First Blog, Just Write Fun
Leveraging Writing Contests
Stretch your creativity, hone your skills, and get useful feedback with writing contests.
One way I work to keep developing my writing muscles is to participate in writing competitions and games. It’s a great way to challenge myself to write something I would not have otherwise been inspired to write, and it can be a lot of fun.
You, too, can join in the fun! In these competitions, you receive a prompt that you probably would not have picked for yourself along with a deadline—usually a few days to a week—to write a short story using the assigned prompt.
Maybe your prompt will be something like this.
Genre: vampire romance
Item: diamond
Action: hiding under the bed
Maybe you will have 500 words and forty-eight hours to work on your story. And you’re off!
Whatever your process is, you can’t overthink it. You have to trim the extra words and even the extra ideas to keep the story short enough to work within the allotted word count. Maybe you will start the action much closer to the climax than you would if you had more words available. Maybe you will focus on one little nugget of conflict between just two characters instead of the large cast an entire coven of vampires would require. Maybe you wish you had more time, but the story is due in an hour, so you will have to find a way to just make it work with what you have.
You submit it, and then you’re done. If you loved the prompt and want to explore it further, by all means. You can turn it into a novel if you want! If you hated it, you never have to work on it again.
If you paid to participate, the competition organizer will probably offer feedback, which you can expect a number of weeks later. (Read the rules of each competition for specifics.)
Playing with the flash fiction stories, where only 250 or 500 words are permitted, has helped me zero in on the essential parts of story and practice economy of words. Writing in genres I don’t usually choose for myself has expanded my knowledge of genre conventions and my understanding of the challenges that different genres present to the writer, all of which help me when I am editing those genres.
In short, these writing games have made me both a better writer and a better editor.
BONUS: Twice now, I have won writing competitions, and both times I earned bragging rights as well as some cash!
Warning: Payment to participate in a writing competition should be minimal. Expect to pay no more than $40 to participate in a writing competition. If anyone asks you for a lot of money to participate in a writing competition, I recommend you look for another option!
If you are interested in checking out some of these competitions, here is a list to get you started. If you have others to suggest, please message me. I will either update this post or write a follow up.