How to Win a Writing Contest

HOW TO WIN A WRITING CONTEST A Guide from The Write Practice

by Joe Bunting

Copyright © 2016 by Joe Bunting

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in the United States of America    Cover and book design: Joe Bunting

Published by The Write Practice  174 Carroll Street SE

Atlanta, GA 30312

Table of Contents Table of Contents 5

Introduction

7

Part 1: Before You Begin 16

Where to Find Writing Contests 17

How NOT to Win a Writing Contest 19

Part 2: The Secret to Winning a Writing Contest: Write a Great Story 22

From Start to Finish: A Short Story Timeline 24

Mood-Driven vs. Event-Driven Stories 34

3 Key Elements of Interesting Short Stories 38

How to Write a Short Story that Wins a Writing Contest 43

Bonus: How to Win a Pulitzer 52

Part 3: Rewrite to Perfection

67

How to Edit Your Story 68

The Secret to Helpful Critique

73

Part 4: The Essential Step: Submit Your Story 80

Submit 81

How to Deal With Rejection

83

Part 5: Wisdom From the Editors of Literary Magazines 91

Tips from Emily Wenstrom, Editor of Wordhaus 92

An Interview with Linda SwansonDavies, Editor of Glimmer Train 96

Part 6: More Writing Contest Resources 103

Introduction Some enter writing contests to get practice. Others enter to motivate themselves to finish their stories.

But there’s one thing nearly everyone who enters a writing contest wants…

To win.

Except winning isn’t easy, right? Each contest can only have one winner, but what if there are hundreds or even thousands of entries? How do you compete in the midst of so many?

Also, writing is subjective. The story I like, you might not be able to stand. The story you love, I might think is mediocre. Each judge brings their own personal taste to their role. You can’t read the judges’ minds. So how do you win a writing contest in the midst of people’s unpredictable whims of taste?

As the editor of The Write Practice, one of the top websites for writers and aspiring writers in the world, I’ve judged more than fifteen writing contests, and I’ve learned what makes a story that wins and what will ruin your chances.

In this guide is everything I’ve learned about how to win a writing contest, from

HOW TO WIN A WRITING CONTEST

finding the right contests to understanding the rules to writing and editing a winning story.

Why Writing Contests? Writing contests can be some of the best practice you can get for your writing. They offer motivation (prizes!), deadlines, inspiration (contest themes!), and publication opportunities.

But they can also be very discouraging. I know from personal experience how frustrating it can be to lose a writing contest, especially when you have no idea why your story wasn’t chosen.

So why participate in writing contests? There are seven main reasons:

1. Practice Writing contests are deliberate practice.

When I first started The Write Practice in 2011, I knew how to practice a sport and how to practice playing an instrument, but for some reason, even after studying it in college, I wasn’t sure how to practice writing.

8


I set out to learn how to practice writing, and I found that the best kinds of practice for writing have three aspects:

●

Good practice is deliberate. You get better faster by writing deliberately, focusing on how you write and not just writing whatever you feel like. Writing contests that have a specific theme are great for this, because they allow you to start from scratch, stretch yourself, and practice the whole writing process from initial idea to editing the final sentence.

●

Good practice is timed. Most writers I know struggle with focus. There are just so many interesting distractions, and writing is just so hard. A good deadline can keep your butt in the chair and your fingers on the keys much longer than “inspiration” ever could. Writing contests have deadlines, and their focusing and motivating power alone is a great reason to participate in them.

●

Good practice includes feedback. We all have blind spots, especially when it comes to our writing, and the feedback you get in a writing contest can help

9


you figure out what’s working with your writing and your stories and what isn’t (more on this in a moment).

2. Get Published Writing contests can get your writing in front of readers. Most contests provide publication of some kind.

Is this important? Yes. Writers write for readers.

If you want to become a writer, you need to get used to writing for others. You need to practice getting feedback and dealing with rejection. You need to start earning fans. You do this by getting published, by sharing your writing in front of as many audiences as you can find.

Writing contest are a great avenue to publication.

3. Grow Your Writing Resume When you look at the query letters and book proposals of authors who attract the attention of publishers and literary agents, it’s often easy to see what separates them from those who go unpublished:

Credentials.

10


When you finish a book and are working on getting it published, you include a query letter to the agent or editor you’re submitting to with information about your background as a writer. And those agents and editors are often checking to make sure you’ve actually written for people before, that you understand what writing for an audience is, and that your writing is already being read by audiences and being approved by other gatekeepers.

That’s where contests can come in. Winning a writing contest, or even becoming a finalist, can be a great way to build your writing resume and start to accumulate those credentials.

4. Get Feedback I mentioned this earlier but it’s so important it bears more emphasis.

Before we begin, let’s all acknowledge something about the nature of feedback, criticism, and rejection: it sucks. Criticism, and rejection especially, is painful at its best and deeply wounding at its worst. It can often have a lasting impact on our writing and selfconfidence.

11


Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, one surprising thing about criticism is that it’s also incredibly useful for creativity. In fact, researchers have found that criticism is far more effective for generating ideas than even brainstorming. Here’s Charlan Nemeth, a psychologist at Berkeley:

While the instruction ‘Do not criticize’ is often cited as the important instruction in brainstorming, this appears to be a counterproductive strategy. Our findings show that debate and criticism do not inhibit ideas but, rather, stimulate them relative to every other condition… Authentic dissent can be difficult, but it’s always invigorating. It wakes us right up.

Many contests offer a review of your manuscript from a professional author or editor. But for many other contests, you don’t need to win to get this feedback: the notes and comments the judging panel make on your entry are included.

Getting a professional to review your writing can be very expensive, so this can be a huge benefit to participating in contests.

12


5. Earn Money and Prizes Who doesn’t like prizes? Most writing contests award prizes ranging from a few copies of the publication to thousands of dollars.

To me, the prizes are much less interesting that the practice, feedback, and credentials you get from participating in writing contests. But still, winning $500 after your story is picked for the first place prize sounds pretty great, right?

6. Get Other Perks As a perk for being a finalist in a writing contest sponsored by the Washington Romance Writer’s association, a writer friend of mine got a chance to pitch the agents and editors who attended the association’s annual retreat. This was ten minutes she got with big name agents and editors she would never have met otherwise. And that was just for being one of about 10 finalists. Pretty great perk!

13


7. They’re Fun! Writing is fun! Sharing your writing in contests is fun! Yes, it’s a competition, but don’t take it too seriously. If you’re not having fun, you’re not doing it right.

Now go out there and enjoy a writing contest!

Why NOT Enter a Writing Contest Writing contests almost always cost money. If you’re uncomfortable spending money to have your work read, contests might not be for you.

They rarely cost more than $30, but that’s more than free. If you try to enter as many contests as possible, the cost will add up quickly.

However, when you think of the time it takes to read hundreds or thousands of writing pieces, you can begin to understand why they cost money. And some writing contests, like the contests The Write Practice hosts, offer perks regardless of whether you win or lose (like publication, feedback, and training).

14


All that said, entering writing contests is still one of the best ways to get writing critique from excellent readers, increase your chances of getting published, and build your writing credentials. It’s definitely worth doing the research to find a contest that fits your stories.

15

Part 1: Before You Begin So you’ve decided to enter a writing contest!

Before you start writing your story, there are a few things to consider. In this section, we’ll go over the basics of finding contests to submit to and look at some contest mistakes to avoid.


CHAPTER 1

Where to Find Writing Contests Don’t know where to find a writing contest? If so, I've got you covered with a handpicked list of my favorite writing contests. You can find the latest version of this list on my website at letswriteashortstory.com/writing-contests, but I’ve also included a list here as well.

In addition, many literary magazines host writing contests. If you have your eye on any literary magazines you’d like to submit a story to, check their guidelines—they may have a contest running soon. And if you’re not sure where to find a literary magazine that fits your stories, check out duotrope.com for upto-date listings of thousands of publications.

