How to Win Writing Contests for Profit

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How to Win Writing Contests for Profit

A practical ebook by Dr John Yeoman, MA (Hons) Oxon, MRes, MPhil, PhD (Creative Writing)

Legal disclaimer: the publisher has tried to be as accurate and complete as possible in the creation of this report, but assumes no responsibility for errors, omissions or interpretations, or for matters which are subjects of opinion, nor does he make any guarantees of income. The book is not intended as a source of legal, business, accounting or financial advice. Professional advice should always be sought where appropriate.

This book is offered free of copyright.

You may copy it, email it to others, sell it or give it away free as a bonus product provided you retain at all times the references that occur in it to the publisher’s web site:

http://www.writers-village.org/welcome.php

Brought to you by Writers’ Village: http://www.writers-village.org/welcome.php



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How to Win Writing Contests for Profit

Chapter 1: The Profit (and Fun) Potential of Fiction Contests

Chapter 2: Choosing Your Contests

Chapter 3: How to Spot Profitable Contests

Chapter 4: How to turn your contest hobby into a profitable business

Chapter 5: Contests to beware of

Chapter 6: Understand the seven key ways that contest entries are judged

Chapter 7: ‘Congratulations, you’ve won!’ How to maximise your win.


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Chapter 1: My promises to you

In this short, easily readable report, I hope:

1. to show you that winning several cash-prize contests every month is achievable and, moreover, that it can bring you a four-figure income.

2. to give you strategies for turning your short fiction into money, not only by publishing them in traditional ways, but also by submitting them to contests.

3. to alert you to what judges of fiction usually look for in an entry, and how you can provide it.

The profit (and fun!) potential of fiction contests

I have discovered from my own experience, over 40 years as a successful commercial writer and publisher, that anyone who has the talent to write stories can gain a very useful income doing what they love to do - writing stories.

I hope that’s you!

You can generate a useful income at any time or place you choose, from your easy chair at home, or travelling on a plane, bus or train, or even lying on a beach. (Chances are, your contest income will fund some very nice holidays each year.)

And you can do as much of it as you please or as little, when and where you choose.

What’s more... follow this plan systematically, and you will develop a portfolio of stories that you can also sell separately. And which may lead to your work being accepted by a publisher. So it will become profitable once again.

Entering contests is like enrolling in a university of creative writing. You will hone your writing skills, painlessly, with every entry you submit. But you don’t pay this ‘university’ - at least, no more than a few dollars a month. It pays you!


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Above all, you will enter an enchanting new world: the company of serious fellow writers.

Untold thousands of us operate our own web sites or blogs, many of them cross-linked with each other. It doesn’t matter where you live in the world, or what your personal circumstances are, you will still be welcomed in this fabulous community. On the web, everyone starts out equal.

Equipped with just a few contest wins, you can approach this friendly virtual world with confidence and impressive credentials!

Thousands of contest opportunities

While doing competitor research for my own writing contests, I found that more than 2100 contests per annum are being announced online, throughout the world, for short fiction alone in the English language. (In fact, no contest really ‘competes’ with another. But I was interested to see what other folk were doing.)

That awesome number does not include contests for novels, playscripts, poetry, multi-media or other creative works, or those awards granted by various bodies to honour works already published, or the many contests - often local - that never find their way onto the web.

You will never discover all the contest opportunities in any one list, online or otherwise. Lists, whether published in print or online, tend to summarise only the most prominent contests and/or those announced in their own countries.

To stay abreast of the latest contests, seek them out throughout the world. New contest lists or directories appear continually on the web.

A tip: Do a periodic search via several different search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc) putting in keywords like ‘writing contest list’, ‘fiction contest directory’, ‘story contests review’, and the like, plus the current year eg ‘2010’. (Otherwise you’ll be swamped by old listings.) Also use a search utility that gathers together the results from several search engines eg. Dogpile: http://www.dogpile.com

Why use several search engines? Google may bury an interesting contest in, say, page 999 of its results whereas Yahoo or Bing will


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put it in the early pages. And vice versa. Dogpile will show a different sequence entirely.

