Waterstone’s have spoken! The UK bookshop’s winning ‘stories on postcards’ are up! But with more than 5000 customer entries, which ones got picked for the two adult and one child prizes?

This editor has peeked in the bookshop windows and gone online at Waterstone’s to take a look. Some entries to the mini short story contest impressed her and some didn’t – read on to see which – and why. Maybe you don’t agree?

First up was a promising story topic for those parents who are raising extreme sports-mad teen sons. A disgruntled teen, disappointed in his surfboard-handling prowess, drags up from the beach, trailing behind his skilled friends after a long day. He spots the balloons on a farm gate which announce a party for an unknown fiftieth birthday party girl. He dumps his surfboard there – his pain becoming her gain? – a well rounded little story with a neat ending.
Next up was a story of barely a few lines written in an elementary grader’s hand. But what adept handling and twisting of concepts appeared in one little sentence from the story, which was about an imaginary or real boxing match.

‘Boy the boxer wrestled.’ Short, succinct and complicated!
The boy’s game in the ‘fighting room’ ends with Mommy’s say so ......
‘no more boxing, Mummy said.’
Did the little author mean ‘boxing ring?’ If an adult had corrected it, would the story have lost it’s fresh voice and charm? Or was the ‘fighting room’ really Mom’s best ‘sitting room.’

Another invigorating, fresh, but taxing-to-read story was one entitled ‘di5l3ksik’ – yes, difficult to read. But if we look at another clue from the author’s ‘message’ which relates to a certain reading disorder – the penny may drop.

The mini tale is indeed about Dyslexia. The author may well be successful in transmitting that message too. The story is almost unintelligible, made tiring on the eye and brain by unfamiliar characters and letters which seem back to front. It’s sobering to think that this is what many little triers face every day in their classrooms, and a challenge that many readers face way on into adulthood. No wonder this winning story has a protest quality to it.

Some of the other entries, such as the bookseller entries, were entertaining too - but many had professional ‘hallmarks’ which not only gave them away, but laid a gloss of familiarity over them. This ‘authors’ styling’ made the little micro fiction pieces appear less fresh than some of the customer entries. These ‘styling qualities’ included over-delivery, blasé tone and slick endings.

So were the published author entries really that much better than the amateurs’? Well, readers could always order the postcard book of winning entries from Waterstones:

http://waterstones.com

to find out, and to form their own opinions on this postcard stories collection. Indeed, to do so would be to support a good cause as the proceeds are being donated to charity (Dyslexia Action and English Pen.)
Waterstones contest organisers have limited the orders of the postcard book (which incidentally contains stories for mixed ages) to two per customer while stocks last.

The Waterstones contest seems to have been an interesting and worthwhile exercise in engaging the general book-reading public in writing through the use of accessible and appealing incentives. There was beauty in the simplicity of the idea of a story on the back of a post card, in the multi-submission options and in the ‘live’ interface of a national bookshop.

One small criticism? The briefest of looks at the background and lives of the customer entry winners, placed in a prominent position on the website, would have spiked even more interest – for this editor at least!

And no, I couldn’t find my entry so it never went in! However, if the contest is repeated I have decided I will enter this worthwhile charity money-raiser next year!