S6 Ep20: Amazing writers flash fiction winner!

Hello and welcome to the Failing Writers Podcast, a podcast for all types of writers who want to get better and become more successful but who would rather do that in a more entertaining way. Because learning doesn't have to be boring, does it Tommy? It doesn't have to be. I mean, we can make it boring, we can do that, and we can do that, but we'd rather not. We probably wouldn't know, otherwise I think it's fair to say John, we wouldn't be an award-winning podcast. I know. What's that Tom? We don't really like to talk about our achievements too because of humbleness or modesty and stuff. It's just because the other night we wouldn't award again, you know, for the best. Oh, sorry. For the podcast award for the In The End of Man, for the podcast award. I think to be fair, we kind of assumed that whether it was a little bit of a surprise wasn't it? Not just our own surprise, but I think everyone was quite surprised by that. I didn't think we didn't think we'd be allowed to win that category to retain it, but it turns out you can. I think well done guys. I think the credit goes to our listeners for listening to this award-winning podcast. I think that says a lot about you guys as writers, just as people really well done. Well done, you guys. Anyway, enough about us. It's not about us today, John. It's not. Okay. No. No, it's not. It's about our amazing, the people that have entered the competition. Yes. There will be someone listening now who will be the person who wins this competition when we speak to David later. We will find out that that person has won. That is an exciting thought, isn't it? It is. I think it's kind of our favourite time of year, isn't it? We do really. It is such a great thing to do. It's quite a lot of work and a lot of reading and a lot of going through stuff and production, but. But joy is so nice to work. Yeah, yeah. It really is. It really is. So, yes, we will later on in this episode reveal the winners of our big annual amazing writers, failing writers, flash friction competition sponsored by Scrivener. It doesn't get any short of that title. Does it? Every title is it. No. You mentioned Scrivener, by the way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Scrivener. Well, let's face it, the best writing software on the market, people aren't that stupid. And so, why is it the best would you say in your opinion, Tom? It's a very good question, John, but in order to tell you that, to answer it, let's play List the Benefits! OK. One. There is no subscription. What do you mean you pay once and then you own it forever, like in the olden days? Like in the good old days, before every, literally everything was on subscription. That is actually a massive perk. It is. It is. Number two. Everything you're going to need to help you write your book more efficiently is there. Folders for characters and research, all your chapters, right there, all easily accessible. Word count targets. Don't forget the word count targets. A cardboard to help you outline your beats. If that's your jam, or you can use it in composition mode. Composition mode. Composition mode. Composition mode. Stripped back no distractions. Which, I obviously, that's not something we need, but yeah, some people might, some people might be easily distracted and not get stuff done for that reason. Yeah, absolutely. Wonder off on a tangent and kind of go off the point for a little while. Anyway, back on this, John. Number three, it allows you to automatically compile your book into an official manuscript or e-book so you can upload it immediately ready for sale to your millions of readers who are anticipating and waiting for you to get your book out there so you can be rich and famous, like your bloody well should be. And you can get 20% off right now by going to Literature and Latte.com and using our very special magic code. Failing. Yeah, do that right now and just think that can be your special way of thanking Scrivener from the bottom of your wallet for helping us on this joyful competition. Also, as well as making us look good, which doesn't hurt, does it, when it comes to begging for more sponsorship next year? Absolutely, absolutely. Also, a big shout out to Libro.fm2 handing out a free audiobook to everyone who entered. Thank you very much. Absolutely. Thank you, Libro.fm, which is, and that's the website where you can support your local book shop while getting your hands on the audio books you want to listen to, which is quite good. Amazing. So, before we speak to David Gaffney, our judge, and find out who's walking off with £500, shall we, Tommy, shall we do a few little, just a little special mentions? Oh, I like a little special mention, yes, well, you've got to be a slave, Johnny Boyle. Well, I've got a particularly good one here. Do you remember David's saying? So thinking about the last line of your story needs to be really strong, but not necessarily you know, something that reveals everything, ah, and it turned out he was actually a dog or something like that. You know, you know, it's kind of taking you something to another place. Well, big up to Jessica Chevaly, having the audacity to do exactly that, so the massive elaborate birthday party in her story, this is what a character called Lily, who turns out at the end to be the pampered pet pug. I think you've got to respect that one. Very nicely done. Yeah. That's a beautiful thing. So thank you, Jessica, that actually genuinely gave us a good