Short Story Awards

Short Story Rules

OPEN FOR ENTRIES:  1 December

CLOSING DATE: 28 February. Entries close at 11.59pm

WORD LIMIT: 2,000 words (not including the title)

Prizes

• First prize of £3,000 second prize £500, third prize £250 open to writers worldwide

• £750 Isobel Lodge Award open to unpublished writers resident in Scotland.

• £300 Write Mango Award for the top story entered that is fun, amusing, bizarre…

• £100 each for at least three Highly Commended stories

• All finalists – invitation to the Short Story Awards Dinner

• The Scottish Arts Club will present one year free membership of the Club to the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place and Isobel Lodge winners.

• Publication in our next anthology for all finalists. Offer to all long-listed writers to also appear in the anthology.

Eligibility

• The Edinburgh Short Story Award is open to all writers worldwide, published and unpublished, who are over 16 years. You do not have to be Scottish to enter the competition.

• The Write Mango Short Story Award is open to writers worldwide and for stories up to 2,000 words that are fun, amusing, bizarre and as delicious as a mango. At least three short mango stories will be shortlisted for the award, included in the overall shortlist for the international competition and offered publication in the anthology. The Write Mango short story winner receives £300 plus the mango trophy and one year free membership of the Scottish Arts Club.

• The Isobel Lodge Award for New Scottish Writing is a special award within the competition that is only open to unpublished writers resident in Scotland. UNPUBLISHED means that the writer has never had a book-length work of fiction or short fictional story purchased by a commercial publisher or magazine.  If you have a work of fiction that has been published online or in print but were not paid for it by a publisher or competition you can qualify for the Isobel Lodge Award. Writers also qualify if they have self-published a work of fiction. Authors of commercially published non-fiction may also submit stories for the Isobel Lodge Award. If you have won a cash prize in a competition that included online or print publication you do not qualify for the Isobel Lodge Award.

• The Scottish Arts Club Member's Award is open to members of the Scottish Arts Club who have been members for at least two years.

• Simultaneous submission is permitted. Should your story win a prize or be published elsewhere, please let us know so that we may remove your entry from the Scottish Arts Club Short Story Awards. Stories entered for the competition should not have been previously published in any format, online or print, self-published or paid. 

• Stories must be for adult readers. Non-fiction and fiction written for children under 14 years are not eligible. Illustrated stories are not eligible.

Topic

• Short stories entered for the competition may be on any topic. Stories do not have to be set in Scotland or based on Scottish themes.

Entry fees / bursaries

• Every story submitted carries an entry fee of £10 payable as a donation to the Scottish Arts Trust via credit/debit card, PayPal or cheque.

• Free entry is available for writers through our bursary scheme. Applications for Short Story Bursaries are open from 3 November 2024 to 3 January 2025. Learn more

• For any questions about payment please contact admin@scottishartstrust.org

Format

• All stories must be in English. Dialect is fine, but bear in mind our readers come from many lands and backgrounds, and may not be familiar with all regional variations.

• Good layout can help a lot. We’d recommend 1.5 lines spaced (or double), font about 12pt Calibri or Times, 11pt Arial.

• Files must be in Microsoft Word (.docx or .doc), rich text (.rtf) or in PDF format. We cannot accept .pages or ,odt files, as we cannot guarantee these will be readable (though we will try).

• Documents must be in typed format. We cannot accept photographs or photocopies of handwritten script.

• PLEASE put the title of the story at the head of the text (whether or not it is also in the header of each page). Judges do not see your file name, and the admin has to add this if you leave it out.

• Having the title of the story and page number on every page is optional, but can avoid confusion for our readers. Ideally this should be inserted using the header format option, not typed on each page (in case someone wants to resize when reading).

• It helps if the total number of words excluding the title is listed at the end of the story (though we check them anyway). Stories that are even one word over 2,000 words will be disqualified (no sneaky hyphenation either!). Note that some word processors will count stand-alone hyphens ( - ) or ellipses ( … ) as words, so if the count is tight, use en or em dashes ( – — ) etc, and you might find you have a few words to spare!
  [e.g. in some versions of Word, “Oh no - John …” shows as five words, while “Oh no — John…” is only three]

• The competition is judged anonymously. The author must not be identifiable from anything in the story or included in the story pages. If your name appears anywhere in the story document (even on a separate title page) the story may be disqualified.

Submission

• All stories must be submitted via the online entry form.  Stories that are sent in hard copy will not be accepted. Writers may submit as many stories as they like, as long as they pay £10 per story. 

Returns/changes

• No corrections can be made after submission, nor fees refunded after entry. If you wish to make changes to your story you may re-submit another version paying another £10 entry fee. No reimbursement will be made for stories that are disqualified for being inconsistent with these rules of entry.

Copyright

• The author will retain copyright to their story. 

• All prizewinning and commended stories will be published.

• All stories submitted must be original, fictional, and entirely the author’s own work, and not infringe the copyright or any other rights of any third party and not be defamatory of any living person or corporate body.

• Entries must be in the entrant’s own name/names, not pseudonymous (if successful, you can request use of an alternative name).

Simultaneous submission

• Simultaneous submission is permitted. Should your story win a prize or be published elsewhere, please let us know so that we may remove your entry from the Scottish Arts Club Short Story Competition.

Publication

• Stories by the finalists will be included in the annual anthology. Other writers who are longlisted for the awards will be offered publication but may opt out if they wish. All writers with a story in the anthology will receive a free copy.

Judging

• During the early phases of the competition, an experienced team of readers will read and assess all stories through successive rounds. Stories are gradually eliminated from the competition until the final round when the last 6 stories are assessed by the Chief Judge. (Stories reaching the final round will have been reviewed more than 40 times.)

• The Scottish Arts Trust guarantees that judging will be anonymous, impartial and fair. The Judge’s decision is final. The Scottish Arts Trust cannot enter into discussion with any entrant on the judging process. We cannot provide feedback on individual stories

Publicity

• By entering this competition all writers agree that if they are among the finalists, their identity and town/country of residence may be released to the media and their stories may be published on the Story Awards website and in the anthology.

• All finalists in the short story competition will be informed personally by email or by telephone. 

• The winners of the Scottish Arts Club Short Story Award 1st and 2nd prizes cannot also win the Isobel Lodge Award of £750.

• The awards will be presented during the Story Awards Dinner held annually at the Scottish Arts Club. The dinner will be free for all finalists. Any guests of finalists will need to pay for their dinner and book in advance. Finalists will be responsible for their own travel and accommodation costs.

Tips on Using Submittable:

• You will need to create a free Submittable account or sign in with Google or Facebook credentials to submit your entries.

• You can save a draft of your entry form if you would like to finish it later.

• Submittable works on Google Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari. Internet Explorer is not supported. 

• We will follow up with you about your submission by email. Please check your Spam folder if you do not hear from us after submitting your entry.

Technical Questions?

• Check out the Submitter Resource Center or contact Submittable Customer Support.

• Please address any questions about the rules to sara@scottishartstrust.org