In the meantime, here are nine of my favorite writing contests:

17


1. Glimmer Train Literary Magazine: Glimmer Train hosts four contests several times each year.

2. Nelsen Algren Award: The Chicago Tribune awards the prestigious Nelsen Algren Award annually.

3. Robert and Adele Schiff Awards in Poetry and Prose: The Cincinnati Review awards the annual Robert and Adele Schiff Awards.

4. Writer’s Digest: Writer’s Digest hosts a short story competition and a general writing competition once each year.

5. Narrative Magazine: Narrative Magazine hosts short story contests several times a year.

6. The NANO Prize: NANO Fiction awards the annual NANO prize for short fiction of 300 words or fewer.

7. The New Guard: The New Guard hosts several short story contests each year.

8. Writing Maps: Writing Maps hosts a monthly writing contest for short fiction of 150 words or fewer.

9. The Write Practice: The Write Practice hosts several short story contests each year.

18


CHAPTER 2

How NOT to Win a Writing Contest Let’s get the obvious out of the way.

Submitting a proofed, grammatically correct entry in the requested genre that follows the contest’s theme and meets the expected word count is just the minimum requirement if you want to win a writing contest.

If you want to lose a writing contest, though, do any or all of the following:

●

Don’t proofread. Do I really need to tell you to proofread? Personally, I’m fairly lenient when it comes to typos. If the piece is excellent but has two or three mistakes, I recognize that there is time to fix them before we publish the story. However, not all judges are so understanding, and it goes without saying that you need to closely proof-

19


read your writing before submitting to a writing contest.

●

Knowingly or unknowingly break grammar rules. If you want to win, observe proper grammar. Again, I don’t really need to tell you this, do I?

●

Write 1,000 words more than the word count limit. You will not win a writing contest if you submit a 2,500 word story to a writing contest asking for pieces 1,500 words or less. Just don’t do it.

●

Submit a literary masterpiece to a supernatural romance contest. Yes, that’s a recipe for failure. Writing contests generally lean toward certain genres. If the genre is not explicitly stated, read previously published stories from the contest to get a sense of what the judges will be looking for.

●

If there is a theme, ignore it. Writing contests often ask for pieces that fit a certain theme or even follow a prompt. A good way to lose a writing contest is to ignore these requirements and write whatever you feel like.

20


These are obvious, right? I would like to believe that they are, but I’ve judged enough writing contests to know that many people don’t seem to understand these tips.

Of course, if you’re reading this guide, I’m sure you’re smart enough to know these already, so let’s get to the important tips, shall we?

Remember, these are just the base requirements. Following them will only ensure that your piece is considered, not chosen as the winner. Actually winning a writing contest is much more difficult.

21

Part 2: The Secret to Winning a Writing Contest: Write a Great Story The truth is, there’s no secret formula to win a writing contest. After all the poorlysubmitted rulebreakers from the previous chapter are weeded out, the judges are left to select a handful of noteworthy stories from a large pool.

If you want the judges to select your story, you must do one thing:

Write a great story.

There’s no shortcut here. Great stories win writing contests. If you want to win, you must write a great story.

This step is essential. It can be intimidating, though. Writing isn’t easy, and writing a great story is even harder.

I used to wonder how Pixar came out with such great movies year after year. Then, I found out a normal Pixar film takes six years to develop, and most of that time is spent on the story.

But don’t despair. There are many tips, tricks, and strategies you can employ to help you write a story, and more importantly, a


story that’s good. In this section, we’ll cover everything you need to know about writing a story that wins a contest.

23


CHAPTER 3

From Start to Finish: A Short Story Timeline Writing a great story always starts with the same first step: write a story.

To some extent, the process for writing a story is different each time. In the introduction to American Gods, Neil Gaiman quotes Gene Wolfe, who told him, “You never learn how to write a novel. You only learn to write the novel you’re on.”

This is true for short stories as well.

You never learn how to write a short story. You only learn to write the story you’re on.

And yet, there are certain patterns to writing a short story, patterns I think everyone follows in their own haphazard way. I’ll call them steps, but they’re more like general paths that may or may not apply to your story. Still, it’s these patterns that I want to present to you in hopes it will make your own short story writing easier.

24


Requirements to Writing a Short Story

Before you begin your story, let’s discuss three things you’ll need to write it. If you don’t have these, you should think twice before you begin:

● Approximately ten to twenty hours of time. We all write at different paces, and depending on the length of your story (e.g. 200 word flash fiction vs. 5,000 word traditional short story), it might take five hours or fifty. But I’ve found that most short stories in the 3,000 to 5,000 word range take ten to twenty hours.

●

An idea. Even a basic sliver of an idea will do. But all stories have to start somewhere—no idea, no story. If you’re still looking for an idea for your story, check out my list of my top 100 short story ideas here.

●

Writing devices or utensils. This one may be obvious, but it bears mentioning; it’s just as essential as the first two. (By the way, I recommend Scrivener for writing short stories.)

Ready to get writing? Here are seven steps to write a short story:

25


1. First, Write the Basic   Story in One Sitting It may seem silly to begin a list of steps on how to write a short story with a tip to “write the story,” but let me explain.

There are really two different kinds of stories. There is the art form, “short stories,” which comes complete with characters, plot, description, and style.

Then there’s the story, the funny, amusing, crazy story you’d tell a friend over a meal.

26


The story and the short story are not the same thing. The former is just a story. We tell them all the time. The latter is an art.

The first step to writing a short story is to write the former, the story, that version of the story that you would tell a friend.

And when you write it, be sure to write it in one sitting. Just tell the story. Don’t think about it too much, don’t go off to do more research, don’t take a break. Just get the story written down.

Whenever I break this rule it takes me FOREVER to finish writing the story. Don’t make that mistake—sit down and write the story.

Time: About 1.5 hours

2. Next, Find Your Protagonist After you’ve written the basic story, take a step back. You may feel extremely proud of your story or completely embarrassed. Ignore these feelings, as they bear no relation to how good or bad your story actually is or, more importantly, how good it will be.

The next step is to read through your story to find the protagonist.

27


As Stephen Koch says, "The protagonist is the character whose fate matters most to the story."

Now, you may think you already know who your protagonist is, but depending on your story, this can actually be more tricky than you might think.

Your protagonist isn’t necessarily the narrator, nor is she necessarily the “good guy” in the story. Instead, the protagonist is the person who makes the decisions that drive the story forward.

Your protagonist centers the story and drives the plot, and his or her fate gives the story its meaning. As you move forward in the writing process, it’s important to choose the right protagonist.

Time: About 0.5 hours

3. Then, Write the   Perfect First Line Great first lines have the power to entice your reader enough that it would be unthinkable to set your story down. If you want to hook your reader, it starts with writing the perfect first line.

There’s a lot to say about how to write the perfect first line, but here are five quick tips:

28


●

Like the opening of a film, invite us into the scene.

● Surprise us.

● Establish a voice.

● Be clear.

● See if you can tell the entirety of your story in a single sentence.

Time: About 1 hour

4. Break the Story Into   a Scene List Every story is composed of a set of scenes which take place in a specific place and time. A scene list keeps track of your scenes, helping you organize your story and add detail and life at each step.

Scene lists do two main things:

●

Provide structure to your story.

29


● Show you which parts need more work.

You don’t have to follow your scene list exactly, but they definitely help you work through your story, especially if you’re writing over multiple sittings.

Time: About 2 hours

5. Only Now Should You Research If you’re like me, you want to start researching as soon as you get an idea so that you can pack as much detail into the story as possible. The problem is that if you research too soon, what you find will distort your story, causing it to potentially break under the weight of what you’ve learned.

Other writers never research, which can leave their story feeling fuzzy and underdeveloped.

