Thanks to everyone who entered our ‘Real’ writing competition.

We had a lot of entries and the standard was very high so don’t feel disappointed if your story didn’t win.

The teen and kid’s categories were particularly difficult to judge this time around – there were so many fabulous entries. It’s great to see so many talented and enthusiastic young writers out there.

The entries that stood out were the ones that had conflict and great characters who hooked the reader into the story. They also had settings that had been woven into the story well and were part of the action.

Overall, there was some really fabulous writing.

FORMATTING

Unfortunately, there were a lot of problem with formatting this time and this delayed the judging.

Please follow submission guidelines. If you don’t submit in the correct format, it might not be possible to read your entry. Consequently, we will not be able to judge it.

TIPS FOR FUTURE COMPETITIONS

Some of the entries didn’t follow the competition guidelines. Please make sure that your submissions are 500 words or less and that they are submitted as a Word attachment or pasted into the body of your email.
Competition results were delayed because some people had sent stories in formats that couldn’t be read.

• Before you send your entry, read it out loud. This will help you pick up accidental mistakes where you have left a word out or typed it twice.

• Try to show the action as it happens instead of telling the reader about it afterwards.

• Think about how you can make the personality of your main character come through in your writing. What is it about this person that makes them stand out?

• Make the start of your story interesting. Introduce your main character straight away and give the reader reasons to care about them.

• Try and have some action in your story. Give your main character a problem so that the reader will wonder how they are going to solve it.

Adult Writers

If you are adults writing for children, here are some things you might want to consider.

1.  Don’t write from an adult’s point of view.  For example, don’t try and get a message across that chocolate is bad for you and have a character who decides they would rather eat broccoli instead. If you write a story where the consequences of a child eating too much chocolate cause a problem for them, this will be more believable.

2.  If you want to write about an issue, write about it from the way a child would see it, not from how an adult would view the situation.

3. If you are writing from the point of view of a ten or twelve year-old, their language, actions, needs, beliefs and motives must be consistent with a character that age.  You need to really immerse yourself in a ten or twelve-year old mindset in order to write a believable story.

OUR NEXT COMPETITION

Our next competition opens on the 1st August and the theme will be ‘unreal’. This time we are going to have four categories:

1. Writers aged 8 to 10

2. Writers aged 11 to 12

3. Teen Writers

4. Adult Writers

Good luck and keep writing:)

Dee

COMPETITION RESULTS

Congratulations to all the worthy winners and to every one who wrote a story and had the courage to enter it.

Prizes and certificates will be emailed over the next few days.