My best short story in 500 words
500 WORDS winners announced
The staggering number of entries proves that the competition goes from strength to strength and continues to capture the imagination of children across the UK. Well done to everyone who made it into the Top 50 and a huge congratulations to our six winners.— Bob Shennan, Controller BBC Radio 2, 6 Music, Asian Network and Director, BBC Music
Returning to BBC Radio 2 for its fourth year, the competition received a staggering 118,632 entries from children aged 13 and under from around the UK who put pen to paper to compose an original work of fiction using no more than 500 words.
This year’s winners were:
10-13 Age Category
GOLD:
SUSANNAH AMES – All The Time In The World (read by Paloma Faith)
13 years old, from Berkshire
SILVER:
NICHOLAS LOCKHART – Diary of a Minotaur (read by Dick & Dom)
12 years old, from Monmouthshire
BRONZE:
OWEN STORER – Albert Onions and Me (read by Barney Harwood)
13 years old, from the Wirral
Nine & Under
GOLD:
DANIEL MARTLEW – Lost Underground (read by Hugh Bonneville)
Nine years old, from Warwick
SILVER:
ROBERT JORDAN – “No Ideas” George (read by Matthew Lewis)
Seven years old, from Stockport
BRONZE:
JULIETTE LEA – Should-Bes (read by Benedict Cumberbatch)
Nine years old, from Cambridge
Chris Evans says: “What a year for 500 WORDS! The competition blew my mind away! I want to say a huge thanks to the amazing children who got involved by putting pen to paper. Seeing the faces of our finalists, and the reaction of this year’s winners, was an absolute joy. Let’s do it all again next year!”
Bob Shennan, Controller BBC Radio 2, 6 Music, Asian Network and Director BBC Music, says: ”The 500 WORDS final on Radio 2 is one of the highlights of Radio 2's programming year, and it's a joy to see such distinctive programming in our most listened to part of the schedule. The staggering number of entries proves that the competition goes from strength to strength and continues to capture the imagination of children across the UK. Well done to everyone who made it into the Top 50 and a huge congratulations to our six winners.”
This year, 17 boys and 33 girls make up the Top 50 finalists. They range in age from seven years old, all the way up to 13. And there are representatives from all four nations!
The youngest storywriter in the Top 50 is seven years, five months and seven days old - beating the second youngest by three months.
The furthest-flung finalist drove, with her family, all the way from Moray, in Scotland, on a round trip of over 1,000 miles. Two storywriters crossed the Irish Sea, and one of the finalists flew all the way from Canada to be part of the Final.
The creative cast of characters in this year’s competition included ghosts, dragons, an evil wizard, a Russian spy, a Minotaur, Bigfoot, a secret-agent chicken, a superhero squirrel, a criminal banana, and much, much more!
The winning stories were brought to life on the show by an amazing cast of special celebrity guests – including Lord of Downton, Hugh Bonneville; chart-topper Paloma Faith; Harry Potter’s Neville Longbottom, Matthew Lewis; Blue Peter's Barney Harwood; Sherlock himself, Benedict Cumberbatch; and comedy double act Dick and Dom.
This year, the judging panel for the Top 50 entries were joined by the highly acclaimed author of the multi-million-selling Horrid Henry series, Francesca Simon. She sat alongside returning 500 WORDS head judge Richard Hammond, and best-selling authors Charlie Higson, Frank Cottrell Boyce and Children’s Laureate Malorie Blackman.
The 50 million words contained in the stories entered this year were analysed by Oxford University Press, who made some fascinating discoveries. The research shows that hit films, gaming, and current affairs are influencing and enriching British children’s vocabulary and inspiring creative, clever storytelling. It also showed that the enormous success of the two Despicable Me films and The Lego Movie, along with the phenomenally popular games Minecraft and Flappy Birds have had a big impact.
Oxford University Press have elevated the humble minion in stature, declaring it ‘Children’s Word of the Year’ because of a whopping 250 per cent increase in popularity since last year – and it is all thanks to those small, yellow creatures with goggles from Despicable Me. Gru, from the same film, along with Emmet from The Lego Movie are both new entrants into the leader board of fictional characters this year. And the popularity of Minecraft and other narrative games has led to children discovering and employing a whole host of words they would never normally use – hence a huge increase in the use of words such as ‘ocelot’, ‘nether’, and ‘spawn.’
Full details about this year’s research can be found at
The winning stories along with the other final entries, and more detailed information about this year’s corpus are on the Radio 2 website - Also on the 500 Words homepage is a wealth of behind-the-scenes content which will take listeners to the heart of the nail-biting judging session, and pictures from the final in Hay-on-Wye.
500 WORDS was first launched in 2011, in association with Hay Fever, the children's programme of the Hay Festival.
More 500 WORDS info/stats
Chris Evans launched 500 WORDS 2014 on his BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show Monday 20 January, with the help of Blue Peter’s Barney Harwood and Head Judge Richard Hammond.
Frank Cottrell Boyce led a creative classroom takeover with 500 WORDS: The Masterclass on Friday 7 February. This reached an estimated audience of 150,000+ children and had nearly 75k requests to view the video, and clips, afterwards.
Hundreds of thousands of children visited as the nation got writing.
Word generator Alphabot – the nemesis of writer’s block! – was clicked on 400,000 times.
3,500 brilliant, book-loving teachers and librarians help read every, single story and shortlisted for the second round. The Scottish Book Trust then whittled all the stories down to just 50 TOP tales!
For OUP enquiries contact Tracy Jones at Brera PR on tracy@
AF2