chuckle, anything from you, Tommy. Well, we said we weren't going to do this, because it does set a bad example, and encourages people to be naughty. But do you remember last year we had someone that entered right at the last minute? Oh, yeah. Imagine on Ernst Bernie. Last minute, Larry. Yeah. We did have another deadline, Devil, this year, which I wasn't going to do it, but this one kind of blew that away, because it wasn't any time to spare at all. It was on the deadline. And that was Mary Astor, although on the application that came in, it said Astor Mary on the entrance. I'm not sure if she got, she was in such a rush that she got names mixed round, or they would just, maybe it's called someone called Astor Mary, I don't know. She was just making up an eye. She was just a short name that she could get in before the deadline. Type it in anything. I'm going to assume the surname was Astor, because then it lets me construct this thoroughly average joke, because I was going to say, if they'd taken even a second longer to try and enter, they would have had to change the first name to Des. Desaster. Desaster. Desaster. Desaster. Desaster. Desaster. Yeah. You got any other mentions, John? Yeah, I have actually, yeah, I thought Ben Chase did a particularly nice job of incorporating his phrase. His story is about a waiter at a restaurant who's been told he can't give any more cake away for people's birthdays, you know, when they bring out the cake, but when this kind of raggedy, underfed woman and daughter come into the restaurant, obviously hiding from someone, he takes matters into his own hands, and this is the quote, a scowling man arrived. My co-workers and I had a place, four candles, and the cake. My body was positioned to block the front of the restaurant. I clapped my hands and sang, and yeah, the man boggers off basically before they sing the birthday song. That was nice. I didn't really even notice it the first time, and I just thought, yeah, that is good. I also enjoyed RJ Kinani's or Kinani's, which was in the form of a shopping list, and it just went a couple of pounds of hard cheddar, a place, four candles, one for every 20 years. She doesn't want to set the house a light, a bottle of Harvey's Bristol cream and a big tub of rum and raisin. It's nice, but also what's particularly nice is the shopping list is actually relevant, like it becomes the thing that reveals stuff about the character. So well done Rebecca, lovely stuff. Okay, anything else before David arrives to announce? We do have one thing, don't we, which has now become unavoidable tradition in the winners episode? Is the ditty? You make a sound like it's such a terrible thing, Tom. I'm sure a lot of people look forward to it, John. I'm sure a lot of people don't mind it. It's why they're listening to me. Yeah. John, one year John compiled, you know, he likes his ditties, compiled a song, just grabbing people's names and what their story is about and squishing them all together. And we should say, we always say, I mean, this has no relevance to who might have won. I've got through anything. It's literally just all stuff you can lyrically squeeze into. Yeah, yeah. But I do, I do favor my favorites to be fair. Oh, so if I can squeeze, yeah, it's a big honesty. Right. I do try and squeeze my favorites in. If you're left out, it doesn't mean that I didn't like it, it just means that you didn't rhyme. Yeah, that's the problem. Let's have a listen. Although Tom and I sometimes act daftly, today we're serious because alongside David Gaffney will have a bash that seeing whose flash is worth 500 quid in cash. We loved. Reese Housen, Campbell Bearing Pilgrim, Jeff Harrison's candles went and killed him and a boy says, "Child, but from a building in the booze monster." In Jamie Gills' thing, Terry Keran's granny is leaving a sentient whisk from Esther Freeman. His aunt Cooper's brother, grieving Matthew Turner gave a cyborgs to believe in. Cleve Redford Lane's Grandpa Waxing Lawyer Stable panas, looks, maxi-risso-cinicle. Kaelin Peterson's present is criminal And we love the rate of Bickler's healing walks, Miracle, a Hanna Ross, soon-lever, an Emily Gale. Gave his wives with lives beyond the pale. Hillary Huggins just about stays on the rails. The Carol Robinson's really needs to bail Christoph Mike's new. Is the cake king, a noodle celebration from making? Aaron Courts for that tiny life taken, and Steve Soulsbury, What the hell did you awaken? We enjoyed Mother Lane's enemy twins. Joe Shariff's creepy tale made his wins. As did Chris Hutchings, human mince, and Jean-Colon of Arnie Sina, Who got rinsed, break my goaluses with sweet. But not Sakarin, a Jonathan Dawson's cake, Someone's with Jaffa's in, Stephen Stillbex, Mabel just won't pack it in, Martha Lane's baby's feet, And just pizza paturine. And now finally, Tommy, I think let's get the results. Yes. David, welcome back. Hello, thanks for having me. How are you coping with the God-like power that you're currently wielding? Has it gone to your head at all? It's absolutely incredible. I just want to do this every week. Take a look at people's work and decide which ones go. Swipe to the left, swipe to the right. It's a bit like that, isn't it? Which ones go that way? This one, I just use a yes, no, and a possible, basically. Go through them all. That's my method. That's good. So you do have a strategy. And go through them like that. Excellent. And then come back and have another tweak. But yes, I do enjoy. But every