Home        News        Membership        Meetings        Calendar        Homework        Competitions         Publications        Successes        Links

Thames Valley Writers' Circle - Competitions

The Circle holds its own competitions from time to time…

The ‘story in a hundred words’ competition in July 2008 was won by Adrian with “Confession” (click here to read it),

second was Jo with “Suspicious Character,”  (click here to read it),

and Alex was third with “Patrick Burgers” (click here to read it).

Short Story Competition judged by Iain Pattison on May 13th. 2008:

 First prize was won by Neil with “Pride,”

 second prize went to Chris with “The Favour of the Gods”

 and third prize to Adrian with “The Last of the Coppertops.”

Our annual 2008 One-Act-Play Competition was judged again by award winning Spanish video maker, David Casals-Roma.  He made his judgements after prior reading all the plays as well as seeing them ‘enacted’ on the evening.  

                   Photo by Dick Sawdon Smith

He awarded first place to ‘It’s all for Charity’ by Adrian Faulkner which humorously tells how a charity is called to account after exaggerating its fundraising efforts in the name of marketing. 

Runner-up was Jan Sprenger with ‘Romantic Hero’ in which a romantic novelist goes on a blind date to overcome her writer’s block with surprising results. 

Third place was taken by Dick Sawdon Smith whose play ‘Family Crisis’ tells how a 1930s debutant fools her father into paying for two years in Italy, by pretending to be engaged to a stable hand.

 

The photo shows the winners with David Casals-Roma centre,
Adrian Faulkner at the rear, Dick Sawdon Smith and Jan Sprenger.

The January optional homework for members had to include the following words: rubber gloves, lawnmower, gift tag, stilton cheese, lampshade and a foreign coin.

Fifteen members entered the competition and the winner was Adrian Faulkner with “Professor Rosenkrops and his Quest for Cheese”.  It told how when the professor tried to go back in his time machine to a couple of days before his local shop ran out of cheese, he mistakenly went back hundreds of years and inadvertently led to the discovery of Stilton cheese.  The full story can be read here.  Runner-up was Neil Somerville, whose story “Pride and Sensitivity” was about a scientist who made very little money out of inventing aromas until he found he could empty a jewellers shop with a fake fire and gas smell.  In third place, Duncan Howard related in “Shipwreck” how passengers and crew of a ship wrecked on a tropical island managed to salvage all the items except the lawnmower which was already there.

This year’s Hallowe’en Competition (a ‘Flash Fiction Frightener’  - a story of less than 500 words, or a poem of up to 40 lines) was won by Adrian Faulkner with a poem entitled ‘Trick or Treat,’ with Duncan Howard as runner-up with a short story ‘Dear Prudence’ and taking third prize was Jo Baker with ‘Night Riders.’

The Optional Homework for the summer holiday, “The Unwanted Gift” attracted 19 entries and had to be judged over two weeks.
The winner on 11th September was Duncan Howard for his short story.  The runners-up were Mary Pooley and Les Cooper.  The winner on 18th September was Elizabeth Berk (click here to read her story), the runners-up were Dorothy Winters, Nick Telepneff and Joyce Robinson.

Our Optional Homework competition in June attracted another good entry.  Members were set the task of writing a short story not more than 1500 words or a poem not more than 40 lines on the theme 'Be careful what you wish for' and it had to include the following words chosen at random from an AA Irish Guide Book - beauty, pagan, stone, many, west, indication.  The winner was Alex Craggs with a poem, or a story in verse as he would prefer to call it, entitled 'Gryff gets Fired'.  Runner up (again) was Les Cooper with a short story and third was Barbara Smith also with a short story.  Click here to read Alex's story.

The Optional Homework to write an article on any subject attracted 12 members to read their entries at the meeting on 24th April 2007.  Topics were very varied, ranging from ‘The History of Lavatories' to 'Exotic Aberystwyth', from ‘Canoeists v Anglers’ to ‘Carry-On Movies’.

The winner, chosen by the members present, was Neil Somerville for his 'A to Z of Writing Success'.  Runner-up was former journalist, Richard Holdsworth, who in 'The Rise and Fall of Hastings Pier', wrote about the decline of the pier under which he experienced his first kiss as a schoolboy whilst on holiday.  In joint third place were Les Cooper with a humorous account of his hip operation from the time of diagnosis to the pre-op injection and Barbara Smith with 'A Matter of Choice', showing how difficult choices in life can be turned into fictional stories.

The first prize in the Poetry Competition held on 20th February 2007 was awarded to Dorothy Winters for her poem  “Our Life“ (click here to read it).  Second prize went to Jan Sprenger and third prize to Les Cooper.

On 23rd January 2007, we were delighted to welcome back David Casals,  for the third year running, to judge our annual One-Act Play Competition.  David is a screen writer, film producer and lecturer.  The scripts had already been sent to David so that he had a chance to read through them before seeing them performed by members of the Circle.

At the end of the evening David made comments about each play, pointing out it’s strengths.  He awarded first prize to Betty Gibbons, one of our members in Australia, for ‘Lunacy at Lavender Lodge’ second prize went to Gerry Robinson and third prize to Jan Sprenger.

 

 

© Thames Valley Writers' Circle