Remember: not every contest organiser is adept at Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or can afford search engine advertising like Adwords to assure that their contest appears on page one. Some excellent contests may be buried very deep in the web!


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Chapter 2: Choosing your contests

With so many contests to choose from, how do you focus on the ones that will bring you the most profit? First, you look at the fee to prize ratio.

If you carefully analyse a large list of ‘short fiction’ contests, as I did, you’ll probably find a ratio of around 1:60 between the entry fee and the total cash value of the prizes. (That’s if we leave aside some special cases that skew the figures.) So a contest with cash prizes totalling around $500 will typically charge $8-$10 per entry.

That’s a fair ratio. Your risk is low, the payout is worthwhile and - unlike a sweepstake or lottery - your skill (not chance) will determine if you win. So there’s a psychological as well as monetary reward.

But if a contest shows a ratio very different from 1:60, it’s worth asking a few questions. Let’s look at these questionable cases.

1. The contest offers no monetary prizes or prizes of low value.

If no cash prizes are offered but an entry fee is charged nonetheless, this may be acceptable if the non-monetary rewards are still attractive.

I’ve noticed universities offering a top prize of a three-month study residency. One promoter of a prestigious conference gave free places on a three-day event - plus the presentation of the winners’ awards at the conference podium magna cum laude! Such contests might be worth a wager.

Sometimes, a contest has no tangible prizes - just a promise of publication in an obscure magazine, web site or ezine (electronic newsletter). There’s no harm in that if no entry fee is required. It can also be very heartening, at the start of a writing career, to see one’s stories ‘in print’. Wherever they appear.

But you won’t make any money. And that’s what we’re here for!

And if all you win is a free magazine, maybe the organisers are simply seeking free content plus enough dollars to pay the printer. I sympathise with such small presses (truly). They struggle hard. I just wouldn’t enter their contests.


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2. The contest offers high prize values but also demands a high entry fee.

At first sight, this looks compelling. If your story is good, it should stand a better chance than usual of winning because the contest will attract few entries. Or so you might reason. However... it also means that the organisers, unless they’re separately funded by some reputable body like a newspaper or university, will lose their shirts.

Ask yourself: are the organisers likely to pay out the prizes, if they make a loss?

It gets worse. Sometimes the small print will reveal that prizes will be paid out only if enough entries are received. Or that the prizes stated are the maximum available. The total pot of entry fee money will be split among the winners - after subtracting administrative costs, of course.

So the organisers can’t lose but the winners may receive little or nothing. Check the small print!

3. The contest offers small prizes but demands no entry fee.

This seems good. What can you lose? In three words: time, labour and postage. Often these contests are perfectly reputable but your only reward is a smidgen of publicity. Remember: you can’t take fame to the bank.

There’s also another point to consider. Why do organisers of legitimate award schemes often ask for a token entry fee - although they don’t need the money? To be merciful to their judges! They know very well, a totally free competition with no entry preconditions will be swamped by dross. Do you really want to keep such company?


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Chapter 3: How to spot profitable contests

Tip #1. Look for contests that offer a good spread of prizes.

A good spread might be a top prize of £150, 2nd prize of £30, 2nd prize of £20, plus ten runner-up prizes of £10 each. (Forgive me if I cite my own contest at Writers’ Village as a model. You can see how it works at: http://www.writers-village.org/welcome.php) Such a contest gives you 13 opportunities to win.

However, if you strain every brain cell to enter a major contest that offers just one stellar top prize, but no other prizes, it’s little consolation to be haloed later among its top 100 also-rans - if their names are published at all.

Tip #2. Look for contests that offer cash awards but where contestants must meet specific criteria.

The criteria might insist that the author falls within a certain age range, ethnic group, gender, occupation or nationality. Provided you truly fit these criteria, you stand a better chance of winning than if you enter a contest which places no restrictions on the entrant.

