Matt Rilkoff

JUDGE’S COMMENTS

MATT RILKOFF

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Ronald Hugh Morrieson wrote fiction, but his characters and descriptions of life were built from the keen observations of the people and places around him. He may not have even realised, but he was a researcher. Thorough research underpins all good writing. It lets the writer tell a convincing tale, to take their readers to places they can believe are real even when they are not. Research is a writer’s secret weapon. The research category aims to get writers truly looking at the world around them and the people within it. It tasks them with making connections that a picture cannot reveal, with understanding a person within their environment. We are more than just what you see and it is a writer’s job to reveal that. This year the topic was to tell the story of a Taranakibased person who, good or bad, had influenced the writer. We did not just want to know who they were, but why they were. It is no easy task to bring a person to life using words. The finalists this year made their influencers real. They revealed their motivations, their character, their charming idiosyncrasies, their habits and their philosophies. The winning entry achieved all of these things. It was a delightful piece of writing. It made me nostalgic for a life I did not lead, for a person I had never known. The piece was full of warm detail and revealing truths that, like all good writing, showed much more than it told.