How to Succeed at Novel Competitions With the Bath Novel Awards

For many novel writers, entering a competition can feel like an exciting but daunting step. Is your manuscript ready? What do judges look for? Could this really help you in your writing career or are you just wasting your time?

In this guest post, Caroline Ambrose, founder and director of the Bath Novel Awards, shares her exclusive behind-the-scenes knowledge, including the biggest mistake she sees writers making, and her top tips for maximising your chances of success.

Who are you and why are you a good person to talk about novel competitions?

I’m Caroline Ambrose, founder and director of the Bath Novel Awards, novel competitions for emerging writers of adult and children’s novels. I have directed 21 awards so far and work closely with entrants, readers, authors, agents and judges, so I have lots of experience and inside knowledge about novel competitions.

Tell us about the Bath Novel Awards – what was your motivation in setting it up, and what do you consider its greatest successes?

Before the awards, I used to run creative writing courses and critique workshops for unpublished novelists. Writers seeking agent representation would often raise their worries about querying too early given the risk of blowing your opportunity with a dream agent.

Unlike now, there were very few prizes for unpublished and self-published writers and none that were both inclusive and awarded for full manuscripts. I could see the need for a prestigious prize to celebrate emerging talent and help writers to gauge query-readiness. After reaching out to agents and editors, I launched the awards in 2013 with Juliet Mushens as judge. She signed our inaugural winner Joanna Barnard, and sold her superb debut Precocious at publishing auction, and the awards have gone from strength to strength ever since.

Our greatest successes are our winners and listees’ success. There are too many to list, but we are probably best known for the debuts by Abi Daré; Matthew Fox; Laura Marshall; Struan Murray; Hollie Overton; Kim Sherwood and Chris Whitaker, all of whom found publishing success after winning or listing for our awards.

I’m also very proud of the success of our pioneering scheme offering free entries for novel writers on a low income. With the help of Kit de Waal and the generosity of sponsors it has transformed competition inclusivity by opening up opportunities for hundreds of writers. Best of all, it’s now normalised across the novel competition sector with many prizes following suit.

What are the benefits to writers of entering competitions?

A prestigious win can be a gamechanger. Our latest adult and children’s winners, Ben Reeves and Craig Pearson Fender, are both now working with superb literary agents after writing for fifteen and twenty years respectively without success. Many agents follow our prize and having a listing in your query letter is always helpful. Beyond the query stage, Bath Novel Awards listings feature in agents’ book fair brochures and pitches to publishers. Publishers in turn can use them for book releases and booksellers’ listings. For self-published authors, award listings can boost sales for not only the listed book but also backlists and future releases.

Writers also use our closing date as a motivation and deadline, and often tell me that connections they make with fellow entrants helped them to build a supportive community as they journey towards publication.

The specific competition prize benefits we offer are: £5,000 for the winning author; full manuscript critiques for shortlistees and partial manuscript feedback for longlistees. There’s also a fantastic longlist prize of a professional editing course worth £1,980 courtesy of Cornerstones Literary Consultancy and the Professional Writing Academy with excellent coaching on structural and story development as well as insights from industry experts.

What are your top tips to people entering writing competitions?

