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Anyone entering the Francis MacManus competition this year?

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  • 17-01-2012 8:39pm
    #1
    DublinWriter
    Registered Users Posts: 9,555 ✭✭✭


    RTE run a short story competition annually - the Francis McMahon competition.

    This year the closing date is 20th Jan.

    Has anyone ever bothered entering?

    I'm currently reading a compilation of prize winning stories since 1984, and it's dour going.


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    #2
    coffee_cake
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Politics Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 81,310 CMod ✭✭✭✭coffee_cake


    you mean this one?
    http://www.rte.ie/radio1/francismacmanus/

    hadn't heard of it, might do it next time


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    #3
    Toasterspark
    Closed Accounts Posts: 273 ✭✭Toasterspark


    I dunno, I don't think I'm pretentious enough to enter. Just the vibe I get from just reading up on it.


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    #4
    Antilles
    Registered Users Posts: 1,183 ✭✭✭Antilles


    Toasterspark wrote: »
    I dunno, I don't think I'm pretentious enough to enter. Just the vibe I get from just reading up on it.

    Don't say that Toasterspark, you're totally pretentious enough! ;)


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    #5
    Inky_Lady
    Registered Users Posts: 54 ✭✭Inky_Lady


    *MacManus.
    Competition is usually tough for this one. I have too much on to put the work into an entry this year but my OH is planning on entering.
    Best of luck to all who are giving it a go!


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    #6
    Toasterspark
    Closed Accounts Posts: 273 ✭✭Toasterspark


    *puts down champagne*

    How rude! I am not pretentious!

    If I can find time between my golf practice and my day-trips to the continent, I'll be sure to try and scrape something together.


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    #7
    DublinWriter
    Registered Users Posts: 9,555 ✭✭✭DublinWriter


    I read all of the winners and runner-ups from 1986 to 1995 and there seems to be a commonality among them all:

    1. Written in first person
    2. Author looking back to some event in the past, usually the death of a family member
    3. Very depressing

    As I went from story to story I couldn't believe the sameness of them all. There were a few stand outs and notable exceptions, but on the whole 90% of the winning entries conformed to the above three rules.


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    #8
    Long Room Hubba
    Registered Users Posts: 544 ✭✭✭Long Room Hubba


    DublinWriter wrote: »
    I read all of the winners and runner-ups from 1986 to 1995 and there seems to be a commonality among them all:

    1. Written in first person
    2. Author looking back to some event in the past, usually the death of a family member
    3. Very depressing

    As I went from story to story I couldn't believe the sameness of them all. There were a few stand outs and notable exceptions, but on the whole 90% of the winning entries conformed to the above three rules.

    That's not necessarily the judges' preference, though. I imagine they fall with great relief on anything that stands out from the pack.


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    #9
    echo beach
    Registered Users Posts: 1,252 ✭✭✭echo beach


    It is a radio competition so the enteries are intended to be read out loud, which does make a difference. They employ actors to read the winning enteries and I didn't hear all 25 that were broadcast last year, pretty late at night, but they seemed a fairly mixed bunch. Some were excellent and others I just didn't get and I thought "I could do as well as that..", until I tried.

    The word count is very specific, 1800-2000 words, again so that they fit into a given time slot, and I found it difficult to stick to it but I sent off an entry today so that I wouldn't break my New Year's resolution before January was out. My reasoning is that for the sake of the price of a stamp it might as well be in their bin as in mine.


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    #10
    PurpleBee
    Registered Users Posts: 274 ✭✭PurpleBee


    echo beach wrote: »
    My reasoning is that for the sake of the price of a stamp it might as well be in their bin as in mine.

    Don't be so pessimistic!


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    #11
    echo beach
    Registered Users Posts: 1,252 ✭✭✭echo beach


    PurpleBee wrote: »
    Don't be so pessimistic!

    But I have reason to be.
    1) I didn't write it in the first person
    2) It doesn't look back and none of my family dies
    3) It isn't depressing at all, in fact it has a happy ending.

    On top of that I'm not pretentious (at least I don't think I am) so what hope have I?:p


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    #12
    pickarooney
    Moderators, Arts Moderators Posts: 35,091 Mod ✭✭✭✭pickarooney


    DublinWriter, I edited the thread title to read 'MacManus'


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    #13
    coffee_cake
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Politics Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 81,310 CMod ✭✭✭✭coffee_cake


    echo beach wrote: »
    But I have reason to be.
    1) I didn't write it in the first person
    2) It doesn't look back and none of my family dies
    3) It isn't depressing at all, in fact it has a happy ending.