By waiting until your story is well on its way, you can keep it from getting derailed by the research process, and by this point you’ll also be able to ask very specific questions about your story rather than following tangents wherever they take you.

30


So go fill in that scene list with some hard, cold facts!

Time: About 3 hours

6. Write/Edit/Write/Edit/Write/ Edit At this point, it’s time to get some serious writing done.

Now that you know who your protagonist is, have the perfect first line, have created your scene list, and have done your research, it’s time to finally get this story written.

We all write differently. Some write quickly in multiple drafts; others write slowly and edit as they go. I’m not going to tell you how you should be writing. Whatever works for you, just get it done.

Time: About 10 hours (or more!)

7. Publish! I firmly believe publishing is the most important step to becoming a writer. Once your story is finally written, it’s not finished until it’s published.

Why? In short, writers write things other people read.

31


You write better when you know someone will soon be reading what you’ve written. If you write in the dark, no one will know if you aren’t giving your writing everything you have. But when you share your writing, you face the possibility of failure. This will force you to write the best story you possibly can.

Publishing doesn’t necessarily mean getting accepted by Glimmer Train or Narrative. It doesn’t even mean winning a writing contest.

Publishing simply involves sharing your work—whether that’s with your best friend or the writing contest judges.

When you’ve finished your first couple of drafts, share your story with a small group of friends or other writers who will be honest about its strengths and weaknesses. Getting feedback can be painful, but it’s an incredibly helpful part of the revision process. Your readers will find problems—and solutions— you’d never imagined.

And when you’ve polished your story until it shines, take the big step: submit it to a contest. There’s no writing motivation quite like a panel of judges.

The worst thing you can do for your story is to hide it away out of fear or even feigned indifference. When you’ve made it the best

32


story you know how to make it, go get your story out into the world.

Time: About 1 hour

The Only Short Story   They’ll Ever Read

As you write your short story, I want you to ask yourself a question:

What if this is the only story of yours someone ever reads? How will you give it everything you have?

Annie Dillard once said:

One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.

Don’t hold back. Don’t save ideas. Don’t write something you feel you should write.

Instead, write something that is wholly you, a story so bound to your soul that it would be impossible to mistake it for the work of another writer.

In other words, don’t write the best story. Write your best story.

That’s the story the judges want to read.

33


CHAPTER 4

Mood-Driven vs. Event-Driven Stories Edgar Allen Poe said, “A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.”

However, I would argue that most, if not quite all, short stories revolve around a central event, an event that provides most of the story’s meaning and creates a transformation in the protagonist. Besides length, this is one of the major things that distinguishes short stories from other literary forms.

So which is it? Are stories structured according to mood or transformative incidents? And when you’re writing a short story, do you need to have an event or a mood in mind before you begin?

Let’s look at the uses of each one.

34


Event-Driven Stories For many short stories it’s clearly true that a single event organizes the story.

Think about John Updike’s highly anthologized story “A&P,” about Sammy, a teenager who quits his job in protest for the way two girls were treated by his manager (you might have read it in high school). There is clearly a central event to the story: the moment Sammy quits his job, rebelling against the value system of his parents.

Or Shirley Jackson’s story “The Lottery” (if you didn’t read this in high school, you must have been homeschooled!), a Hunger Games-esque story about a lottery held in a small town that ended (spoiler alert if you somehow missed this one) with the public execution by stoning of the “winner.” It’s very clear that this story revolves around a central event.

Mood-Driven Stories However, there are also stories that don’t have a central event, stories where you can’t clearly say, “Oh, this is the major event in the story.” Some of these stories don’t even have many major events to speak of. Instead,

35


these are “mood” stories, stories that aren’t organized by action but by an emotional state.

For example, in Roberto Bolaño’s story “Gómez Palacio,” it is difficult to pinpoint an event that centers the story. However, Balaño is always building on the single mood of failure.

Or Denis Johnson’s “Emergency,” which I would argue does have a central moment, but which is mostly about the mood of self-destruction.

Which Is It? Mood or Event? Ultimately, this is a tough question to answer. While I think most good short stories are event driven, it’s hard to argue with Edgar Allen Poe, Denis Johnson, and Roberto Bolaño.

Here’s a suggestion for how to balance the two: if you’re writing a mood driven story, try to create a major event to center your story. If you’re writing an event driven story, try to maintain a consistent mood.

It’s important to recognize the roles that mood and event play in short stories. If you don’t understand the form of short stories,

36


you won’t be able to write a great one yourself.

But if these guidelines about mood vs. event don’t work for your story, do whatever does work. The goal isn’t to follow a formula perfectly. The goal is to write a really good short story.

37


CHAPTER 5

3 Key Elements of Interesting Short Stories At this point, you know what you need to do. Write, revise, submit—you’ve got those basics down.

Now it’s time to talk about the form of the short story and how to use it well.

Short stories vary dramatically in structure, genre, style, length, and pretty much every other measure. There are as many different kinds of short stories as there are writers who write them.

However, most great short stories share a few common traits. If you want to win a writing contest, it’s wise to employ these key elements.

1. A Few Moments Robert McKee says the challenge of the writer is to “show a lifetime in a few mo38


ments,” and in no other form is that more true than in a short story. You only have a handful of moments to tell the whole story, so you’d better pick those moments wisely.

The stories that win writing contests succeed in that. Many writers whose stories aren’t chosen fall into the fatal trap telling instead of showing. Instead of showing the reader a scene in time, with description, dialogue, and action, these writers summarize what happened with expository narrative.

In other words, the writers who win tell a story, while many of the writers who don’t win give a lot of information.

Choose your moments wisely, and show them clearly with action, dialogue, and description.

2. A Character Who Changes When I judge writing contests, I always ask, “Does the main character in this story change? Is he different at the end of it?”

Stories, for better worse, are intrinsically moralistic. The protagonist must learn something by the end of it; something must happen to her. Otherwise, it’s a waste of the reader’s (and the writer’s!) time.

39


Does your protagonist change? Do you clearly show that change? If not, how can you introduce some kind of conflict to help your protagonist along?

3. Realistic Scenes I’m not a particularly realistic writer. I once wrote a story about a boy who kills a mountain lion with his bare hands. In contests I’ve judged in the past, I’ve often shortlisted stories with elements that seemed perfectly plausible to me. However, inevitably, another judge would ask, “Would that character really do that? Is that realistic?”

One judge in particular was good at finding the flaws in logic in stories. A trauma nurse for over 20 years, she easily found places where the writer fudged the truth to make their story work. And she was always right. We disqualified dozens of stories because they weren’t realistic.

As you edit your stories, perform a realism audit:

●

Read through your dialogue aloud. After each line, ask yourself, “Would this character really say that? Is that true to who he or she is?”

40


●

Look at each action made by a character, and ask, “Would this character really do that? Is that true to who he or she is?

●

Look at the more spectacular events in your story. Are you taking things too far in order to create false drama? Remember what John Steinback said: “I never exaggerate. I just remember big.”

As you edit (though not as you write), be skeptical about your stories. Those who are reading your work will be.

Employ These Elements   and Get Creative Within these guidelines, there’s a lot of room to play around. Let your creativity flow and write whatever kind of story you like!

But keep these essential elements in mind as you write, and especially as you edit. Employ them all, and when you’re done, you’ll have a tight, well-crafted, intriguing short story that is sure to capture readers’ (and judges’!) attention.

41


42


CHAPTER 6

How to Write a Short Story that Wins a Writing Contest By now, you’ve got the basics of short story writing down. You know the steps to take and the elements to include. You’ve got some fundamental principles for how to structure your story, and you know how to make it interesting and engaging.

But you’re here to do more than just write a short story. You’re here to win a writing contest.

So now, let’s take your story to the next level.

1. First, recognize you are human This may be a strange way to begin a list of tips on how to win a writing contest, but let me explain.

