Essential Writers > Competitions > Winter Witch Books’ new writing contest offers the prize of having your novel published

Winter Witch Books’ new writing contest offers the prize of having your novel published

Posted by Kathleen Inglis
August 27, 2009
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© sxc.hu

© sxc.hu

Is the protagonist of your novel a hero or an anti-hero? How can you tell? For their latest fiction-writing competition Winter Witch Books are asking what it take to be a hero. Do you have to battle against a terrible foe to rescue the love of your life, or simple with your own inner conflicts? Do you have to save the world or just yourself? Do you need to be kind to kittens or brutal with wrongdoers?

For their competition, Winter Witch Books want you to focus on personality, in particular your hero or anti-hero. With a strong emphasis on your main character or characters, give us a good storyline, inhabited by believable and vibrant people.

They don’t need to leap off the page screaming and waving their cutlasses, but they should be real enough to make you feel you know them by the time you’ve read their story.

Decide whether your main character is a hero or an anti-hero, and ask yourself whether a fully fleshed, three-dimensional fictional character can ever solely be one thing or the other.

Although Winter Witch have used the male form of hero and anti-hero, they urge you to feel free to have as many strong, scary, wonderful, kind and world-saving women as you want for your main characters!

Your work should be fiction but the genre and audience is up to you. The closing date is September 30th 2009.

Winter Witch writing contest prizes

All entrants will receive a free week of Winter Witch’s creative writing course on receipt of their entry

The first prize is £250, publication of your entire manuscript and a 12-week creative writing course with feedback.

Second prize is £50, the option to have the first chapter of your book published in the back of the winning book and an online, 12-week creative writing course with feedback.

Five runners up will receive a four-week creative writing course with feedback.

Winners will be announced on November 30th 2009.

For enquiries, please email office@winterwitch.co.uk

Winter Witch writing contest guidelines

Entries cost £4 per entry, and though you may enter as many times as you like there is only one free week of coursework per entrant.

Please enter the first 1-3 chapters of your work, depending on the stage reached in your project. Your project does not have to be completed for you to enter, but a synopsis and/or character biographies would be appreciated.

The length of your finished project is flexible, though Winter Witch would prefer your final book length to be less than 150,000 words. If your work is unfinished, please state the estimated final length of your book - this will not affect your chance of winning. If it is complete, the approximate word count should be included.

Please submit your entries in 12point font size or above and ensure all pages are numbered and labelled, in case they become separated.

If submitting by email, please send your work in the body of the email or as an attachment in MS Word, MS Works or as a PDF.

If submitting by post, please send your entry to Winter Witch Books, 3 Stoneybeck Cottages, Broughton Cross, Cockermouth Cumbria CA13 0TX.

If you wish to pay by cheque, please make it payable to J. Findlay.

For further information, please visit www.winterwitch.co.uk/hero.html


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