• One of our nine-year-old Junior Judges once wrote: “Be more interesting more quickly” and I can’t think of better advice – for writing or for life. Capturing readers’ attention from the off is especially important in the first rounds of writing competitions.
• Similar to the above, a winning opening line will get you off to a flying start. Great openers obviously come in all shapes and sizes but if in doubt, a simple declarative sentence conveying change and intrigue is a common choice by writers in many of our readers’ first round favourite picks:
  • “This is the last conversation we will have.” Testament by Kim Sherwood
  • “This morning, Papa call me inside the parlour.” The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré
  • “The email arrives in my inbox like an unexploded bomb.” Friend Request by Laura Marshall.
• Establish setting, period and the main character’s situation quickly to make it easier for your readers to reset and reorientate between entries. Professional readers typically work onscreen on up to 25 partials in a day, so in an hour could go from: an astronaut watching her planet die, to a mosaic artist winning a commission in Ancient Greece; to a bartender in downtown Tokyo whose long lost twin just walked in, to Pacific island schoolchildren running as a tsunami crashes in, to a warlock giving chase on a flying horse, to a serial murderer hunter in C17th London. The faster you can orientate your reader in your story’s world, the easier it is for them to engage and be pulled into your narrative.
• On a related note, consider skipping a lengthy prologue if your first chapter then introduces a whole new setting and cast. In competitions, offering a cohesive read rather than an extract that is split in two can help you get to the next round, where you can then present your full manuscript.
• Another trick in the extract rounds is to create a competition version of your extract with the endpoint tweaked to leave readers wanting more. In our first round, readers vote yes or no to the question: “Did this extract and synopsis make you want to read the full? Ending on a cliffhanger will make your entry satisfying and memorable. Stopping abruptly mid-sentence in a minor subplot scene won’t.
• Don’t underestimate the brilliance of industry standard formatting. Industry standard formatting is the industry standard because it’s invisible to industry readers. This lets your writing shine out and helps to pull your readers in. My heart always sinks when I see a font that sings to a premise or genre but murders the readability and reader flow.
• Proofread thoroughly. We all have blind spots and one typo is ok, but one typo on every page is not. Typos signal carelessness, which creates doubt, and your goal is to make the reader believe they are in secure storytelling hands.
• Perseverance is key. Most of the manuscripts we see are only a good edit away from longlisting. Many of our winners and listees have done so with a resub at later draft. If you believe in your writing, keep developing your craft because one day you will find your place.
• When choosing your competitions, think tactically. For example, if you have a full draft, head for prizes which award for the whole manuscript. Completing a full draft is an achievement few writers reach, so if that’s you, take full advantage and head for full manuscript awards rather than competing against everyone with only a great first page, chapter or partial manuscript.
• Be as wary of vanity prizes as you would be of vanity publishers. Prioritise well-run, reputable competitions with a track record of helping authors achieve the success you’re aiming for.

Have you noticed any interesting trends in the competition entries (e.g. are there years when certain themes dominate)?

I LOVE the entry trends. They tend to tie in with cultural trends, significant anniversaries, world events and shifts in how we understand and navigate the world, though some surges come more out of the blue. Currently we’re seeing an upswing in neurodiverse protagonists, podcast plots, extreme cli-fi, characters with health conditions, content creators and influencers as villains or victims, and books set in 2015 to 2019 rather than genuinely contemporary settings.

How could a writer make their entry stand out from the rest?

The exceptional books are always by writers who have poured their heart and soul into their craft. Writers who are funny and fearless and full of kindness and not afraid to take risks. Voice. Dialogue that is rich and sparkling with subtext always leaps out. Characters so real you think about them long after the last page. I have no say in the final choice, but the winning books are always the ones that made me laugh, cry or gasp and drop everything to read on.

What is the biggest mistake you see writers making when entering competitions?

Lack of momentum due to protagonists simply having events happen to them rather than making choices that move the plot along. Whether a novel is character or plot-driven, engaging protagonists have a clear motivation and are actively striving for a goal.

Do you think writers should make sure their entry is completely perfect before entering?

I don’t think completely perfect exists. Winning manuscripts are always exceptional but still go through multiple more rounds of edits with agents and then publishers to become the best possible published book. I’d say if you are happy that your opening pages are your best work, and 90% sure you’ve done all you can with your full manuscript that’s about as perfect as it comes.

Is there anything else you can tell us from behind the scenes that writers might find interesting or enlightening?

You can’t run a brilliant prize without a brilliant and inclusive reading team. We have a handpicked diverse team of exceptional professional readers from all over the world, some of whom have worked with us from the very beginning. Our readers include industry editors, genre experts as well as library workers and award-winning and shortlisted authors. For our children’s prize, an international team of Junior Judges aged seven to seventeen choose the shortlist and they are always the heart and magic of the prize.

People are always amazed that I also read every extract and full. It’s mostly because I can’t bear the thought of a novel falling through the cracks but also because I still have the same excitement when opening up each new entry to see whether this could be the one everyone is going to love.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

We’re currently open for both awards and always looking for fresh new voices and compelling plots, so if you have a novel you’d like to enter, the deadlines are 31 May for adult novels and 30 Nov for children’s novels, chapter books and picture book texts. To find out more, head over to our website at www.bathnovelaward.co.uk