Stephen King once said, “To write is human, to edit is divine.” Instead of the word 43


“editing,” you could substitute the phrase “judge writing contests,” because editors and writing contest judges play a similarly godlike role. (Although, you might say writing contest judges are more like fallen angels than little gods).

Why is one excellent story chosen over another excellent story? Who knows?! Even the judge may not know, at least not objectively (although, they will always have great reasons).

To scrutinize the actions of the judges of a writing contest is impossible.

All writing is subjective. A judge attempts to say, “This story is good,” or, “This story is bad,” but really, they are just choosing based on their own idiosyncratic taste. Winning comes down to luck. Or God. Or what the judge ate for lunch that day.

What is the writer to do then? Submit your piece, pray it wins, and then go write your next story (and find a new contest to submit to). Nothing else can be done.

I know that’s not a very good tip. If you need more advice than this, continue reading.

44


2. Defeat Writer’s Block Sometimes it’s hard to get started. Sometimes it’s hard to slog through the middle. And sometimes it’s hard to wrap it up.

If you want to finish your story and win a writing contest, though, you have to fight through it and write anyway.

The best way to defeat writer’s block is to write. If you’re stuck, don’t try to write well. Don’t try to be perfect. Just write.

Sometimes, to write better stories, you have to start by taking the pressure off and just writing.

3. Develop Your Protagonist… Stories are about protagonists, and if you don’t have a good protagonist, you won’t have a good story.

The essential ingredient for every protagonist is that they must make decisions. Victor Frankl said, “A human being is a deciding being.” Your protagonist must make a decision to get herself into whatever mess she gets into in your story, and likewise, she must decide to get herself out of the mess.

To further develop your protagonist, use other character archetypes like the villain,

45


the protagonist’s opposite; or the fool, a sidekick character that reveals the protagonist’s softer side.

4. And Make Your Protagonist Fascinating Your protagonist must be fascinating. And what fascinates us the most is contrast.

Light vs. Darkness. Good vs. evil. A good hero battling the evil in the world. A normal person battling the evil inside themselves. An evil person drawn, despite themselves, to a moment of goodness.

Life vs. death. A woman’s struggle against cancer, against a villain that wants to kill her, against the deathly banality of modern life.

Male vs. female.

Neat vs. messy.

Contrast is fascinating. Does your protagonist have contrast? If you want to win a writing contest, he or she should.

5. Write What You Know (even if what you know never happened) In one writing contest, I read a story written by a Brazilian writer about American kids 46


driving around, eating hamburgers, and going to prep school.

“Write what you know,” I wrote to her over email. “I’m sure there are fascinating stories where you live. But don’t regurgitate stories you see on American television. You will never know that world as deeply as you know your own.”

On the other hand, Ursula Le Guin said this about the advice to write what you know:

I think it’s a very good rule and have always obeyed it. I write about imaginary countries, alien societies on other planets, dragons, wizards, the Napa Valley in 22002. I know these things. I know them better than anybody else possibly could, so it’s my duty to testify about them.

6. Create Suspense and Drama To create suspense, set up a dramatic question. A dramatic question is something like, “Is he going to make it?” or, “Is she going to get the man of her dreams?” By putting your protagonist’s fate in doubt, you make the reader ask, “What happens next?”

47


To do this well, you need to carefully restrict the flow of information to the reader. Nothing destroys drama like over-sharing.

7. Show, Don’t Tell Honestly, the saying “show, don’t tell” is overused. However, when placed next to the step above, it becomes very effective.

When something interesting happens in your story that changes the fate of your character, don’t tell us about it. Show the scene! Your readers have a right to see the best parts of the story play out in front of them. Show the interesting parts of your story, and tell the rest.

8. Write Good Dialogue Good dialogue comes from two things: intimate knowledge of your characters and lots of rewriting.

Each character must have a unique voice. To make sure your characters all sound different, read each character’s dialogue out loud and ask yourself, “Does this sound like my character?” If your answer is no, then you have some rewriting to do.

48


Also, with your speaker tags, try not to use anything but “he said” and “she said.” Speaker tags like “he exclaimed,” “she announced,” and “he spoke vehemently” are distracting and unnecessary. The occasional “he asked” is fine, though.

9. Write About Death Think about the last five novels you read. In how many of them did a character die? Good stories often involve death. Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Charlotte’s Web, and The Lord of the Rings all involve main characters who die.

Death is the universal theme because every person who lives will one day die. Tap into the power of death in your storytelling.

10. Write a Surprise Ending I love surprise endings. All judges do. However, I hate out of the blue endings.

A good surprise ending can be predicted from the very beginning, but the author skillfully distracts you so that you never expect it. The traditional method of distracting the reader is to use red herrings.

49


A bad surprise ending cannot be predicted, and feels like the writer is simply trying to give the reader something they would never expect. This is lazy.

Please surprise me. Please don’t make up the most shocking ending without providing the clues to this ending earlier in the story.

11. Repeat With a Twist In the last few lines of your story, repeat something from earlier in the story with a twist. This echoed ending will reverberate with your reader, giving closure and emotional power.

For example, you might repeat the opening image. If the snow is falling in the first lines of the story, you might say, “As night closed, the snow continued to fall. He thought it would fall for all his life.”

You might repeat an action. If your character is eating at a diner with his wife in the first scene, perhaps in the last scene he is eating at the same diner all alone.

You might repeat a character. If your heroine has a meet-cute with an attractive man early in the story, you can end the story with him unexpectedly showing up at her workplace.

50


Repeating with a twist gives your ending an artful sense of unity. It’s also really fun!

12. Know the Rules,   Then Break Them Good writers know all the rules and follow them. Great writers know all the rules and break them.

However, the best writers don’t break the rules arbitrarily. They break them because their stories require a whole new set of rules. Respect the rules. But remember that you don’t serve the rules—you serve your stories.

How to (Really) Win a Writing Contest There is, of course, no guaranteed way to win a writing contest. All you can do is write your best piece, follow the rules of the contest, and submit. Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts.

All that’s to say, don’t over think this.

WRITE. SUBMIT. REPEAT. Truly, that is the only way to win a writing contest.

#   51

51


CHAPTER 7

Bonus: How to Win a Pulitzer In 2012, the Pulitzer Prize for fiction was not awarded. The fiction panel nominated three books from a reading list of 300. (Can you imagine reading 300 books in a year?)

Yet the Pulitzer board didn’t pick any of them. And we don’t know why. Were they not good enough? Were they not American enough? We don’t know. All we know is the Pulitzer Prize for fiction wasn’t awarded that year.

However, Michael Cunningham’s article on how the three Pulitzer nominees were chosen is a fascinating guide for how to angle for the Pulitzer.

The writing contests you’re submitting your stories to aren’t the Pulitzer Prize. But while we’re talking contests, let’s take a look at one of the most prestigious writing prizes in the United States.

52


Who knows? Maybe one day, the book the Pulitzer board selects will be yours.

It never hurts to be prepared, and it’s always a good idea to look to the greats so you know what to aim for.

But before we talk about what the Pulitzer fiction panel looked for in the books they read, let’s look at what sets Pulitzer reading list novels apart.

8 Secrets of Literary Fiction We all know there are novels and then there are “literary” novels. When you read Margaret Atwood, it just feels different than when you read Tom Clancy. And for some reason, these literary novels are the ones that win all the most prestigious awards, like the Pulitzer Prize, the Man Booker Prize, and the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Literary authors are known for their unique voices and experimental styles. You might have learned not to write run-on sentences in school or to avoid beginning a sentence with “and,” but literary writers often seem to flaunt their rule-breaking ways.

This is both good and bad. Literary novels can be difficult to understand, but they can also be beautiful to read, like poetry.

53


Many of the qualities that make them so beautiful are difficult to pinpoint, more about feel and taste than specific strategies. But there are also some techniques commonly employed in literary fiction that don’t always appear in popular fiction. If you want to make your writing more “literary,” try your hand at these eight techniques.

