creative writing competitions

creative writing competitions

The Importance of Participating in Creative Writing Competitions

1. Benefits of Creative Writing Competitions

Improve your writing skills: Regardless of the outcome, you will find that the more you write, the better you will become. Writing is a difficult career to get into, and it is often quite a challenge to find paid work. Creative writing competitions offer good cash prizes. This is a huge bonus considering the contest might be on a topic that the writer feels uncomfortable with. For the more confident writer, this is also the chance to gain recognition for your writing or to turn a hobby into a career. High commendations, placing, or winning a competition always looks good on your writer’s resume. Writing contests are also a good way to get your work read by others and to compare your writing with that of other writers. Oftentimes the judge will also give feedback on your entry. This is a good opportunity to receive honest and constructive criticism that will help improve your writing skills and determine which areas you need to work on.

Participating in creative writing competitions has many positive aspects for your personal and career development. The foremost thing is that the competitions usually provide an opportunity for the writer to explore other areas of his/her capabilities. Creative writing is a highly unstructured form of writing, thus by exploring other areas such as writing business reports, copywriting, and article writing, the writer can develop a broad writing style and develop a niche in which they feel most comfortable. This is an important activity for new writers and writers who are currently insecure about their capabilities.

2. How to Find and Choose the Right Competition

It is important to get some idea of the standard of your work, by comparing it with the rest of the writing world. If it is your first time entering a competition or you are relatively young, it may be wise to start with smaller contests, in order to have a higher chance of winning and build confidence. To do this, try using a search engine with key words about the style, type or genre of writing that you are doing. There are a number of contemporary websites available which list competitions, or you can look for ads in writing magazines that are often given away free at libraries. If your writing is of a very high standard and you are feeling ambitious, you may wish to jump straight in at the deep end by taking on some of the more renowned writing contests. These tend to offer a range of different cash and non-cash prizes, so you can still be a runner-up!

One of the best reasons to participate in creative writing competitions is that choosing the right one can be a form of education in itself. Since the competitions will likely be of a similar nature to any submission process you go through when trying to get published, it is a chance to learn about the professional writing world and to start developing practical skills. It can teach you how to research markets, since the first step in choosing the right competition is to find them! Then, consider your target audience.

3. Tips for Writing a Winning Entry

The most appealing factor of an entry is the use of original ideas. These will often get extra credit. For example, last year there was a KS3 competition and an AS level competition based on the same theme. The KS3 judges noted that the ideas were rarely fresh and the same thing had been seen many times before. Characters need to be believable, and it is important to develop them and the plot. In the past, character competitions have been successful because there were so many entries with stereotypical cardboard characters. A good game for students is to enter their work in a competition without revealing the author and finding out how it has done compared to other entries.

Winning entries are those that are well written and thought out. Poor language and structure can detract from an imaginative plot and characterization. Such entries are rarely winners, even if the idea was the best. It is important to plan your story, but do not spend too long assessing glittering ideas at the expense of getting something on paper. You may find that what you begin to write is an improvement on your original idea. Keep to the set theme if there is one. In the Key Stage 4 and 5 competitions, pretty much all the entries have been stories, and some poems have received negative feedback for not being taken as a serious response. If your poem was the best piece you have read, then enter it in the school magazine competition. There is nothing to stop you from using your story or poem in another competition or for school work.

2. Introduction 3. Tips for writing a winning entry 4. Mistakes to avoid 5. Conclusion

4. The Impact of Competitions on Personal Growth

Other than that, with a lot of ideas being generated in their mind, it has helped them to be more open-minded and view things from various perspectives. In order to create a good piece of writing, one must be able to see things from various perspectives because if they only stick to one point of view, they will have trouble linking the ideas and developing the story further. Highly able persons are usually those who can view things in the third person’s perspective and not only think about themselves. By having creative thinking and being original, it can really help them boost their confidence and believe in their ideas. Confidence levels will increase to the point that they are not afraid to criticize, and often they will take it as a challenge to prove that their ideas are the best. Confidence is an important element in bringing success to our lives. With a lot of ideas in their mind, the ability to see things from various perspectives, and a high level of confidence, it can help them improve their personality and have good character, which is an element of personal growth.

Creative writing competitions are having a big impact on personal growth. First and foremost, the participants who have been taking part in these kinds of competitions tend to think creatively and be more original. By trying to write the best and original stories for the competition, it has helped them to stimulate and arouse their right brain to take on a more dominant role. According to a psychologist, Mr. Robert E. Franken, in his book “Human Motivation,” he stated that the right brain is the idea generator that is able to generate a big scope of ideas. Out of those ideas, they are more capable of developing something original. We cannot deny the fact that a good and reputable creative writer in a certain field is someone who is very original in their thinking and ideas.

5. Conclusion: Embrace the Challenge and Unleash Your Creativity

Participating in a writing competition requires time, effort, and sometimes funds. However, the benefits from venturing into such activities may go beyond the mere sense of achievement from winning it. Writing competitions exist for both upcoming writers seeking validation and proficient and established writers seeking a new environment. The challenges posed by such competitions can be a major catalyst for an improvement in one’s writing, and even if one does not win, one’s skills and abilities would have improved drastically. Competitions can be thought of as a test or a challenge. It is human nature to strive to do better when faced with a challenge. Most writers, when given a topic to write, will be able to churn something out. But if the writing has to be on a topic given by someone else, whereby the writing should be the best out of all the others taking part in the competition, it becomes totally another issue. The level of difficulty in creative writing competitions may vary among different competitions. But the essence of it will be a challenge to create something outstanding. By taking part in such challenges, a writer may greatly improve his writing. Whether it is in sentence formation, choice of words, or overall content, the writer is forced to rethink if what he has written is the best that he can write. The very thought that someone else taking part in the same competition is trying to outdo him will press the writer to write and rewrite his work. And the feeling of achievement will be much greater, whether or not he wins the competition.