Switched from fantasy to realistic fiction prompt for a contest entry last week and it flopped hard

I was sitting at my desk in my apartment last Tuesday, working on a fantasy story about dragons for a local writing contest. I got 3 paragraphs in and suddenly felt like the whole idea was too cliche. So I scrapped it and wrote a realistic fiction piece about a woman returning to her hometown after 10 years. The contest judge later told me they were looking for something more creative and imaginative. My entry didn't even make the top 20. Has anyone else had a prompt submission go completely wrong after a last-minute change?

2 comments

2 Comments

miller.susan9d ago

logansullivan said the judge called it "too boring" and honestly that might be the real lesson here. You swapped from dragons to a hometown story and that's a huge swing in tone and energy. Contest judges usually have a specific vibe they want and realistic fiction about a woman going home is pretty standard stuff. If you had stuck with the dragons you might have stood out even if it felt cliche to you. Sometimes our own doubts screw us over more than the actual idea does.

logansullivan13d ago

Oh man, that's brutal. A friend of mine once rewrote her whole contest entry the night before and ended up writing about a guy stuck in an elevator, but the judge said it was too boring.