time I read a load of stories from a competition, I'm kind of looking to see whether there's some kind of a zeitgeisty theme that they've all come up with together, in like a swarm sort of thing. I'm not sure this time we had much of that. But there was a fair bit of sort of grief and serious kind of. There was some common themes that came through it. Yeah, it was interesting. I thought it was interesting how. Because I think you mentioned that you have a fondness for slightly weird stuff. Yeah. But we didn't actually get that many weird entries. No. I mean, there were a few. But I suppose you can't set off with that in your mind. You just got to write what comes to you. And if it happens to be a bit odd. Yes. And great. But yeah, I thought, especially after last year, I thought we might get inundated with really strange stories. But yeah, never really happened. I think you're right, though, if you're sort of trying to write that, you end up possibly. Does the danger of you just sounding like a teenager trying to sound? Yeah. You've kind of got that kind of. You can't. I'm going to be really wacky. It's psychedelic. It's going to be crazy. It's going to be surreal. And there's a danger in setting off like that, I think. So none of them were in that field. There was one a little bit like that, I think, that kind of struck me as quite odd in a good way. Yeah. But the rest of them were fairly realism, you know, you know, contemporary and fairly straightforward in some ways. David, did you enjoy it or did you feel. Do you feel an overwhelming sense of responsibility and pressure when you're doing these judging things? I enjoyed it. It's good to see what people are doing. It's good to see what the competition are doing, isn't it? Yes, it is. It's a great insight. We know that's right. We know that's why he wanted to do it. My main purpose of this is to deter people from writing flash fiction, put them off as much as I possibly can. And if that works, then it leaves the field free for me. You know, you would don't put that bit in. No, I'm sure people have suggested that's the entire reason for our podcast existing. It's just to put masses of people off writing to thin out the field to give us slightly better opportunities. Okay, you're right, yeah. Were you pleased with the way our listeners incorporated your special phrase? I really enjoyed it, actually, because they all used it and not that they were colluding. They all used it in a different way. And where it fell, it was quite nice to work out where it was going to fall as we were reading in. It was a place for candles, was the phrase. And when you hear them in a bit, you'll see they've all placed it in a different way. And they've drawn a different meaning out of it. And I thought that was interesting. They'd kind of got double meanings out of it. And they've really felt to me like they'd really thought about that. Just out of interest. Did you kind of have an idea for a piece of flash fitting the criteria of our competition, David? Did anything jump into your head? It didn't, but it reminded me of a story that I had published, which has got a birthday theme, which is, I think it's in Saw and Off Tales. And I think it's about a bloke who. He has to get his sister to buy his father a birthday card every year and deliver it to him. And he decides that to save time and money, he'll just send a certain number of cards. He sends a 27 cards. And he says, "This is 27 cards. I've worked out how long he's likely to live." And I think this is in my years, he's got left. So I've sent all the cards and signed them all. Then we don't need to do anything else. You send them to him. And his sister's a bit upset about this. I don't know if it's cold, right? So that's the only one I've written, which is got a birthday theme, which I don't know, so it's quite a dark. Although it's funny, it's also not only dark. Right, without further ado, let's get into it. I believe, David, you've got a. Before we get into the 321, the bronze silver gold, you've got a highly commended for us. Up your judging sleeve. I get one of them didn't get up in the top three, but it did come out as a strong contender. Oh, we should say, actually, just before we do this, and we will run through the list of the short list, there were nine that got through to the final judging element. Oh, yeah. So even to get highly commended, puts you quite high up that list of nine in fourth place. So yeah, sorry, David, carry on. So highly commended was the story called Intensive Care. That was by Debbie Howard. Well done, Debbie, very good. Well done, Debbie. That was one of my favourites. Yeah, same. Have a listen to Intensive Care by Debbie Howard. Intensive Care by Debbie Howard. You sit by my bedside holding my hand, tapping a finger to the monitor's beat. I hear tea and sympathy, and wonder if the nurses are pretty. Last year, Dave from the Dole office sent me a Valentine's card that said, "Do you believe in Kudafoudra?" I went to the library to find out. Kudafoudra, love at first sight. Next time I signed on, I gave Dave a note that said, "No." Then you moved into the flat. We stayed up late, listening to your records, and crying about your childhood. You read me poetry, and explained why a fringe would flatter my nose, and let me do your washing. I fell asleep with your words, swooping through my head like a murmuration, dreamt of falling into your dimples, and emerging, Jonah-like from your mouth. World Cup, planning how to make you