A written fiction contest in which entrants compose a short story in a language other than the festival’s main regional language, marked off-stage on plot, characters and language.
Story Writing (Any Other Language) is the open-language version of the regional-language story-writing item. Each entrant sits down with a prompt and writes a short story from scratch, then hands in the pages to be marked afterwards. Nothing is performed or read aloud. The difference lies only in the language: it is not fixed to the festival’s home language, so a student whose strongest written language is English, Hindi or another tongue still has a place in the same contest.
In this library the item belongs to one template, a university inter-collegiate youth festival, where it sits in the Literacy category beside a Marathi story-writing item. It is an Individual item open to students of any gender in a single 17 to 25 band, with a total sitting of 120 minutes and a mark out of 100. The language field is left open (‘Any/NA’), while the sister item in the same festival is fixed to Marathi. No warning bell is set, so the clock is a single total for the whole sitting.
A sitting is run quietly and in one room: entrants receive the prompt and paper together, write against the clock without notes or reference books, and submit when time is called. Because the paper is read later by a panel member, the language each entrant chooses must be one the panel can read. A strong entry invents a plot with a beginning, a middle and an ending, lets characters show themselves through what they do and say, and keeps one point of view throughout.
Organisers run a separate any-language item so that the regional-language contest stays fair for those who write best in that language, while widening participation for everyone else. The trade-off is that the language has to be settled before the sitting begins, because a story that moves between languages is hard to follow and hard to mark.
Where Story Writing (Any Other Language) is run
In this library the item is carried by one template, a Maharashtra university’s inter-collegiate youth festival, in its Literacy category next to the Marathi Story Writing. Many Indian college and school literary festivals pair a regional-language written item with an English or Hindi one, but names, time limits and rules differ between festivals, so read your own programme.
- Maharashtra, India (university youth festival)
Key facts
- Individual item, open to students of any gender.
- Single Students band, 17 to 25 years.
- One 120-minute sitting in total, with no warning bell set; marked out of 100.
- Language is open (‘Any/NA’): any language the panel can read, chosen before the sitting.
- Written and marked off-stage, after the sitting, rather than judged live.
- The same festival’s Marathi Story Writing is a separate item with its own entries; enter the one that matches your writing language.
On eTalenter, Story Writing (Any Other Language) is filed under Literacy and typically scored with Marks. It appears in 1 ready-made event templates — each one can adjust its time limit, age-group assignment and scoring setup independently.
Across the templates that use it, Story Writing (Any Other Language) is most often entered as an Individual competition, typically scored out of 100, commonly time-limited to around 120 minutes where a limit is set.
What judges look at in Story Writing (Any Other Language)
What a Story Writing (Any Other Language) panel is actually weighing up, and where the marks are usually won or lost:
- Plot: a story that begins, develops and ends within the sitting. A scene description or an opinion dressed as a story loses the largest share of marks.
- Characters: people shown through action, speech and small detail rather than a list of traits announced to the reader.
- Command of the chosen language: grammar, spelling, sentence variety and word choice. In an open-language item, drifting between languages mid-story is normally penalised.
- Point of view and voice: a steady first- or third-person narrator held from the opening line to the last.
- Originality: an idea that goes beyond the first, most obvious reading of the prompt, written in the entrant’s own words.
- Legibility and finish: handwriting a marker can read at speed, and an ending that is reached rather than cut off when the 120 minutes run out.
Treat these as the judging focus, not a fixed rubric: publish your own weighted criteria for Story Writing (Any Other Language) under Scoring Setup, or start from the full essay & story writing judging criteria guide.
How to prepare for Story Writing (Any Other Language)
How entrants and their teachers usually get Story Writing (Any Other Language) right on the day:
- Choose the language you can write well under pressure, not merely speak well. Test it with a one-hour practice story on an unfamiliar prompt before deciding.
- Spend the first ten minutes planning: who the characters are, what goes wrong, how it ends. A short plan stops the middle of the story from wandering.
- With 120 minutes available, aim to finish the draft by about the hundred-minute mark and keep the last fifteen for rereading and tidying.
- Practise opening lines. A first paragraph that puts a character in a problem draws the reader in faster than a paragraph of scene-setting.
- Write dialogue and action as well as description; a moment shown through what someone says and does reads stronger than the same moment simply told.
- Read stories in the language you will write in, and note how dialogue is punctuated there, since conventions differ between languages.
- Check the festival’s rules for permitted languages, whether the prompt is released beforehand and whether a dictionary is allowed, and plan around those answers.
Ready-made event templates that include Story Writing (Any Other Language)
Open any template to preview it in eTalenter and install it as a live, editable event.
| Template | Category | Score label | Competitions |
|---|---|---|---|
| University of Mumbai Youth Festival | Literacy | Marks | 1 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Story Writing (Any Other Language) judged individually or as a team?
Across eTalenter’s templates it’s most often run as an Individual entry, though an organiser can set either participation type when assigning the item to an age group.
Is Story Writing (Any Other Language) the same as Story Writing?
No. At this festival, Story Writing is fixed to Marathi and Story Writing (Any Other Language) is open to other languages. They are separate items with separate entries, marked on the same qualities.
Which languages can I write in?
The language field is open, so any language the panel can read. English and Hindi are the usual choices, but confirm the permitted languages in your festival’s rules.
How long is the sitting?
The university festival template sets 120 minutes in total, with no warning bell, so keep your own eye on the clock.
Is it judged individually or as a team?
It is an Individual item: each entrant writes alone and is scored on their own story out of 100.
Is it the same as Story Telling?
No. Story Telling is spoken and judged live on delivery, while Story Writing is written in one sitting and marked from the finished pages afterwards.
Want the full judging picture? Read the full essay & story writing judging criteria guide, or browse every literacy competition item.
Try Story Writing (Any Other Language) in eTalenter
See every ready-made template that runs Story Writing (Any Other Language), and install one as a live event — age groups, rules and scoring included.
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