Why? The number of entrants should be fewer and the judges will be looking for elements in the story which illustrate the criteria of the contest. As an authentic member of this niche, you can persuasively supply those elements. The prizes might also be higher than usual because such contests are often run by organisations which have some PR, cultural or political agenda to pursue - plus a budget to match.

Of course, it would be very unwise to fake your identity to enter such contests :)

The organisers will thirst to publicise their winners to support their PR agendas. So if a contest is run to encourage female Canadian writers and you masquerade as, say, a Vancouver-born mother of three it would be quite embarrassing if you won and were asked to give a media interview. Especially if you turn out to be, undisguisably, a male Australian.

I do not joke. Something like this happened last year to the winner of a UK romantic novel award who wrote under a female name. When the winner arrived at the award ceremony, everyone was



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surprised to find that ‘she’ was a retired brigadier in his sixties, heavily moustached. It wouldn’t surprise me if the organisers took back their award...

Tip #3. Seek out contests that ask only a token entry fee.

A fee of say $8-$16 (£5-£10) is a reasonable wager if the top cash prize is in three figures. A fee of $30 or more is probably not. For a weekly investment of $160 (£100) and entry fees of $8 (£5) you could enter 20 contests a week and have a very good chance, not only of recouping your investment, but also of making a healthy profit.

At $30 per entry, given a $160 budget, you could enter only five contests per week and you would stand very little chance of winning at all (see my thoughts later about contests that demand high entry fees).

Another tip: once your story has won, immediately submit it again elsewhere - adapted to the rules of the new contests (see below). But do check that the contest rules do not explicitly bar the submission of stories that have previously won a contest.

Your chances of winning in a further contest are also now greater because you are submitting a tested ‘product’!


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Chapter 4: How to turn your contest hobby into a profitable business

If you are serious about making money from contests (even if you only want your contest entries to be a paying hobby), you must organise yourself. It is now your business! Search for contests online, then copy the details of the relevant ones into a database.

Excel or ACT are sophisticated databases and they take some getting used to. But a Table in Word.doc serves me well enough. It lets you do simple sort and search routines, which are useful for keeping your contest deadlines in chronological order and for finding a contest buried in a long list. And the Table utility is easy to learn.

You’ll need to set up around six columns: Deadline, Contest name, Prize money & Entry fee, Basic rules (like word length, theme, etc), Contact details, Action taken and Result.

It’s then painless to switch between different windows - the Word.doc Table and your web browser - to fill in more details from each contest site online as required. The Table will also remind you of the deadlines for submission and will make it easy to check periodically on the status of entries you’ve submitted.

Note: a contest that fails to announce its winners after a reasonable period, either publicly and/or to the entrants, should be put on your ‘iffy’ list for the future. How do you know the prizes were ever awarded?

Moreover, a database can help you to avoid the faux pas of accidentally resubmitting the same story to the same contest once again. (Especially if your story has already won that contest ;))

Accelerate your profits with multiple submissions

Most contests welcome multiple entries, provided you pay an entry fee for each, nor do they usually try to prevent you submitting the same story to several other contests simultaneously. Nor should they. You own the copyright and, provided you haven’t signed a contract with a publisher, you can do whatever you wish with your own story.


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We all know how much labour we put into creative writing. It can take days, even weeks, to complete a few thousand words. So don’t chance all your work on one wager. Submit the same story several times to as many relevant contests as possible.

Is this ethical? Provided the contest rules don’t forbid it, my opinion is: yes.

It’s akin to submitting your novel to several literary agents simultaneously. No agent today expects you to make a submission just to one agency at a time then wait patiently up to six months for a form rejection letter (if, indeed, you ever do get a response). Multiple submissions to agencies are now the norm.

Will the contest organisers try to bar you from submitting your story elsewhere?

Sometimes. Read the rules! It would be very galling to win a prize then have it withheld because the judges discover your story has already won another competition. (In these days of Google, it is quite easy to discover evidence of previous publication.)

