: How to Win Short-Fiction Writing Competitions I've written many stories and have received some good feedback but have never tried to compete with others. I've been thinking recently that it would

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This is really the number one advice I can give anybody entering creative competitions:

Learn how the competition works.

Every competition has rules. Wordcount; formatting; themes.

Some of them also have guidelines. Stuff the judges like; stuff the contest is kind of tired of; stuff that's considered particularly impressive, or that's OK but generally doesn't do to well.

Learn all of them; follow all of them (or know why you're choosing to ignore some; don't make any unnecessary mistakes.

This will do two things for you:

It will keep you from being in the bottom 25%. In most contests and competitions, there are many participants who don't read or follow the rules. They can be pretty much auto-rejected out of hand -- and even if they aren't, they give an extremely poor first impression.
Now, being in the top 75% is still a far cry from winning, or even placing -- but it's a lot better than being in the bottom 25%.
(The choice of "25%" specifically is a gross exaggeration, in one direction or another -- it will vary from contest to contest.)
You will learn to be critical of submissions in general, and yours in particular. The rules, guidelines, and mores of the competition can, in combination, teach you an incredible amount. By focusing on "How to do this one specific task, in a way that will impress these specific people" -- you will have developed your own taste, and your own writing ability. It will also help you improve specifically at whatever this particular contest values most.

All this works best with a competition that is relatively consistent -- held regularly, with the same set of judges (or mostly the same, or with similar-ish tastes), spoken about enough in public for you to actually get a sense of what the contest is looking for.

Not all contests are like that -- but that's a good reason to seek out a few that are.

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Speaking as a professor, I have frequently been a judge (one of five for my field) for our annual poster contest (all sciences) in which students produce a poster describing their research, suitable for an academic conference (often actually accepted for display in such a conference). These typically take students about a month to produce, they are not done lightly, typically contain illustrations, charts and text with references.

Drawing from that experience, I'd say the winning criterion is surprise.

Most research produces nothing very surprising. It isn't that I knew their results in advance, but their results are in line with what I would expect myself if I undertook their research.

The students may make a valid discovery or provide statistical evidence something is true, something I would guess is true but did not know for certain was true -- but the key element for winners always seems to be a surprising result that, once you learn it, makes sense. The results stick with you, get you thinking, make you wonder about something else or further implications, or get you talking with the presenter (the student) about where this goes next, what are the next experiments, where do they think it is going.

Translating that experience to a fiction contest; I think a surprise that in retrospect makes sense could go a long way toward winning. A twist that resolves the conflict in an unexpected manner, whether it is humorous or not.

I realize that is often how a joke is described; the punchline is an unexpected statement or action that, in retrospect, works.

But in fiction the twist can be like The Sixth Sense, it isn't really funny in any way, but it is fun because it suddenly recasts the story in an entirely new light, and for some reason that makes us humans laugh, we really like it.

It is a prescription that might be difficult to fill, twist endings and surprises are not that easy to devise, and may fall flat. But hopefully a little more specific advice than "write better."

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I read for a contest run by a literary journal. There are a few rounds of reading. In the first round we weed out the pieces that are problematic from the start. So polish your piece to perfection. Fix all punctuation and grammar problems. In the second round we're reading stories that are all pretty good, and we read to find the ones that are seriously good. The third round is when the journal's editors read through the ones that have made it through, and I think the few that remain go to our guest judge to pick a winner.

We have a lot of stories to get through, so don't give us any reason to stop reading. And be lucky.

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Look at the competition from the judge's point of view.

Whatever the theme of the competition, assume that the vast majority of entries will grab for its' low hanging fruit. If a competition is about vampires, most of the entries will deal with normal afterlife challenges, such as sunshine and madmen with wooden stakes. So find something new such as a vampire sommelier (wine-expert) with a cellar full of vintage winos.

Always try to make the judge laugh.

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