1. Write long sentences. Long sentences can make for beautiful, complex prose that you want to read again and again to fully appreciate.

Hemingway, Faulkner (both Nobel winners), James Joyce, and all those 1920s modernist authors were known for their long, run-on sentences, full of conjunctions and lacking “correct” punctuation. Contemporary writers, like Cormac McCarthy and Tim O’Brien, do the same. Here’s a quote from O’Brien’s The Things They Carried which illustrates it clearly:

Now and then, however, there were times of panic, when they squealed or wanted to squeal but couldn’t, when they twitched and made moaning sounds and covered their 54


heads and said Dear Jesus and flopped around on the earth and fired their weapons blindly and cringed and sobbed and begged for the noise to stop and went wild and made stupid promises to themselves and to God and to their mothers and fathers, hoping not to die.

Isn’t that beautiful?

2. Write short sentences. Writing long sentences can get old. If you follow up an extremely long sentence with a short snappy one, you can whip your reader to attention. Notice how Cormac McCarthy does it in Suttree:

One thing. I spoke with bitterness about my life and I said that I would take my own part against the slander of oblivion and against the monstrous facelessness of it and that I would stand a stone in the very void where all would read my name. Of that vanity I recant all.

55


Try reading it aloud. Notice how that last sentence feels like a gavel cracking in a loud courtroom?

3. Be lyrical. Literary writers are interested not just in what their words mean, but in how they sound. The technical term for this is phonaesthetics, the study of the sound of words and sentences. Like poets, literary writers want their words to melt on their readers’ tongues like rich, dark chocolate. They want their readers to stop and say, “Mmm,” and stare off into the distance contemplating all that is beautiful.

There are a few techniques writers use to make their writing more euphonic, including alliteration, assonance, and consonance, but the best way to develop your “ear” for lyrical writing is to read other lyrical writers very slowly. You might pick up some Annie Dillard, William Faulkner, or Virginia Woolf.

56


4. Make an allusion to the Bible or Moby Dick or Milton. Literary writers are well-read. They realize their writing doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and so they subtly pay homage to the classic writers who have gone before them, which also deepens the meaning of their own work.

To make an allusion, you use an image, character, or even a direct quote from another work of literature. These act as portals, coloring your story with the meanings wrapped up in the work you’re referencing.

Also, it makes those who “get it” feel special.

5. Use an eponym to name your characters. Another way to use allusion is to name one of your characters after a character in another work. This technique works as a kind of literary pun, and creates an implicit association, a shared relationship, with the character in the other work.

57


6. Be specific. Literary writers often study the vocabulary of the subject they’re writing about. They want their writing to be precise. For example, if they’re writing about nature, rather than just talking about the trees, they might describe the tulip poplar, the white oak, the eastern red cedar.

If they’re writing about birds, they might avoid describing them as the red bird or the blue bird, but rather the kingfisher, the painted bunting, or the yellow-bellied sapsucker.

7. Write a story within a story (or a story within a story within a story). The story-within-a-story is one of the oldest literary techniques, and it’s a simple way to create rich, multi-layered stories.

It works simply by having one of your characters tell another character a story, and this second story becomes the main story of the novel. Think Arabian Nights, where Scheherazade tells the Sultan story after sto-

58


ry and eventually manages to make him fall in love with her.

Or Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, where the story of Petruchio “wedding and bedding” Katherina is set within another play about a drunk tricked into thinking he’s rich.

Or Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, where the protagonist writes his memoirs as he narrates them to his mistress.

This is dangerous to try in a short story— there’s just not enough room to develop more than a single plot. Remember, one of the key elements of interesting short stories is that they contain just a few moments.

However, consider exploring this technique in your next novel, especially if you’re aiming for a Pulitzer.

8. Have a wide scope. Literary novels tend to have a wide national or international scope, even if they portray local events. Hemingway, for example, often set his novels within the context of great wars, like World War I or the Spanish Civil War. Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby is considered a portrait of the “Lost Generation” and the Roaring Twenties because of its memorable characters caught up in the decade’s

59


debauchery. Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is about the rise and “fall” of India, from independence to Indira Gandhi’s injustices.

You may not want to win a Pulitzer, but if you do want to give your writing a touch of literary flair, these techniques are a good place to start. By far the best way to learn more about these techniques is to read more literary fiction. Here are a few good titles by authors I’ve mentioned:

●

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

● The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

● Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

● Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

● A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

● Absalom! Absalom! by William Faulkner

60


5 Attributes of Pulitzer Winners A variety of techniques set “literary” fiction apart from the rest of the writing world. But those books are determined to be “literary,” what makes one novel more worthy of the Pulitzer than another?

Let’s look at what Michael Cunningham, who served on the Pulitzer panel in 2012, has to say about what sets apart the good from the great. If you want to win the Pulitzer, here’s how in five (not so) easy steps:

1. Go Big If you want to win a Pulitzer, Cunningham says go big:

[We agreed] we would tend to favor the grand, flawed effort over the exquisitely crafted miniature. We preferred visionary explorers to modest gardeners, and declared ourselves willing to forgive certain shortcomings or overreachings in a writer who was clearly attempting to accomplish more than can tech-

61


nically be done using only ink and paper.

Be ambitious. Write the story you’re not sure you have the skills to tell. Take more risks.

There’s nothing wrong, of course, with a small story. However, these judges decided a national prize deserves a country-sized story.

2. Discover Something New or Destroy Something Old One of the jurors looked for stories where something “happened”:

Maureen was drawn to writers who told a gripping and forceful story. She did not by any means require a conventional story, conventionally told, but she wanted something to have happened by the time she reached the end, some sea change to have occurred, some new narrative continent discovered, or some ancient narrative civilization destroyed.

62


Good stories require change. Great stories require colossal transformation.

How much transformation do your characters go through from the beginning of your story to the end? How can you inflict more change upon them?

3. Make Your Reader Fall in Love This might be beyond your control, but great books make their readers fall in love with them. The third juror was looking for just that:

Susan was a tough-minded romantic. She wanted to fall in love with a book. She always had reasons for her devotions, as an astute reader would, but she was, to her credit, probably the most emotional one among us. Susan could fall in love with a book in more or less the way one falls in love with a person. Yes, you can provide, if asked, a list of your loved one’s lovable qualities: he’s kind and funny and smart and generous and he knows the names of trees.

63


But he’s also more than amalgamation of qualities. You love him, the entirety of him, which can’t be wholly explained by even the most exhaustive explication of his virtues. And you love him no less for his failings. O.K., he’s bad with money, he can be moody sometimes, and he snores. His marvels so outshine the little complaints as to render them ridiculous.

4. Write Beautifully To win a Pulitzer, every sentence must be beautifully written, says Cunningham:

I was the language crank, the one who swooned over sentences. I could forgive much in a book if it was written with force and beauty, if its story was told in a voice unlike anything I’d heard before, if the writer was finding new and mesmerizing ways to employ the same words that have been available to all American writers for hundreds

64


of years. I tended to balk if a book contained some good lines but also some indifferent ones. I insisted that every line should be a good one. I was—and am—a bit fanatical on the subject.

Of all of the criteria, this may be the piece most in your power. Beautiful writing requires only dogged editing, the willingness to write and rewrite a thousand times until each sentence is perfect. Or if not perfect, at least well-written.

Are you willing to spend that much time with each sentence?

5. Do Magic The last criterion, however, dissolves all the others:

Fiction involves trace elements of magic; it works for reasons we can explain and also for reasons we can’t. If novels or short-story collections could be weighed strictly in terms of their components (fully developed characters, check; origi-

65


nal voice, check; solidly crafted structure, check; serious theme, check) they might satisfy, but they would fail to enchant. A great work of fiction involves a certain frisson that occurs when its various components cohere and then ignite. The cause of the fire should, to some extent, elude the experts sent to investigate.

