Stories from where we live and work

The short story is a notoriously difficult genre to write. There’s no room to ramble, little space for back story or description, and character has to be shown by a few well-chosen and subtle details. Aotearoa New Zealand has a long tradition of excellent short story writers: think Katherine Mansfield, Frank Sargeson, Keri Hulme and Owen Marshall to name just a few. Internationally there are many, many writers who have perfected the genre: Alice Munro, John Cheever, Anton Chekhov, Anita Desai – the list goes on. If you want to write short stories, you really need to read short stories too, to see what works and how.

What we were looking for in the competition was first of all a good story, something that drew us in right from the start. Stream of consciousness doth not a story make. A useful rule of thumb is to jump straight in to the action. Many stories could have been improved by cutting the first page or two – it sounds brutal, but often works. There needs to be a story arc: something needs to have changed, or a character needs to have learnt something by the end. There’s a danger here of wrapping things up too neatly, though, which can lead to a story seeming trite, so some stories not only needed to start later, but end sooner, leaving the reader to join the dots.

A good short story also has strong characterisation. You can show character through the way people speak, and the implication of back story, but every detail needs to be there for a reason. That goes for every element in a story: there’s an old saying that if there’s a loaded gun on a table it has to go off by the end. It’s particularly true for description of place. None of us lives in a vacuum and we are moulded by the environment in which we live. We asked for stories to have a link to Central Otago, so the setting (and there were some very evocative descriptions) needed to be relevant to the plot. Could this have taken place anywhere else in the country or the world?

After many readings the place-getters were really quite clear. First prize goes to Walter McKenzie. It’s a quiet story, and we loved the skillful development of character and the growing relationship between the two men. There were some absolutely beautiful turns of phrase and telling details. This was a story that stayed with us over several weeks. A close second is New Gold and like the first prizewinner, avoided the pitfall of tying up ends too neatly. There was a skillful interweaving of different elements of the story, and a subtle feeding in of information as it was needed. Like Walter McKenzie, the characters felt true to life and the story had the added bonus of conveying the fragility of the precious ecosystem of our unique environment in Central Otago. Third place goes to Schist Happens. This was laugh-out-loud funny. It’s a mark of skillful writing and good characterisation with distinct voices that such an implausible story could suspend our disbelief.

The four entries that we highly commend were all good stories, but didn’t quite get into the top three for some of the reasons outlined above: they needed to either start later or finish sooner, or they might have been a bit clichéd or predictable. Those four (in no particular order) are Jumbo’s Big Reunion, Resignation, The Raft, and Good Prospects.

This is the first time that Checketts McKay Law has sponsored a short story competition. We hope that this initiative will encourage good writing in the region for many years to come.

Bridget Auchmuty and Rosemary Riddell