Rusty Fears 7

I saw this evening that it’s time, once again, for Rusty Quill's horror story competition 'Rusty fears'. This, apparently, is the seventh showcase of fan submissions and this time, not only will the winners be featured on the Magnus Archives podcast feed, but they will also receive some delightful tea-based prizes.

Obviously as an aspiring writer and enjoyer of hot drinks my first thought was that I should definitely submit at least one story and I should start working on it right away. But as I read through the rest of the announcement and the terms and conditions it started to feel like a daunting challenge to say the least 

Earlier this year I submitted two entries into the Edinburgh Flash Fiction Award, costing me a cool £10 each, but for some reason this feels a lot more intimidating. With the Edinburgh competition I didn't really have a gauge of what I was dealing with. I was blissfully ignorant because I had avoided reading any of the previous winners and didn't seek out the runners up or do any other research into anything.

I didn’t find time until the very last minute, wrote two stories (both bang on the 250 word limit) and submitted them on the second to last day. Then I forgot all about it until a couple of weeks ago. People successfully on the short list or long list will be notified by December 15th so hopefully they’ll let me know either way and I won’t be the first doofus to be ghosted by Edinburgh.

With Rusty Quill and The Magnus Archives, though, I’ve spent hours and hours listening to the peerless writing of Johnny Sims. The way he writes is so natural and listenable but still manages to be complex and intricate. The final series when Johnny was finally able to reveal the full details of the concepts he’d created honestly seemed like one flex after another.

So, this exposure to an extremely high calibre of writing and story telling that Rusty Quill has become known for has, indeed, scared this aspiring writer off a little bit. I don't know if they’re expecting the same level of quality from the submissions and I honestly don't know if that's what they received in previous competitions because I always skipped those episodes. If they did get anything close to that, though, then… you know…

Also the word count for this one is 1000 - 2500 words which isn’t impossible but I don't know about pacing and how much of a story they're expecting one to tell with that many words. I remember when I was writing the Edinburgh stories I found 250 to be quite frustrating and it didn't feel like there was enough time to get any real character development or simply have enough time to provide enough detail and set up for a satisfying ending. I do feel like it forced me to be really critical of every last word and to make sure that nothing was wasted; every sentence and every word was there for a reason and served a purpose.

The word count for this competition could do the same thing and result in me writing a better story but it feels like it would be a lot more difficult to keep track of a story 4 to 10 times longer than the two Edinburgh ones and I feel like I could get lost really easily.

The categories are: Theatre, forensic, video store, giant and waste.

First impressions: Theatre and forensic are a no go. I don't know enough about either subject to write anything good about them. I find waste a bit too vague but I'll keep it in mind. I think giant will be a deceptively difficult subject. When trying to convey really big things for a whole story it's way too easy to get wrapped up in listing off adjectives and superlatives that quickly become meaningless and boring. It could still be an interesting topic though, if the most obvious paths are avoided. This leaves me with video store. This does feel like the most comfortable and familiar one for me to choose, be that for better or worse. Again, though, it will require a fresh and unique take on a familiar subject to stand any chance in the competition. 

I'll give it a few days, have a listen to the previous submissions and see how I feel about it then. There's still just over three weeks left until the deadline so I’ll keep mulling it over.