So far, I have articles, interviews, YouTube links, Podcasts, articles on the workshop, forum locations, etc, etc. This page is pretty much everything I used to research the contest and eventually win it. The information is totally invaluable, and centralized! If you’ve read, seen, or experienced something about the contest and it isn’t on this page, please shoot me a link and I’ll include it. I hope you enjoy it!

You can see the finalists here. Congrats to all the finalists!!!

Music to write by: “Civil War“ by Guns N’ Roses

Welcome to your Writers of the Future (Wotf) Spectacular!

What is Wotf? It is simply one of the most pretigious short fiction writing contests of any genre anywhere. At Norweson recently James C Glass said that after he won the contest (1990), he was the “flavour of the month. Everyone wanted a story from [him]“. It’s a huge career booster, and the value of the prizes (cash and otherwise) isn’t anything to sneer at either.

So, what is this intention of this blog post? Well, like almost everything in this blog, it’s to put the tools to succeed into your hands. I haven’t won WotF. I’m not an expert, nor will I claim anywhere in this article that I know how to win. What this blog will do is point you in the direction of the experts and provide you with resources you might not have been aware of (and won’t show up right away on a Google search). Rather than focusing on the rules of the contest, I’d like to start with an excerpt of an interview with Dan Wolverton, the head judge.

How are manuscripts handled?

There’s a contest administrator who receives all the manuscripts. The administrator makes sure all the stories are anonymous (no names on manuscripts, etc.) then sends the stories to me. I pick out the ones that will be the finalists. Usually about six to ten stories. Then I return them to the administrator who sends the finalist stories to the other judges. They determine who gets first, second and third place.

Any other comments you’d like to make?

The “Writers of the Future” contest has prizes as well as money for publication. Each quarterly contest has three prizes. $1000 for first place, $750 for second, $500 for third. Each year, there’s a grand prize winner selected from the four quarterly first place winner. That person gets an additional $4000.

Then, the winning stories are bought for the anthology. The twelve winners get 20 cents a word up to $1000.

Finalists get 15 cents a word up to $500. Around three finalists get their stories published in the anthology each year, in addition to the winners. So, if you make grand prize winner, you could earn around $6000. It’s about the highest paying market in the field. It should be the first place writers look at.

In addition to the money, if your story is published in the anthology, you get to attend a writing workshop.A lot of writers come each year who are close to breaking into the pro market. The workshop helps them figure out what they need to do and where they need to go.

If you win (or are even a published finalist), you get to attend a Writer’s Workshop hosted by some of the top writers in the field, including Orson Scott Card, K.D.Wentworth, Tim Powers, Kevin J. Anderson, and more. Luc Reid, a winner in 2003 has a great description at his experience at the writer’s workshop as well as some good advice on how to win the contest from a writer that’s actually won it! His article can be found here.

Amy Casil Sterling won third place in the contest in 1999. She wrote an essay on her journey to the winners podium which is highly suggested reading. Her article definitely implies that winning the contest requires a lot of work, top notch craftsmanship, and a little luck. Many people (myself included) enter the contest quarter after quarter until they win. In the author bios of last year’s volume I noticed that one writer had entered 27 times before they won. For the math challenged, that’s an entry a quarter for 7 years.

One final tool that you can use to gain insight about the contest is the Writers and Illustrators of the Future Contest Blog run by John Goodwin at Galaxy Press. It’s updated almost daily and is one of the locations where winners are announced.

Of course, the best advice on how to win is to read the anthologies. I said this before: a great way to sell to an editor is to read the stuff they publish and then write a story you’ll know they’ll like. So good luck with the contest! I submit every quarter, so if you’re reading this, we’ll probably be crossing swords in the slush pile. En guarde!