A quick online search reveals that hundreds of short story contests are open right now. Some of them are quite prestigious – or at least well worth entering, and definitely worth winning. There are some fantastic prizes on offer, as well as plenty of cash.
But how can you raise your story above everyone else’s and give yourself the best chance of winning? Read on for some great tips from a prize-winning writer and contest judge.
Free entry or pay to enter – which is best?
First, choose your short story contest. Is there a fee to enter it? If there is, many people won’t consider entering it, so your chances are greatly increased.
But it’s not quite as easy as that, because while fees weed out beginners and average writers, they don’t put off serious writers. You’ll be up against stiff competition and your story will need to stand out.
A good thing about paying to enter a short story contest is that you’ll often receive feedback. This can be a valuable. Even if you don’t win, the judge will give you pointers that should significantly increase your chances of winning next time. (If a contest doesn’t offer feedback, maybe skip it for now and choose one that does – there are plenty that do.)
Stick to the rules
So, having chosen a short story contest to enter, what do you do next? Read the rules, of course. You’ll be surprised how many people don’t. For example, if there’s a word count limit, don’t exceed it. Either the judge or the competition organizer will check it, and it can mean instant disqualification.
If you’re given the first sentence, use it exactly as it’s written. Often, writers put the sentence into quotes and treat it as dialogue, even though it wasn’t written that way. Judges’ opinions vary on how to deal with this. Some disqualify them immediately. Your judge might be more lenient, but even so, you’ve labelled yourself as a tricky customer, and he’ll be extra picky. You might still win, but your story will have to be extraordinarily good. (But it ought to be extraordinarily good anyway.)
Similarly, if you’re given a topic or theme, make sure your story’s main focus is on that topic or theme. For example, if you’re asked to write about a dog, you can’t make the story about a cat that’s friends with a dog. It needs to be about a dog that’s friends with a cat. The dog must be the star, not the cat.
Conflict comes first
Once you’ve decided what your story will be about, and who the characters are, you can start writing it, right?
Well, hang on now, let’s not rush this. You can’t just have a story where this happens then that happens, and everything’s fine, the end. Oh no; you’ll have to do better than that. How are you going to make it GOOD?
Judges want to see conflict, and they want it right from the start. It could be:
● internal conflict where the character has to overcome something that’s mentally holding him back
● external conflict where he has to battle his way through a fierce storm or something
● interpersonal conflict where he has to battle against other people to get what he wants
● or an epic combination of two or three of these
In the opening of your story (the first two paragraphs) set the scene, introduce your main character, introduce the conflict, and get your judge well and truly gripped. Make him desperate to read your story to find out what happens.
Unique characters
Now let’s think about your characters. They need to be distinctive not boring, and unique personalities not stereotypes. Slightly exaggerated and over-the-top is good, but bizarre and outlandish is usually not.
Your ideal main character will be someone the judge has never come across before. He won’t be the average person who lives next door to you. There needs to be something fascinating about him. He might be living a quiet life in retirement, but he’ll have seen and done things most people would never see and do. And he’ll use some of his skills and experiences to overcome the conflict in this story.
He’ll probably also have some extraordinary mementos on his walls that give hints about his past. (Don’t forget to mention those!)
Whatever sort of character he is, and whatever he does, you need to make sure the judge knows who he is, and cares about him by the end of the story.
Your character must always be true to his personality in everything he says and does.
Character design tips
Here’s one of my tips for designing a character; I call it the 100 percent trait.
Let’s say one of your characters is known for her aggression. We’ll find out why during the story, but let’s not reveal it just yet. Let’s make her 100 percent aggressive all the time and see how the story plays out. It will probably be too much, so turn it down until she’s recognizably aggressive in every scene, but not so aggressive that it ruins the story.
Give your other characters other traits and do the same with them. If you haven’t come up with a conflict for your story yet, just putting this bunch of characters together should trigger something. But how about forcing them to work together to overcome something or achieve something?
A great story changes your characters. Perhaps the aggressive woman learns that aggression isn’t always the best response, or that there’s no need to be aggressive at all. Perhaps she learns to focus her aggression into a different strength she can call upon when she needs it.
Unique plot
Now that your characters are sorted, let’s look at the plot. Your story should be a kind of obstacle course. You can’t just have your hero walk through it from beginning to end, encounter no problems, and finish unscathed and unchanged. That’s not what a prize-winning story looks like.
