Are Writing Contests Worth It?
Quick answer: Are writing contests worth it? Yes, when chosen well: deadlines, feedback, credentials and prizes. When they are not, and a five-check filter that decides.
Chosen well, yes. A good contest pays a writer four ways: a deadline that forces stories to get finished, a defined competitive field rather than a bottomless slush pile, a citable credential if you place, and sometimes feedback or scores no magazine will ever send. Chosen badly, contests are a fee-drain with worse odds than submitting to magazines. The worth lives entirely in the choosing, which takes about ten minutes of checking per contest.
The question splits writers into camps, evangelists and refuseniks, and both camps are arguing about their own sampling. The useful position is a filter, not a faith.
The case for, made concretely
Deadlines are the underrated prize. Most unfinished stories die of no particular date, and a contest closing on the 25th of the month has finished more fiction than most writing advice combined. The defined field matters too: a contest judged against a stated rubric with a known entry window is a bounded game, unlike magazine slush, which refills daily and forever. For newer writers especially, contests offer something magazines structurally cannot: a guaranteed adjudication, your story will be read and judged by a date, always.
Then the compounding rewards. Placings and wins are legible credentials that cover letters and agent queries can cite; prize money at the mid-tier competes with pro magazine rates; winning stories get published and promoted; and feedback-bearing contests return usable information for the entry fee. Writers who treat two or three well-chosen contests a year as fixed points report a rhythm benefit that outlasts any individual result: finished story, external verdict, next story.
The case against, taken seriously
Fees accumulate faster than wins: a writer entering monthly at fifteen dollars spends 180 dollars a year, and most entrants win nothing most years; that money funds other people's prizes. Odds at famous contests are magazine-slush odds or worse, thousands of entries for one cheque. Some contests take rights from all entrants, a genuinely bad trade. And the contest circuit can distort a writer's development: work tuned to please judges within a rubric can drift toward safe, well-made sameness, the competent story that offends no one and haunts no one either.
There is also an opportunity cost argument: every strong unpublished story spent on a contest that publishes only winners was, for a season, unavailable to magazines that might have bought it. None of these objections kills the case for contests. Each one narrows it, toward fewer, better-chosen entries with stories that have a plan B.
The filter that settles it per contest
Ask five questions. Can I read past winners, and do I respect them? Are the judges named, with relevant standing? Is the fee proportionate to the prize pool and to what non-winners receive? Does the rights clause bind winners only, for a limited time? Does the organiser exist beyond the contest, a magazine, festival, foundation, platform with a life? Two failures, walk away. Clean passes, and the contest is worth what it costs, whatever the result.
Add one personal question: what does this entry buy me if I lose? A contest that answers nothing must be worth its fee on prize odds alone, which is rarely true. Contests that publish shortlists, return judge comments or issue scores answer something concrete, feedback-bearing contests convert every entry into information, which is why they suit developing writers best. Losing with a score is coaching; losing into silence is just spending.
Making contests part of a strategy, not the strategy
The healthy pattern among working writers looks like this: magazines as the default destination for finished stories, plus a small annual shortlist of contests entered deliberately, chosen for fit, feedback or a credential the writer currently lacks. Contest deadlines slot into the production calendar as forcing functions; contest results, good and bad, get logged in the same tracker as submissions, because they are the same activity, external verdicts on finished work.
What to avoid is contest-only careers and contest-never purism alike. The writer who only enters competitions builds a trophy shelf but no editorial relationships; the writer who refuses them forfeits deadlines, credentials and the occasional life-changing cheque on principle. Both are leaving value on the table. Contests are a tool with a price tag. Priced honestly and used for what they uniquely provide, they are worth it; used as a lottery habit, they are not, and the difference was always in your hands.
What poets can take from this
- Enter few contests, chosen with a five-check filter, rather than many chosen by hope.
- Ask what an entry buys you if you lose; prefer contests where the answer is concrete.
- Use contest deadlines as forcing functions in your production calendar.
- Never enter a contest whose rights clause binds all entrants rather than winners.
- Log contest results beside magazine submissions; they are the same career data.
Try it yourself
Write the story you would enter if you knew the judges would read only your first page, because at scale, first pages decide. Make every paragraph on that page earn the next one, then finish the story to the same standard and enter it somewhere with a deadline this month.
Questions
Do writing contests help beginners?
Disproportionately, when the contest returns something for every entry: a guaranteed reading, a deadline, feedback or a score. Beginners lack external verdicts most of all, and honest contests supply them on a schedule that magazine slush cannot promise.
How many writing contests should I enter a year?
Most working writers who use contests well enter two to six annually, budgeted in advance and chosen for fit or feedback. Beyond that, fees compound, quality of targeting drops, and magazine submission time gets cannibalised.
Do agents care about writing contest wins?
Named, respectable contest results register: they show a third party chose your work over a defined field. One line in a query listing a real prize or shortlist helps; a paragraph of obscure wins does not. Curate the credential like everything else.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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