    On top of that I'm not pretentious (at least I don't think I am) so what hope have I?:p

    write a happy story then put at the end "and then my -family member- died"
    :D


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    #14
    diddlybit
    Registered Users Posts: 1,026 ✭✭✭diddlybit


    DublinWriter wrote: »
    1. Written in first person
    2. Author looking back to some event in the past, usually the death of a family member
    3. Very depressing

    I have approximately one-and-a-half of those components. I shall channel the spirit of my dead grandmother for the remaining quotient.

    Knowing her, she probably won't comply.


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    #15
    The Mad Hatter
    Registered Users Posts: 4,718 ✭✭✭The Mad Hatter


    bluewolf wrote: »
    write a happy story then put at the end "and then my -family member- died"
    :D

    In Derren Brown's Confessions of a Conjuror, he talks about a boy in his class who had no gift for or interest in creative writing, who used to infuriate his teacher by having every story consist of a long chain of increasingly nonsensical events which bore no relation to one another, and always finishing with the same line: "Then I woke up. Then I died."


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    #16
    Toasterspark
    Closed Accounts Posts: 273 ✭✭Toasterspark


    Excerpt from my entry:
    The dentist's reception area was a dreary mix of elephant greys and murky blues. The coffee table was groaning under the weight of 'Woman's Weekly' and 'Hello' magazines. Along the walls, outdated pamphlets were stuffed into scratched plastic holders. On the other side of the room a young child played with some building bricks, the best toys clearly broken or stolen. Her mother, a curious paradox of heavy sweater and inch-long mini skirt, chewed gum loudly by her side.

    "Get out of here, you swine," yelled a presence to my left.

    A woman in her fifties (maybe sixties) hovered in the air waving her hands. She swiped at me viciously, but her ghostly hands went right through me. A chill trickled down my spine.

    "Get lost," I whispered, batting my hand in the air. The little child looked at me in wonder, her mother oblivious. "I said - get lost!"

    My toothache was bad enough without this old coot badgering me. She was probably a resident of this old house, years ago. I looked up at the dentist's door, hoping for it to open. It was hard sometimes, to ignore spirits. Especially if you don't want people to think you're crazy.

    Haha, nah I'm only joking. I tried making it as depressing as possible, but I didn't think I have it in me.


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    #17
    DublinWriter
    Registered Users Posts: 9,555 ✭✭✭DublinWriter


    It was the smell I remembered the most. The smell of overgrown heather in a small Irish country garden. I stood outside the abandoned, desolate cottage, now as welcoming to the elements as it had been to me in my youth. Each footstep I took to the abandoned front door seemed to be measured in years rather than feet.

    At the threshold I paused, paused in an infinity of possibility and ancient platitudes. The wooden front door, rotten and corrupt, seemed to taunt me by the jaunty angle it happily hung off a single working hinge.

    I turned back from the door, jaw strong and resolute. I refused to enter and instead I pulled an AK47 from inside my jacket and hissed to myself...."Trent...you will avenge the death of your father....."


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    #18
    Slang_Tang
    Registered Users Posts: 188 ✭✭Slang_Tang


    DublinWriter wrote: »
    I read all of the winners and runner-ups from 1986 to 1995 and there seems to be a commonality among them all:

    1. Written in first person
    2. Author looking back to some event in the past, usually the death of a family member
    3. Very depressing

    As I went from story to story I couldn't believe the sameness of them all. There were a few stand outs and notable exceptions, but on the whole 90% of the winning entries conformed to the above three rules.

    Where did you read them all?


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    #19
    Inky_Lady
    Registered Users Posts: 54 ✭✭Inky_Lady


    They do release collections of winning stories, although I'm not sure how regularly. You could try your local second hand bookshop for old copies?


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    #20
    DublinWriter
    Registered Users Posts: 9,555 ✭✭✭DublinWriter


    Slang_Tang wrote: »
    Where did you read them all?
    I've a compilation of the winners from 1986 to 1995. Yours for a fiver plus P&P, otherwise it's going into a nearby charity shop soon.


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    #21
    echo beach
    Registered Users Posts: 1,252 ✭✭✭echo beach


    It is that time of year again. Entries are open until 21st January 2013.
    http://www.rte.ie/radio1/francismacmanus/Francis-MacManus-Entry-Form-2013.pdf

    1249 entries last year so stiff competition.


