I won a writing contest hosted by Wattpad and Tim Hortons!
The prizes included a $100 Tim Hortons card and a swag bag of Wattpad-branded goodies.
The experience made me reflect on how many times I’ve won writing contests in the past. In 2021, I won a local writing contest which awarded me several bottles of wine.
Just this year alone, I’ve placed in numerous small-scale contests on the platform Wattpad.
I’d like to impart to you 3 tips that I use to succeed in writing contests.
1. Follow the Rules
With every contest, there are clear guidelines involving how to enter, how to format, the theme of the contest, etc.
You ignore these guidelines at your peril. Contests generally get a large pool of entrants; in order to save time, preliminary screeners often weed out entries that do not follow the guidelines that are set.
So if a contest calls for 12-point Garamond font, don’t submit your entry in 20-point Comic Sans. If the theme of a contest is high fantasy, don’t submit your cozy mystery.
The competition is fierce; don’t knock yourself out of contention from the onset.
2. Make Your Entry STAND OUT
Once again, you may have submitted your best writing to a contest, but if it looks the same as all the other entrants, it’s going to get passed over by a selection panel.
A good strategy is to attract potential judges with something that immediately grabs their attention.
If a contest calls for cover art, make sure that the image POPS!
You do your writing a disservice to put all your energy into your words, only to pick a generic, boring cover image.
Think, bright, vibrant colours or imagery that piques human curiosity.
In terms of content, be sure to grab the reader with the first couple of lines. Slow burns do not a good entry make when you are competing against thousands of other stories.
Stand out and make yourself known right out the gate to keep them invested.
3. Minimize Competition (Be a Big Fish in a Small Pond)
Author Malcolm Gladwell said it best in his award-winning novel David and Goliath; in order to increase your chances of being seen, you must be a big fish in a small pond.
Whenever there’s a national contest boasting a hefty grand prize, all types of writers from various backgrounds and levels of experience come out to compete.
You may be in the top 10% of writers, but if 10% comes from a pool of 1000 writers, you’re still competing against 100 of your peers.
The best strategy I’ve found for winning contests is to select competitions where the competitor pool is low. For example, in the case of the Wattpad contest I won, the competition was only available to residents of Canada.
It may be in your best interest to seek out contests that narrow eligibility based on demographic, location, age, etc. While you won’t be guaranteed to win, you at least won’t get lost in a sea of other competent writing (pun intended).
Have you won a writing contest before? What prize did you win, if any, and what strategies have you used to successfully come out on top? Please leave your comments below!