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'd forgotten I had entered this. No feedback yet and, I suppose, anything will be a bonus as I wasn't expecting it, but I'm now prepared not to be blown away by 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.

I have a CW MA and have completed selective higher level courses through bursaries I've won. One of the things we're taught, isn't just the basics but how to apply them and when to ignore them, as in learn the rules, then learn how to break them. Writing is an art form not a rule following exercise.

And honestly, my Cheshire entry wasn't my best work. I've since rewritten that section and removed plenty of flaws. It's about a thousand words shorter but with lots more small details now. It absolutely deserved criticism as it was, and I was pretty excited to see the Cheshire feedback, hoping to see things pointed out that I missed. But other than the names of my characters, the feedback I got just wasn't for the book I'm writing.

Do you think it got mixed up with someone else's?

Well done on getting bursaries! I had looked into those but I never fit the categories sadly.

It was about mine alright but all the advice was as if it was for a thriller because a crime happens. But my book isn't a thriller, there is no mystery, or whodunit or build up of scary tension, it's a character study. Which my synopsis and comps make clear. Yet all of the advice (both paragraphs) was about thrillers, down to a comment on the thriller market.

Oh right I see what you mean. Perhaps you ought to email them back and ask them to have another look?

How frustrating!!

Hi everyone, I also entered this prize and am waiting for my feedback. It’s interesting to hear some of your thoughts on what you received. I follow them on social media and there seems to be a lot of drama over people emailing to ask about feedback. It may have been better if they’d only shared the cut off date for feedback and not the active feedback period. The wait does feel long otherwise.

With so many entries, I’m not sure how much in-depth attention they can give to each single piece of work. On X it seems as if they are stressing about the number of them they have to write. I entered a previous prize similar to this (Grindstone, although it doesn’t run any longer) and they also gave everyone feedback as part of the entry fee. It was agent feedback too, which was very useful. I don’t remember hearing about any issues with that, which makes me think it might be best for the Cheshire team not to share their thoughts about it so publicly. It gives a chaotic vibe.

That said, I look forward to hearing what they have to say about my entry. I entered mainly because I wanted some fresh eyes on my opening.

Drama is a good way of describing it, it does seem chaotic but I think they're a tiny team. I have a lot of respect for someone who can pull of such a feat.
I did read however that it takes 20 minutes to do the feedback. I wondered how they can feedback 5 pages in detail on entries, but I realised that what that is, is collating feedback from the initial readers.

To that end to all of us who didn't make the long list, we should take heart that our feedback is the opinion of two or three beta readers, not editors nor agents. A fresh pair of eyes will be brilliant to hear from, but if I get disappointing advice, I will tell myself it's not from agents!

Honestly, it was a really good fun qualification. Mostly online, but with a couple of bits face to face. My CW tutor was malcolm pryce, (he writes the Aberystwyth series of comic crime noir, and he wrote the course. It was excellent and I learnt an awful lot. Sadly I don't think he is involved any more but I recommend his books as they're great fun.

When I tried for MAs, it was next to impossible. I had to get all sorts of references, which I hate to get because in my eyes when you have to ask someone for ten references as you apply for courses or ultimately a job, it's going to piss them off fast. I eventually found myself wondering, what's the goal here, writing and publishing or an MA? The price of an MA is more than I would likely get as an advance!

You're going to think I'm related to malcolm pryce (I'm not) but now that he is now longer with ContEd, I must recommend that you have a look on his website, too. He has a lot of advice on there which I have found really helpful.

Best to leave it and move on I think, as has been said Cheshire is very chaotic. Though while I appreciate that it's a small team of non-industry volunteers, I think the way this is run really risks destroying some people's confidence.

I've posted previously on here about the Cheshire Prize and I'm not a fan. I had a similar experience to @GhostImposter I write literary fiction and received damning feedback that didn't seem to align with my novel. It was basically criticised for not being a thriller. The bulk of the 'feedback' was generic stuff about 'show don't tell' and 'exposition'. My writing has never been criticised for such things and like other posters, I have had full ms requests and two Arts Council grants on the basis of the same piece of writing.

