RTÉ is inviting entries to one of Ireland's longest established and most significant literary prizes, the RTÉ Short Story Competition in honour of writer and broadcaster, Francis MacManus - find out more here.
Below, competition judge and acclaimed author Neil Hegarty explores the creative process, and finding your voice...
Write what you know – so the suggestion goes. The more I write, though, and the more I read, the more I feel that we should instead be saying: Write about what you're interested in, what moves you, what stimulates your mind and your imagination. You don't have to know much before you begin a new writing adventure, in fact you don’t have to know anything: you just have to feel a pulse of curiosity, of attention, of excitement. And so you begin to write – and the gates swing wide open, and you experience a flow of creativity, and of unexpected thoughts and connections.
It's the unexpected thoughts and connections that interest me. We all aim as writers for this time of flow, when we write and write: and then afterwards, we sit back and marvel at the words that have appeared on the screen or the page, at the thoughts and images that we hardly knew – that often we simply didn’t know – were in our heads. And now there they are, our words manifest, as if by magic.
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Listen: The RTÉ Short Story Competition 2025 judges talk to RTÉ Arena
And it seems to me that we can put ourselves in the way of this flow of magic by resolving to write about what interests us, and then seeing where this resolve will take us.
I felt this sparkle of magic last year, when I was fortunate to be a judge on the RTE Short Story Competition, alongside Claire Kilroy and Kathleen MacMahon. The quality of the entries was striking; and so was the sense that the shortlisted stories and the winners had collectively struck that seam of gold, that sense of the unexpected that can bring a story to life. This was especially the case with Dead Bait, Mattie Brennan’s winning entry, in which the narrative executes not just one but two striking turns in unexpected directions – and all within the Competition’s 2000-word limit. The story was to me something of a tour de force, as well as a potent illustration of just what can be achieved within a strictly delineated textual space.
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Listen to the 2024 Short Story Competition winner, Mattie Brennan's Dead Bait
The other element that interests me – and the element that makes the RTE Short Story Competition stand out as distinctive – is that of voice. This being a radio competition, the voice in the writing, and its texture, really matter – and here too, the voices in the shortlisted and winning entries came through for the judges, as clear as a bell. As I write this, I hear the voice of Stephen O’Reilly’s second-placed story Divination: a father’s voice, struggling on the sidelines as he and his family face an immeasurable loss; and the voice of Emer O’Toole’s youthful protagonist in the third-placed story The Other Órla, as she navigates the treacherous and essentially unknown waters of adolescence. In both cases, the voices drew us in, steadily, hypnotically; we didn’t know what was coming, but we wanted to follow in order to find out.
I’m looking forward to more of these transformative reading experiences in the months ahead, as I judge the RTE Short Story Competition 2025 alongside Jan Carson and Tristan Rosenstock.
Find out more about the RTÉ Short Story Competition 2025, and how you can enter here.
