Magic Thursday: Judging Spooky with Carolyn Wren!

 

I’m lucky enough to live only 15 minutes from The Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre, located in a heritage listed building in the Perth foothills and I’ve been a member there for over a decade.  In 2016 KSP decided to run a Spooky Stories Contest with a specific themed subject, and asked me to be part of the judging panel.  The contest had a max word count of 1200 for adults and 500 for youth under 18.

We received 36 entries between 5 judges, so we weren’t exactly swamped.  Although the Spooky Stories Awards night, complete with firepits, toasted marshmallows and live story reading proved popular, with over 100 people attending.  

In 2017 the judging panel began to dwindle until only I was left.  Fearing the contest would be dropped from KSPs schedule, I took on the entire judging role, not realising the contest had grabbed people’s attention.  That year we had 80 entries.  In 2023 we had 325.  And, yes, it’s still just me doing all the judging.

So, after 8 years and hundreds of hours of reading, taking notes, eating chocolate, and more reading, I thought it might be fun to share some highlights of Judging Spooky.

Photos from Carolyn Wren

I love that kids are fearless writers.  Nothing is off limits.  Nothing is too gross.  In 2020, KSP decided to produce a print anthology featuring the contest finalists in both categories.  This meant the rules were tweaked and all authors were asked to keep their stories to a PG rating.  Every year I find myself checking each adult entry for content deemed too violent, while a 10 year old author is happily describing blood spurting from severed limbs and yellow puss oozing from eyeballs!

Kids also seem to hate happy endings.  The vast majority of the stories follow a particular format:  My parents told me not to do something.  I did it anyway.  I found a monster.  The monster grabbed me. Now I’m dead.  

Yes, I admit it, the youth category of the SS contest can be my favourite.

Pacing is a key factor in creating a good story.  I can’t even count the entries I’ve read with amazing beginnings, brilliant world building, fantastic descriptions, and a rushed ambiguous or confusing ending.  I can always tell when an author is way over the word count but also reluctant to change anything about the story start. This creates an unbalanced feel which leaves the reader – and the judge – unsatisfied. 

I’ve been asked if I can separate subjectivity from the quality of the work when judging.  ie: I mark one story higher because I enjoyed the plot more than another, or if a particular story has a better quality of writing/editing. That’s a complex question with a simple answer.  The contest is themed, and each story must address that theme.  I may read an amazing entry, filled with wonderful descriptions of sun filled days.  But if the theme that year is ‘Night’, and the story doesn’t mention night, wouldn’t work at night and doesn’t even have a metaphor for night, it doesn’t matter how much I love it, that story is unlikely to progress to the finals.  With regard to the technical side, Spooky Stories is a story telling contest, not a technical skills contest, and it’s open to all writers regardless of experience.  This could include well published authors with several books, through to brand new writers sending in their first ever story.  It’s impossible to compare the expertise of someone who’s worked with an editor for years, with someone who’s never even met one.   And because the contest is judged without any author identification, I have no clue how much experience each entrant has.  Some people are natural storytellers, and that’s what I look for when I judge.  To me that’s way more important than perfect punctuation.

I’ve read some amazing stories over the years.  Our first winner back in 2016 – before the change to PG rating – was a horrifying and gruesome tale of Jack the Ripper’s victims in the afterlife.  2017’s winner was a ghostly take on the Home Alone movie called, ‘Moan Alone’.  A favourite finalist from this year was an action-adventure tale about a group of vampire hunting vigilantes who patrolled the night markets in their food truck armed with pure garlic powder.  And the name of that vamp fighting truck? ‘Food Van Helsing’.  C’mon, how brilliant is that, right?   One particular entry from a few years back sticks in my mind.  ‘He Just Watches’ is an utterly terrifying story about a little boy laying in bed and the man sitting on top of his wardrobe staring at him…who no one else can see.  That winning story was from an author who’d never written anything before, and has since gone on to get a publishing contract.

Like a lot of things after 2019, Covid 19 affected the annual awards night celebrations, reducing them to a simple seated event.  But KSP are hoping next year to get back to the full bonfire, marshmallow roasting, spooky story reading, night of fun and games.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed for that.  As well as judging, I get to host the night and always enjoy dressing up.  So far I’ve been a Ghost Bride, a Mummy Princess, and various other ridiculous incarnations.  The kids get a kick out of it, and so do I.  Last year I came as Spooky Bridgerton,  and this years personal dress up theme was Goth Gone Wrong.  Yep, I’m a big kid at heart. 

In conclusion…do I have time to dedicate 3 months of my life every year to doing this, as well as attending to life’s essentials, like eating, sleeping and writing my own books? Heck no.  Would I give it up just for an easier life? Heck no.  Everything about judging this contest is fun.  I wait with baited breath once I know the entries are being processed.  There’s a thrill in losing yourself in someone else’s imagination.  I’m in awe by the talented writers I get to meet.  The best thing in the world is finding the one story that takes my breathe away and makes me sit back in the chair and smile…or, because this is a spooky story contest, the story that keeps me awake all night because I’m too scared to close my eyes.

If you’d like to check out some of the spookiness, including one DSDU contest winner (Eleni: D.D. Line) in the 2022 anthology, head to the KSP website.  

https://www.kspwriterscentre.com/spooky-story-competition  

Carolyn Wren

By Zest Photography

Carolyn is a Perth hills author of Romance and Suspense novels, who spent most of her working life in the mining industry.  When a story popped into her brain, she began writing in 2009 and entered a few contests, just for fun.  Much to her surprise, she won the Australian based Emerald Award for unpublished manuscripts, and one week later received a commendation from the International Daphne Du Maurier Awards for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense. This gave her the incentive to keep writing, and to pursue a publishing deal.   As at July 2021 Carolyn has 21 books, 7 first place trophies and 17 finalist certificates from contests all around the world.  Her primary Australian publisher is Gumnut Press with anthology stories through Serenity Press.

You can find Carolyn at her website.