Write Club 2016: Advice from Past Winners

Tiana: I think that my writing is pretty voicey, which definitely helped a lot. I didn’t take time to build things up, I just jumped right in and tried to use as much humor in 500 words as I could. I think when you’re reading a lot of entries, your eyes can tend to glaze over, but if you make them laugh, then your piece stands out more.

Mark: Hmm, how did I win? Let’s just say it involved bribing some very influential magic goats. Seriously, there was some strong competition that year, and I’m sure luck was involved when it came down to who my early submissions were matched against. I think that what made my writing stand out is that I took a risk and broke some rules. In a contest where you have one chance to catch a reader’s attention, you have to proceed as you would with the first page of a book: the characters and/or narrator’s voice MUST be the hook. You don’t have a dust jacket or a promotional team to convince people to keep reading to get to the good stuff.

Tex: I’ve said it before, but in 500 words, you have just enough time to do one thing really well. For me, that was voice. It’s not the only road to success, but if on your first page you can establish a character so peculiar, so savory or unusual or captivating that the reader says, “I have no idea what you’re doing, but I want to stick around to watch you do it” – then you have a real winner on your hands.

Dan: I’ve shared my strategies in a previous post, but briefly: studied the past contests to see what worked well, and then wrote the tightest 500-word piece that I could, balancing action, snappy dialogue, and twist endings.

Lisa: This is a kind of tough question to answer. I have to say it was a combination of luck, subjectivity, and hard work. A lot of great writers participate in WRiTE CLUB, and you never know which contestant you’ll be up against, how their piece will compare with yours, or what mood readers will be in when they show up to vote. You have to bring your best every single time. My goal was to create a character readers would cheer for, someone they’d follow anywhere. Based on the votes, a lot of readers connected with Grace, and I think that personal connection with the protagonist helped immensely, as did sticking her in the most awkward situations I could imagine. A second goal as I wrote each piece was to include a range of emotions to give readers the satisfaction of experiencing a slice of life’s ups and downs along with the protagonist. No one likes a story that doesn’t go anywhere, so I tried to give each piece a clear conflict, a satisfying resolution, and a few lines of subtext just to keep things interesting.

Tiana: In the beginning, there were fewer entries, so there was less competition. There were also fewer rules. Over time, the contest has evolved to accommodate more people, so more restrictions are to be expected. The first year, it didn’t run as long, and most of the people voting were the same. Now it seems like you never know who is going to be voting, so you can’t try to please any one audience. I think it’s more difficult to win now, so I’m glad I tried my hand at it the first year!

Mark: It’s hard to say how it evolved, because it’s, by its very nature, going to be different every year. There are new initial filtering judges, new final judges, different readers, and a whole new batch of entries. Unfortunately, some great entries are always lost in opening rounds, which ends up having a ripple effect on the finals, making each final round fairly unique.

Tex: I love how it’s grown! For me, the biggest thrill has been getting to collaborate with DL in making Write Club an official partner of the DFW Writers Conference. We have loads of great classes and speakers (and agents and editors, of course!), but there is absolutely no substitute for getting lots of honest, impartial feedback on your work – and Write Clubdelivers in spades. (Life goal: after I make my first million, I am throwing fistfuls of money at DL to hire more readers and judges, so even more people can participate!)

Lisa: I only participated two years, so I’m not sure how much insight I can offer here, but I was excited to see DFW Conference come on board as a sponsor and hope the contest continues to grow.

Tiana: I think something that really works is to make sure your pieces start and end in a great place. It’s tempting to take something from a larger piece of work and cut it off at the 500 word mark without making any changes. But if you take a little extra time and tweak your entries so that it ends with the reader wanting more, then you’ve won half the battle. Over the years, I’ve noticed that the people who win play both ends of the spectrum–they’re either super light and fun, or they pull on your heartstrings. You have to give your readers something to care about, so a passage that is beautifully written but doesn’t evoke emotion might not do as well as something that has a great hook with a grammar error or two. Also, go through your submission and make sure you don’t have anything that might be confusing. For example, in a book, you might have a lot of characters and the readers will know who they are, but if you take a small sample from that book and mention five different characters, you’ll probably confuse people voting in this competition. Always simplify and parse things down as cleanly as possible.

Mark: Hehe. Tips are my specialty. My greatest bit of advice would be to stop thinking that a highly emotional scene is your “best writing.” You might love it because you know your characters, but they mean nothing to new readers. If I tell you, in highly literal form, about a man crying for days, it means nothing to us if we don’t know what he’s crying about or why we should care. Engage us with your characters and your voice. Same thing goes for action scenes. Action isn’t exciting unless we know why it matters to the character. Finally, if you’re going to write humor (which is great), you’ve got to be unique or daring with it. Don’t go for slapstick or low humor. The same rules that comedians need to follow go for writers. Bathroom humor = cheap laughs. Super highbrow humor = alienating some of your audience. Cliche jokes or situations = yawn. Give us something we’ve never heard before, and tell it well.

Tex: I’ve shared my pearls of wisdom as best I can. But I think Mark Hough said it best: at the end of the day, ‘decent’ doesn’t cut it. I know from my turn in the Write Club slush-trenches that there are PLENTY of decent entries out there – and the people who seem to come out on top are the ones who invest heavily in well-crafted, peer-critiqued, innovative ideas.

Dan: I’ve already covered it pretty well in a previous post.

Lisa: First of all, edit, edit, edit! You don’t want to lose votes because you wrote “there” instead of “their.” Second, be concise. Put down the essentials and trust your readers to fill in the blanks. Create a complete scene with depth of character and plot, but keep it brief. Those 500 words submissions are 800-1,000 words in novel form. For WRiTE CLUB, the key is short, powerful, and to the point.

Tiana: The short piece that I wrote for the finals of WRiTE CLUB actually turned into a full-length novel, and that was the book that got me my agent. So, that turned out well! It’s a contemporary YA retelling of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I’m finishing up a few edits on it now before I send it back to my agent. I’m also starting a new YA contemporary that involves celebrities, reality television, and electric violin. I used to play viola professionally, so it’ll be great to write something I’m familiar with. It will have confusing teenage relationships with a national spotlight and high stakes. And of course, lots of kissing, because those are the best kind of books!

Mark: My current project is a massive rewrite of one of the projects I submitted to Write Club. Besides that, I’ve been working on a humorous novel-in-verse for middle graders (I like to think of it as a novel that Bill Watterson might write), and pouring lots of creative energy into another art: oil painting. (You can see some recent-ish works on my painting blog: livepraypaint.blogspot.com.)

Tex: So good of you to ask! I’m just putting the finishing touches on Dreams of the Eaten, the last book in the Children of the Drought trilogy. Crows and magic and fishmen and earthquakes and week-old corpses crawling back to their moms – what’s not to love?!

Dan: I’m polishing the sequel to The Rogue Retrieval, my adult sci-fi novel about a Vegas magician who infiltrates a medieval world, which was published last month by Harper Voyager.

Lisa: I’m actually weaving my COMMANDO GRACE pieces into a Contemporary Young Adult series that follows Grace Welch from the day her six older brothers dare her to go commando her entire freshman year to her high school graduation. I outlined all four books, but decided to start with Grace’s sophomore year because that’s when all the WRiTE CLUBscenes happened. The story is much bigger than I expected when I submitted my first 500 word sample to WRiTE CLUB, and I hope all the humor and sorrow and raw humanity come through in the finished product! In non-WRiTE CLUB related news, Anaiah Press will be publishing the final book in my YA Fantasy trilogy, CHILD OF THRESH, this May.