Likewise, a contest may require that the story has not been published before in print media. I make this stipulation in the Writers’ Village contest. I do it simply because I want to encourage those writers, in particular, who have published little or nothing to date.

Plagiarism is very silly

Needless to say, plagiarism is a no, no. Worse, it’s silly. A well-read judge can often spot it. If s/he doesn’t, readers almost certainly will when the story goes online.

I once received a brilliant entry to the Writers’ Village contest but something about it made me pause. It used the phrases and syntax of a previous century. My wife read it and exclaimed ‘de Maupassant!’. Sure enough, it was a blatant adaptation, with only minimal editing, of one of his classic tales.

There’s no harm in borrowing an idea from elsewhere. All writers do it. (Shakespeare stole every one of his plot ideas.) But if you do it, you must be 100% original in your composition!


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A clever, ethical and profitable strategy

Here is a strategy that is not widely known but it can make you a great deal of money.

It’s so simple, but very powerful. You make multiple submissions, not by submitting the same story to every contest but... by adapting the story every time you submit it. Not only does this strategy increase the frequency with which you can enter contests but also it will allow you to enter contests that seem - unreasonably - to demand that you write your story just for them.

Frankly, given the hours that a writer puts into a good story, that’s absurd. (It might be fair enough if the organisers gave every entrant a prize. But then it wouldn’t be a contest!)

How can we enter many contests like that, rapidly and painlessly?

Let’s take a typical contest. It might have a specific theme such as: ‘the first day of spring’. A company celebrating its silver or 25th anniversary might run a competition where every story has to focus on the theme of ‘silver’.

A contest might impose a specific plot: for instance, ‘imagine that somebody opens a letter or diary they are not supposed to read. What happens next?’ Other contests might set you the opening words of the story eg: ‘My life might have been very different, if only I had...’.

Surely you have to write a fresh story every time to comply with such rules?

No! Any well crafted story has a strong plot element or ‘nugget’ that is independent of its characters, descriptions, time, place or even genre.

So you can recompose that nugget to suit almost any contest!

Remember the story of Cinderella? The theme of rags to riches, complete with wicked step-sisters and fairy godmothers, has been noted in different cultures all over the world since records began. (Sometimes the stepmothers are oppressive landlords, sometimes Cinderella is a poor fisherman, sometimes the fairy is a genie, etc.)


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The same story has appeared in plays, ballets, poems and, of course, pantomimes.

But surely (I hear you say) my story is essentially tragic or downbeat. How can I edit it into a happy or comic one? Or vice versa? Very easily. All downbeat stories contain a victim. Add comic punchlines and the tragedy becomes a jest. Take away the punchlines and the jest becomes a tragedy.

It’s true! In the late 17th century, a producer called James Howard staged Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as ‘tragedy’ and ‘comedy’ on alternate nights. For the comic version, he cut out just a few scenes and added upbeat endings to the existing scenes. (In the comic version, Romeo and Juliet got married. In West Side Story today, the star-crossed lovers sing upbeat songs - and dance too.)

So... simply recast your story to the demands of each contest!

You need do little more than write a fresh first paragraph, plus make some cosmetic changes to character names, dialogue, setting and key incidents. That way, if you’re a competent writer, you should find it possible to produce a half dozen ‘new’ short stories in a single day from one original, strongly crafted story.

Submit six stories a day, each to a different contest and - if you’re skilled at your craft - at least one story per day should win you something. It may be that four-figure top prize!

Incidentally, you can find a treasury of free tips to improve your writing at: http://www.writers-village.org/welcome.php (Please pardon my unforgivable plug. I shall now move on :))

Whether you go on to adapt your winning story and resubmit it to further contests depends upon the rules of those contests. But do be careful which contests you select when resubmitting a newly adapted story. Otherwise, before long, every contest judge in the world will chuckle when your entry arrives and murmur: ‘here comes Cinderella again’.