Great writing is, in other words, a mystery.

A list of tips like this is, to some extent, a foolish exercise. While you have control over much of your writing, there will always be pieces that escape your grasp, that will not be controlled by a mortal, that must be rendered unto God.

In the end, all you can do is write the best story you know how, edit it to perfection, and submit it—and then repeat the process again, and again, and again.

66

Part 3: Rewrite to Perfection At this point, you’ve sat down with your inkling of an idea, picked up a pen, and gotten your story down on paper.

Great job! That’s the big step.

Now it’s time for the other big step: editing your story.

Don’t worry—this step isn’t as scary as it sounds. In the following chapters, we’ll cover how to self-edit your story and how to get feedback that will take it to the next level.


CHAPTER 8

How to Edit Your Story Writing the final line of your first draft opens up a major question: How do you know when your story is finished?

I love this quote from Michael Crichton:

Books aren’t written—they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it.

Your story isn’t finished until you revise it from beginning to end at least once (and almost always more than once). I could share a hundred quotes from celebrated writers that sound exactly like the one above, but instead, just trust me. When you finish your first draft, you have much more work to do.

68


How the Editing Process Works Though the editing process looks different for every writer, a few things seem to work well for everyone. The best book I’ve ever read about the revision process is Stephen Koch’s Writer’s Workshop. If you want to learn more about this subject, I highly recommend picking up a copy.

Here are four suggestions on how to edit your story:

1. Read Your Story After you finish your first draft, read your story once by yourself. Don’t edit. Don’t cross out anything. The purpose of this step is not to revise but to get a fresh perspective on the story and see what holes need filling.

While I wouldn’t suggest doing any heavy duty editing, you’re welcome to take notes or jot down any ideas you have for the next step.

2. Write 10 Scenarios In my college art class, our first assignment was to draw a quick sketch of a tea cup 100 times. Yes, I was very familiar with that tea cup by the end of the assignment. The

69


hard part was that each drawing had to be different. After I drew the teacup from a few normal perspectives, I was forced to get creative. I started drawing levitating tea cups, tea cups that were sawn in half, cubist tea cups, and even tea cup wallpaper.

Scenarios function the same way. They’re quick summaries of your entire story in just a few hundred words. By telling a summarized version of your story ten different ways, you get new ideas about its core essentials, who the main important characters are, which ideas are most central, and how to structure the story in the most interesting way possible.

Scenarios shouldn’t take longer than a day to write, and can be as short as 300 to 500 words for a short story. The key is to have fun and be creative!

3. Three Drafts Most professional writers write three drafts or more. The first draft is often called the “vomit draft” or the “shitty first draft.” Don’t share it with anyone! Your first draft is your chance to explore your story and figure out what it’s about.

70


Of course, there are quite a few writers out there who write just one draft total, no further drafts needed. However, single-drafters usually spend much longer on their first drafts than most writers, so that by the end, they probably rewrite more than multidrafters.

After your first draft, your second draft is meant for major structural fixes and for clarifying the plot and characters of your story. If you found any major holes in the reading stage, your second draft is a great time to write or rewrite scenes. After the discoveries you make in your scenarios, you may even decide to rewrite the whole story from the beginning.

I wouldn’t do much polishing until your third draft. That would be like sanding down the foundation of your house. Your final touches don’t come until your third draft. Now is where everything starts to gel. This is the fun part! First drafts are for digging the story’s foundation, second drafts for framing the house, and third drafts for finish work.

4. Send it to Friends How do you know when your story is finished? Leonard da Vinci once said, “Art is

71


never finished, only abandoned.” However, there is a trick to knowing when to “abandon” your book and send it out into the world.

Whenever I finish any draft except for the first—which is for my eyes only—I send my story to a group of up to thirty friends to give me feedback. Through these beta readers I’m able to get a sense of what my story really is, not what I think it is. When you edit your story, you get too close to the work to have any rational perspective. Beta readers bring fresh eyes, and by listening to them as they talk about your story, you’ll be able to see whether it’s ready for the world.

Of course, receiving helpful critique can be a challenging and emotional process. In the next chapter, we’ll look at the essentials of truly good critique and talk about how to make it as useful as possible.

In the meantime, edit, edit, and edit some more!

72


CHAPTER 9

The Secret to Helpful Critique Remember earlier when we talked about publishing? I told you then that publishing is the most important step to become a writer.

It’s true. But wait! Don’t go submitting your story to that writing contest just yet.

Publishing is about so much more than being recognized by a literary magazine, a writing contest judge, or a literary agent. The essence of publishing is simply sharing your work, inviting someone, anyone, to read it. It doesn’t matter whether that person is a bigshot New York editor or your mom. When you invite others to read your story, you’re publishing.

You have to share your writing.

That being said, the first place you share your story shouldn’t be a writing contest submission form.

Once you’ve edited and edited and edited until you can find nothing else to change, it’s

73


time to seek out feedback from others. You’re very close to your story, too close to see its weaknesses and strengths. Other readers will be able to identify them, and may also have good ideas for how to fix the weaknesses and make the strengths even stronger.

Still, I understand that this can be a scary step. If you’ve ever received a bad critique, whether it was poorly thought out or just straight up wrong, you know that sometimes critiques can do more harm than good.

In order to make this step as pain-free and helpful as possible, let’s talk about how to give feedback as good as any New York editor and how to take feedback like a pro.

Critique Is Vital Not sure you want to do this? Let’s revisit that quote from Charlan Nemeth, a psychologist at Berkeley, way up in the Introduction.

While the instruction ‘Do not criticize’ is often cited as the important instruction in brainstorming, this appears to be a counterproductive strategy. Our findings show that debate and criticism do not inhibit ideas but, rather, stimulate them relative to every other condition…. Authentic dissent can be 74


difficult, but it’s always invigorating. It wakes us right up.

Great writing critique is both encouraging and invigorating and gives you an invaluable boost as a writer. Though it can be hard to receive, it will always leave you with a more polished story. Why would you skip a step that can so dramatically improve your writing and increase your chances of winning the next contest?

Feedback is a vital tool to make your story the best it can be. Not all feedback is helpful, though, or even kind. So how can you sift out the good from the dross?

There are a variety of ways to give and receive writing critique. But there are a couple of hallmarks that mark the really helpful feedback—the feedback that both helps you recognize your story’s weaknesses and encourages you to keep writing.

1. Good Critique Identifies Both the Good and the Bad Imagine if I read your story and handed it back to you, and all I said was, “This dialogue isn’t believable at all.”

75


How would that make you feel? Probably pretty discouraged.

But suppose I switched it up and said, “Hey, you’ve got a great story here! I really like this character. He’s interesting and welldeveloped. In this section, I don’t find his dialogue very believable. But you’ve done a really good job of showing his personality in this story.”

In both examples, I’ve pointed out a weakness that needs some work. But in the second example, I’ve also identified a couple of strengths. By surrounding the weakness with the strengths, I’ve presented critique in a way that’s much easier to accept and more encouraging to receive.

Here’s the truth: your story has weaknesses. You need to know what those are so you can revise them.

But here’s the other truth: your story also has strengths. You need to know what those strengths are so you can remember you’re doing great and feel that boost of encouragement to keep writing. And hey, you also need to know what not to change!

If you hear only the good, you won’t know what to work on, and if you hear only the bad, you’ll feel too discouraged to continue. Find a reader who is willing to tell you both what’s working in your story and what isn’t.

76


2. Good Critique Is Specific Truly helpful critique doesn’t generalize and isn’t vague, but is as specific as possible. It’s much easier to see what doesn’t work, understand what’s wrong, and figure out how to fix it when the critique is very specific, using precise examples.

Here’s what I mean:

I really liked the way you drew us into the scene by describing the setting as if we were actively walking through it. I especially enjoyed your description of Manhattan here: “Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward.”

