So another 5S is done and dusted, and three of us are all doing a merry dance at the prospect of prizes! Yay!
However, in a very real sense everyone who entered has prizes to claim; you’ve not only got the satisfaction of knowing you got a story up and done, but also that a Black Library author read it and gave feedback!
I want to begin by saying that this shouldn’t be taken lightly – take note and apply the criticism to future pieces, be that next year’s competition, some future attempt at a novel or your next little fluff piece for your army.
Now I would like to give some thoughts to prospective entrants, and indeed those who did enter. I’m not saying these are right, but this is pretty much what I have in mind when going into these competitions:
Anyone can tell a story
I mean that. Absolutely everyone on this forum should be able to put an entry into these competitions. If you don’t think you can win, odds are the thing holding you back is yourself.
What I would suggest to anyone who is not confident in their own abilities is this; read. Read novels, short stories, fanfiction or whatever else takes your fancy. As you read, try to objectively analyse the story (you might want to do this on the second go round so you can just enjoy it the first time). Try to work out where the story grips you; what is exciting, what is scary, etc. Try to think about how using one word over another alters the perception of the scene.
More than anything, you should write. Go create some army background, or a fluff piece or whatever. Post it on the forums. If people don’t seem to be reading it, harass people via PM who you think should be reading it – your friends, or other people who seem to be active on the board – and get them to give feedback! I’ll readily admit I am guilty of often not commenting on stories I read, yet I also get annoyed when people don’t comment after reading my stuff. If you really want to know what people think, sometimes you have to grab them by the collar and demand an answer!
3,000 words is nothing!
The 5S contest runs over two months. Do you know what the bare minimum work rate to get a viable entry for this contest is? 50 words a day. If you typed 50 words a day from the day of the contest being announced to the submission deadline, you’d have a 3K story.
At this junction I must hold up my hand and say, “yes, real life will get in the way.” It will. Sometimes you won’t like what you’re doing and you’ll scrap it (I did – I threw away a 1.5K word piece and called a do-over a fair way into the comp. Sometimes you’ll just get lazy (I did – I could have had my story finished properly well before the deadline, but I just kept putting it back...). Sometimes you’ll be sure it’s not worth entering because nobody will like your story...
...which is exactly how I felt. My story didn’t have a proper ending, I had left out a lot of what I’d planned to do, and I’d not even got around to proof-reading it! Clearly it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was, but if I hadn’t taken the plunge and entered I’d have gotten nowhere!
So to prospective entrants I say this – knuckle down and do it. Set yourself a reasonable task (say, “2K words every weekend”) and work at it. Do a bad job first time – rush it, force it, ignore your inner editor and just produce a piece with a legal word count! You’ve got two months... you can always go back and proof read!
If all else fails, remember that there’s no reason you can’t start your story early if needs be.
Stand out
I have always believed when entering this competition that simply being a good writer is not enough.
I enter these story competitions assuming that there will be a better writer than me involved, and that I cannot win simply by being really solid on the mechanics of writing. Thus, in order to make my story stand out, I aim to be different. So should you.
Whatever you write, I would strongly emphasise this as the most important rule of all; if you don’t think it’s interesting, don’t do it!
Let us take my entry as an example; my initial concept was about Imperial Guard sappers demolishing a bridge. I decided it was uninspiring and “safe”, which meant it would not grab people’s attention, nor capture their imagination. It was promptly scrapped.
I then went on and considered a piece about Guard and Marines fighting Orks. This too felt a little un-gripping... and then I thought to myself, “what if the story was about Orks fighting Marines and Guard?” That I liked, and so I created a story from the Ork perspective.
It’s not the winning...
Ah, that old chestnut.
To be serious, there’s some truth in that; this competition is a good way to see how you compare as an author to others on the forum. It’s an experience, and you’ll get feedback on how well you did that can help you think about where you need to improve and where you are already strong.
Remember, even if you don’t win it doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t write a good story. Nor does it mean you’ve wasted your time; the top three stories got paid for their efforts! Isn’t it worth the attempt on the off chance you somehow get to the top spot?
As a final thought, this post is exactly 1,000 words long. That’s about a third of the minimum entry requirements for the 5S competition. Trust me; it isn’t as hard to do as it looks...
Good luck for next year!
