Less than 48 hours to go until our latest competition closes and yet again we have had some interesting entries. A number of them go to the heart of something I wrote about a few days ago under the heading When less is more.

That blog, if you recall, explored the idea that writing has to be effective, with every word doing its job and all the unnecessary ones stripped out.

Several of the entries to our competition have been short and sharp - not 2,000 words but nearer six or seven hundred words, if that. Does that kind of approach make for a good short story? Well, yes, it can do because sometimes a writer has an idea that needs no more that a few hundred words.

The golden rule for a short story? Tell it only in as many words as it needs - and not one syllable more. And now, since this blog threatens to become overwritten, I will sign off!

John Dean

Can I make an apology to those people who have sent us queries about competition rules and the like in recent days.

We had a slight technical hitch which meant they got held up in the system. However, we have cleared that now and taken steps to make sure it does not happen again.

So, apologies for the delay and here are some of the answers to a couple of your questions.

Question I am having trouble entering the competition via the website. What might be the problem?

Answer When entering again, and this person had tried to do that having entered in December, you need to re-register as if you are a new person. Perhaps the easiest thing to do is put a 2 after the log in you used before. More details are given on our guidance to entering section on the home page.

Question Can I enter a story that has been published?

Answer: Yes, as long as the copyright remains yours. Many short story writers have work that appears in magazines or on websites and we are happy to have them as entries.

John Dean

A week to go in our latest competition and what is again emerging is how the good authors write effectively.

What do I mean by that? Well, in a short story, and in other forms of writing, the key is to keep the reader interested and the trick to that is cutting out what is not important or not needed.

A forest may be beautiful but to take a page and a half telling the reader does not work in a short story. You just do not have the space to do that.

It may, instead, mean selecting just three or four facts and letting the readers build their picture up from there.

I am a great believer in using triggers - phrases, images that allow the reader to draw on their own life, their own history and bring them to your story.

If you write about a park, it does not matter that I, as a reader, do not see exactly the same park that you see - what matters is that I see a park. If that happens, then your job is done and done well and if you only need three or four sentences to achieve it, then all the better. More space to tell the rest of your story.

Good short story writing cuts out the extraneous stuff and focuses in on what is really important. It can be a tough discipline hitting the delete button when you slaved so hard over each hand-crafted word but it is a discipline that turns a decent short story into an absolute cracker!

John Dean

We’re always grateful for the support we receive in promoting our competition - it’s a big world out there and there are a lot of writers to reach.

So, it is worth a mention in dispatches for our friends at Kudos, whose bulletin has been mentioning this competition.

Sites likes these are excellent for spreading the word about competitions, particularly at a time when competitions offer great opportunities for aspiring authors seeking to further their careers. So, it is well worth you checking out www.kudoswriting.wordpress.com <http://www.kudoswriting.wordpress.com/>

Entries to our January competition have been fairly slow - so perhaps now is the time to chance your arm. You never know!

John Dean

It’s good - and appropriate - that we are now seeing entries coming in from American writers.

Why appropriate? Well, although there is much debate about who was responsible for the birth of the modern short story, perhaps the strongest claim comes from the US in the 1800s.

There had been short stories before - the tradition of oral storytelling is based upon the idea, just read some Geoffrey Chaucer to confirm that - but it was not until the 19th Century that it really started to establish itself as a written force to be reckoned with.

And probably the person who initially did most to achieve that was Nathaniel Hawthorne, of Salem, Massachusetts, whose book Twice-Told Tales was published in America in 1837. Many see it as the beginning of the modern short story.

Whoever can take the credit, it is certainly true that some of the writers who have taken the genre and made it their own have been Americans, the celebrated Edgar Allan Poe and Scott Fitzgerald among them.

That is not to say that the Americans dominated the scene, quite the opposite in fact, and many other countries can claim their own, including France where Somerset Maughan was born of British parents, Russia with Anton Chekov, Germany with Franz Kafka, India with Rudyard Kipling, and my own favourite, Hector Hugh Munro, better known as Saki, who although a British writer was born in Akyab, in Myanmar, also known as Burma, I believe.

I know I will have missed out great short story writers from other continents and other countries but space permits me mentioning more than a few. By all means, email and make the case for a writer from your country and we’ll give them a mention.

