Anyone entered the Cheshire Novel Prize?

[TiroirSousLeMiroir]

It's in its third year and has just closed. It has a £29 entry fee which would normally put me off but you get individual feedback, so I've given it a go and just squeaked in under the deadline.

Has anyone else entered?

I believe there were close to a thousand entries last year. Looking at the short list from last year it seems a load of them are historical fiction.

I wonder if that is representative of the stats of the people who entered, or whether I ought to switch to that category!

Would love to hear from other entrants on here! :-)

I meant to say, pm me if you want to join.

coming back to this to ask if anyone has done Cheshire’s summer school and found it useful? I’ve already done Ink Academy so I wonder if it would be rehashing old ground…?

What I was wondering with it is that there was an Instagram live with advice such as, don't use speech marker other than "he said, she said ",and I wasn't sure if the summer school would be at that level. I understand there is an advanced one I'm November but can't find any details on it.

I was keen on the idea of the agent showcase but pp pointed out it wasn't very good as it was just one agent who was looking for a different genre.

Hi @Pupsandturtles I did it last year and did find it useful but I'd never really been on a writing course before so perhaps others would say it was basic. We looked at plot structure, profluence, interiority, character arcs and so on. The live videos often became a bit of everything as people asked questions or Sara went on a (usually welcome / relevant) tangent. Having said that, Sara did try to cut back on those as the course went on as the sessions were going on for hours and she must have been exhausted.
You get put into groups with others who write your genre, so I think some people really like that for forming support groups and so on. I liked a couple of the people in my group but ongoing friendships haven't happened, sadly.
As described up thread, for me the agent showcase was a bit of a let down. Perhaps future ones will be different.

I haven't yet figured out that website but if I do I'll definitely message you!

Has anyone had their feedback yet? I'm just really curious now about what it will be like. People on SM feedback that it's really helpful, so I'm hoping it will be :-)

Hiya,
No, no feedback here yet. Trying to put it out of my mind and enjoy the summer. September will hopefully bring renewed motivation and useful feedback.
Hope yours is useful as and when it arrives.

Nothing yet. I entered last year too, right at the deadline, and my feedback came towards the end of the feedback period. It was helpful feedback when it came, and very detailed when you consider it's an add-on to the competition entry.

If you set yourself up with an account and let me know your username on there, I'll send you an invite.

I had feed back today. It was quite detailed and very useful.

@ladybyron oh that's great! Do you agree with the feedback, are you going to make changes based on it?

Yes, absolutely but for my next project.
Totally fed up with this one - it was my first novel and I am now just viewing it as a massive learning curve. Trite but true.
Next year I’ll enter again for the feedback was better than the money I spent on The Novelry, for instance.

That's very interesting. How did you find the novelry?

Do they provide feedback for everyone or do you have to pay extra for that?

It's included.

I did the editing course. The sheer waft of information can be overwhelming. The one- to-one feedback is useful but not enough … then you have to pay for the next tranche … etc

That's interesting to read @ladybyron. Did you manage to get your work edited?

The wait for CP feedback feels long 😂 I saw that they are half way through, but could be waiting another ten weeks 😭

Hi all, I hope you don’t mind me joining the thread!

I entered Cheshire Novel Prize for the first time this year. I entered two books, and got feedback for both.

Book A (a finished manuscript) got read three times to round one. Feedback was nice but I got the impression they don’t think it’s close to ready yet.

Book B (my WIP which I’ve been struggling on with for several years now!) got read six times to round two! So that was a big shock. I found the feedback for that one particularly positive and useful. They said some really kind things!

Book A has actually been longlisted for a competition previously (Blue Pencil Agency first novel award) bases on the first 5k words, so I’ve found it quite confusing that they didn’t like that one very much, and it didn’t get past first round for Cheshire, if that makes sense!! I feel my less-good book performed better.

My aim now is to work on my WIP (Book B) incorporating the feedback and resubmit to Cheshire next year (if Sara keeps it going).

The nature of this contest, where people will act on previous feedback and then re-submit, makes it particularly hard to place highly upon first submission I think.

Regarding your last paragraph, yes fair point, however don't they change the judges and readers each year?
Is the feedback for your preferred book of the sort that you feel it will improve your book?

@TiroirSousLeMiroir I don’t know if they completely change the judges each time, or if there’s some overlap between years. When they tweeted the first lines, there were a few that said “We recognised this from last year” or “improved from last year” sort of comments.