Above all, don’t cheat

As I’ve said, contest organisers often allow multiple entries from the same contestant. Even so, it would not be a good idea to make multiple



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submissions to the same contest under several false names, using the addresses of your complicitous friends, in some deluded hope of improving your chances.

Just think. Suppose you won all the prizes and had to turn up in person to collect them! You wouldn’t know where to hide your face (or faces).

If you wish to pursue chicanery, go into public relations. It’s legal.


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Chapter 5: Contests to beware of

Strangely, some folk who promote story contests think they are an easy way to make money. So (I’m told) they will put up a web site that costs them nothing, buy a $10 domain name, advertise an alluring array of cash prizes that they have no intention of paying out, hype their offer with exclamation marks and breathless copy generated by a sales software program.

And hope to pocket a five figure sum in three months.

When this doesn’t happen (and to attract more than 100 paying entries for a contest announced by a previously unknown organiser is a miracle), they will shut down the site, start another scam under a different name and use even more exclamation marks.

I find this strange because the only way to make money in any business (and many reputable contests are businesses) is to build the customer relationship, over time, by being scrupulously honest. That’s not moralising. After 40 years of running my own companies, I can promise you - it’s tested commercial sense.

Here are the tell-tale clues of a hungry promoter, who lacks commercial sense:

1. The promoter has no obvious credentials in literature, academia or business.

2. You’ve never heard of the judges or cannot easily check on them. Worse, no judges are named.

3. The text in the contest web site or announcement shows evidence of illiteracy. If a contest cannot even place it’s apostrophes in the right place :), is it qualified to review your story?

4. The contest does not showcase the work of previous winners. Why not? Unless the contest has not been run before, the organisers should lust to flaunt this proof of their credentials and, not least, encourage future entrants to seek a similar fame.

5. If the winning stories are showcased, were they - in your opinion - worthy of an award? If not, you might understandably feel


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motivated to enter the contest because, you think, you could easily beat the previous winners. In fact, if the stories are mediocre yet - inexplicably - they still won money, ask yourself: did the organisers write the stories? If so, did they ever hand out any cash prizes?

In other words, watch for contests that appear to be run ineptly and/or solely as a get-rich-quick machine. Please note: there is nothing wrong in running a contest to make money. I do it myself at Writers’ Village. Only bodies with large public relations budgets or taxpayer funding can afford to run a contest, at a loss, for goodwill alone.

But my ‘profits’ from Writers’ Village are no more than beer money. In my retirement years, I run the contest (a) for fun and (b) because - having been a professional writer all my life and experienced the wretched problems of breaking into print in my early years - I genuinely want to encourage writers who are newly facing these problems. The winners together make more profit than I do. (True! And cue violins...)

So watch out for organisers who are (too obviously) hungry.

Here are some more clues to a hungry promoter:

1. Avoid the contest that tries to hard-sell you immediately on some other service or product.

For a mere $39 to defray expenses your work will be included in an anthology, they say. You can then buy copies in a hardcover edition for the privileged price of $59 each (or, in gold-embossed leather, for just $199!).

If your entry is part of a larger work, the organisers will praise you unreasonably and offer to publish your entire work and promote it on their website where customers will flock to buy it. (Allegedly.) Agents regularly scan the site, they say, keen to find new talent. (Ho!) Moreover, the organisers will circulate copies among literary scouts who have an ‘inside track’ to top publishers! (Ho! And ho again.)

Surely, all that is worth your life savings, paid up front, they will ask? (I leave the answer to you.)


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Of course, this is vanity publishing. Every author knows the folly of it and you can read about it in sickening detail via a Google search along the lines: ‘vanity publishing scams’.

Unhappily, it’s quite common for vanity publishers to run contests solely to entice gullible writers. So beware of any contest organiser who asks money from you to ‘publish’ your work.

2. Shun any contest that wants to take the copyright of your story.

Why any contest organiser would want to steal a writer’s copyright, defeats me. But some do.

