THE writer who is judging this year’s Bridport Prize says story competitions are hugely important and he is thrilled to be a part of such a prestigious one.

And that’s not just because Patrick Gale says he owes his own success to winning the Whitbread Prize in 1986.

It is also because he thinks short stories deserve a better press and a wider audience.

Mr Gale said: “I am passionate about the short story and it gets very hard done by these days by the publishing trade who don’t traditionally like them because they can’t make money out of them.

“But readers do like them in my experience and writers love writing them, so the more prizes there are and the higher the profile the better the chances of getting this form back to centre stage where it belongs.”

It was thanks to his own success in what was then the Whitbread Prize, (now the Costa Prize) that Mr Gale got his first novel into print.

He said: “Martin Amis was the judge. It was a small success but it was just what it took to get a publisher’s attention.”

Mr Gale said it was a great honour to judge the Bridport Prize.

He said: “It is highly thought of. What I love is that it has this local association but national importance which is a real achievement.

“When I was asked I was in the throes of judging last year’s Costa Prize so I was being buried under novels so being buried under short stories won’t be nearly as bad.”

Mr Gale will be sent a shortlist of 100 stories and 50 flash fiction pieces.

He said: “You think it is going to be difficult to judge but it isn’t. Good writing jumps off the page at you.”

Mr Gale said talent is something people have or they don’t.

He said: “I think writing skill is something you have or you don’t. I can teach elements of technique. You can take a good writer and make them really good but I think there is a basic mind-set to writers.

“It is a sort of confidence and a voice. There is something about the short story that really sorts the sheep from the goats.

“It is terribly disciplined and you have nowhere to hide, there is no room for padding, you have to hold the readers’ attention.”

Mr Gale does write short stories himself – mostly to commission.

He said: “When you are in the middle of the long drawn out process of writing a novel it can be refreshing to set the big work aside and try and do something really tight and disciplined like that.”