Anyway, with such a fabulous writing tradition, it has been worrying to see the short story being threatened with slow death because not many people are publishing them, which is why I would argue that competitions are so important in helping to keep the short story flag flying.

And it is certainly flying here. Reading the comments from Fiona Cooper on our first winners (and there were plenty other stories that impressed her as well), it is clear that the tradition is in safe hands with a new generation of writers.

We will be putting the winning stories up in a day or two so you can see some of their work.

John Dean

The winners have been named in the first monthly Global Short Story Competition - and the successes have been divided between Australia and the UK.

The judge, respected North-East writer Fiona Cooper, chose as the winner of the £100 first prize a story called Rings Around the Moon by Australian writer Kaalii Cargill, of St Kilda, in Australia. Second place also went to a St Kilda writer, SJ Finn, with a story called Heart String, who wins £25.

Commended was Bill Akers, a writer from County Durham, England, for a story called A Strawberry in Winter.

Fiona said of the winner, Rings Around the Moon: “It has pace, style, wit, pathos, vivacity and originality. The story is subtle and many textured and contains surprises - quite an accomplishment in a short story. The writer takes us into the world of Lana effortlessly and speaks to our senses and our feelings, and there is nothing cliched about the resolution of the story. What a wonderful image! It is a fine accomplishment, leaving enough space for the reader to empathise and imagine into the situation. ”

Of the second place story, Heart String, she said: “The use of language in all its richness in this story is breathtaking. It speaks richly to all the senses and captures that ‘first love’ desolation which we all know so well. I will be very interested to see what else this writer does, as a real love of words shines through every sentence. Very atmospheric and bitter sweet. ”

And of A Strawberry in Winter, she said: “A difficult subject handled well and sympathetically.”

All three stories will be on our site in due course.

The current competition closes on January 31. The judge will again be Fiona Cooper.

All this talk about writers from the likes of Australia, New Zealand and Canada has somewhat overshadowed UK writers in my recent blogs. Hopefully, this puts that right.

The entries coming in for the January competition, as well as those for the December one, have included a significant number from the UK - North Yorkshire is already well represented this time around.

They illustrate the strength of writing in the UK. As our promotion of this competition gathers pace, we are trying to mail or email as many writing groups as we can worldwide. We have contacted more than 150 in the UK alone already. It has been the same in other countries.

We know that so far we have only found a tiny fraction of those that exist, each one containing writers with the ability to tell compelling stories.

If you would like more information sent to your group, wherever you are, please do get in touch. We are also happy to answer any of your questions. We put a number of those questions and replies on our Frequently Asked Questions section if we think they have wider interest.

We are also happy to provide details of your group’s website on our showcase section. We are keen to do anything we can to promote the undiscovered writers of the world.

Those that entered December‚s competition will be eagerly awaiting the results, as are we. Fiona Cooper, the judge, is working her way through the stories and has already found several that she really likes. We await her decision with interest.

All the best.

John Dean

The first entries for our second monthly competition are in - Australia and Canada quick off the blocks - and all the stories so far submitted have something in common: a first line that intrigues.

I have referred to this in an earlier blog but it is worth repeating. When it comes to short stories, my view is that the first two or three lines are absolutely crucial. I believe it is vital that the opening line has what is known as The Question, something that makes you want to read on.

It does not have to be a shock, horror line but it needs something to hook the reader - why is the character unhappy, why is the character in this strange place, why does the character feel uneasy, why are they in this predicament why, why, why, always why?

There are others ways of doing it - you could produce writing so beautiful that, whatever the story, the reader wants more because life is poorer without it, or introduce a character so fascinating that the reader wants to get to know them better. We know people like that in real life so it stands to sense that it works in writing as well.

However you start your story, it is certainly well worth spending time getting that first line right. It can get you a long, long way!

John Dean

January 7, 2008

Happy New Year to you all from the team here at Certys.

Well, our first monthly competition has now closed for entries and the stories are on their way to our judge, Fiona Cooper. We will announce the winner as soon as she has made her decision.

Now, attention turns to the January competition, as you can see from the counter on our home page.

If the quality of those entries are anything like the ones submitted for our December competition, Fiona is in for another treat.

Good luck.

John Dean