(Amazingly, it can also be legal. The practice is widespread in academia. Some academic journals not only refuse to pay for articles but also steal their copyright. So an author has to beg the journal’s permission to republish his or her own work elsewhere. Unworldly academics might put up with such brigandry, but we shouldn’t.)

3. Beware of the contest that, in any way, implies that if you buy the promoter’s other products you stand a better chance of winning the contest.

There should be no objection to organisers who also sell, for example, books, critiques or mentoring programs at a modest price. Maybe that’s their main business. (It certainly is mine.) Nobody criticises Writers Digest or Writing Magazine for advertising, in their magazines and websites, products alongside their contests.

But they don’t imply that buying their products will give you a headstart in the contests.

Entries in a reputable contest are judged solely on their own merits. Amen. (How can you tell if a contest is reputable? See my remarks above!)


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Chapter 6: Understand the seven key ways that contest entries are judged

All writing contests, if fairly judged, will have strict criteria for assessing entries. Some contests publish their criteria, some don’t. But if they don’t, how do you know what judges are looking for?

Having judged many contests - and more stories from students in my creative writing classes than I care to remember - I can reasonably suggest that the following standards of assessment are true of most contests.

Remember: all judges are subjective, as are literary agents and publishers’ readers. A story that wafts one judge into a rhapsody of incoherent joy will leave another unmoved. That’s why a respectable contest will have a ‘points’ system in place.

A system is essential - not so much in detecting an outright winner (the quality of an outstanding entry usually speaks for itself), but in making fine judgements between, say, the winner of a 3rd prize and a runner-up prize. (It also reduces the risk of judges coming to blows.)

Here is the points system I use myself.

A ‘perfect’ story would have a weighting of 55 points. My top three prize winners usually score in the range of 40-50 points while the ten shortlisted winners typically fall into the 30-40 points bracket.

True, there is still room for personal judgement. Each judge will award slightly different - sometimes very different - points in each category. That’s why a story that flops in one contest might well go on to win first prize in another. It’s also why, if you think your story is good, you should keep on submitting - and improving it!

1. How well does the story reflect the theme, genre or author requirements of the contest?

Not all contests are themed. If the organisers ask merely for short fiction of any kind whatsoever, this category of assessment is inapplicable. But beware of a contest that has no stipulations. Perhaps it lacks discrimination in other respects too? :) Usually the rules for theme, genre and/or author, etc, are clearly stated.


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It goes without saying that you shouldn’t submit, for example, an emphatically ‘Christmas’ story under a ‘summer vacation’ theme, or a poem, playscript or noir detective mystery to a children’s fiction contest, or a story to a competition intended to acknowledge Afro-Caribbean writers if you cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, qualify as an Afro-Caribbean.

Uh... if it goes without saying, why did I say it? Because, as many contest organisers will doubtless tell you: people don’t always read the rules. I have had to exclude several entries from my quarterly short fiction contest because, despite my guidelines, the stories were not (in my judgement) short fiction.

Total possible points: 10

2. Does the story engage the reader emotionally throughout?

I have judged many stories that were impressively clever. They danced with ingenuity, wit or wordplay. But they left me cold. They were intellectual exercises, rather like the mystery tales of John Dickson Carr. (True, he is a wonderful writer but he tends to appeal to readers who wish to be cerebrally rather than emotionally engaged).

The characters in such stories are cardboard or the themes trivial or the narrative tenuous. By the end the reader no longer cares how the tale turns out. It takes enormous craft skill to make the reader care about characters and incidents that are wholly imaginary.


3. Is the story original in its concept?

By all means take a familiar plot or theme. There have been just 36 of them since the dawn of humanity, according to Georges Polti (1916) - or only seven if you believe Christopher Booker (The Seven Basic Plots, 2004 ) - so you’re unlikely to invent a new one. But do something new with them!

