There is a wealth of material available to help writers hone their craft. I intend to help you find something exciting to write about so you have something to hone.
There are plenty of insanely talented writers in White County Creative Writers group who regularly share information about how to make your writing win contests. They are more suited to share that information with you due to their greater experience winning contests. In this piece my goal is to help you learn to have fun entering a bunch of contests. And even if you don’t see contests as your thing, it isn’t the contest for the contest’s sake. You certainly won’t be paying your bills with them. But it’s the creativity they spark. The building of neural pathways and triggers to get you writing!
INTRODUCTION:
Here’s a little about me to help you see where I hope to take you. When I joined White County Creative Writers in the fall of 2023, I doubted myself and my ability as a writer due to low traction with publishers, and marked unstellar feedback. And by low traction I mean no traction.
After insightful classes at our meetings, the WCCW gang convinced me to enter some contests at the 2024 Conference even though short stories weren’t my thing. I wrote five entries and received a first, a second, and two honorable mentions. I pulled a bi-polar 180 and decided I was all that and a kettle of figs. I was going to enter all or nearly all the 2025 WCCW contests, and go to Ozark Writers Conference and show them what a winning writer I was as well.
When the contests came out in 2025, I saw exactly zero that resonated with me. Sixty total prompts and I had nothing. I don’t do romance, fantasy, horror, westerns, sci-fi, or memoirs. The strength of my children’s books is my illustrations, which aren’t included in writing contests. Nothing.
I wound up with 18 entries for WCCW and 21 for Ozark. That’s zero ideas to 39. WHAT HAPPENED? That’s what I am here to tell you right now.
Most of you write well once you know what you want to write about. But you need a gripping subject. A catch. A hook. You need creative pre-creative-writing skills.
CREATIVITY WITH WORDS
First, look at the words in prompt itself. One prompt this year said to write a story about what was in the box, while thinking outside the box. Take the words of the prompt and find unusual, creative definitions. The sport boxing. Sporting events’ box score. Boxer dogs. Canadian Boxing Day. I went with the box turtle. I made a play on the Maltese Falcon wherein valuables were hidden in an ancient box turtle from Hindu legend (which I made up).
One prompt said to write about who killed the matchmaker. How many kinds of matchmakers can you think of? The obvious romantic coupling expert notwithstanding, there could be many. The person who arranges boxing or MMA fights. Someone who finds the other sock. Whoever makes bullets for competition or sniper’s long shots, which are called matched rounds. I went with one of the Swedish brothers credited with developing the modern match for starting fires.
One contest prompt involved turning calamity into triumph. I wrote about the triumph motorcycle, with made-up bits about the original name being Ramp, the German word for calamity. One prompt encouraged writing about “everything but kitchen sink.” We usually think of that as being a collection of tons of stuff. I wrote literally about a kitchen sink. A tornado took the entire house and furnishings, leaving nothing but the kitchen sink precariously perched atop its drain pipe.
Next, attack the hardest part first. That can often help spark your creativity. Three contests this year were in alphabetical format, with each line beginning with the next letter in the alphabet. Start with the hardest: X, Q, Z. I saw that and thought, “ZOIKS!” and the story became a Scooby Doo vignette. If the contest is poetry, get a handle on the format first: the rhyme and meter schemes requested. A couple of contests this year had a prompt and then the requirement to utilize certain words in your story. One had the word “solidarity.” That immediately told me the story could be about Lech Walesa, originator of the Solidarity Party in Poland that eventually led to the fall of communism in that country. The littlest bit of research gave me information about his wife, their occupations, and the town they lived in—perfect fodder for me to creatively weave into my story.
CREATIVE COMBOS
Now that you have ignited new creativity to look at prompts in non-obvious ways, how about combining things creatively to get even more wild stories!!
You could start by creatively combining prompts themselves. This year, there was a prompt for who killed the matchmaker, one for a murder by stabbing, and one for a murder where the victim was found in a bathroom of some sort. When you creatively combine prompt ideas, you get a wacky story opportunity that is fun to write and hopefully equally entertaining to read.
I took the three prompts listed above and combined them to have a victim stabbed with an ancient spear that was at the blacksmith’s shop for repairs. The victim was relieving himself in an oft-used alcove near the pub—thus the bathroom. The victim was a maker of new fangled matches that put the previous town firelighter (the blacksmith) out of his position as Mr. Cool Guy.
Consider creatively combing characters. Take bits of your weird Uncle Chet, your least favorite politician, and a crazy character from a movie you love. Mix parts from all three. Combine stories. On the kitchen sink story I mentioned earlier, I mixed stories. First, I used a bizarre tornado event from my mother’s home town that left a table, tablecloth, and single rose in a vase at one home as it ripped along a ridge eliminating house after house. I combined that with a fun character friend who lives in a prime tornado visitation zone surrounded by rice fields on three sides. I also inserted my personal tornado experience moving my cousin during the worst tornados in Arkansas history, which we didn’t even know because it was before smart phones and the radio was in a packing box.
CREATIVITY WITH SOURCE
Throughout the story making process, you need to be creative with your sources. This is not just for non-fiction. Everything and everyone you encounter can add to the characters and situations you invent.
My absolute favorite British sitcom only ran for three years due to the unfortunate and premature demise of the main character. The show was called Father Ted, and it portrayed the lives of three Roman Catholic priests banished to the worst parish in the world, one for being a womanizer, one a drunk, and one a young idiot. In the episode entitled “Speed 3” (available on YouTube) there is a new milkman in town. He is loud, boisterous, and fancies himself a ladies man in every 1970s way you can imagine. Gold chains, chest hair, satin shirts. This milkman has unruly hair, unruly sideburns, and unruly facial hair. The priests notice something when the find an unusual number of ugly babies to bless that year—complete with side burns, unruly hair, and mustaches. The milkman delivers milk to all the homes after the men have left for work. This character was the inspiration for my blacksmith jealous enough to kill the matchmaker. Prior to the matchmaker coming to town, the blacksmith carried embers to relight any kitchen fires that had been allowed to go out. Pat Mustard, the milkman, gave me the motive I needed for my murder story.
