Writing Award Magic - A Tested Plan to Pay Yourself Extra Spare Time Income
How do you make a reliable and lucrative salary from writing awards? Everything depends upon your method. Here are many tips condensed from the experience of countless expert competition winners.
Study the sector first. Don't complete an entry then look for an award scheme. The experienced approach is to see exactly what the sector needs then pattern a product for this.
Thus you'd decide on a set of, for example, twelve great contests with a big total prize sum. Then you would adapt a story precisely for those key competitions.
If practical, look at the stories that triumphed in those competitions before. If the organizers don't publish them, ask why not. Do these stories really exist? Did the promoters even pay that award money?
Such scepticism might be out of place with a respected contest that's been around quite some time. But some lesser known contests are run merely to make money and so they might be a sham.
When you've already prepared a great story, needless to say, you can easily send it again to another competition or several competitions. A good strategy is to modify the tale to the competition subject, word length and genre.
This is usually easy with a robust narrative. For example, an award scheme may require that you concentrate on 'gardening' simply because that is the organizer's niche. Just about any story can be given this particular topic, with the help of a skillful change of location and incidents.
Be innovative in your variations. In the event the contest asks that stories be on some overseas holiday topic, the most obvious approach is to place the narrative in some exotic tourist setting. But almost every other entrant will be trying that. Find a new angle: 'The wonderful holiday I almost took, and the reason why I'm glad I didn't'.
At times you will need to write a totally new tale to handle the guidelines of a specific and extremely desirable competition. Nevertheless don't keep the story just for that contest. Change the word length, concept, personas, names, settings and situations as needed and provide it to several other contests.
Most promoters won't worry if you submit a comparable entry somewhere else, if it's not precisely the same story. Just make sure to read the small print. It would be pretty sad if you couldn't receive a top notch award because the competition rules insisted that your story was 100% unique to that contest.
Regard each and every competition story as a creation that you produce to win profit. Of course, you may still have fun from writing it but your writing is no longer a hobby. It's an important new income source.
Hence don't get psychologically attached to a story. It may do well or flop for numerous reasons outside your control. When you can assume that attitude, you'll have become a professional competition contender. And that's a win-win profit engine!
About the Author
Dr John Yeoman, PhD Creative Writing, is chairman of the writing awards centre Writers' Village. A university tutor in short story writing, he has been for many years a competition judge. You'll find dozens of original plans to gain cash prizes in his practical manual How to Win Writing Contests for Profit. Get it for free now at: http://www.writers-village.org/writing_awards
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