The jilted lover who plans a cruel revenge on his/her faithless spouse or Significant Other goes right back to the tale of Medea. But (I hear you ask) surely we could do a twist. We might have the jilted lover hide his/her murder victim in a garage freezer - only for the new lover, aghast,


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to stumble upon it. Couldn’t we? Nope. That’s just a re-run of Bluebeard’s cupboard.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with reprising the theme of Bluebeard’s cupboard, provided you disguise it with a highly original twist!

Total possible points: 10.

4. Does the first paragraph encourage the reader to read on?

You don’t need a shock opening. In fact, the cheap thrill (‘I pulled the trigger. The punk fell dead’) is seriously to be avoided. Unless done very well, it’s a yawn.

Instead, consider the elegance and poetry of the first line of the novel The Go Between: ‘The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there’ (L. P. Hartley, 1953). Or that of Rebecca: ‘Last night I dreamt I went to Mandalay again’ (Daphne du Maurier, 1938). Or the intriguing start of the short story Harrison Bergeron: ‘The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal’ (Kurt Vonnegut Jr, 1961).

Can any thoughtful reader not want to continue?

Unfortunately, although understandably, hard-pressed literary agents today tend to judge a novel solely by its first paragraph or two.

In fact, one agent told me he kicks most of his submissions into the slush pile after an appraisal of just the first paragraph of the covering letter. To coax him as far as the novel itself, he said, is a major authorial achievement. He claimed his practice was not untypical among agencies faced with 10,000 submissions every year.

It’s nonsense, of course. By a test so cruel and arbitrary, hardly any distinguished novel published in the 20th century would have made it into print. (In fact, most ‘household name’ novelists did struggle in their earliest years against such obstacles. But that’s another story...)

Alas, the fact is that a short story - anything up to, say, 6000 words - must seduce the judges in the first one or two paragraphs or risk being tossed into the reject pile. (So should any novel presented to an agent or publisher - unless, of course, your name is Dan Brown or K. J. Rowling. Then you could probably submit it, scribbled in crayon, on the back of a Kleenex tissue :))


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5. Does your story have a strong sense of form, a coherent narrative progression and a satisfying conclusion?

A novel is a ‘closed compacted thing’, according to Virginia Woolf. Even more so is a short story. In other words, it should be a unity.

True, many a fine story lacks ‘closure’. It may leave the reader with untidy loose ends or an unresolved mystery. (A classic example is Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1898), where the reader is utterly confused at the end as to what the story, absorbing though it is, had really been all about.)

A story might even appear, at first glance, to be a collection of vivid but disjointed impressions. (Joyce’s Ulysses comes to mind.)

Yet such stories should still be rigorous in their construction. A judge should feel, with admiration: nothing could usefully have been added to, or cut from, this story. It’s a whole. It works.


6. Is your story fresh in its use of language?

You don’t need to litter every line with metaphors or have your syntax turn somersaults. Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea (1952) is as prosaic in its language and grammar as the label on a ketchup bottle. Personally, this story underwhelms me. But folk wiser than me say that, in its clinical simplicity, it is a triumph of creative writing.

They may have a point. Nobody would regard the blunt language of the Ten Commandments in the King James Bible as ‘creative writing’. But it was. The right words are used in exactly the right place. ‘Creative’ language is often just a matter of immense precision.

So a story that is imprecise and lazy in its language - for example, it uses clichés and secondhand expressions (except for a deliberate purpose, such as to define a ridiculous character) - will be heavily marked down.



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7. Is your story competently presented, in terms of layout, spelling, punctuation and grammar?

A wise contest judge will turn a blind eye to the odd ‘literal’ (mistyping), misspelling or punctuation error in a short story that is otherwise good. But do not tempt that wise person to reject your story by ignoring the standard rules of presentation. You can find them in any writer’s manual.

Contest rules might differ but not by much. For example, I always insist that the story be presented in a standard Times Roman font, 12 point, 1½ spaced, with good margins left and right. I ask that the story title, word count, entrant’s name, snail-mail and email address, and phone number (in case they win) appear on the cover page.

