While reading some stories produced by students, I came up with the idea for an exciting new game show format – a televised weekly short story competition. Bear with me on this.
The cameras could follow the authors day-by-day during the stories’ constructions, building up to their reading out the 3000 words max each Saturday on a prime time TV slot.
Some of the swearing, killing and sexual assaults in the texts might have to be toned down a bit for a family audience, but I think it has legs.
Imagine a panel of critics eviscerating the output of some callow wannabe Saki while the camera cuts to a close-up of the author’s parents in the audience, faces contorted in anger at the injustice of the appraisal of their child’s output.
My working title is “The Great Irish Write-off”, which shouldn’t be confused with what NAMA does.