However, I found that your language was overly stiff and formal, especially when you use words like “thence” and “circumambulate,” which are so far out of common use I had to look a few of them up. I think you’ll find that people will be able to connect emotionally with your novel much more easily if you used a more informal vocabulary.

77


See how specific I was? Easy enough, right? (Bonus points if you know what famous novel I was “critiquing.”)

The best part is, now you know why the good parts work and how to revise the weaker parts so they work better.

Ask your readers to give you specific feedback. If you’re ever confused by what they tell you, ask clarifying questions to help you understand precisely what works and what you need to fix.

To Win a Writing Contest, Seek Out Critique Self-editing is an important step and an essential skill for every writer. You should work through at least one round of revisions before you share your story with anyone.

But if you want to win a writing contest, take a deep breath and share your story with an honest and astute reader—a friend, a fellow writer—before you submit. Plan this in as an integral step in your writing process.

You can bet the judges will notice the strengths and weaknesses of your story. Find readers whom you trust to tell you those strengths and weaknesses for you so you can address them before you submit.

78


Then, when you do send your story to the judges, you can do so with confidence, knowing it’s the absolute best it can be.

79

Part 4: The Essential Step: Submit Your Story All the previous steps have been leading up to this: submitting your story to a writing contest. In these chapters, we’ll walk through the submissions process and prepare for the results.


CHAPTER 10

Submit It’s finally time. After writing, editing, writing, and editing your story; after getting helpful critique from astute readers; after polishing your writing until there’s nothing left you can think to change—it’s time to submit.

Check the guidelines for the contest you’re entering and make sure you follow their submission requirements. Different contests have different requirements, so it’s no use listing them here. But you should be able to find the requirements easily in the same place you found the contest. Revisit them and follow them precisely.

Double-check that your story is within the required word count and formatted according to their specifications. Be sure to proofread your story!

81


Then, when everything’s exactly as it should be, take a deep breath and submit your story.

Congratulations! You did it!

You’ve worked hard to write a story you’re proud of, and now you’ve sent it off into the world to be read. That’s an accomplishment to celebrate!

No matter what the judges say, simply by entering, you’ve already won.

82


CHAPTER 11

How to Deal With Rejection Here’s the problem with writing contests: when you select a winner, you end up creating a lot of not-winners. I understand what it’s like to be a not-winner (which is different from being a loser, I think). I’ve been rejected many times for my own writing.

That’s why I believe that instead of measuring how many times you’re published, you should measure rejections. Instead of trying to get everyone to like your stories, get as much feedback about how to improve as you can.

Don’t try to justify how good you are. Try to get better. If you do this for long enough, you won’t need anyone to tell you you’re a success. You’ll be a success all on your own.

I recently received a rejection letter for a short story I submitted. The letter read:

Dear JH Bunting,

83


We regret that your manuscript does not fit our current editorial needs, but we appreciated the opportunity to consider your work. Thanks very much for submitting.

Sincerely,

The Editors of the Magazine that Doesn’t Want to Publish Me

This is the nature of this work we do. On the one hand, we get to make up new worlds, and play with our imaginary friends. We experience the joy of creating. Writing is wonderful, isn’t it?

On the other hand, we will face rejection upon rejection upon rejection.

Are you ready for that? Is writing worth that for you?

How to Handle Rejection I have another rejection letter that makes an excellent coaster for my coffee cup. It’s made out of card stock. I try to spill as much coffee on it as I can.

A friend on Twitter told me she has a wall in her closet where she pins all her rejection letters. She highlights all the nice things edi84


tors say. (Why don’t the rejection letters I get say nice things?)

Stephen King did something similar, and in On Writing, he says at fourteen, “The nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and kept on writing.”

Rejection is a red badge of honor. It means you’re serious, you’re disciplined, and you won’t give up. If you haven’t been rejected, it probably means you’re not passionate enough.

A writer emailed me after submitting something to a writing contest and said, “I’ve never submitted anything. And after I hit submit, I wanted to hide under my blankets. I still do.”

Submitting is hard.

“That’s exactly how I feel!” he told me.

Every writer faces the possibility, nay the probability, of rejection. So what can you do about it? How can you avoid having your short stories rejected by a literary magazine?

Here are four tips:

85


1. Write the Best Story You Can At the Association for Writers and Writing Programs Conference one year, I asked the editor of a literary magazine what would improve my chances of being accepted. “Write the best story you can,” he said.

This is the most annoyingly worthless kind of advice. “Ok, well, what is a good story? How do you define a good story? How does your definition differ from mine?”

Useless.

However, the question people most often ask me is, “How do I know if my short story is good enough or even finished?”

The best thing I can recommend is to show your short story to a group of trusted readers. If your trusted reading group likes it, send it. If they mostly like it but have a few issues (especially if the issue is with the ending), consider tweaking it. If they unanimously hate it, go cry in the bathroom and then write another story.

2. Find the Right Fit It’s common to think if your story is good enough, any literary magazine will accept it. However, editors say they read hundreds of

86


interesting, well-written stories which they reject because it wasn’t the right fit for their magazine.

If you want to avoid rejection, do your research. Read two editions of twenty literary magazines and take notes. It’s a lot of work, but you’ll save yourself the pain of a lot of rejection.

3. Follow the Submission Guidelines I know, I know—we keep coming back to this most basic instruction. You’d be surprised how many writers complicate things, however.

The truth is, literary magazine editors work long hours and are severely underpaid. Following the submission guidelines and sending in your story formatted to their specifications makes their life easier. You don’t want to turn an editor off before they even start reading because you sent the wrong file format or used Comic Sans.

If the submission guidelines aren’t clear about how to format your story, consider using standard manuscript formatting, a set of universal guidelines about story format. At

87


the very least, make sure it’s all clear, neat, and easy to read.

4. Embrace Rejection I’ve heard a few horror stories from people who quit writing when they were young because an adult criticized them. For example, one new friend told me he quit writing fiction because a teacher had written, “Too conversational,” at the top of his story.

I’ve been there, too. When I was a junior in high school, a writing teacher scolded me in public over an article I wrote. I still don’t think I’ve gotten over it, and the experience turned me off of journalism and writing for other people for years.

My greatest fear as a teacher is that I’ll be the star of one of those stories, that someone would give up on writing because of something I said. It reminds me of something Jesus said: “It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble.”

However, if you’ve given up writing because of something a teacher said, it’s time to take ownership of your writing and embrace your fear. If you want to be a writer, you will

88


be rejected. There’s just no avoiding it. Sorry. The question is not how to avoid rejection, but can you embrace yourself if you’ve been rejected?

Rejection will not change your identity. It doesn’t make you a bad writer. It doesn’t mean you won’t be published someday. But it might mean you have to work harder.

It’s up to you. Are you willing to do the work?

Just a reminder. If you didn’t win this writing contest it doesn’t mean:

● You’re not a writer.

● Your words weren’t moving.

You are a writer if you choose to be one. Your words are powerful things, adding meaning to your life and to the lives of those around you.

Some of the most important parts of becoming a writer are the process and the discipline. If you didn’t win, ask yourself if you’re willing to work harder. Are you willing to read more? Are you willing to write more stories and submit them to more contests? Are you willing to practice six days a week?

89


If you’re not willing to work harder, that’s fine. Writing is a rewarding pastime, whether you do it as a discipline or a hobby.

But maybe you just need a push. Maybe you’ve been wanting to get more focused, to be more disciplined. In that case, not-winning a writing contest might just be the best thing you can do. Perhaps that rejection will give you the nudge you need to write another story, and another, and another.

And one day, you might just win.

90

Part 5: Wisdom From the Editors of Literary Magazines In the following chapters, you’ll find wisdom and tips from the editors of several literary magazines. In these pieces, they share their thoughts on selecting submissions to publish and recognizing quality writing.