The entrant’s name, story title and page numbers should also appear on each page in the header, in case a page gets detached.

It’s only common sense. If such details are omitted, you cannot expect a busy a judge, howsoever conscientious, to scribble your contact details on the first page. And if the details are missing, and you win, where will the organisers send your prize?


Total aggregate points: 55.


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Chapter 7: ‘Congratulations, you’ve won!’ How to maximise your win.

Astute contest organisers will do everything they can to publicise your win. Certainly your name, and possibly your winning story, should appear in their web site or other publications to honour you and - not least - encourage future entrants.

All money apart, to see your story published and accessible by thousands of people is a joy in itself. Several of my own winners have told me that the recognition is more gratifying than the cash.

(Hm... sometimes I wonder why I bother to offer cash at all :))

A tip: have a ‘biographical kit’ ready to hand for those times, probably many of them, when an organiser will ask you: ‘please send me a photo of yourself plus around 100 words describing your occupation, age, family, hobbies, career to date, previously published works plus any writers’ magazines or online groups you subscribe to’.

The latter details are very important to a marketing-wise organiser. If you subscribe to a writing magazine or online group, they will hustle to publicise your win there to woo future entrants. They may even notify your local newspaper or radio station. (Do make it clear to the organisers, when they approach you, whether you’re happy for them to do this.)

Compile that kit as a ready-to-go file on your computer along with a suitable digital photo (jpg). If you happen to have your own blog or website that features your writing activities some organisers will be happy to announce its address (URL). That will bring more visitors to your site.

Of course, there’s also profit to be made in compiling your stories - whether they win or not - into an ebook or other digital product and selling the stories directly from your site. (Even as a conventional printed book.)

Alas, I have no space here to explore ebooks and self-publishing. Their do’s and don’ts can easily be found via a Google search.

Just take note that some contest organisers might regard stories you sell from your site as ‘previously published works’. So check the rules!


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What (truly) might you earn from entering story contests?

Okay, I’ll be candid. You are not likely to exceed the income of Dan Brown from entering writing contests alone. (Though your stories will probably be a lot better.) Never mind. Let’s do the maths...

Suppose you enter 120 contests a year and, at the start, win a prize in only 20% of these contents (24). Your cash prizes in minor contests should range between $20 and $500 and your entry fees will be around $8 each. So if your wins average out at $200 each, you have gained $4800 per year and made some $3840 profit.

In time, you will do far better as your writing improves and you gain a feel for what judges look for. If your strike rate then goes up to 30% you will gain around 36 wins per annum, bringing you $7200 gross and a net profit of $6240.

That’s assuming you don’t win a really major prize in four or five figures. But, chances are, if you persist and your writing improves - you will. In fact, you will probably win several major prizes in a year.

At this point you might want to increase your investment in the number of entries you submit and your income will increase accordingly.

True, by then you will be devoting almost every leisure hour to entering contests. But many thousands of people do! Several big-circulation magazines and web sites cater for them. (My mother became an expert in entering consumer contests. A day rarely passed when she did not receive a prize for her slogans, ranging from a food blender to an expensive holiday.)

Of course, at that point you may not need to enter any more contests!

Why? You will now have a portfolio to hand of several dozen, good tested stories plus a glittering list of prize wins to boast about. You can approach a literary agent with some more substantial project that you’ve been working on, like a novel.

True, a single win here and there in some obscure competition won’t impress that discerning person. But a dozen or more major wins certainly will, especially if they include some very prestigious contests. Then an


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agent might actually read your work and offer you a contract. And your life will change. Most agreeably :)

Welcome to the world of the professional writer!

Meanwhile, don’t delay another moment. You’ll find a wealth of free writing tips that work - plus a contest with plenty of cash prizes on offer - at my own web site:http://www.writers-village.org/welcome.php

I look forward to meeting you there.



Documents

How to Win Writing Contests for Profit