Fanfiction Contests: The Value of a Loss
When I started (officially) writing fanfiction back in 2013, I would never have guessed that I would love short format fiction.
Over the past nine years, I’ve competed in 16 different fanfiction short story contests. Each one challenged me to reach beyond my experience and try something new in an environment where I had nothing to lose if I didn’t win.
On my about page, I have a list of fanfic competitions I’ve placed in and links to all the winning pieces, but today, I’d like to talk about instances where my pieces didn’t place.
Don’t misunderstand, I love to win, but winning is often an added bonus on top of gathering more varied experience. Each of these challenges pushed me to do things I’d never even considered before, much less attempted, but every contest gave me another weapon in my writing arsenal and provided a low-pressure environment in which to learn how to use it.
My favorite place to compete is on fanfiction.net’s Writer’s Anonymous Forum. They host new contests every three to four months, and they alternate between skill-building and prompt-based challenges, so all writers can participate, regardless of experience level.
Though they didn’t place, each of these pieces represent important moments in my writing life, and I learned so much from them.
Writer’s Anonymous Alternate Format entry, February, 2017.
This piece let me explore writing from a ship’s viewpoint. I had no idea what I was doing, and it shows, because I threw in all the characters I loved in the bare space of 2,000 words, but it freed me to express smaller portions of this massive alternate universe instead of chaining myself to novel-length work.
Writer’s Anonymous Character Development entry, July, 2017.
Before this piece, I had never dared write anything this intense, nor had I written from a point-of-view vastly differing from my own. All characters I’d worked with were likable, heroic (or a the very least, sympathetic) figures. This changed that by allowing me to explore writing from two villains’ perspectives and opening the door for a big win several years later when I penned Heartless.
Writer’s Anonymous One-Word Prompt entry, October, 2017.
This work includes a place of peace from a song I love. This challenge afforded me the real estate where, for the first time, I got to build a location I had envisioned for 16 years, and from that time on, I found opportunities to construct other settings I’d only ever imagined.
Writer’s Anonymous No Dialogue entry, March, 2018.
Without this challenge, I never would have tried writing a piece that didn’t include dialogue. It’s harder than it sounds. Speech is such an intricate part of most people’s lives, and finding a point-of-view that works without it can be a challenge all its own. But, this story was my first experience with writing from an animal’s point-of-view. It paved the way for writing portions of in-fandom classic, The Right of Kings , as well as another contest winner, Home.
Writer’s Anonymous Holiday Challenge entry, December, 2018.
My first ever foray into first-person writing. Without this piece, I probably wouldn’t have tried first-person. It’s still not my favorite POV to write from, but I know how to use it now, and have since applied it to winning fanfiction pieces and original work.
Writer’s Anonymous Random Opener entry, July, 2019
Having never focused on sensory details before now, this piece is the reason I understand the potency of carefully placed descriptors, and it was a key contributor to the writing of in-fandom classic, Cure Seekers.
Writer’s Anonymous Break the Cliche entry, September, 2020.
Character voice is vital to a story’s success. This was the first time that concept snapped into focus for me, and it was instrumental in my discovery of every other character voice since.
Writer’s Anonymous Never in a Million Years entry, March, 2021.
This was the first piece I ever enlisted a beta reader for. And I am forever glad I did. Their input completely changed this piece and helped me decide to dive into a verb tense and POV choice I’d never chosen before—3rd person present. Learning the value of a good beta reader helped me tremendously when I wrote contest winner, Under Windswept Stars, a year later, also with the help of that same beta reader. That initial beta experience also pushed me to learn how to take good, blunt criticism and use it to shape my work into something amazing.
Don’t fear losing.
Some things can only be learned by a loss, and that knowledge is just as valuable as any accolade.