5 Tips for Winning Trophies at Writing Contests

Trophies and awards are always sweet and memorable to win.  Winning trophies is a matter of pride too. Hence, I have presented some beautiful and useful tips that can help you a lot to win creative writing contests.

Every writer wishes to win at a writing contest at some point or the other. For unestablished writers, winning any writing contest sets the path to a bright career. Apart from this, winning at writing contests has some distinct benefits to a writer, such as:
• It boosts the morale of the writer and crumbles psychological barriers.
• It gives prestige to the writer who wins it.
• It helps a writer in winning the favor of editorial board and celebrity writers or professionals associated with the contests.
• It helps a writer provide unique characters to recycle that the writer has developed during participation in previous contests.
• It establishes a writer as a known entity in the community and helps a writer in the career to win bread-and-butter.

What Makes a Writer Win Trophies at Writing Contests?
To stand out from the other participants is an easy and obvious answer to the question, but doing so is not as easy as it seems. A writer should have some innate qualities and abilities to stand out from the crowd.
In due course, I have recognized five tips, which may prove sure-fire ways to win the prize at a writing contest.
They are:

1. Follow Rules and Best Practices Prescribed by Editorial Boards at Writing Contests:
I have observed that writing contests are of different genres of writing like short stories, novels, fiction, non-fiction, and art manuscripts. These are usually all varying in length and have prescribed word counts. A writer must adhere to word count and formats prescribed, as well as finish the contest accordingly.
Another common thing I have noticed in writing contests is the language and format-related expectations or instructions, such as:
• They expect spelling-mistakes free content.
• They expect short & concise sentences with an average word count, and the sentence must target a single purpose.
• They expect short paragraphs covering one point in each.
• They expect simple words without many intricacies so that even a school grade reader can understand the content easily.
Decades ago, it was paper and pen as well as typewriters that were being used by writers but, the world today has evolved to the majority of writers using computing devices like desktops, laptops, or tablets to write their content.
The modern computing devices have the software, which helps a writer in editing, formatting, and checking content. Thus, a writer must use a good spell checker, readability checker, and style checker with the software available in the market. It will save a writer from making common mistakes as well as helps in preparation of decent content layouts.
2. Select a Best and Valid Theme According to Your Contest:
Starting with a bang, and getting lost mid-way with no obvious end are common phenomena in most of the submissions to writing contests. Therefore, you must have an appropriate theme for your story or content that best fits.
First, you should imagine an end, of course, the positive end. Now, design some awesome twists in the midst of the story. Remember that you should begin with a short introduction and end up with a fruitful conclusion. These all give your story a smooth flow that can attract and engage the readers throughout the story.
For example, if you are participating in a non-fiction writing contest, writing a spooky story proves a kooky idea and can annoy the judges or editors too. So, select the appropriate theme for your story and go ahead on a well-crafted path or theme.

3.Imagine a Meaningful End of Your Story:
I have seen many stories end with a dot, dot, and dot. No meaningful end appears. It will keep you away from winning trophies at writing contests. Most of the spooky or other stories have no meaningful end. It is not compulsory for you to have a happy end to your story.
It may be a sad end, but must be meaningful. The end of your story should be capable of teaching or revealing meaningful facts of life that may interest your readers. A meaningful end gives your reader a sense that they got something out of the story. It gives your story the valued contributions to the life of human beings.

4.Start Your Story with a Sense of Direction:
It has been seen as a trend among most modern writers, that like their ancestors, they begin with weather-related para or a bang and get lost afterward. If you can focus on people and their conflicts, as a core idea of your introductory para, as well as make it engaging enough, you can draw your readers to the next section easily. This strategy may lead you to win the trophies or awards of writing contests in Australia and elsewhere in the world.
Keep your first paragraph short and sweet, so your readers will not be overwhelmed by mere filler words. Instead, you should provide them with some crucial info or a meaningful message in a few lines. Thus, they will strive for more in the coming paragraphs. In short, evoking a sense of thirst among readers leads you to win the gold trophy!

5. Develop Your Own Characters Instead of Relying on Existing Celebrities or Media Characters:
It has been observed that rising talents, as well as some seasoned writers also prefer existing celebrities from different fields to make their ideal characters in their stories. They similarly portray those characters that the celebrities are portraying in real life.
Of course, the familiarity of readers with existing celebrities or eminent public life figures eased their work to some extent, but their stories lost the uniqueness and charm that only comes with unique characters. Therefore, a writer must have developed a character with own concepts and from scratch, as well as they should nurture the characters in their other stories or episodes on visual media.
Creating unique characters and establishing them in the minds of the public is hard, and also demands constant efforts. However, rewards are high in long-term, and you can win more awards in upcoming writing contests.

Conclusion:
If you are an academic organization or a corporate entity striving to encourage students, as well as emerging writers in Australia, my writing tips may help your contests’ participants a lot. There are plenty of tips available on the web, but I hope that my tips may prove practical and viable for rising talents.
Moreover, I also like to help you buy trophies from a known Trophy shop in Perth. If you prefer online trophy purchasing through a dependable website, I would like to suggest to you a reputed website, Olympia in Australia.
I am pointing out Olympia in particular for buying trophies and awards for Australian readers because in my opinion, Olympia has everything for the selection of right trophies and awards with a quality mark that you can give your winner in the writing contests. Thus, you can offer your winners memorable trophies and plaques in cost-effective ways.

Author Bio
Fawne is an online educator, programmer and an academic writer associated with education industry. Besides being associated with the education and teaching industry, Fawne is passionate about awards and trophies of different types of industries and he is a good chess player.