Novel Competition Rules

1. The rules are designed to eliminate unintentional plagiarism and require competitors to reflect on where they get their ideas from.  Everything that we read, or experience, goes somewhere in our brain and people can plagiarise written material without realising it. Before reading his/her novel, each contestant in the novel competition will make a short statement of where the ideas for the novel originated (e.g. from personal experience or an amalgamation of events or just plain inspiration).

2. The competition requires contestants to concentrate on the audible and not the visible techniques of speaking. The obvious use of notes or a full script will not disadvantage any speaker, nor will the lack of gestures.

3. Contestants are required to present their original novel of approximately 5 minutes duration. The title of the piece will be declared, and the genre; e.g. adventure, romance, historical, thriller, ghost, sci-fi etc. Any contestant who uses another author’s work or characters will be eliminated.

4. Each contestant will be given 3 minutes exactly to present a reading of the first part of his/her novel during which time the contestant should establish the essence of the story and introduce the principal characters.

5. The purpose of the presentation is to produce a ‘cliff-hanger’ i.e. to convince the audience that they want to know what happens next in the story.

6. Lights will be displayed as follows:

7. The first and second places will be decided by a panel of three judges. The winner and runner up will be required to recount their complete novel.