smile. You said I was the best flat mate ever. Sometimes you put your hand on my knee. All the girls you brought home had tiny noses. On my birthday, you promised to be back early. I made your favourite meal, bought wine and baked a cake. I went to the park and filled the flat with daffodils, saying, "Happy birthday to me." Then I put on the dress you said you liked, and waited. When it was dark, I watched the news, but there were no riots, crashes or natural disasters. Just leads in a goalless draw. I balanced the empty wine bottles on the windowsill, a place for candles to guide your way home. I lit them with one match, watched the nylon nets flare, let the flames warm my face, and imagined you finding me there. They're talking about reconstructive surgery. Behind the bandages, I picture an exquisitely irresistible nose. Excellent, excellent stuff Debbie. Thank you for that and congratulations on highly commended. I think what makes this really heartbreaking for me is how passive it is if that makes sense. It feels like a story that happens to somebody which is, you're not really supposed to do that. Your protagonist has got to be active and doing things, but this is all you did this and you did that. When it comes to the narrator themselves, she uses words like, "I let and I watched and I picture, I dreamt." Yeah, yeah. In fact, it makes it stronger for that. It's quite unusual. It's quite unusual. You could almost say, "Is she even alive?" It's a sort of story where you might expect she might not even be there. She might even have died and she's some kind of observing ghost in the story. But it's a kind of thing that you might have written and then taken that out. I love how the whole thing is set up at the beginning as well. Even the structure of it is fatalistic. Yeah. One of those bits of writing I think that you, I certainly read it, I think I read it about six or seven times and every time you read it again, you just think, "Oh, that is really clever." You kind of spot a new thing or you know it's something else about it. Yeah. I thought that was excellent. And Coup de Foudre, I didn't know mental about first sight. No, never heard that. So we've learned something as well. It's good to learn what reading's all about. Well, let's leave Debbie in that weird limbo of being really pleased that she got to the short list, but slightly disappointed, she didn't make it further on than that. But it's got to mention, got it right out. So it's not too bad. Let's, yes. So number, number bronze. Well, for number three, I went for the small things we keep. And that was by Sharon Marie Hire. Well done, Sharon. And this was a, and I like the tone of it. It was a nice simple story about grief, I think, for me. And it was about loss and about somebody repeating the same things every day, but, and then, but we're going to, we're going to listen to it anyway, aren't we? So they won't give too much. Yeah, let's have a listen. And then we'll come back and have a little chat about it. The small things we keep by Sharon Marie Hire. Every morning, David courage two cups of tea into the garden. One was for him. The other he placed beside the apple tree, where Mabel used to sit with her knitting and complain about the blackbirds. His dog Seren came too, though she'd stopped expecting Mabel to throw her crusts. On Tuesday, David found a white feather on the doorstep. He tucked it into his pocket beside the card he'd bought three weeks ago and never sent. Mabel would have been 92 today. He'd planned a party once for Mabel's 80th, bought balloons, invited the neighbors, even ordered a cake with her name spelled wrong. She'd laughed until she cried. She'd fed half the cake to Seren, telling her it was their secret. Now the house was quiet enough to hear the fridge thinking. At lunchtime, he opened the cupboard beneath the sink, looking for the tin of polish. Instead, he found Mabel's old biscuit tin, the one with the faded roses. Inside were buttons, a broken watch, three foreign coins, and a photo of him at 23, holding a puppy too big for his arms. On the back she'd written, "He thinks nobody notices how gentle he is." David sat on the kitchen floor, Seren pressed against his chest. He held her until his breathing settled and the light shifted across the Lionel. He cleared his space on the mantelpiece, a place for candles he thought, though there was no cake today and nobody coming. He lit one anyway. Seren watched the flame tremble. Outside, a blackbird landed on the apple tree in sound. David cut a slice of bread, put it on a saucer and carried it into the garden. For the first time in months, he left the second cup of tea at home. Ah, see, I loved that. And can I just give a massive thank you to Phil Rowe, the brilliant Welsh voice actor who helped us out there. Beautiful job, mate. Thanks very much. And you can check out his work at PhilRowVoice.com. Yeah, David, what were you saying about it then? What was it that brought it so high in the rankings? I think it was a nice simplicity about it and nice tone about it. Nice even tone about the language. You know, it worked quite well. It's nice sometimes when you can almost feel the end of the story coming rather than as a surprise and it builds like that for me. It sort of swells up at the end and you kind of, yeah, that's where I knew it was going, but that's not always bad. And it ended up and it's got some nice lines in it. There's a great line where you just heard where it says the house was quiet enough