Join the stampede to 2024 writing contests

 Nothing enforces New Year's resolutions like competition. And time crunches. For some incentives to get those writing muscles back in shape -- or keep them strong -- check out this list of 2024 contests and their deadlines. 

Now - January 15: Modern Muse for Writers First Five Pages Contest seeks entries from all literary genres. Free. Submit your first five pages (up to 1,500 words). Winners receive developmental critiques and line edits of their first chapter, up to 15 pages. See the site for details.

Now - January 15: Writer's Digest Short Short Story Competition seeks stories of not more than 1,500 words. This is an extended deadline -- for this contest only, ignore the deadline posted on the site. Winners receive cash prizes and publication. Fee: $30 for first entry, $25 for each additional entry. See the site for details.

Now - January 28: AutoCrit's "Start Strong Challenge" opens, using prompts from its community of writers. Finalist entries will be read live on YouTube, with the audience determining the winner. Word limit: 1,000. There's no fee for the contest, but you have to pay to play by joining the AutoCrit community. Luckily, it's offering discounted subscriptions! See the site for details and those all-important prompts.

Now - February 1: The First Line magazine's contest requires contestants to open their work with the provided first line, currently: "Mr. Morton needed a new pair of shoes," although non-fiction essay entries may deal instead with writers' favorite opening lines from literary works. Free. The contest repeats quarterly with new opening lines. Winners receive publication and cash awards. See site for details.

Now - February 29: The Crime Writers' Association offers two contests for newbie writers: The Margery Allingham Short Mystery Competition and The CWA Debut Dagger. Entry fee is £18 for the Margery Allingham contest, £42 for the Debut Dagger. See the site for details. 

Now - March 1: Speak Your Truth contest (site). This one's just for Dallas, Texas, residents/students ages 15-20. Apply to become the Youth Poet Laureate of Dallas for 2024-2025. Winner receives a $1,000 scholarship. See the site for youth poet duties. Email libyouthservices@dallascityhall.com for more information.

Image by Brigitte Werner for Pixabay

Nowish - mid-March: ArmadilloCon, Texas' feisty sci-fi/fantasy/horror convention returns with a flash fiction contest. No fee but contests must be the convention's writing students from 2017-2024. (Hint: if you're thinking of joining for the full convention in August, now's the time!) This year, contests will be able to provide input for themes. This information just hit my inbox, with the 2024 website not yet online. Contact writersworkshop@armadillcon.org for information. I'll also update this site as soon as possible.

Now - May 1: ThrillerFest's Best First Sentence contest is looking for the to-die-for opening of your work of mystery or suspense. This is also pay to play -- entrants must be members of the ITW (International Thriller Writers) or registered for ThrillerFest XIX 2024. See the Best First Sentence site for details.

Now - June 30: One of my favorite goofy writing contests is the annual Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest, commemorating the 19th century novelist infamous for the opening line: "It was a dark and stormy night. . ." Each entry must consist of a single, unpublished sentence of any length, although the authorities recommend (i.e. plead) for it not to exceed 50-60 words. The winner will receive a certificate and bragging rights. Free. See the site for details and hilarious previous winning entries.

Now - October 1: If every story must have a first line, it must also have a last one. Check out The Last Line magazine (sister journal to The First Line) for a contest with an ending prompt. For 2024, that prompt is, "I didn't want to admit it, but Lee was usually right." See site for details. Winners receive cash and publication.

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Want more contests? Of course, you do! See the likes of Poets & Writers, Reedsy, Erica Verrillo's month's lists, New Pages, The Submissions Grinder, and Writers of the Future for inspirations!

First things first – our story’s opening sentence

An email about Thrillerfest’s “best first sentence” contest reminded me it’s been way too long since I posted about opening sentences. Fortunately, Reedsy’s “First Line Frenzy” event with editor Rebecca Heyman was coming up. I sent in one of my opening sentences. So did more than 2,000 other writers worldwide, over a range of genres. Although Heyman had time to deal with fewer than 30, the results were instructive.

What did she like?

n  Pertinent details. (But see the caution below about getting to the heart of the character.)

n  Short and punchy (although she made exceptions).

n  Funny and intriguing. (For which she could forgive a writer whose sentence otherwise got a little “weird.”)

n  Something out of the ordinary. Regarding a sentence that basically started with a character opening his mail – “find something more interesting that’s going on here.”

n  Solid analogies.

What didn’t she like?

n  Starting with the word “it.”

n  Too many questions, not enough details.

n  Grammar problems. Watch the order of clauses. And mind the punctuation. Opening sentences probably don’t have enough going on to warrant the use of semi-colons. (Also see Heyman’s warning about run-on sentences below.)

n  Word use. Watch out for articles such as “the” and “a” which Heyman called “pointing” words.  and “a” Also word endings – a sentence full of verbs ending in “-ing” got a knock.

n  Run-on sentences. (By which she meant “run-on” in the traditional sense of splicing multiple sentences together without punctuation. Not exactly the “just too long” sense in which some of us use the term, which also veers into dangerous territory.) “Way too many ideas” packed into a single (more or less) sentence – “just tell us the one important thing. You have to get our attention with a unified notion.”

n   Info dumps. “It’s not necessary to teach with a heavy hand. . . Show us the danger, don’t tell us it exists.”

n  Outward description that doesn’t get to the heart of the character. “I’d like to be more inside (the character’s experience instead of surface details.”

What was iffy?

n  Starting with dialogue. But there were exceptions. “I usually discourage starting with dialogue without context but (one can be) an interesting enough snippet that I’m not bored with it.” (Proceed with caution!)

n  Word repetition, such as the “week/weekly” in one example.

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I also unearthed some basic no-nos for opening sentences, courtesy of North Texas science fiction/fantasy writer Alex Martinez, from a previous year’s Roanoke, Texas, writers’ conference. At that point, Martinez had nearly a dozen published books (probably many more by now!), and years of participating in writing critique groups. “I’ve heard a billion chapters, including plenty that make the same mistakes over and over.”

The easiest things to fix are the cliched openings, for which Martinez’s list of don’ts includes:

n  Don’t start with descriptions of weather (goodbye, dark and stormy nights!).

n  Don’t start with a character waking up.

n  Don’t start with a character looking in a mirror.

n  Don’t start with a dream sequence.

“Well, maybe you can have one of the dreaded cliché openings,” he admitted, “but they have to be really exciting.” On the other hand, he noted, “agents and editors know that first sentences are the easiest things to fix. . . Just try not to have typos in your first sentence.”

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I’ll conclude with some winners from Thrillerfest’s 2020 best first sentence contests for inspiration. I wonder which of these would have made editor Heyman’s thumbs-up list.

n  If there is a special place in hell for particularly heinous acts, I will be going there because I just bounced a blind man off my front bumper.

n  “Ten thousand bodies lie under the New Orleans sidewalks,” the tour guide told his group in a sepulchral tone, as he did every night below my Bourbon Street balcony.

n  She swore she’d never turn into her PI father. . . but that was before she ran over the body.

n  I wrote my first obituary when I was twelve.

And my personal favorite:

n  Dorie told the truth on the installment plan.

Happy writing! And if you should find yourself itching to try your luck with Thrillerfest’s contest, get a move on – it closes tomorrow, June 15!