Ruqaya Places in Top 60 of The BBC and Cambridge Young Writers Award

At the beginning of 2023, I entered a competition called ‘The BBC and Cambridge Young Writers Award’. It is open to anyone aged 14-18. To enter you are required to write a short story under one-thousand words. I entered with my dystopian short story and my entry made it to the top sixty out of six hundred entries! I had the idea of this story for quite a while; one of my friends helped me brainstorm ideas a few months before the competition. I entered the competition as I’ve always enjoyed writing and thought it would be a good experience to share my stories.

 My story was based on the theme of freedom and friendship.

The main character –– Ophelia –– has a strong desire to leave her current home and discover a new life, however, she feels stuck with the life she has. Ophelia lives in a world where all colour in the world gets ‘drained’ after sunset. If anyone goes out after dark, they are only able to live in the night-time. She believes that being stuck in the dark is confining, it’s what scares her most. However, she ends up going through the ‘draining’ and being sentenced to a life in the darkness forever.

 My inspiration for this story was the idea sometimes, the thing you are most afraid of is what will give you what you need most––as the characters in this story discover near the end.

 All in all, it was a riveting journey to go on and I definitely recommend entering to any young aspiring writers!

Congratulations to Ruqaya!