Although I’m not in the habit of entering writing contests much, I know a lot of writers do enter them regularly and I’ve noticed a couple of things about some contests that are quite disturbing, and this includes the better known ones. The least worrying of these elements, but still something to take note of, is when the author’s name is allowed, under the contest rules, to appear on the manuscript. The manuscripts should be entirely anonymous and the author assigned a code for identification. [Although most contests quite rightly say that friends and family members of those involved in organising and judging the contest cannot enter].
A second worrying aspect to some contests is that they use the same judges each year, and so ultimately it means the stories will all begin to homogenise in terms of style, length, tone, subject matter etc. I say this because once writers in contests have reached a given level of experience and skill, the judging process is not about how well the writer is writing but is simply about whether the judge[s] happened to like one story over another… it’s purely subjective. The way to deal with this is to have new judges for each contest. However, being a judge in a literary contest brings kudos in its wake and it’s good to have on a writer’s biography, and therefore ambitious writers might well hustle to become literary judges. Some, [although not all], of these roles might also be paid ones, so you can see how unwilling a set of judges might be to give up their positions, or their niches.
The third and most serious problem that really does make me quite angry is that alongside those few professional and published writers who enter contests there are sometimes many hundreds of people who have aspirations to write fiction, but haven’t yet got anywhere near learning the craft. Everyone has to pay an entry fee and it could be anything from a fiver up to twenty five pounds. Some of the prize money amounts are really good, and so it’s easy to see how tempting it might be to enter a writing contest. Would-be writers happily give over their entry money, and then dream… So the contests, in my opinion, are literally run on the innocent money of would-be writers who haven’t a chance in hell of even reaching the long-list, let alone winning. You might say it’s not the organisers’ fault if the no-chancers enter, but there is something they could do about it if they had any sense of shame at all, and it is to make it very clear at the top of the submission instructions that that the entrants will be competing with professional published writers. That at least is a warning, and the decent thing to do. Otherwise you could stipulate that the contest was only for published writers, and that way the playing field might be leveled out a little. So why don’t literary contest organisers do this? I think I’m going to let you work that one out. But I’m happy to talk about it further if you contact me.