to hear the fridge thinking. And I liked that. And in some ways, if we were looking at it in the workshop, I might have said bit more of that thing will be good if you're going to make it longer, a bit more of that kind of thing because it comes in, it's great, but it doesn't kind of have any more of that in it, that sort of figurative, that sort of poetic sort of language. So it's good and we haven't, and this one we haven't talked about how they've got the place for candles in. So it's interesting, you've got a phrase you've got to insert and she just put clear to space on the mantelpiece, a place for candles and then it just lands there. You don't really notice it, which is quite nice and clips it in. But overall, nice ending, it's quite good, I think. Often when you reach your fiction and poetry, what you remember about it, apart from that phrase about the fridge, you often remember more an image, I think, than you remember the actual words. And I think for this one, there's a nice setup image at the end, which is in the garden of flames trembling, blackbird on the apple tree, spicy bread. You've got all this stuff going on, so you come away with it with that in your head, I think, which is quite interesting. Yeah, that's true. I have an embarrassing admission about this. This story brought actual tears to my eyes. I really, I think it was the only one that I read, and I, yeah, I got off it, Terry. I just thought it was just really beautifully, a lot of what you were saying, it was very sort of subtly and definitely put together. Stuff like this can so easily tip over into more cushionist kind of. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just thought it felt quite restrained. It was the line that got me, it was on the back of the photo, so she'd written, yeah, I think nobody notices how gentle he is. I know. I've got about that. It's sat on the kitchen floor. Yeah, that for me was just like, oh, blood, yeah, yeah, very, very nicely put together. Yeah, very, really good. And also shows you that you can, you can write a really effective piece where you're not particularly developing or having conflict, have a massive change, you're in one spot, aren't you with this? It's certainly one spot, one feeling, and there's a movement in it towards again, but it's not radical, and I think it's nice. It just stays there, doesn't it? Yeah, that's right. And it's all ever so slow, isn't it? It just feels so kind of languid in its delivery, which it's not trying to rush you through and go, oh, look at this, look at this, look at this. Yeah, it's just so gently, gently, gently slow it is. But there's still, like you were saying, not a lot happens in it, but there's still a movement forward, isn't there, because that last line for the first time in months, he left the second 50 at home. That's the, that's the switch, isn't it? That's the one, isn't it? Yeah, okay, he's going to be all right, it's going to be all right. Yeah, very nice. Brilliant. Well done, Sharon. Well done, Sharon. Okay, moving forwards, let's have your silver. The silver, the second prize is going to the woman in the hopper print has stepped out. This was one that I thought really, really jumped out as being quite a bit different from some of the others and as quite an oddness about it, but maybe we should just listen to it first and then talk about it. The woman in the hopper print has stepped out by Marqueta Dowling. He is studying the woman in her underwear. The harsh light finds the folds of her body, which is flesh coloured and the grey green of vertigree. The green advances up her thighs like damp, up a wall. Her hair is black. For her age, he thinks. Her lips deep red. He's always liked women dark with a tinge of bitterness. She opens his shirt as though it were a reasonable thing. Her hand goes in through the scar, closes around his heart and squeezes until he can't swallow. He imagines this with great tenderness, the nicest thing anyone has done for his birthday. His charcoal snaps. The glass ends and nobody sings. She takes his arm and the cobbles, because her shoes are not sensible, which is true and not the whole truth. In the wine bar, the burgundy tastes of coins. Their table has a place for candles. "I'm most myself in that hour," she says. "You'd think it would be the opposite." By the second bottle, there is a candle after all. The wax runs into his glass. She drinks it. His apartment is tall-sealinged. A vacant hopper print. A lamp throwing his circle of amber. Beyond its edge, the floor goes on for longer than it should. She sees the emptiness and is not bothered by it. "Come here." She takes his glasses off. A warm smear of green and red. When she starts on his buttons, unhurried. His hands close over hers. There's a scar. I know. It's been humming. He hears a zip. Long and patient. it travels from wall to ceiling to floor and the apartment opens along its seam. Beyond, no night, only red, expanding and contracting. Something is being held, his heart or hers, or a candle, and they lean in to blow. So yeah, that was the woman in the hopper printer stepped out by Marqueta Dowling. So congratulations, second prize. Yeah, David, what was it about this? I was intrigued by the writing about our piece of art, as well bringing that into the story, intrigued me first of all, so when I read it, and I just thought that there was some really weird things about it, and that's what drew me in, really. I wasn't quite sure where it was going, and I'm still not