Entries for the ABC Radio short story competition
are due at the end of next week.

I entered last year after discovering this competition a week before the deadline. I submitted "Vanilla", which was the only story I had that was complete and met the word count. It wasn't really appropriate (it's a bit raunchy), but it's funny and fresh. I'm not surprised that it wasn't chosen.

This year I started thinking about the competition two months in advance.

Looking at the winning entries, only one really caught my imagination. I thought it was well written and interesting. But what about the rest of the winners? What is it about them that was special?

What makes a good radio short story?

I think the magic ingredient is probably this statement from the ABC website: We're looking for short stories that will make great radio.

Well, that makes sense. But what does it mean?

My friends over at Critique Circle gave me some advice

A radio short story needs:

• clear action and meaning – as the listener won't have a chance to go back to reread something they missed or didn't understand
• no tongue twisters, difficult sounds, too much alliteration, nor too many sibilant sounds (such as S's & F's)
• a steady flow, and a natural rhythm and cadence, when read aloud
• strong, simple images
• memorable writing by a "real character" who is easy to empathise with

I think my writing has a lot of these aspects naturally. My writing is full of strong imagery, and many have said that my writing has the cadence of a poem at times.

Well, I have a profusion of S's, so that's something to watch.

Curiously, though, it was that last point, provided by my friend Hilary that gave me the most pause.

Yes, but is it a good story?

The reality is that I'm not really a short-story writer. I write short stories as literary exercises. I hone my skills and story-telling, I play with different voices and styles, and cut back my natural verbosity, and try to "cram" a complex story into as a few words as possible to improve my ability to "imply" action and plot.

But do I write good, engaging stories?

Probably not. That's not to say that I don't have a few very good short stories, but on the whole, I rely too heavily on my unique Voice. Stories often come from the specific style of a first sentence, an image, or an artificial trigger.

It's my longer stories that work the best. Ones that follow a traditional 3 Act Structure, or ones that parallel a traditional story (conflict, resolution), such as "Justin's Prison", which is a rewrite of the ballet "Giselle".

My short stories tend to be vignettes, with only the element of transformation fulfilled.

The sum of my existence

I nearly gave up my Radio short-story before it began. But for some reason I perservered.

Looking at two 600 word pieces, that I submitted to another competition, could I make them suitable for radio? The stories were nice, but not really that engaging.

I have a stand alone chapter that forms a prologue to one of my planned novels. It has a good character, and a good scenario, but again, it had nothing about it that would captivate someone in a short space of time.

Finally I had a piece that I wrote from a triggered sentence "This is the sum of my existence." It was written in first person, and a memoir of sorst - not something I do often, on either count. It was strongly driven by the unique voice of that first sentence, and had no direction.

I'd started it, but didn't know how to frame, or end it. It was just a bunch of facts and events thrown together. What was the emotional content of it? What were the themes? How can you frame a snippet of your life into a story that starts and ends within 800 words?

Well, I don't know. Which is why I'm not a memoir writer. But it was my best bet, so I ripped it apart, and put it back togther again. I put it up for critique over at Critique Circle, and tinkered with it for a day. I changed the title twice. I changed the end twice.

I submitted the last version just before the current critique period switched over.

It made my friend Chelle cry. My friend Hilary, who is a playwright, says it's the best thing I've written.

And why? Becuase it has all those things she suggested, but more importantly it's about a real person, and it's a real story.

I don't know *shrugs*. I'm too close to it to see it properly, but now we just have to see what the judges over at the ABC think...