Budding young writers in the Rutherglen constituency are being invited to enter a short story competition being run by the area’s MP.
Michael Shanks is asking pupils in primaries five to seven to compose stories of up to 500 words set in their locality, with the winners being crowned and receiving book-related prizes at an awards ceremony in the week of World Book Day, which falls on March 7.
The competition aims to “encourage reading, writing and creativity in children” and follows the success of the Westminster representative’s Christmas card competition, which attracted hundreds of entries from artistic primary school pupils across the seat.
Mr Shanks, whose constituency includes Blantyre, Bothwell, Uddingston and Cambuslang as well as Rutherglen, said: “I’m really excited to launch our first-ever short story competition. Developing a life-long interest in reading and writing can help develop critical skills and can also build children’s imagination and creativity.
“I wanted to celebrate storytelling and story-writing as well as the importance of reading in a way that I hope will be fun for children in the area. I’m looking forward to reading the submissions – the more creative, the better!”
He has written to schools across the constituency to showcase the competition, and youngsters have until February 17 to submit their entries – which can be handwritten, typed or in the form of audio files – to his office at Aspire business centre in Rutherglen or to [email protected].
Young writers are asked to devise short stories set in the local constituency area, and are free to choose any time setting in the past, present or future and can include public figures from today or history if they wish to.
A panel of judges will assess entries for plot, originality, characterisation and language , with the entry information adding: “Stories will not be judged on spelling, punctuation or grammar as this competition is all about creativity.”
Further information is on the MP’s website at https://michaelshanksmp.co.uk/f/short-story-competition
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