It should be obvious, but I don’t mind stating the obvious. The broader your pool of characters and experiences, the more creatively you can set up your story. Get characters from your family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers. Get them from movies and shows. Get them from books. Be out. Be places. The world is FULL of characters and situations waiting for you to tweak them into something fun!
CREATIVITY WITH RESEARCH
I wholeheartedly believe you have to be interested to be interesting. This applies on the personal relations level, but just as much in writing. If you start delving into something and one fact after another pops up and you’re in love with the information, you’re on a good start!
To belabor the example above, once I had Pat Mustard the milkman in mind, it was easiest for me to place my story in Ireland like the setting for Father Ted. I needed a small town where people knew each other and would know the one blacksmith. So, I searched for little Irish towns with goofy names, because goofy helps a story. Here is the rabbit hole that opened before me.
I found the small town of Carrickfergus, Ireland. You cannot ask for a better name for a town in a story. I looked through maps of the town, read about the industries. Saw news articles (about the people lining the shores to watch the Titanic launch! Carrickfergus is just out from Belfast where it began its fateful journey!) I even found a site with archives of newspapers from Carrickfergus and surrounding towns. I was able to set my story in the 1800s when the safety match was invented, and read the papers from the exact days I chose for my tale. I researched the churches where the victim would likely be interred. I found information about law enforcement during that period in Northern Ireland. I discovered legends about an ancient type of spear unique to Ireland. Probably the newspaper was the most entertaining.
In other stories I found similar interesting things. In a story about time travel, I found a year that a horse won the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes, and got second in the Preakness. The same year the NY Yankees won the world series over the Phillies. That made my time travelers gamblers who wanted to go back, place a few bets, invest the money, and return home to enjoy their winnings. It was interesting to see what stock gained the most from their time destination—1950—to their home time—1980. Care to venture a guess? Walt Disney, number one, and Hewlett Packard, number two.
For a romance story set in New Orleans I found that Café Du Monde’s famous coffee is a blend of coffee and chicory, which became popular during the Civil War when blockades made coffee scarce. I learned about the Louis Armstrong Park. The couple needed to meet at a writer’s conference, and I found Heather Graham’s. It costs about $2,500, so I learned I shouldn’t be planning to attend that. But I saw the hotel where attendees stay and made mine stay there.
CREATIVITY IN USE
Get creative with story ideas you’ve already had fun with. One great example is my story where the blacksmith murdered the matchmaker. Another prompt asked for a newspaper crime story. I already had the actual name of the paper for that town. I had a story I loved. I got the joy of creatively rewriting it as the journalist’s coverage of my own murder mystery I’d already written!
In another example, I wrote a western about an evil man, hated by the whole town. They hoped to rid themselves of him, but he was killed by someone even worse who then took his place. Another contest wanted a strong female character. I already had one in the background of the western story. I created a new story by using the existing “set” and characters, but making her the villain-killing hero this time.
I think my favorite creative use this year was my cave man stories. The first was supposed to be a “life-changing event.” So my neanderthals were busy inventing wheels and fires and surprise parties. Then I encountered a prompt for a story about a mad scientist. It is not usual for a mad scientist to be from prehistoric times, so I needed a lot of creative license, which I took. My inventor cave man added potions and a Frankenstein-style monster for that contest. Finally, there was another romance contest. Nobody writes a cave person romance, perfect opportunity to get creative again! So I did.
CONTINUING CREATIVITY
The story doesn’t often come all at once. Even if it does, these suggestions can help you create something better!
Keep your documents open. Revisit now and then and see if something new jumps out at you. Maybe a solution to a problem you’ve had, maybe a key plot point that has eluded you.
But the number one thing, bar none, I have done to spark creativity and ideas for stories is Morning Pages. Morning Pages is the main tenet of Julia Cameron’s system for boosting creativity from her book The Artist’s Way. Julia’s rule is to write three pages every morning, first thing. But wait! Before you decide you know what she means, listen: these pages are not well-written. They are not crafted, planned, edited, creative. They are more like stream of consciousness. And they are not whenever you’d like during the day. You write them when you first get up. They are a brain dump.
It is counterintuitive, but the brain dump that her recommended writing is supposed to be, leads to the most creative solutions I’ve ever had. I’ll be writing along about my head hurting and why the coffee is bitter and whether I can finish before my morning constitutional, and then POW! There’s the answer to a problem on my farm. ZING! There’s the plot I needed for a short story contest that had me stumped. SOK! The way to end that story that just stopped dead.
There is so much extraneous crap that your pen excretes during morning pages that you have to have a mechanism to find these nuggets when you want to. I jot a note in the margin for anything I want to find later. I kid you not, the entire contents of this presentation came to me and I wrote them in bullet points during morning pages. Nearly every story I mentioned in this lesson had some improvement or stuck spot break free during morning pages.
There you have it. The pre-creative writing tools I used to launch 39 contest entries that involved some of the most fun writing, most entertaining characters and situations, and best overall stories I’ve ever written. You can do it, too. Whether it’s one short story or fifty, I challenge you to do more this year than you did last year!
- Preemptive Creativity - November 28, 2025
- Defeating Writer’s Block - January 6, 2025
- Increasing Your Capacity to Write - May 27, 2024