quite sure where it ends up, but that's all a better for it for me. Having some great lines in it, like I like the way the green advances or per leg like damp up a wall, which surrounded out of me, and then there were having some wine and said the burgundy tastes like coins, I think it says something like that, which again was quite unusual, but also you could kind of imagine it, like that metallic sort of thing, and there was another line I picked out. This was good for language and lines and quotes. There was one where it says the floor goes on longer than it should. That was great. I mean, I think they were talking about the painting, and I didn't dig out the actual painting, actually, I should have dug it out and looked at it, because I imagine there's a specific hopper painting that they're talking about. Yeah, I had a look, but I couldn't find anything that sort of was specific. There seemed to be quite a few bits of hopper as far as I could tell. I mean, I like this idea of opening the shirt and putting the hand into a scar, closing on that. I didn't quite get that, to be honest, the rest of it, but I liked where did you guys feel about that element of it? I felt like there was a lot in this that was happening in his imagination. So it was almost like a story partly set in the recesses of his imagination. So you're never quite on solid ground with it. It's kind of what you were saying before. You're never quite sure whether you're in a painting or in real life. That's what I loved about. It's not just a story that kind of revolves around art, but it's actually a story about art in a way, like about painting and the way that certain spaces don't quite make sense, but they sort of do. There's that great bit where he's imagining. He imagines this with great tenderness. The nicest thing anyone's done for his birthday is charcoal snaps. So he's clearly there actually drawing this woman. And then in the sort of throws of his imagination, he snaps his charcoal. I just thought I was lovely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's a lot in it. It's like a lot of this really short fiction, it demands rereading, doesn't it? There's a lot there. It's quite, I think a lot of my favourite writing as well as, I don't have to describe it really, but kind of ugly and beautiful at the same time if that makes sense. Right. Like almost like you're trying to find the beautiful in ugly things. Yes. And this I think does does that really well. But yeah, it's almost like it's a story that's being painted as you're reading it. Yeah, that makes sense. And that thing about the room opens with a zip along its seam at the end. This kind of weird, we said there was not much surreal, but there is in this one. Yeah, yeah. That's the whole thing about the sort of thing you can do when you're you're sort of living in a twilight world between reality, art and your imagination somewhere between the three all day and it's kind of working in a dream world, isn't it? And that's what, yeah, that's what that's what I liked about this one. Yeah, it does it leans into that, doesn't that kind of things that things that would make sense in a dream? Yeah. And I think that's quite, that's quite hard to do in, in any writing, in flash, because it can, it can come off as a bit overworked and try and try hard, but it seems to exist, it exists naturally in this, doesn't it? It just exists. Yeah, I wonder if actually writing down a dream does work. I've tried before writing a dream, you know, a dream that I've had getting up, writing it down. And I'm never sure that works that that well. And actually, I don't know if you two have ever tried that with writing, but it's just, it's just really hard to capture the disconnect and the, it contradicts itself, and still makes sense in your dream world. It's hard to get that on paper. But that last paragraph and this is a perfect example I thought of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of how you kind of, it's the, you know, it's someone's dress being on zipped or whatever it is, but actually, you know, it's not the entire room and then outside, it's just, there's no night, it's just red, but that's some, you can see that in a dream. Yeah, it's kind of cinematic in some ways. This one, actually, isn't it? You could imagine that you've been done with it visually. Yeah, like an animation or something. Yeah, very, very, very avant, yeah, very avant-garde animation. Yeah, yeah. Brilliant. Well done, Marquetta, brilliant. That concludes number two. So on to the big prize. We should say both, number two and number three, we'll be taking home a copy of Scrivener. Okay, great. Great. Well, and several libro.fm audiobooks as well. Okay. Yeah, to those guys. But the big prize, the £500, rests on the shoulders of the prize winner, which rests on the shoulders of David Gaffney to announce. Right, as you would do it with a little drum roll. