{"id":9601,"date":"2014-11-06T11:55:37","date_gmt":"2014-11-06T01:55:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/?p=9601"},"modified":"2022-08-29T18:57:51","modified_gmt":"2022-08-29T08:57:51","slug":"what-you-need-to-know-about-writing-competitions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/what-you-need-to-know-about-writing-competitions\/","title":{"rendered":"What You Need to Know About Writing Competitions"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Me<\/a>

Me with my Ditmar Award from earlier this year.<\/p><\/div>\n

Yay \u2013 to date, I\u2019ve won first place in eight national writing competitions here in Australia, ten if you count my co-authored work. How? Well, that\u2019s a good question, with a very simple answer: you have to know your market.<\/p>\n

To do this, you can start by researching:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Who\u2019s running the competition?<\/li>\n
  2. Who\u2019s the judge?<\/li>\n
  3. What kind of story will that judge enjoy?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    You have to know whose opinion you\u2019re trying to win over, so you can motivate them into taking action \u2013 ie. award you first prize! There\u2019s little point entering a genre story into a literary writing competition and vice versa. You might love your contemporary short fiction written entirely in text messages and tweets\u2026 But will the judge of a traditional writers\u2019 group\u2019s competition love it as much?<\/p>\n

    So, think about the competition you want to enter and ask yourself\u2026<\/p>\n

    Who\u2019s running this competition?<\/h3>\n
    \"AHWAtrophy\"<\/a>

    My horror writing trophy from last year. Mm… so shiny!<\/p><\/div>\n

    The organisers of writing competitions are the ones who select the judges \u2013 who are they and what kind of writing do they like? This is a little easier to know when the competition is for a particular genre. For example, the organisers of a horror writing competition are highly likely to select judges who like reading horror and dark fantasy. If it\u2019s a mainstream writing group\u2019s \u2018open\u2019 competition, however, they\u2019re not as likely to have a preference for horror or dark fantasy.<\/p>\n

    Next, ask yourself\u2026<\/p>\n

    Who\u2019s the judge?<\/h3>\n

    Mostly, the judges of writing competitions are writers themselves. So why not research what they write and\/or read? This will tell you if they\u2019re likely to value your writing. We all have different preferences \u2013 in music, books, movies, etc \u2013 judges too! Knowing your judge will help you pick the right story to enter, or even whether to enter at all. You may be wasting your time by entering a competition judged by someone highly unlikely to appreciate your writing style or genre. They are simply going to award first place to a story they<\/em> like.<\/p>\n

    If you can\u2019t find out who\u2019s going to be the judge of this year\u2019s competition, find out who judged the same competition last year. It\u2019s likely the organisers will select a similar person again.<\/p>\n

    Next, think about how you\u2019re going to connect with that judge.<\/p>\n

    What kind of story will that judge enjoy?<\/h3>\n
    \"May<\/a>

    May all the wins be yours!
    Not these though \u2013 they’re mine!!<\/p><\/div>\n

    Most writing competitions are judged by a single person, so you\u2019ve got to put everything you can into writing a story guaranteed to connect with them.<\/p>\n

    Guaranteed? <\/em><\/p>\n

    That\u2019s impossible?<\/em><\/p>\n

    And yet someone did it last year. I\u2019ve done it ten times. So research who won the competition last year and, if you can, read what they wrote. Hundreds of writers will be trying to capture the judge\u2019s attention this year. The odds might feel impossible, but someone is<\/em> going to do it. Why not you?<\/p>\n

    What can you write that might interest that judge?<\/p>\n

    How did last year\u2019s entrant stand out?<\/p>\n

    Most probably they wrote from the heart, like all good writers do \u2013\u00a0and they did their research \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

    GOOD LUCK!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Yay \u2013 to date, I\u2019ve won first place in eight national writing competitions here in Australia, ten if you count my co-authored work. How? Well, that\u2019s a good question, with a very simple answer: you have to know your market. To do this, you can start by researching: Who\u2019s running\u2026<\/p>\n

    Continue reading<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9603,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[1012,1010,1009,1011,716],"class_list":["post-9601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-writer-advice","tag-competition","tag-how-to-win-competitions","tag-how-to-win-writing-competitions","tag-judge","tag-writing-tips"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Trophies.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9601"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14641,"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9601\/revisions\/14641"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}