Five days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, each afternoon at 3.30, the BBC broadcasts a short story on Radio 4; there are more to be found on weekend evenings, some are dramatized for play slots such as the Afternoon Play, others appear in the concert intervals on Radio 3. For some years now, the BBC has been the biggest single commissioner and champion of the short story in the UK.

With the decrease in the numbers of printed outlets for short story writers, the BBC ha'Every rule can be broken if the writing or the characters are strong enough. However a successful short story - whether read or heard - needs to be more than a snapshot of a moment and to convey more than it covers.'s increasingly become the most prolific sponsor of the form. Our output ranges from the best classic and recently published works, to newly commissioned stories on a vast range of subjects and from all points of the globe.

Given that the stories tend to fill a week of broadcasting, they usually come in clusters of five, either by a single author (often taken from a recent collection) or linked by a theme, which is used as a springboard for commissioning work by five different writers.

To give some idea of the diversity of the slot in 2005 alone, different producers, both in-house and independent, have directed stories from new collections by Lesley Hart, Matthew Kneale, Mary Yukari Waters and Mick Jackson; there have also been a number of classic collections from past masters of the art like Elizabeth Taylor, Margaret Bonham and Oscar Wilde.

Beyond these however, the BBC has been responsible already this year for commissioning around 40 weeks of stories written directly for broadcast.

The themes are as varied as the writers approached; our audience has had the chance to hear a bedazzling and wide-ranging selection of both content and names.

There have been stories drawn from the Borderlands by writers such as Stevie Davies, Alison Fell and the late Julia Darling; tales of Wild Ways from Bosnia to the American highway - by writers such as Kate Pullinger, Emily Perkins and Louise Doughty; and stories set on board overnight trains from Shanghai to Beijing, Vienna to Bucharest, Glasgow to Euston.

Tales firmly rooted in place came from Cornwall, the Bath Festival and Brighton (where Lynne Truss introduced five diverting stories about famous women of the town to a live audience).

Actors Harry Towb and Frances Tomelty wrote and performed their work; stories from Saki, Wilde and Flaubert were introduced by the likes of John Cushman and Julian Barnes for the series 'A Garden of Stories'.

'Theories of Relativity' celebrated the hundredth anniversary of Einstein's discovery with stories about Einstein in an alternative life as a locksmith and as a time-traveller sharing philosophies and ginger nuts with a car park attendant. A second series of 'Curly Tales' played with the story-telling form and enjoyed turning it upside down.

This year Radio 4 has enticed major US writers (Jonathan Franzen, Nicole Krauss and Alice Sebold) to write for the Afternoon slot; and has also promoted the work of five Burmese writers, some of whom are unable to publish in their own country.

Most of the stories are single-voice readings recorded in a studio, often read by some of the greatest names in British theatre, occasionally by the author, but always produced with great sympathy for each voice. Sometimes locations take a role: in 'Poor, Obscure, Plain and Little' five writers were asked to write a story inspired by Jane Eyre, which were then recorded in Howarth.

Sometimes fiction is mixed with fact; in a series from the Pennines stories were mixed with actual recordings from the area. Recordings are also made at literary festivals, and in front of audiences. Occasionally stories are told using two voices, or music or effects.

The story slots on Radio 4 run to fourteen minutes, which means stories are either written to a specific length - approximately 2000 words - or abridged if already published. The fees for writers are small but the exposure is large - the current audience figures for the afternoon slot are 1.3 million listeners aged over 15 a week!

What kind of story works best? It's hard to be definitive. Every rule can be broken if the writing or the characters are strong enough. However a successful short story - whether read or heard - needs to be more than a snapshot of a moment and to convey more than it covers.

As Alice Munro, a doyenne of the art, has written, the short story is 'a world seen in a quick glancing light.' For radio, it is perhaps worth bearing in mind that the audience cannot look back to the beginning, and so the plot needs to be clear and the characters not too numerous.

Jumps in time and place can be hard to negotiate for even the most skilled reader; remember too that unbroken though beautifully lyrical prose can wash over the audience, who will probably be busy doing other things at the same time.

Dialogue is often the ideal way to break up long passages and re-capture the audience's attention. Finally bear in mind that our stories are on air in the middle of the afternoon, when children may be listening and that the BBC will not broadcast anything offensive or unsuitable in content or language for a daytime audience.

A word on the National Short Story prize which Radio 4 is proud to be involved with. Given Radio 4's commitment to writing and to the short story form in particular, this prize offers a wonderful opportunity to encourage writers, readers and listeners to recognize the extraordinary power of a story to create a whole world in a matter of minutes.

Radio 4 intends to broadcast the five finalists to coincide with the Prize. Clearly the stories submitted may well be longer than the word-count we require in which case they will need to be abridged to a suitable length.

This will be done with our usual sensitivity to the writing and by highly experienced abridgers. Given our ongoing commitment to the short story we are delighted and excited to add our voice to the fanfare surrounding the National Short Story Prize.

Di Speirs is Executive Producer Readings at BBC Radio 4. She has recommended a previously unpublished short story by Trezza Azzopardi for this web site. Find out more and download this short story