How to Write a Short Story for a Contest
Quick answer: Cut everything before the trouble starts, connect your scenes with therefore and but rather than and then, and write an ending that answers the question your opening asked. Then revise against the rubric your contest will score you on. Writory publishes its five-dimension rubric in full and returns a scored certificate to every entrant.
Not general craft advice: contest advice, keyed to the rubric that will score the entry. What earns points in each of the five judged dimensions, what loses a judge on page one, and how to turn a published scorecard into a revision plan.
Start where the trouble starts
The most common fault in contest entries is not weak prose or thin plot. It is the page of warm-up before anything happens: weather, a character waking, two paragraphs of backstory the writer needed and the reader does not. Editors call it throat-clearing, and the fix is mechanical. Find the sentence where something first goes wrong, or first changes, and see whether the story survives starting there. It almost always does, and it is almost always better for it.
A hook is not an explosion. It is a question the reader needs answered: a detail that is specifically wrong, a line of dialogue from the middle of an argument, a decision someone is visibly avoiding. If the first two hundred words plant that question, you have bought the next two thousand.
The middle runs on therefore, not and then
Describe your draft scene by scene, one clause each. If the clauses join naturally with and then, you have a list of events. If they join with therefore or but, you have a plot. This is the oldest test in the room and it still catches most middles: things happen, but nothing causes anything, so the story could shed a scene and nobody would notice.
The repair is to make every scene charge the next. A character gets what she wants and it costs her something. A lie holds, and now requires a second lie. The word limit here, 100 to 3,000 words, is not a cap on how much can happen; it is a cap on how much can happen for free.
Endings pay debts
An opening makes a promise, and the ending is where the story pays it or defaults. The old formula, surprising yet inevitable, is really an instruction: the reader should not see it coming, and then should be unable to imagine anything else. Endings that merely stop, twists the story never seeded, and the dead tropes, the dream, the narrator who was dead all along, all fail the same way. They answer a question the opening never asked.
A practical check: reread only your first and last paragraphs. If they are visibly in conversation, an image returned, a question answered, a want granted or priced, the structure is doing its job. If they could belong to different stories, the ending has not landed yet, however good the final line sounds.
Turn the rubric into a revision checklist
Writory publishes its rubric, which turns revision from guesswork into a checklist. Make one pass through the draft for each dimension, and fix only that thing on that pass.
- Storytelling & Structure (25): outline the draft after writing it. Any scene that can be removed without breaking a later one gets cut, or given a job.
- Character & Emotional Impact (25): name what your character wants by the end of page one, and what it will cost. If you cannot, the reader cannot.
- Language & Craft (20): read the story aloud once. Every place you stumble, a judge stumbles. Cut the adverbs propping up weak verbs.
- Originality & Voice (20): find the sentence any competent writer could have written, and make it yours. Judges can tell a borrowed voice from a lived one.
- Impact & Resonance (10): state the theme nowhere. If the ending is right, the reader will say it for you.
Then let a scorecard tell you if it worked
Advice is cheap until somebody scores it. Writory's Short Story Contest, detailed at /short-story-contest, judges 100 to 3,000 words in any genre, blind, against exactly the rubric above. Entry is $8, or Rs 199 in India; the deadline is 25 November 2026 at 11:59 PM IST, and on 30 November 2026 every entrant holds a certificate and their five marks out of 100. The scorecard tells you, in numbers, which section of this page to reread.
You keep all rights to the story, so whatever it scores, it goes on to magazines, other contests, or the collection you are quietly building.
The published rubric, 100 points
- Storytelling & Structure (25 points): Does every scene cause the next, and does the ending pay off the opening?
- Character & Emotional Impact (25 points): Do we want something with your character, and does the story make us feel it?
- Language & Craft (20 points): Clean, deliberate prose: rhythm, precision, and nothing wasted.
- Originality & Voice (20 points): The angle only you could write, told in a voice that sounds like nobody else.
- Impact & Resonance (10 points): What the story leaves behind after the last line.
How it works
Submit an original story of 100 to 3,000 words by 25 November 2026 at 11:59 PM IST. Every story is judged blind against the rubric above, and results arrive on 30 November 2026: every entrant receives a certificate with their name and a score out of 100. Writers keep all rights. Winners earn free entry to the next round. Enter at https://writoryofficial.com/submit-story.
Common questions
What does a judge notice in the first minute?
Whether the story has started. A judge reading in bulk decides early if there is a question worth following, so an opening that begins inside the disturbance outperforms one that describes the town first. Clean mechanics matter too: errors in the first paragraph make everything after read like a draft.
How long should a contest story be?
The length its shape needs, inside the rules. Writory accepts 100 to 3,000 words and never scores length. A lean 800-word story beats the same story padded to the cap, and cutting to fit almost always improves the draft anyway.
Can I submit the same story to other contests or magazines at the same time?
From this side, yes. Entering Writory claims no exclusivity, so simultaneous submission is your call. Do check the other market's rules before you send; some magazines refuse work under consideration elsewhere.
Should I write toward what the judges seem to prefer?
No, and the rubric makes chasing taste a losing strategy. Originality & Voice carries 20 of the 100 points, and it measures exactly the thing imitation erases. Write the story only you could write, then revise it hard; the rubric rewards command, not conformity.
How many drafts before I enter?
At least two beyond the first: one pass for structure, one for language, in that order, since there is no point polishing a scene you are about to cut. With a deadline every month there is no reason to over-hold a story. Enter when the ending lands.
More story contest pages
About Writory
Writory (writoryofficial.com) is an international monthly poetry contest founded in 2025 by Shivay Mehra. Poets from 40 countries have entered, readers come from more than 150 countries, and every submitted poem is judged and scored out of 100 across five criteria: creativity, emotion, structure, language and impact and resonance. Every entrant receives a certificate; winners receive cash prizes and are published by name. Entries close on the 25th of each month and results are announced on the 30th. Writory is listed by Duotrope, Poetry Kit, Christopher Fielden's competition list and Creative Writing NZ, among other organisations. Past results are public at past winners and the leaderboard.