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    #22
    havetoquit
    Registered Users Posts: 429 ✭✭havetoquit


    Because so many books and short stories have been written about childhood days, as in the wonderfully entertaining Alice Taylor's 'Through the Fields to School' and many others, I am wondering if there is room for any more such revelations, or if the interest has waned somewhat.

    I keep a daily journal of my own life for my grand children to hopefully enjoy and hand down, but writing it in story form for public reading is not something I would feel terribly sure of, even though it is uplifting, totally not sad, does much to shed light on a time past and life in the places I have lived and traveled in. There are many characters who hugely impacted upon my years, including some who still do and our interactions have often produced many hilarious moments which I treasure.

    At the end of the day it is not written from imagination, but from experiences and perhaps this road has been trodden thus too often by others, so I hesitate.

    I also think personally, that although I love writing and telling a story to those I correspond with on a regular basis, I do not perhaps have the necessary skills to lay it out and present it in a way that would render it acceptable in the literal sense.

    What form of expression does one use to make one's own story compelling enough without sounding contrived and make others want to read it? There are obviously rules to follow and I am without this knowledge unfortunately. I have always considered that those who write great stories are gifted and that it is not something that can be learned.

    Personally, I love to read a story with characters that grab my interest in the first couple of chapters and keeps me so engrossed that I cannot bear to put it down. This can be either fact or fiction, but it does need to be uplifting on the whole, or at the very least hint that a happy ending will ensue.

    Perhaps I will one day do a course in Creative Writing which will answer these and other questions.

    Any tips would be most welcome and appreciated and would go a long way even towards improving my daily journal.


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    #23
    shuffles03
    Registered Users Posts: 2,058 ✭✭✭shuffles03


    I'm going to give this a go (opens the sealed door containing thoughts of insanity and prepares to spill them onto an A4 page)


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    #24
    mc3
    Registered Users Posts: 4 ✭mc3


    Toasterspark wrote: »
    Excerpt from my entry:



    Haha, nah I'm only joking. I tried making it as depressing as possible, but I didn't think I have it in me.


    Toasterspark, can we have more of your "entry" please?!

    Def winner in my book... :p Might inspire us all on...


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    #25
    Ulysses Gaze
    Closed Accounts Posts: 7,570 ✭✭✭Ulysses Gaze


    DublinWriter wrote: »
    It was the smell I remembered the most. The smell of overgrown heather in a small Irish country garden. I stood outside the abandoned, desolate cottage, now as welcoming to the elements as it had been to me in my youth. Each footstep I took to the abandoned front door seemed to be measured in years rather than feet.

    At the threshold I paused, paused in an infinity of possibility and ancient platitudes. The wooden front door, rotten and corrupt, seemed to taunt me by the jaunty angle it happily hung off a single working hinge.

    I turned back from the door, jaw strong and resolute. I refused to enter and instead I pulled an AK47 from inside my jacket and hissed to myself...."Trent...you will avenge the death of your father....."

    This.


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    #26
    Toasterspark
    Closed Accounts Posts: 273 ✭✭Toasterspark


    mc3 wrote: »
    Toasterspark, can we have more of your "entry" please?!

    Def winner in my book... :p Might inspire us all on...

    I'd forgotten I'd written that 'excerpt'. Damnit, I kind of want to see what happens next as well!


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    #27
    Siuin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,659 ✭✭✭Siuin


    Just posted off my entry at lunchtime today (I know, VERY last minute!) It's really strange that they don't accept entries via email, but fingers crossed now! Does anyone know when the winners will be announced? Looking forward to seeing what other people wrote!


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    #28
    echo beach
    Registered Users Posts: 1,252 ✭✭✭echo beach


    This year's competition is now open for entries if anybody wants to have a try. http://www.rte.ie/radio1/francis-macmanus-short-story/


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    #29
    Mr E
    Registered Users Posts: 55,451 ✭✭✭✭Mr E


    I'm tempted. If I expanded on one of my earlier VOAT stories - does that count as 'previously published'?


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    #30
    redser7
    Registered Users Posts: 2,729 ✭✭✭redser7


    Mr E wrote: »
    I'm tempted. If I expanded on one of my earlier VOAT stories - does that count as 'previously published'?

    I guess you would have to delete it off the site?


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    #31
    echo beach
    Registered Users Posts: 1,252 ✭✭✭echo beach


    If you are thinking of entering a version of it anywhere get it deleted. Anything that will show up in a plagiarism checker is 'already published' so it does depend on how much you alter it. Be sure to change names and locations.


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