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The first prize goes to the spool. That was by Rachel Dunlach. Congratulations, Rachel. Well done, Rachel. I think Rachel was in last year shortlist. Oh, really? I have a feeling. Was it last year's or the years before, year before, bridging? I think she wrote a bit of consistency there. Right. The cream is rising. Yeah, yeah. She's a repeat offender of this sort of thing, obviously. No, I thought it was, yeah, it was something about it. Again, when we've listened to it, we can talk a bit more about it, but yeah, I thought it was the strongest of the nine for me. Spool by Rachel Dunlach. I take a photograph of my parents outside their house every year on my birthday. I take it from the car just before I leave. When I first arrive, there's always an awkwardness to overcome and awareness that while once we were never apart, now we are rarely together. It takes a while of settling down before our small stories start to feel big again. I like them to wave. Here's my mother leaning into the camera, her arm flung high, a swing to her hips. My father's in the shade of the carport, raised arm, cocked at a neat right angle. His other hand pressed flat to the side of his slacks for balance. Sometimes, when I want to feel sad, I'll spool back through the photos, year by year, the flipbook animation. As I go back, my father plumpens, his free hand sneaking behind his back to hide a lit cigarette, his shoulders broad with purpose. My mother folds further into herself, the younger she gets. Turning Controposter to offer the smallest slice of herself to the camera. I have a mental tagline for each photo. The time I told them I was getting a divorce. The time dad cried, talking about his father. The time my mother said her biggest regret was never teaching me how to knit. The time she made a cake so sadly sunken, she couldn't find a place for candles on it. The time, they both knew not to ask about the baby. A spool forwards, letting my mother fill the frame with a late life fuck it attitude, tracking my father, flattening into the shadow, pulling my eye with his stillness. I bring my own cake now, because they forget what day it is, but they never forget the photograph. They always wave. Beautiful that. David, over to you, tell us what you liked about it. I like the structure of the repetition of it. It had a real spine to it, which was the repeated photograph every year going through. I like that because it means having a structure like that can mean you can veer off. You've got focus all the way through. A little bit like the other one, small things about grief. It's a little bit in that zone, as well as the parents of that, but just some nice stuff. The last line I thought was great, they always wave. Is that thing about that? I like the way he used the punctuation of the taking a photograph every year to kind of mark the changes in his or her life as she's observing it. Those are dropped in the different things, not asking about the partner, all of that. The way that changes, as his parents got older, the way they changed their position in the photographs and all of that, it was a good way coming up with that idea was an interesting way of just talking about your parents getting older. Basically, because that's what it's about really. It's about a simple thing. Consume Dr. Lab, but doing that gave it a kind of, and again, you left with powerful images, again, of those points you could almost imagine, the photographs and what happens to them. And the word spool was a nice choice of title, I think, on that one. - Yeah, yeah. - Because the title works, we talked about it last time, doing a title, doing more work than it actually needs to do, and this one's doing quite a bit more work. You're spooling, your life's spooling. Everything, you know, it's doing quite a lot. So you come back to it and say, oh, yeah, that's why it's called spool. You could have called it photograph. You could have called it something else, but. - Yeah, spool brings that certain element of movement into it as well. It's kind of, it's winding on as it's moving along. It's like you can't kind of stop it. And I thought the format of this was such a brilliant thing, because it's quite a simple framework to hang it all on, but in terms of writing it, it kind of gives you these, you're almost writing a bunch of little stories, each little crafted, and then they stick together by the nature of the thing. Which I feel, it kind of almost gives you, you feel like you've got more value for the story. - Yeah. - You feel like you're getting an awful lot of stuff in 300 points. - Yeah, yeah. - It's also, I think, very clever how, all that there are quite a lot of clues about the narrator that come across kind of via the parents and these snapshots, you know, about their lost baby and a divorce and a kind of general numbness. And that's the kind of the magic in it, in a way, because it is about their parents, and it's about these photographs, but actually get, these clues are kind of important, aren't they? Make you care about the character, they're all these kind of subtle telling things that the father getting thinner and quieter and the mother getting fatter and sort of less uptight as time goes by, just, yeah, just so much stuff in it. - Yeah, and you made a cake, so badly sunken, she couldn't find a place for candles. And it's a nice way of getting the phrase in without it. - Yeah, yeah. - There's a lot in it, I think. So it packs a lot, do you need? It packs a lot, almost feels like you've packed a novel of some of this life in there by using these photographs to pack it in, so that's what I liked about it. - Yeah, it felt like a very, it was another one, it was a very, very quiet little story in a way, like if you're not paying attention, you could almost wander past it. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And not quite notice how brilliant it is, but it is just brilliant, yeah, great, great story about time and the things that changes and things that don't, and the power of connection between people as well. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And just so well observed with those tiny little details that you would bring those photos to like real, they make them real in your head, just the little art positions, and the young short, short as in that you can kind of really see them each time. - Yeah, so you hiding the lipstick around. - But you get that sense of time, 'cause you really just captures it so well in there. - And you got a sense of realism from it, using words like carport, you said nobody else, you wouldn't put that in unless it was real, unless they had a carport, I mean, who has carports, I don't know, some modernist Corby building on something, but the idea of this car, the idea of that made you, just draws you into it and thinks this is, there's a lot of real about this. It's a lot of just a concussion. - Brilliant, brilliant, well done, right? - Fantastic work. - And thank you, David, thank you so much. - No problem, I've enjoyed it. - Thanks for asking me. - Really, really appreciate it. I think, yeah, we always say this, but there's so many stories that could have made it through, they didn't even, but it weren't very many that you could kind of easily skip past in all of the entrants that we got. There was a lot of really good stuff, I mean, an overwhelming amount of good stuff that did make it particularly difficult. (upbeat music) - Amazing, amazing. - Truly amazing. - Thank you, David, again, for doing all the judging. Congratulations to Rachel, obviously, for winning. - Yeah, fantastic. - We'll try and have a chat with her in the next episode. - Yeah. - There were loads of entries we really liked this year. - There really were, yeah, we mentioned it in our chat with David, but it was incredibly difficult. - But you know what, we need to do before we do anything else. - John, we need to tell people who was actually in the shortlist. - Oh, yeah. - Yeah. - So, well done to John Deacon. - We wrote, "Your murders come with smiles." That was good, really good. - Martha Lane, who got two in the bloody shortlist. - What an achievement. - I know. - Well done, Martha. - That is, well, it's unprecedented, but also, frankly, amazing. - I don't think that has ever happened before. - Mel Yod, with Bird Lovers, and Tess Allen, with the Harbinger. - Well done, guys. We flippin' loved all those stories, and we'll get to hear them next week. - Do you know what we should do, Tommy, as well as the shortlist? - Yeah. - Should we do a rundown of our longlist? - Yes. - Yeah, yeah. - Okay. - Those people maybe deserve a little mention, do you think you should do that? - Yes. - Let's do that, let's do that right now. - Okay. - Should we just do it and I'll turn it? - Yeah. - All right. A theme of law. - Well done. - Got on the longlist. - What change? - Chris Parker. - Good year for Chris's. - Wasn't it? - Right. - Great Margolis. - A previous winner. - Great Margolis, yeah. - First winner. - Yeah. - Esther Freeman, Jeff Harrison, Georgina Bailey, Gerwin Eugenram, Hilary Hodgins, Jonathan Dawson. - Kelly Johnson, kick lodge. - Kick was there last year as well. - All right. - I was lurking around somewhere in the shortlist. - Louise Walton, Rebecca Latham, Sam James, Samuel Howell, Stephanie Percival. That's the name that's been poppin' up in our competitions for a while, isn't it? - Yeah. - Another winner. - Did you win? - Another winner of the love story. Flashback. - That's why it rings about on Stephanie. - Steve Solzbury and Tina Gillam, well done people. - Won't you were knowingly close to getting through us? - Yeah, I got the feeling there as well that we're really close to getting through. So I don't know if I were them, so we're out of that list so you can just be really angry. - Yeah. - It's not fair. - Absolutely not fair. - Yeah. - It's almost like to be in the end. - Yeah. - You know, a bit of subjective. Yeah, we're probably just in a better mood when we read the other ones. - Yeah, unlucky. - Oh, unlucky. - Seriously, congratulations to you guys, 'cause there's a lot of entries and even getting to the long list is nice, isn't it? It's nice for you to kind of nearly there and you've got something worth reading in the story. - Yeah, big up to all of you who wrote stories. - I think just writing a flipping story to be honest. - Yeah. - Absolutely. - You deserve a little prize, but we can't give you one. - Okay, everyone can have an audio book, John. - Oh, of course. - So they literally can. Everyone is a winner. - Everyone is a winner. - Amazing, another year, another winner. What a winner, very worthy winner. So tune in next time and we'll have a little listen to all the runners up and speak to our winner, hopefully as well. And finally, can we just, if we just want to say thank you to you for listening. And if you're new to the show, thanks for coming on board. Maybe consider mentioning us online. If you like what we do, we do have a kind of informal policy. Don't we, Tommy, that if we spot, particularly lovely mentions, we do sometimes bribe people with merch. So you might want to consider that worth being nice. - Yeah, just a final thank you to Scrivener to Libra.fm and to David Gaffney for being so generous with his time and helping us judge this year's competition. - Yeah, and also thanks again to Phil Roe and Katie Rand for helping us out with the narration. - Absolutely glorious work. Thank you folks, amazing stuff. See you next time. (upbeat music) - Hello. - Hello. - Where's everybody gone?