Quotes from previous judges reports
In each of the years that Bridport Prize has been running, the final judge in both the poetry and short story section has written a report explaining their choice of winner. Often these reports provide an insight into what they have looked for in a prize-winning entry, and what led them to select one out of many. These extracts represent some of the views expressed by the professional writers who have selected previous Bridport prize winners - their opinion on what makes a good (and also a bad) poem or short story.Short Stories
A disappointing number of entries disqualified themselves by their misuse of grammar, syntax, spelling and especially punctuation; many too by their sense of d"é"j"à" vu of having read the same story before, of unoriginality. Intellectual self-indulgence, "cleverness", wrecked the emotional force of some stories, while the undoubted and often moving feeling implicit in others was not matched by the quality of their ideas. The fact that you can get obsessions and/or fantasies about sex and love, youth and age,rekindled passion, madness and suicide off your chest in a rush -or beaten laboriously into submission - does not mean that you can tell a story.
Paul Hyland, short story judge 1982
A short story is like a slap in the face. It must immediately sting, make itself known at once, and it must leave a red mark for hours to come. The first paragraph - the first line! - has to arrest the reader. A short story is like a novel. It hasn't the time and space to develop, to build a world, to inhabit it and destroy it or alter it. It is a microcosm. The novel is a huge cake - take your time and eat it all - but the short story is a crumb but it must be one by which you taste the whole cake.
Before you type, write or power up, think. Think of a story, of a person, of a place. Live it, be him (or her), go there. In your head: on the bus, if the place is actual. Then read what people are reading these days. Literature is as governed by fashion as jeans and sexy underwear. Then go to the society where your character hangs out .... and listen to the type talking. Finally, get something of the judges work and see what he likes and how he writes.
Martin Booth, short story judge 1988 and 1992
Ernest Hemingway once wrote that you should never mention in a story that there is a gun on the wall unless you intend to have someone fire it; that compactness, such economy of scene-setting and all else, seems to me vital.
Another judge would have made other decisions. Next year there will be another judge.
Philip Glazebrook, short story judge 1991
Good short story writers don't indulge in the mechanical piling up of sensory detail but select the most telling details according to a principle of relevance ....it is not enough that a particular concrete detail should serve the purpose of helping a reader to imagine the situation or experience or event related ....the detail must also carry weight, must have some bearing on what the story is about, must ultimately add to the totality of the story's meaning.
Brian McCabe, short story judge 1994
It was obvious that would-be winners aren't reading much; whereas would-be writers always do, and so they should! Reading voraciously and well is a vital part of learning the short story craft.
Ignorance of what work has been and is being done leads to writing in stilted, conventional and lifeless modes.
Alexis Lykiard, short story judge 1995
What is a short story? ....the question has had more answers than you could count. I think William Trevor came closest when he said 'a novel must have a plot, while a short story must have a point'. I think Roald Dahl has got a lot to answer for - his 'Twist in the Tail' stories have given too many writers the idea that a short story exists simply to surprise the reader at the end. I lost count of the number of stories that bored me rigid until at the very end something happened! And always with an exclamation mark! And usually totally out of keeping with what had gone on before!
Peter Benson, short story judge 1999
What exactly is a short story? Well, I'll tell you what - in my opinion - it is not.
It's not a memoir. It's not an excerpt from a longer work. It's not a synopsis for a television play, or a film. It's not a blown-up joke or anecdote. Nor is it a vignette. It's definitely not a rambling semi-abstract introverted piece of personal reflection.
Well it is, is a tale .... It has to tell you something new and make you believe it and it has to leave you perhaps surprised, or shocked, or moved, or amused, but withal satisfied
Lynne Reid Banks, short story judge 2000
The short story is a difficult and demanding form. It is perhaps as hard to write a really first-rate short story as it is to write a really first rate poem. Both need a strong, informing idea. Both demand an economy of means. Both demand - line by line - a language appropriate to its subject, upon which the writer must never lose his/her grip.
Rose Tremain, short story judge 2003
Poems
In judging these poems I have laid emphasis upon: craftsmanship (and so-called "free verse", which I prefer to call "unstructured verse", requires just as much craftsmanship as structured verse); individual vision and use of imagination; adequate command of language appropriate to the poem; and genuine feeling and commitment.
If I may pass on a few hints to competitors, they are:
Howard Sargeant, poetry judge 1982
Old-fashioned terms like 'twixt, neath, doth' and so on won't wash today - they sound wrong. And you have to be clever to make end-of-the-line rhymes work for you, rather than against you.
Be clever, be specific - then take the poem down to a deeper level of poetic meaning. And I'd advise to forget about being funny.
Owen Davis, poetry judge 1991
How do I win a poetry competition? I could answer: write a poem that is alive. That takes you by the hand. That takes risks. That takes off. That shows you care. That's written as if you mean it. I will try and be more practical in my comments.....
PRESENTATION: No coffee stains, old staples, signs of last-minute splodgy Tippexing-out. No old dates or crossed out names. Elaborate bindings and folders can look a bit silly too. Make space for the poem simply to speak for itself. get it all on one page if at all possible.
SUBJECT MATTER: Remember your poem is one in thousands. It's got to do what it can to stay on top. Writing on a well-worn theme will only mean more competition.
TITLES: if the typing is like the front garden, the title is like the door. Imagine reading maybe fifty poems called Spring.
FORM: Use form if you can get it absolutely perfect. If you can use the form to say more than you could have without it.
Selima Hill, poetry judge 1995
Many entries for poetry competitions suffer from too heavy a use of poetry tools. Using too much rhyme, rhythm, assonance or alliteration will carve away a poem until nothing is left but patterns... a poet who wants all rhyme neat as houses is working on patterns instead of poetry, reducing it to a mathematics.
Tobias Hill, poetry judge 1999
A big prestigious competition like the Bridport Prize is rather like working your way through a vast crowd. What one wants is fresh air, an imagination that strikes one first of all with its novelty or poise, then on closer inspection, with its substance. poems that take risks while remaining on their feet are at an advantage.
George Szirtes, poetry judge 2000
The best poems may leap off the page, or they may be deceptive, and clinch, or undercut, all that has gone before; they are written by people who have an ear for the incomparable cadences of our language; they read aloud well. Those written as a dramatic monologue will have chosen a particular, often striking, voice. Most difficult of all, they will be consistent with themselves: no wobbly starts, no soft centres, no collapsed endings.
U A Fanthorpe, poetry judge 2003