I do feel like the feedback on the book that got to round 2 was very helpful, but it kind of reaffirmed what I already knew (chap 1 is not good, chap 2 and 3 much better) and gave some very useful advice to execute. It was quite specific - like “X fact is interesting, mention that in the first chapter. Make this motivation clearer, do you mean X or Y” and so on. And it was quite complimentary which boosted me. It’s got me motivated to keep working at it!

The feedback on my other book was less complimentary (although still polite!) and less actionable. They basically felt the main character didn’t have much agency (which is probably a fair comment! But accurate to the time period). They also commented that I needed to make the dates much clearer, but I had put the date at the start of each chapter, so hard to know how to action that.

I think my takeaway is that really not all readers are going to like your book or receive it the same way, and that’s okay. I assumed that book it would do well because it had previously been longlisted for another competition, but I was wrong!

I do reckon that submitting to lots of competitions is one of the best ways of getting the attention of agents. The odds are so stacked against you just sending out query letters.

I also find it motivates me to have something to work towards (competition deadline). When I was longlisted for the other competition, I then had to prepare the next 20k words in case I was shortlisted. I can honestly say I would never have finished that manuscript if I hadn’t entered the BPA award. The agent who judged it later reached out to me that she wanted to see the manuscript when it was finished, and while she ultimately passed on it, she was very kind about it, and it did motivate me to get it finished and was a big confidence boost.

I got my feedback on this recently and it was honestly less than worthless. I got 5 pages of feedback, of which 169 words were on my submission and the rest was copy and paste of basic advice. The two paragraphs that were specific to mine were just specific in name only, as in it referenced my characters but had nothing to do with what my book is actually about. It was honestly weird, I don't think it was written by AI but it was that kind of 'not quite right' in terms of misunderstood context. I've read on mumsnet threads from years before that people got the impression from the feedback that the person writing it wanted the book to be a thriller even when it isn't, and that's the impression I got too.

Luckily for me, the same extract shortlisted in another competition - judged by an agent, if it hadn't I think this would have utterly destroyed me. I genuinely welcome honest, critical feedback. If the judge/writer had said, what you're going for here is not effective due to xyz I'd have been more than happy with that. But this wasn't anything like that, it was just suggestions for a different book entirely.

I think that the some of the people who serve as initial judges for Cheshire are the type of people who have a little knowledge but no real understanding of application. So they have a checklist of what they are looking for, 'show don't tell,' 'Stay in the moment - no backstory.' Without understanding that all books are a blend of show and tell, action and backstory. It's why it felt like a piece of AI generated feedback, there was no understanding of nuance. If an entry goes through to the next round, then it's probably read by an industry professional, which is why the feedback is better.

I definitely won't enter this competition again and I wouldn't really recommend it to others. I also really hated the games they play with people to generate twitter engagement like the snippets thing. It's disrespectful to entrants. I know a lot of people enter it for the feedback, £29 for 5000 words seems like good value, but it's only good value if the feedback is worth something and it's not.

@GhostImposter I very much agree with you re the Snippets thing. It knocked the stuffing out of me somehow. Haven't received my feedback as yet so will be interested to see.

@GhostImposter that's so interesting, thank you.

Twitter is often awash with people saying that the feedback is amazing, but that's what I was wondering when I said upthread that I was hesitating about the summer school, because basic and beginners advice to one person is really useful to another.

I'd be interested in how much of various people's feedback overlaps.

I truly don't want to criticise the prize at all, I personally have a lot of respect and will be grateful for any feedback, given that most places don't give any. But my motivation is to get my story out there and doing well as I believe in it. I have already done a course with Oxford ContEd (much easier to get onto that an MA!) And as such I think I have the basics covered.

One thing I do remember is my story was categorized in a totally different genre and I know they give them to readers based on genre so it's possible mine was read by someone who was just not interested.

@Ted22 made an interesting point about entries being remembered year on year.

I do read a lot and there are plenty of books in print that have a real flavour of having been written to a formula or to order, and they are marketed really well. And plenty of excellent books that are poorly marketed. I think that it's marketing that counts at the end of the day!

This post is a bit choppy, I'm sorry, I've got one ear on the kids!

Even the first line thing. I was taught to make the first line really interesting and maybe I'm Mrs miserable but I wasn't blown away by some of the first lines. That sounds awful, and I don't mean it to be, but I presume those ones get going a few lines later!

@TiroirSousLeMiroir Not the point but I'm off to look up Oxford ContEd!