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< 500 Words < Everything about 500 Words

500 Words, the UK's largest children's writing competition for children aged 5-11, is open for entries!

Submissions are open from Tuesday 24 September to 9pm on Friday 8 November 2024.

If you are an adult, please click here to sign-up to submit the story. Please note all stories must be typed and submitted by an adult through our website, as we can only accept story entries that have been submitted through our website.

If stories are submitted by a teacher, sports club leader or community group leader, they must have the permission of the child's parent or guardian.

Before you submit, please read our T&Cs to make sure the story meets all of the requirements.

If you have already signed up as a submitter or as a volunteer judge, you can login here

Remember, we want children to write a story they would love to read.

The competition is open to any child aged between 5-11 years-old of any writing ability, who reside in the UK. (Children have to be of the relevant age on the date the competition closes, Friday 8 November, 2024).

The competition is a celebration of children’s creativity, so stories will not be marked on spelling, grammar or punctuation.

Remember, before you submit any stories, teachers, sports club leaders and community group leaders must have permission from the child’s parents or guardians to do so.

It is very straightforward. You just need to sign-up here as a submitter and then you can enter as many stories as you want (remember it is one entry per child).

We suggest typing up your story in another document (make sure you save it and continue to save it as you go!). Once finished and saved, you can then copy and paste the entry into the submission form.

They can be saved as drafts and submitted later if needed.

Don't forget, before they are submitted make sure they meet the following requirements.

Checklist

• The story must not contain the child’s name or any information which identifies the child
• The story must be written by one person, not as a collaboration in a class
• Eligible entrants must be must be at least five years old and no older than 11 by Friday 8 November
• The story must be an original work of fiction
• No part of the story can be created, written or developed using AI
• There’s a 500 word limit (title is not included in the word count) but no rules on theme

Once you have submitted you will be unable to edit your story or change any of your details, so please double-check everything before you hit the submit button.

We recommend not leaving the submission process to the last minute, as we cannot accept entries past 9pm on Friday 8 November 2024.

Once you submit your story to the competition, you will receive a confirmation email. Please check you have received this email as it may appear in your junk folder. If you do not receive a confirmation email, your story will not have been submitted successfully and will not be entered into this year's competition. If you do not receive a confirmation email, please log back in to your profile and check your drafts. Stories that are left in drafts will not be entered into the competition.

If your child struggles to write their 500 Words story, give these options a go, as an alternative way of creating their story.

Advice for teachers

Teachers, sports club leaders and community group leaders can save a whole class or group's worth of drafts (remember it's one entry per child) onto their account at once and once happy, these can all be submitted at the same time (you’ll still need the child’s parents or guardian permission to submit their stories). You can even enter different classes if you want to under different group names.

We know teachers are incredibly busy. If you don’t have the time, why not get your students to write their stories in class and then ask their parents to type up their stories and submit the child’s stories as part of their homework. Check out one of our winners from 2019, Eve this is exactly what her teachers did.

Remember, you can submit stories at various times, for example if you want to submit one class' worth of stories one week, you can and then submit another class' entries at a later date.

If you are having trouble with the site, please try loading it in a different browser, such as: Safari, Microsoft Edge, Chrome or Firefox, as it may be that your browser is not up to date. Simply copy and paste the link into an alternative browser.

To help prevent issues receiving account activation emails and competition updates, please add 500words@bbc.co.uk to your safe senders list. Your email provider or security service will be able to provide details about how to do this. We will always send a confirmation email to you once you have successfully submitted a story. If you do not receive this email, you may have not successfully submitted your story and that story may still be in your drafts. Any stories left in drafts and not submitted by the competition closing date of 9pm on Friday 8 November will unfortunately not be entered into the competition.

If you are submitting stories but would also like to apply to be a judge, it's best to register to be a judge as this account will also allow you to submit entries, as well as judge them.

What happens next?

Once stories have been submitted entrants will be able to download a 500 Words certificate to celebrate their achievement! We'll be in touch in mid-December to let submitters know whether their stories have made it through the first round of judging.

If you have any questions about submissions, have a look at our FAQs and our privacy notice.

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