Do the Obvious Stuff
Follow the submission guidelines. Get the formatting right. Make sure the story is anonymised if it has to be. Check you haven’t left any details in the doc from a previous contest requirement. Don’t send a 500-word bio when they want 75 words max.
Look for Author-Competition Fit
Contests typically change judges every year, but you still can learn the sense of story flavour that seems to do well. Some competitions will have a better fit for your work than others, so consider re-entering competitions where you’ve been successful before.
Use Competitions to Free You from Creative Blockage
Story contests get you writing again when you’ve been blocked. Choose one with a soonish deadline and an interesting prompt – and get cracking!
Work That Title
We all know the importance of starting strong, but judges wish more attention was paid to titles. An original title helps a story stand out, and too many have very similar titles, e.g., “The Visit” or “An Affair.” Also, with a very common title, if the shortlist is published without the authors’ names (as is often the case), you’ll have the agony of waiting to see if that story is really yours.
Ask Yourself Why You’re Entering
Would even an honourable mention feel like a big achievement, or do you have a story you really believe in and think could achieve great success? Or are you just testing the waters with a new voice or style? Deciding will help you choose which contests to dare enter which stories.
Think Carefully about Multiple Entries
Smaller contests and literary mags may be more likely to accept your work, and sooner, which may mean having to withdraw from bigger comps and never knowing how that special story would have done. Better to time your entries – and not waste your entry fee – so you hear from the big venues first.
Don’t Enter for the Sake of It
Sometimes you are tempted to enter a competition because everyone is, or you haven’t entered anything in a while. But if you have to shoehorn your story to make it fit the prompt or if it’s not ready, it’s unlikely to do well. You can affect your odds.
Read the Judges’ Comments from Previous Years
Most winner announcements come with a summing-up from the judge(s) about the chosen stories. Also, they often write follow-up articles advising people about common mistakes to avoid and how to craft stories to improve chances. These are always well worth reading.
Keep a Record (and Don’t Forget to Withdraw)
Keep a record of where you’ve entered so you can withdraw a story if accepted elsewhere. (Generally a story that gets longlisted or even in many cases shortlisted doesn’t have to be withdrawn from other comps, but always check the terms and conditions). You must withdraw any story that is no longer eligible for a competition. Not doing so can cause a major headache for organisers.
Think About Rights
Always check what rights you give away before you enter a contest, especially if you aim to publish a collection of your stories at some point.
BIO – Dan Brotzel (@brotzel_fiction) is author of a collection of short stories, Hotel du Jack, and co-author of a new comic novel, Kitten on a Fatberg (Unbound). To order Kitten on a Fatberg for a ten percent discount, quote KITTEN10
This is an excellent list. I particularly like the point about titles – that hadn’t occurred to me before! You’re dead right – when I’ve judged writing competitions, my heart does tend to sink at the sight of yet another poem called ‘Love’ or ‘Loss’, or a story called, ‘Endings’, etc.
Thanks, Cathy. Having judged many novels, the title indeed makes a huge difference.
One thing the author forgot to mention is, contests say they take all genres, and they do, but all genres do not win. Comedy stories rarely win. Fight stories or soldier stories or romance stories or…rarely, if ever, win. What you want to write is a first person narrative about friends and family. A sad story with a lot of great characters. Do not worry about any kind of story line, that does not matter in the modern short story. Of course if your story is NOT Politically Correct you have zero chance of winning. ZERO. On judges: You think a black lesbian writer from the inner city will pick a white guy, dairy farmer from rural America? Make me laugh. That won’t win either.
I’m investigating in view of an article, on what is ‘politically correct’…is it up to a daring editor to decide, for example, to publish a story that might have a UK or US teen’s mom exclaim to herself after she met her daughter’s boyfriend: “He looked like a Maori rugby star!” or “He looked like a South African swimmer!”…or “He looked like a Californian surfer!”? All of these can be taken in different ways, they imply generalizations of age, race, gender, etc so one wonders how ‘honestly’ our characters can express themselves without fear they might be construed as ‘incorrect’– Does it depend on who the readers might be?
Any reader may resent being categorized on sight, and yet we might say ‘he looked like a drag queen in his black shorts’, but aren’t we assuming that’s ok because we think drag queens might not read our book? Is there an element of ‘silent exclusion’ almost everywhere, and when is it seen as ‘incorrect’? Writers must be daring sometimes, or not write at all–especially as ‘differences’ are what make the most famous stories!