Think about what sort of story you’re writing, what your main character wants to achieve, and what you can put in his way. As we saw earlier, it could be physical obstacles or barriers, personal or emotional challenges, stress, pressure, anxiety, a time limit, or whatever fits the story best.
Bear in mind that the person judging your story has read hundreds of short stories before yours, and probably thousands of them. He’s seen it all before – or so he thinks. How can you make your story different – something he hasn’t seen before? That will make him notice you!
Endings
Let’s talk about the ending. The most important thing is that you must resolve the conflict you introduced at the beginning. If the judge is left wondering what happened, you’ll almost certainly lose marks. (Occasionally, a truly great story will leave you wondering, but in most cases, everything should be squared off properly.)
Twists and surprises
Twist endings are good, but can you make yours shocking and unexpected? A twist ending shouldn’t come out of nowhere. Once you’ve written the ending, go back and make sure there are enough clues in the story that hint at what will happen at the end. Ideally, you’ll sneak them in so no one really notices them – until the twist comes. Your readers should kick themselves for not spotting the clues you cleverly buried in the text.
Surprises are good too, and they can occur at any time, not just at the end. Again, they must come from the characters and the situation; they can’t just happen for no reason. If the surprise knocks the judge sideways, that’s even better.
Remember the character from earlier who had mementos from his past on his wall. He might use a surprising skill to get out of a tricky situation. Yet the mementos on his wall show he’s done that sort of thing before.
Of course, you don’t necessarily have to show the mementos before he uses his surprising skill. He might return to his house once everything is over and smile at a photo on the wall. It might show him holding a bomb he defused when he was in the Army. That brief scene might make the perfect ending for your story.
Cause a reaction
Your ending needs to cause some sort of reaction: satisfaction, surprise, love, hate, a warm glow, or … something. You don’t want the judge to read your story and think, well that’s ten minutes of my life I just wasted. You want him to think, yes, I really liked that, it can go through to the next round.
More tips
Now let’s look at some other quick tips to help you write prize-winning stories.
Get reading
As I mentioned earlier, judges have read hundreds of stories, if not thousands. Have you? Get reading! You need to know what other writers have written, so you can aspire to be as good as the best ones. You also need to know which plots, situations, characters and phrases other writers have overused and overdone so you can come up with something unique and original.
If you’re wondering what to read, start with the past winners of the contest you’re entering, so you know what sort of thing the judges favour.
Write tightly
Prize-winning writers write tightly, while new writers write too loosely. If you, just, you know, write some nice sentences that, you know, kind of just seem to fit your story, you’re, like, not really going to even win or anything, actually. (Okay, that was an extreme example; I hope your writing was never as loose as that!)
Be more literary
Judges love to see a literary turn of phrase that lifts your writing above other people’s. It’s not “normal” writing, it’s prize-winning writing. It’s hard to explain, but judges know it when they see it. You can develop this skill by reading stories by skilled literary writers. But don’t just copy what they do; find your own way of doing it.
Develop a distinctive writing voice
Try to develop a distinctive writing voice, so that readers can recognize your writing even if your name isn’t on it. This is tricky to pull off; you want your readers to get lost in your stories and characters, not blown away by your brilliant writing. But it’s something the best writers can do ‐ and they win all the prizes.
Here’s an idea that might make your writing more like this. Start by writing your story as a poem. Write it as an actual poem – work hard on it, finish it, and keep polishing it for a week or two, making the rhymes, rhythms, images and phrasing better and better. Then turn it into a story – but keep your favourite poetic phrases.
Edit with friends
Editing your story is important too. But don’t trust your word processor to check your spelling and grammar; get other people to check it too. Your favourite sentence might have a missing word that you overlooked. You’re convinced it’s there, but it isn’t. It could ruin the entire story.
Once they’ve checked it, ask them to read it out loud to you. Listen for any awkwardness. Then fix it.
Get feedback
Ask some other people to give you feedback on your story – to judge it before a real judge sees it.
If you’re serious about becoming a great writer, join an online critique group where you read and review each other’s stories.
And finally …
Avoid clichés like the plague!
Go for it!
I hope you found this article useful and it has encouraged you to analyse your writing and improve it. I hope you’ll also enter some short story contests to see how you get on.
If you’d like more tips and information on entering and winning short story contests, I have a book! Take a look at How to Win Short Story Competitions. I co-wrote it with Geoff Nelder who is a prize-winning author and an experienced competition judge. The book includes two brilliant short stories, including one of Geoff’s.