Though they don’t specifically address writing contests, both their magazines regularly host contests, and they’ve seen their fair share of entrants. The wisdom they share applies to any story submission.


CHAPTER 12

Tips from Emily Wenstrom, Editor of Wordhaus Getting published. It’s a goal almost every writer shares. But how do you get your story from slush pile to publication?

As the editor of wordhaus, a weekly ezine for genre flash fiction, I’ve gotten to see behind the curtain of how these decisions get made. Though wordhaus rotates between three genres—romance, thriller/horror, and sci-fi/fantasy—I’ve found that the qualities that set apart a great story are always the same.

I can’t answer for all editors, but when I’m considering stories for wordhaus, I have four key things I look for:

92


1. A Good Writer Is a Writer Who Reads (Submission Guidelines) Before I see your story, I see your email subject line. And your subject line tells me something very important: whether you read the submission guidelines.

If you do it right, your subject line looks like this: “Submission: [Your genre here], X,XXX words.”

And if it doesn’t look like that, I know from experience that the odds of your story fitting wordhaus’ niche are much lower. Because if you didn’t read the guidelines, how do you know what we publish?

So when I’m reviewing the latest submissions, I open the ones that follow the guidelines first, and I feel a lot more optimistic about what I’m about to read going into those stories.

2. Lede Me On Now I open your email excited about the story inside it. But right now I’m only reading your opening paragraphs, with special attention to your starting sentence, or the lede. Just like in journalism, a lede that works tells

93


me something important about the story and makes me want to keep reading.

That lede is critical. It’s the teaser that will give readers a sneak peek of your story from the home page, and it’s the preview that will autogenerate when your story is linked on Facebook.

These first few paragraphs also give me a sense of your writing abilities and help me determine if your story’s content matches what wordhaus publishes.

If I still want to read at this point, I pull your story into Word and double check your word count. This shouldn’t be a surprise since you followed the guidelines and put it in your subject line.

3. Keep It Moving Now, finally, I read your full story. There are two things I’m looking for as I do so. The first is conflict.

Conflict gives your story the tension that forces it forward. No conflict, no story. What you’ve got there is a scene description or a character sketch.

I know, this feels like Story 101. But so many submissions overlook this key element.

94


4. Tie Up Loose Ends The other thing I’m looking for is a conclusion. Many short stories start strong only to drift off into nothing at the end.

Perhaps writers get to the end of their story and find they have run out of space within the word count. Or perhaps they are trying to be artsy by leaving the conclusion open to interpretation. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t work. Loose ends have a tendency to unravel.

Do your readers a favor. Take those lovely story threads you’ve woven together and tie them up properly at the end.

And, well, it’s that simple. The key to getting published is in pulling the details together properly to draw the reader in, creating a conflict that pushes the story forward, crafting a tight conclusion, and following the submission guidelines. Do these four things in your story, and this is one editor who will have no choice but to publish you.

95


CHAPTER 13

An Interview with Linda Swanson-Davies, Editor of Glimmer Train Glimmer Train literary magazine is harder to get into than Harvard. In 2011, Harvard accepted 6.2 percent of applicants. Literary magazines like Glimmer Train often have acceptance rates of under one percent.

So when I asked Linda Swanson-Davies, who founded the journal with her sister in 1990, to chat with me about Glimmer Train and how to get published in literary magazines, I honestly wasn’t expecting her to say yes.

But she did!

I hope this interview challenges you to consider submitting your work to literary magazines like Glimmer Train, and I hope it provides something of a salve to the soul if

96


your story isn’t chosen. Mine certainly haven’t been!

Enjoy the interview.

Joe Bunting Hi, Linda. Thanks so much for joining me today! Now, why should writers who are just starting out submit their stories to literary magazines? Why not just pop their stories up on Amazon and make a little money without the chance of rejection?

Linda Swanson-Davies There’s nothing inherently wrong with popping your stories up on Amazon or anywhere else. (It might be wise to read any fine print, make sure that you still hold the copyright and can, for instance, include the story in your own collection at a later date.)

It is tough to get a piece accepted for publication, and if a person is mostly concerned with a sense of completion and of having spoken one’s piece (especially if you feel you have one important story you need to write) in a potentially public way, posting a story online may be exactly the way to go.

97


But there are also solid reasons to consider submitting your stories to literary magazines.

If you’re a voracious reader (serious writers are) who’s thrilled by the significant, moving, and artful things words can do, you will likely want to develop skills that enable you to best craft the stories you want to tell, and you will likely want to aim for publication that will reach a wider audience.

Although it’s painful to get a rejection notice for a story you love, it’s pretty thrilling to hear that an editor (who considers hundreds or thousands of stories a year) took some note of your story, and if a story is accepted for publication, it’s an over-the-moon experience for a developing writer. A writer has to be tough enough to bear the inevitable rejections. It’s the only way to have a chance of having your work presented by a well-regarded publication, and read by serious readers.

Agents look to literary magazines to find talented emerging writers. (Their plates are full, too. It’s helpful to be able to read a collection of stories vetted by editors whose taste and opinions they respect.) After each issue of Glimmer Train comes out, we are contacted by agents who’ve read stories they

98


loved and are interested in representing the authors.

If your goal is to publish a book, having first published fiction in literary magazines gives publishers more confidence in the merit and marketability of an author’s work.

Joe When some people hear literary fiction, they think boring fiction. Is literary fiction boring? And how can writers create beautifully written and engaging stories?

Linda Literary fiction can be boring. We only publish writing that is finely written and engaging. We’re all busy (if we’re lucky!)—why waste time reading pretty words that hold no meaning, reveal nothing of significance? That’s actually one of the reasons we started Glimmer Train; too much of the work being published felt finely crafted but completely lifeless. We wanted more.

99


Joe Glimmer Train seems to be particularly fond of emerging writers. Why do you publish unpublished writers?

Linda These are hard times for writers and publishers. (Are you reading?) Many publishers are playing it safe, opting to publish writers who’ve already been heavily published. Though you can hardly blame them, in some ways, it’s a real loss for readers, and obviously also for writers! There are talented writers out there who have worked and continue to work to create the most gorgeous and meaningful stories they have to tell.

We are continually stunned by the depth, breadth, and beauty of the work new writers submit, and it thrills us to present the very best of them in a handsome physical publication that will persist in the real world.

Joe What are three things an unpublished writer can do to get their first story published in a magazine?

100


Linda #1 Write a story that moves you, in which something happens, that has characters who are complex enough to feel utterly real so we are pulled into their lives, and they become part of ours.

#2 Read aloud, and think about, every sentence and paragraph. Is it clearly written? Does it make sense? Do all the words serve the story? (Beware clever or unnecessary prose that doesn’t advance the story.)

#3 Send the story out into the world to find its way. If it comes back to you, you can send it elsewhere, or you can revisit it. Is the right character telling the story or would another perspective give it more power? Have you gone far enough—is there something significant that remains hidden? Have faith in the story. Sometimes a piece just needs to brew a bit longer before it can draw breath.

Joe Thank you so much Linda!

101


Why Read Literary Magazines One great way to increase your chances of getting published in literary magazines is by reading them. It’s also a good way to support the writing community.

If you like literary fiction, consider subscribing to Glimmer Train. I think you’ll like it.

And perhaps one day, you’ll see your name on the cover.

102

Part 6: More Writing Contest Resources Want more tips? Here are a few good resources:

• 5 Key Elements of Successful Short Stories

• Don’t Make These Common Short Story Mistakes

• How to Write a Short Story With Deep Structure (And Win a Prize for It)

• How do contest judges pick the winners?

•

20 Tips For Winning Writing Contests

• 5 Key Elements for Successful Short Stories

• Don’t Make These 4 Common Short Story Mistakes

• Stop Editing Already: When It’s Time to Put the Pen Down and Submit


104

How to Win a Writing Contest

Recommend Documents