Novel Writing Contests: Why Writory Is Not One, and What a Novelist Can Enter
Quick answer: Novel writing contests want a manuscript; Writory does not accept novels, synopses or excerpts. What a novelist can enter is a standalone story of 100 to 3,000 words, set in the novel's world, judged blind against a published rubric. Entry is $8, the deadline is 25 November 2026 at 11:59 PM IST, and every entrant receives a certificate and a score out of 100.
Writory's short story contest takes original stories of 100 to 3,000 words, not manuscripts, synopses or excerpts. A novelist can enter a standalone story of chapter length for $8 by 25 November 2026 at 11:59 PM IST, and every entrant receives a certificate and a score out of 100.
What Writory does not accept, said plainly
Writory does not run a novel writing contest. The short story contest accepts original stories of 100 to 3,000 words, and the form at /submit-story checks that cap. There is no manuscript category, no first-chapter-plus-synopsis category and no unpublished-novel prize. A synopsis cannot be judged under a rubric that scores Language & Craft, because a synopsis is not written prose in the judged sense; a 3,000-word excerpt that stops mid-scene cannot be judged under Storytelling & Structure, because it has no structure of its own. We say this first so nobody pays $8 for a reading their work is not built for.
Novel prizes exist and they are the right home for a manuscript. They typically ask for a complete draft or an opening plus outline, read once a year, and return a longlist. Writory does something narrower and more frequent: a blind reading of a complete short piece, repeated every round, with a certificate and a score out of 100 returned to every entrant. For a novelist that is a different tool, useful for a different job, and the rest of this page is about what that job is.
An excerpt is not a story
The difference is causation. A chapter is written to make the next chapter necessary; a story is written to make the next page unnecessary. Judges reading blind see only what is on the page, and a chapter lifted from a novel usually opens on a character the reader is assumed to know, escalates a problem that was set up 40 pages earlier and ends on a hook. Against a rubric that gives 25 points to whether the ending pays off the opening, that chapter scores as a fragment, because it is one.
A standalone story set in the novel's world is a different object. Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio (1919) is a novel made of stories that each close; Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge (2008) does the same, and several of its chapters ran as stories first; Ray Bradbury assembled The Martian Chronicles (1950) from pieces he had already sold to magazines. Jennifer Egan published chapters of A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010) as freestanding stories before the book existed. Each of those pieces has its own opening, turn and ending, and would be judged as a whole.
How to build a chapter-length story that stands alone
Pick a stretch of your world that contains a complete want. Not the inciting incident of the novel, which by design opens more than it closes, but a side event: the week your antagonist buried a parent, the day a minor character left town. Give it an opening the reader can enter cold, so any name or fact needed is on the page within the first 200 words. Escalate inside the piece rather than gesturing at the larger plot. End on a change in the person, not on a door left open for chapter nine.
Then check it against the five marks the judges use: Storytelling & Structure 25, Character & Emotional Impact 25, Language & Craft 20, Originality & Voice 20, Impact & Resonance 10. Ask a reader who has never seen the novel to read it and tell you the story back; if they need to ask who anyone is, the piece is still an excerpt. The free Story Craft course at /academy/story-craft is built for this length, and the full criteria are published at /short-story-judging-criteria.
Why a novelist might bother
The scorecard. A novel takes a year or more to write and a further year to hear back about, and in that time a writer gets almost no external reading of sentence-level craft. A standalone story from the same world can be written in a fortnight, entered for $8, and returned with five marks on 30 November 2026. If Language & Craft comes back at 14 out of 20 twice in a row, that is information the manuscript needs before it goes to an agent. The first contest runs from 1 September to 25 November 2026 at 11:59 PM IST, with results and certificates on 30 November 2026. From December the contest is monthly: entries close on the 25th, results on the 30th, and the next round opens the moment they land.
Every entrant receives a certificate and a score out of 100. The top story takes $100 and free entry to the next round, and writers keep all rights, so a story that scores well can still become a chapter, or go to a magazine, or both. Stories in any language are read in that language. Writers must be 13 or over. Optional written feedback is available at entry for those who want the reading behind the numbers.
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. Monthly winners earn free entry to the next round. Enter at https://writoryofficial.com/submit-story.
Common questions
Can I enter my novel, or the first chapter, in the Writory contest?
No. The contest takes original stories of 100 to 3,000 words and does not accept manuscripts, synopses or excerpts. A chapter that stops mid-arc will be read as a fragment and scored as one. What you can enter is a standalone story of chapter length, set in your novel's world if you like, with its own opening, turn and ending.
What does entry cost?
$8 for one story, $14 for two, $25 for five, each judged and scored separately. The winner of a round takes $100 and free entry to the next; free entry is earned that way and is not open to all.
What do I get back?
Every entrant receives a certificate and a score out of 100 split into the five rubric marks, so a novelist sees Language & Craft and Storytelling & Structure scored separately by readers who have no idea who wrote the piece. Optional written feedback on the story is available at entry.
Can the story use the same characters as my novel?
Yes. The requirement is that the story stands alone on the page: a reader who has never heard of your novel must be able to follow it, care about the person in it, and feel the ending land. Reusing characters is fine; assuming the reader already knows them is not.
Does entering affect my rights to the novel?
No. Writers keep all rights to everything entered. The story can become a chapter later, go to a magazine, or be cut from the book; nothing about the contest gets in the way. Judging is blind, so publication history also has no bearing on the score.
Is 3,000 words enough for a chapter-length story?
It is the cap, and it is roughly the length of a short chapter in most literary novels. It holds one complete want and one change. If your material needs 5,000 words to close, it is not yet a story for this contest; find the smaller event inside it.
More story contest pages
About Writory
Writory (writoryofficial.com) is an international monthly poetry contest founded in 2025 by Shivay Mehra. Poets from 31 countries have entered, readers come from over 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.