Literary competitions are a great way to break into publishing. With that in mind, I wanted to share the judge’s response to entries into one of the UK’s most popular writing competitions.
Personally, I’ve never submitted to a Mslexia competition. But my friend who writes historical fiction entered a part of her novel into the 2021 competition. Mslexia is a magazine for women who write. (Mslexia means women's writing. Ms = woman lexia = words. Its association with dyslexia is intentional. Dyslexia is a difficulty, more prevalent in men, with reading and spelling. Mslexia is a difficulty, more prevalent in women, with getting into print. Sorry guys!).
I thought the judge’s reaction, copied below, was really interesting. There is much to learn from their feedback. Have a read and see what you think. Some great tips in here:
Though we aren’t able to provide individual feedback, we always ask our judges to comment on their general impressions of the work they’ve read, so I hope you might find something useful here for when you return to your draft.
Given that Hilary Mantel is our lead judge, it’s not surprising that there were a great many historical novel entries this year – set both in the recent ‘historical past’ of the 1960s and 1980s, but also during the two world wars, and as far back as prehistory. But there were also lots of fantasy and speculative fiction, contemporary settings, and literary fiction – and our judges were pleased to welcome quite a few humorous entries and few comedies of manners. Many of the extracts were transportive in the best way, taking the reader to Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, South Africa, India, Canada, Jamaica and elsewhere.
What our judges didn’t find were many novels tackling the ‘big themes’ of recent years: plagues and misinformation, Black Lives Matter and #metoo. I’m guessing this is because it takes time for such things to sink into a writers’ unconscious and often many years to write a novel, so those topics are still percolating and have yet to emerge.
What they were looking for was, to quote one judge, ‘something that hooked me in from the opening line, kept me engrossed, and made me forget I was judging’. The magic ingredients tended to be a confident authorial voice, an original concept or setting, engaging characters, and a powerful narrative drive. Easy to list, but what does this mean in practice?
‘An unusual setting or a strange scenario, for which the writer had obviously done some research, were immediately interesting’ said one judge. ‘An intriguing character would keep me reading even if there wasn’t a clear plot hook,’ said another – ‘especially if there was a strong “I” voice too.’ Speaking of voices, ‘I was really pleased to see some writers experimenting with colloquial and distinctive styles, like Sara Baume and Eimear McBride’. This wasn’t always successful, but when it did work the results transported the reader just as powerfully as an unusual fantasy or historical setting.
In terms of what went wrong with some of the entries, our judges identified several recurrent issues. (If absolutely none of these seem to apply to your novel, forgive me – yours was probably one of those at the very top of the ‘maybe’ pile that didn’t quite get through!)
The most common issue, that crops up in every novel competition we run, was a slow start. Though it seems logical to set the scene and provide a character’s back story at the start of the book, it’s usually better to drip-feed this kind of information throughout the first few chapters. ‘Sometimes the pace was too slow and the writing too expositional because the writer was attempting to supply too much information,’ commented one of our judges. ‘However beautiful the descriptions, they still feel like an information-dump when all clumped into the first five pages.’
In other novels there was the opposite problem, and the pace was too fast, with not enough information provided, leaving the reader confused and struggling to get into the story. This was particularly unfortunate in genres that need a lot of world-building, such as historical or fantasy – ‘I was left dangling with too many possibilities in terms of character and location to picture the story. It's disconcerting to be imagining a modern-day setting, only to discover in Chapter 3 that it is based in 1914’.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t! It's a tricky balance to strike, but nothing that can’t be sorted with a bit of an edit.
Related to this was the issue of ‘hook’ – namely, a question or puzzle that sparks the reader’s curiosity and makes them want to read on. ‘Why is she so grumpy?’ ‘So what did happen in this room last year?’ ‘How did he end up sleeping rough in an evening dress?’ The ‘hook’ lives in that sweet spot between telling too much and telling too little. ‘The trick is to draw the reader in and get them to ask questions – not hand them everything on a plate.’ (But not too many questions, all at once!)
Then there is the issue of prologues, which has cropped up many times in the decade since we launched this competition. Though it can work powerfully in a minority of cases, in general a prologue within an extract of 5,000 words results in what one judge described as a read that was ‘choppy and disconnected with multiple beginnings’: a dramatic prologue followed by a first chapter in a completely different time period and setting, sometimes with a completely different character. ‘It’s hard to keep track, and all the tension from the opening prologue is dissipated as it goes into a new situation’. Again, very easy to fix. Though many published novels start with a prologue, my advice is to exclude it from your initial submission for now.
Another problem with some of the entries was bombarding the reader with too many characters at the start. The experience is of walking into a party where you don’t know anyone. Your impulse is to back away – or head towards just one person you like the look of. In a novel too, it’s better to focus on one or too characters and make sure, in the words of one of our judges, that ‘they all have a reason to be there and actually interact or do something interesting – otherwise it's just confusing’. Once again, a doddle to sort out – with just a light pruning of extraneous characters and a closer focus in on your main protagonists.
So, those are the big ones – all with simple solutions. Of course there were a minority of entries that needed a bit more of a rewrite. But let me stress that these were in the minority, where the writing was clearly still at a first-draft stage: interesting and full of potential, but with some basic slip-ups with tense, grammar and point of view, plots that didn’t quite get going, and characters crying out for a further layer of complexity. But, in the words of one of our judges, ‘the vast majority didn’t make any of these mistakes’.
Winners and finalists have discovered that being placed in a Mslexia competition can make a huge difference to how their work is perceived. Our finalists have signed multi-book deals, been awarded grants, achieved agent representation and had their entries broadcast on national radio. Just mentioning a Mslexia longlisting in a cover letter will make the recipient sit up and take notice.
As well as generous cheques, the prizes we offer include publication, career mentoring, manuscript feedback, pitching workshops, and personal introductions to agents and editors. For many, the results have been life-changing.
‘The Mslexia Novel Competition was my first big ‘yes’ as a writer, and this summer my agent sold it in a 10-house auction’ Imogen Hermes Gowar, author of The Mermaid And Mrs Hancock
‘My winning pamphlet led to the publication of my first full collection The Disappearing Room (Arc Publications), and my second, The Night We Were Dylan Thomas, published in May 2021. I feel sure that had I not won the Mslexia competition, many of the poems in these books would not have been written.' Mara Bergman
We currently run two annual poetry competitions (for single poem and poetry pamphlet), two annual short fiction competitions (for a short story and flash fiction), two biennial novel competitions (for adult novels and novels for children and young adults), and one biennial memoir competition.
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If you’d like to share any comments or thoughts, I’d be happy to hear from you. Email me directly at lisacliffordwriter@gmail.com.