Adapt Old Pieces for Contests
When trying to find writing contests that will fit the pieces you have already written, it can be difficult and frustrating. Many writing contests have narrow requirements, asking for certain themes or symbols to be present in your writing. As you likely didn't write most of your stories with the contests in mind, it is rare that your piece will fit these conditions from the start. However, don't be afraid to create a new draft of your story and try and adapt it to include the required elements.
The types of requirements that you will often see in contests are the presence of certain items. One contest required the character to be making a journey of some kind, another asked for a family moral. These types of requirements are usually centered around the organization that is offering the contest, to make the pieces more relevant to their own background.
When seeing these, some people will take the challenge and try and write a full piece that encompasses these ideas. However, this can be a time consuming task, and since you're only writing the piece to suit contest requirements, it likely won't be very good and will be quickly written off within the contest. Instead, it is much more effective when you take a piece you are already confident in, and try and find new ways to adapt it.
Adapting your piece to fit a contest's requirements might seem like a dangerous idea at first. After all, you are taking something that you are proud of, and believe to be complete, and you start tweaking it. What's great about this process, is that it opens your mind to new ideas. When you try and change your character's discussions by putting them on an airplane, or by having a background thought in their mind about a family member, you create a new relationship in the story that inspires discussion. You can add more elements of meaning to a story you thought was largely complete.
As a result of this, not only can adapting pieces for writing contest requirements help you win the contests, it can also help you succeed at writing better pieces. You will start looking at your stories in a different light, and take stale work and make it a little more interesting. Give it a try, and see what you're able to come up with.
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