You have decided to enter a creative writing contest. Congrats! But now, you need to write an effective entry in order to have a chance at winning. So how do you write an effective entry for your creative writing contest? Let’s find out together.
Know Your Audience
If you aren’t sure who your audience is, then it’s time to find out. Look at the genre of your creative writing, and you will find out who your audience is. For example, if you’re writing a horror story, then your audience will be people who love scary stories. Once you know your audience, you can create the perfect story for them.
The same thing goes for a romance story. Your audience will be people who love stories about love. Knowing your audience is crucial in order to write an effective piece. Otherwise, you will write something that is too serious for your intended audience, and they will not have as much fun reading it as you did writing it. So make sure you know your audience, and write to them.
Choose A Suitable Title
When entering a creative writing contest, you need to choose a suitable title for your work. Not only does it need to be descriptive enough, but it should also fit within the rules of the contest. Check the rules page before starting to write to see what the requirements are. Choose a title that is unique to your work and fits the form as much as possible.
For example, let’s say you’re writing a horror story and your title is “The Werewolf of Fever Swamp”. This is a pretty unique title, but there is already a published work named “The Werewolf of Fever Swamp”. So, you’ve already got competition. In this case, you might want to consider a different title. However, if you have a strong feeling that your story is going to be a bestseller, then go with your original idea and see what happens.
Describe Your Characters
Your characters will be the individuals who live inside your head. Therefore, it’s important that you give these characters a vivid life in your writing. The more you can say about your characters, the better. This will help the reader understand who they are and what happened to them. If you take the time to truly develop your characters, then the story will come alive and the reader will be able to relate to them.
When writing a novel, you usually have a group of characters who slowly come to life as you go along. You will discover interesting things about them as you write, and this information will help you flesh them out even more. For example, did your characters live a colorful life before the story began? Were they always interested in literature and writing? Did they have a special relationship with the principal character in your story? All of this will make a difference, and it will help you develop unique personalities for each one of your characters. When you are done answering questions about your characters, you should have a good understanding of who they are and what happened to them. This will make it easier to write a compelling story about them.
Set The Tone Correctly
You want your writing to set the tone for your story. This means that you want to write in such a way that it makes the reader feel like they’ve entered a specific world. For example, if you’re writing a war story, then you want to write in a way that makes the reader feel as though they’re actually there. You don’t want to use too many words or phrases that make the reader feel like they’re in a library either. You want them to feel like they’re reading some sort of classic novel.
The same thing goes for a crime story: you want the reader to feel as though they’re watching a real-life detective film. When it comes to writing, you want to make sure that you never take the easy way out. Use your imagination and set the mood of your story the way you want it to be. This will help make your writing stand out.
Create An Atmosphere
When you arrive at your local library or online bookstore, you usually find a section of books on the subject matter that you’re interested in. But, how many of those books did you actually read? When you’re writing, you want to give your readers the impression that they are actually inside of your head, reading your thoughts, so you will need to create an atmosphere. Use whatever tools you have at your disposal – whether it’s the setting or the characters – to create an immersive experience for your reader.
Start by establishing what is occurring in your story. You can set the scene using a combination of the following: action, dialogue, description, and figurative language. If you decide to use action, then use verbs that your readers would actually use. For example, if you want to write about a child’s discovery of their parentage, then you could write:
“Teddy ran to tell his mommy and daddy about the monster under his bed. The terrified children hid under their sheets and waited for their parents’ protection. When the parents arrived, they found their children cowering in fear, while the monster waved them away with a huge grin on its face.”
This type of scene would require the reader to actually imagine themselves in the situation. It would help create an immersive experience for your reader.
Once you’ve set the scene, it’s time to concentrate on the characters. You want to create characters that your readers will find relatable and unique at the same time. If you decide to enter a creative writing contest, then you want to write an effective piece that will have a strong impact on the audience. However, you don’t want to write something that is completely unbelievable, simply for the sake of winning. So, create a balance between what is realistic and what is possible within the context of your story. For example, if you’re writing about a child’s discovery of their parentage, then make sure that the parentage is believable. Otherwise, the entire plot twist might be unbelievable. The same thing goes for the characters’ relationship with one another: make sure that it is consistent and logical throughout the story. This will make your piece more believable. When finished, you should have a sense of cohesion within your story. Everything should fit the form nicely and make sense within the context of your story. This will help create a unified impression on your reader about the story you’ve told.
As you can see, there are several different ways in which you can go about writing an effective piece for your creative writing contest. Make sure to practice and enter your story as soon as possible. Good luck out there.