Salutations, Wordsmiths!

​For the past several years, Big Finish Productions have been running a short story competition commemorating a colleague and friend, Paul Spragg. It was originally suggested 2016 by Ian Atkins, the former producer of the Doctor Who: Short Trips range, and offers an opportunity for new writers to submit their work to the organisation for production. It's a phenomenal opportunity for a good cause.

In 2019, Divergent Wordsmiths (that's us) put our "writing hearts on their writing sleeves", as Ian said himself in our "Introduction", and published The Paul Spragg ReCollections. A volume of stories from all the contributors, still eager and enthused, who wanted a home for stories that were submitted, but didn't make it to that one winning position. These were stories from the past year or from years previous that covered all manner of Doctors and situations. We do this as a means of further celebrating Paul Spragg and giving authors who've already done the work for the competition, an opportunity to see it through to its conclusion.

Many stories from competitions over previous years will fall under the category enforced by Rule #7:

"7. The story should not have been published anywhere before, nor should the entry have been submitted before."

If you have an entry submitted to the Paul Spragg competition you would like to see carried to fruition in the ReCollections anthology, this is the perfect opportunity to submit it to Divergent Wordsmiths. Our submission email can be found by following the instructions on our Submission Guidelines page.

We ask that you submit only a maximum of your 5 best pitches with the expectation of 1 or 2 stories being commissioned for the collection (the precise number to be determined by the comfort of the author). We look forward to seeing where the TARDIS materialises next. Best wishes to our Wordsmiths and happy writing!

~Vworp, vworp!

What is Unbound Imaginings?
Unbound Imaginings is an opportunity to explore "What if?" possibilities for both official and unofficial Doctors. To let loose and explore an idea, a character or a setting that would be difficult, if not impossible, to flesh out in Doctor Who's primary timeline.

Submission Window:
Pitches, synopses and drafts can be sent from July 31st 2020 to September 30th 2020.
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Submission Criteria

• You can initially submit up to five story pitches with two final submissions selected for expansion into full stories (or one, at the author's discretion).
• The word count is up to 7,500 words for each separate submission with a 10% buffer for stories running over that limit.
• All expanded universe characters are likewise welcome, these can include more obscure inventions like the Trods, Frobisher, Dr Who, the Shalka Doctor, et al.

How do I submit a story for this collection?
All the necessary information for the submission process is available on our Submissions Guidelines page.

Best wishes and happy writing!