@Ted22 I would be wary of putting such an emphasis on the feedback. Friends of mine who entered received similar feedback to me, always the same thing about making it more 'exciting' and 'dramatic'. There is no understanding of different genres. I feel that they justify the entry fee because you get feedback, but if most of it is cut and paste generic stuff, it's worse than useless. If I hadn't already had a full MS request when I received that feedback it would have destroyed me.

@BecauseOfIndia Thank you, I will bear that in mind.

I would love to know which other competitions or methods of garnering feedback other people recommend?

I haven’t found much past the three or four very prominent competitions (Bath, Womens discoveries, etc) which seem very competitive.

I really don’t enjoy the writers twitter “world” either.

Agent 121s can be decent value.

What do those involve @GhostImposter ?

They cost around £70 and you send your first 5000 words or three chapters depending on the service, along with your synopsis and query letter, to the agent you choose. And at an arranged time, they will call you for a 15 minute chat about your work.

It's not foolproof, plenty of people have done more than one 121 and gotten conflicting opinions/advice, but at least it's the advice of someone in the industry. And because it's a chat, rather than a report, you have to opportunity to ask questions or ask if something is working or not. It's definitely the cheapest way I've found of getting feedback on quite a large piece of writing. And even if your chapters are great, query and synopsis writing is such a different skill, so getting some tailored advice on that could be very helpful.

It this the I am in print website?

From a look on their site it seems you are basically paying to submit to an agent, so you're not just slush pile - is that right? Because if they like you they may ask for a full?

So for the cost of entering two competitions you get in front of a real agent and get real feedback?

@GhostImposter have you done it?

I think the Jericho Writers website also offer Agent 121s. I’m not a member anymore because it got a bit too expensive for me but I might join again and pay for one when I’m nearing being ready to query. Two of my friends have done them. One found it very useful and said that the agent asked her to query her when she had finished the manuscript. The other friend said the agent identified some issues that beta readers had also mentioned.

I’m becoming quite disillusioned with competitions because they are so subjective and it does affect my confidence if I’m not longlisted, even though I know it’s a small chance with the number of entries. The project I sent into the Cheshire prize was longlisted for a different competition so I had some hopes but nothing came of it in the end. I’ve seen that CB are running the Discoveries prize again but I’ve entered that twice and not been successful so maybe I’ll save up and buy some Agent 121s instead.

I definitely wouldn't look at it as a shortcut to being published. I think it's very unlikely that anyone gets an agent through a 121. It's just a chance to get an insider view and some feedback. I did one on mine, what I've got from it is that my synopsis is terrible. She did not say that at all, she was very nice but I could tell that I haven't managed to express what my book is about in the way that I need to. I think that I took too much advice from guides like Save the Cat, webinars, etc, and made it too stylistic and instead of genuinely informative.

She was positive about my chapters, especially once we talked through what my books is actually about. So it was really good to get that feedback. I'm glad I did it and because we could actually talk to each other, with back and forth, I got so much more from it than any written feedback report. I know some people find the idea of paying an agent to talk to you questionable, and I get that, but I think it's genuinely good value to have someone read your whole submissions package and talk to you about it.

Oh that sounds really positive then! I did look at save the cat and I couldn't understand how it was supposed to be helpful. Even the title confuses me.
All this conflicting advice is difficult when you follow the advice of one party and it actually hinders you!

I read that they have 500 left to do. I'm in that 500 😂

@TiroirSousLeMiroir Me too!

Me too!

@TiroirSousLeMiroir Me too! Feel like the prize is over now with the winner being announced and I’m still sitting here waiting haha.

Gosh how funny we're all still in the last 500 😂

I saw they are also changing the snippets thing in future and just writing to the top 100 when the long list announced. Perhaps they saw our woe!

I'm not really sure what that means,so no snippets,just a top 100 announcement?

I do think I'll go for an agent 121 as soon as I can get the fee together.