry fees: First story submitted £6, and £4 per story from then on- whatever the category is. Can be paid by Paypal or cheque.

You must be 16 and over to enter.

Full details can be read here, and ensure you follow the instructions.

No one wants to pay an entry fee and then realise their story won't be considered because they didn't follow the instructions precisely. :(


If you enter any of these competitions, good luck. :-)





8 comments:

Patsy said...

Thanks for the links, Carol.

Carolb said...

I'm certainly tempted by the first one, Patsy. :)

Rosemary Gemmell said...

I received notice of that first one too, Carol, but haven't heard of the second, though I won't be entering. But it sounds a good prize!

Carolb said...

Yes, the Shortlist prize is very good, Rosemary. Words with Jam run these varying length short stories annually, but they also do do smaller free competitions too. :)

liz young said...

Well, I qualify on the 'over 18' part - do you think they'd notice a 2000 mile gap?

Carolb said...

Sadly, Lizy, I think they would. :D

Dan Purdue said...

Thanks, Carol - the Shortlist prize looks like it's worth a shot. I tried the Words With Jam competition last year with an entry in each category and got nowhere; I might give them another go if I can get something ready in time.

Carolb said...

Good luck with them if you enter, Dan. :-)

Always difficult when you don't know what the judges really want sometimes.