I also talk about this on The Patchword Podcast on Spotify and on YouTube.
Most of the benefits of entering writing competitions are only to be found if you are a winner or, at least, a runner up. So it’s important to make sure you maximise your chances of success. Here are ten tips to help you:
1. Check eligibility
Some competitions are focused on particular demographics – age, gender, geographical location, previously unpublished authors etc. So do make sure you are actually eligible before you waste time and money on your entry.
And it’s not just your personal eligibility that needs to be checked. You should make sure whether your work is eligible, too. Many – but not all – competitions ask for unpublished work; this can be a little tricky as some will only count traditionally published work, while others include personal blogs, self-publishing, sharing on the radio etc. There is no single definition, so read the rules to see if there are more complete details.
2. Read the rules
Beyond laying down basic eligibility requirements, the rules will cover all the details of word count, presentation, format etc. And if you send in a poem with 31 lines to a competition for 10 line poems, or a story with 5,000 words to a flash fiction competition, you’ll fall at the first hurdle.
Sometimes the rules seem to ask you to jump through hoops, specifying font and text size, margin widths and document format. It’s frustrating, but if you fail to follow the instructions, the organisers have every right to take your entrance fee and simply disqualify your entry.
3. Choose the right piece to send
Remember that this is a competition and a lot of other people will be sending their work in, too. If yours is not among the best pieces you have ever written, it may well not rate alongside the pieces that others choose to submit.
That said, when it comes to judging one piece of writing against another, there is always a certain degree of personal opinion, so if you are truly sure that your poem is excellent and it doesn’t get awarded, it may be that it simply didn’t appeal to the judge.
4. Research the judge
Most respectable competitions publish the names of their judges and say whether the judge will actually read all the submissions or whether these will be filtered by a panel of readers. If there is a filtering process, you probably won’t know who will be on that panel, but if you have a named judge, you can do your research and see if you can find out about their own writing and preferences.
This is still a little hit and miss, of course, as someone who is famous for writing sonnets may still appreciate free verse, and a sci fi writer may like horror. But it’s worth thinking about as, for example, an author who is famed for their own literary fiction is probably unlikely to choose a romantic twist-in-the-tale story as the absolute winner if there are a few hundred other pieces up for the same prize.
5. Stick to the theme
Competitions are often “open” or unthemed, but there are many where there is a topic to be written about. Remember that this doesn’t usually mean that you have to use the theme as the title of the piece, so do pay attention to your title, which is a key part of any writing. Themed competitions do perhaps make it slightly easier to judge one piece alongside another: if the final vote comes down to a choice between two pieces, it would be reasonable to select the one that most closely suits the theme.
6. Plan for the deadline
Every competition has a deadline. Sometimes it’s advertised just a few weeks in advance, and sometimes there will be months and months when entries are open. It doesn’t matter whether you send your work off the very moment the gates open, or just ten minutes before they shut, but it must arrive by the deadline to qualify for entry. If you cut it too fine, there’s always a chance that your computer will decide to reboot and the deadline will pass while you’re waiting for your file to upload.
One advantage of leaving it closer to the closing date, is that you might write something better in the meantime. But that doesn’t mean you should wait until the last minute before you actually write the piece you want to submit. If you write it and put it to one side then go and work on something else, when you come back to it, it will be fresh again and you may spot mistakes and other things that can be improved.
Sometimes, you won’t hear about a competition until the last minute. When that happens, if you have a piece that’s already written and suitable, it can make sense to enter, but if it’s going to end up being a mad scramble to hit the deadline, it’s probably better to give it a miss and move on to the next one.
7. Proofread your entry
When you submit your work to a magazine or to a publisher, you may have the good fortune to find an editor who is willing to spend time correcting spelling or making suggestions about your line breaks or punctuation. But in the world of competitions, this is not the job of the judge. So do make sure you have proofread your work very carefully. A simple spelling error may make the difference between carrying off a prize or being left behind.
8. Don’t sit around waiting for the results
Competitions can take a long time to judge. After all, there are sometimes thousands of entries to be read and considered. So, once you’ve sent out an entry, rather than sit around waiting for the result, have a look and see what other competitions are out there, and get to work on your next piece of writing.
9. Keep track
With the number of competitions out there, and the time they take to judge, it’s very easy to lose track of your entries and of your published credits. And if you get confused and send the same piece out to two competitions simultaneously, or send a previously published piece to a competition that wants unpublished work only, you are setting yourself up for disqualification and the possibility of gaining a bad reputation. So start with good habits from the beginning, and make sure you have a record of the competitions you enter, the pieces you send and the results of each.
10. Watch your budget
One final think to think about is keeping track of the money that you spend on competition entries. The individual fees aren’t usually huge, but they do add up over time. Just remember to watch what you’re spending and whether you are actually winning or getting other benefits from the experience.
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