4 Writing Lessons from a Novel Contest Judge
Writing contests are a lot like dating: you have to put yourself out there and brave rejection, but in the end the most important thing is that you love who you are. To cultivate that sense of writerly self-confidence, here are four writing lessons I learned as a judge for the Page Turner Awards.
How to achieve narrative flow
Provide the reader with the information they need to care about the story without giving them too much
- Engagement is about creating that liminal zone between reader comfort and uncertainty
- A lack of narrative flow is a global issue that spans the entirety of the work
- Writers can gain more deliberate practice with narrative flow through receiving feedback on their work, reading a lot, and experimenting with different strategies in their writing
Writers must recognize their own potential
It’s through creating that we discover who we are as artists.
- Lean into your strengths, be cognizant of your weaknesses, and keep writing, and you will see your stories shape themselves into what you’ve always wanted them to be.
Opening with an action-heavy scene won’t have an impact unless the reader cares about the characters
Having the story’s inciting incident happen in the first few pages can actually harm the reading experience because the audience doesn’t know enough about the players involved to care
- In fact, it can often be more effective to scale down the problem the character is facing in the opening as a way to put the focus on smaller, more relatable struggles
A single difference in a sea of sameness can elevate a novel
Have an exciting feature that becomes the essence of the work
- Take risks, even if you fear you might fall short of your ambitions
- Mentally compile all the overused ideas to distinguish when one of your own ideas felt more original
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