How to Win Fiction Writing Competitions

Although you might think the odds are stacked against you when you enter a fiction writing contest (after all, your little story might be one of thousands of entries), your odds are better than you think. Many writers either do not know how to write good fiction and/or they do not follow the rules of the contest, causing their stories to fail before really having a chance. Don’t be one of them. Here is how you can win fiction-writing competitions.

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

1. Start strong. Introduce a complicated or interesting situation in the first few paragraphs of your fiction story. Make the reader want to see what happens to your characters.
2. Be believable. Make your characters “real” people. Hone your dialog so that it sounds natural. Give your characters distinctive, but believable, mannerisms. Do not solve problems in your story with a “coincidence.” The resolution of your story must come from your character’s actions and arise organically from the situation.
3. Be original. Although there may not be any truly “original” stories anymore, you should try to put a unique spin on your story. Even with the well-worn story—boy meets girl, girl falls in love, boy and girl get married—there is room to play with the formula. Make the boy have a horrible secret, the real reason he wants to marry the girl, for instance.
4. End strong. Create an ending with a “bang.” Your ending should tie up loose ends, or teach a moral, or surprise the reader. It should never just end. Think of the thought or feeling that you want to leave the reader with, then build an ending that will best create that kind of a thought or feeling.
5. Proofread. Do not trust the spell/grammar check on your computer. Read your manuscript through, slowly, aloud, taking note of anything that does not sound smooth, as well as any spelling errors. Rewrite as needed. A good way to catch spelling errors is to read your manuscript backwards, from end to beginning. This will keep your brain from tricking you into thinking that a word is spelled correctly when it is not.
6. Follow the rules for submission in the fiction-writing competition. All writing contests have formatting rules such as where your name and other information should be printed, and you must follow these rules or your entry will usually be disqualified.
7. Do not wait until toward the end of the deadline to submit your manuscript. In many fiction-writing contests, the judges start reading as soon as the stories come in. You have a much better chance of being judged fairly if you’re one of the earlier stories to be read rather than one of the later ones read when the judges are swamped with hundreds of late-comer manuscripts.
8. If the contest allows more than one manuscript entry, enter more than one story. This can significantly increase your odds of winning.

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