Using scene building to create winning essays

And an alternative writing challenge with wombats.

Hi writing family. Kelly Eden here,

As you probably know, this month The Medium Writers Challenge is running with $50,000 in prizes. The deadline is August 24th so you still have a few more days to enter.

While the contest is running I’m focusing on personal essays, because regardless of whether or not you enter the contest, personal essays are a great creative form to learn.

The Medium Contest topics are: Death, Reentry, Work, and Space and the definitions of those are quite broad. You can get really creative with it.

Make sure you read the contest entry details and tag your stories properly.

But if you’re not keen to write on those, one of my favorite funny Medium writers, Roz Warren, has an alternative challenge (you won’t win a prize, just for fun) and her topics are:

Unicycles, Karma, the Kitchen Sink or Wombats.

Just tag your story #RWC and she’ll see it.

You don’t need to be a member to write for either the official Medium Challenge or Roz’s alternative one. But if you want to sign up to read more from Medium writers, here’s the link.

If you’re not sure where to start, begin with a scene. Then write another scene that feels related. Make them sensory and visual. Use those objects we talked about last week.

Ask yourself:

• What connects the two?

• What is the conflict or issue these scenes show you dealing with?

• Did you have an internal conflict about what to do, nervousness, apprehension?

Here’s a bit more about writing scenes:

How Vivid Scenes Boost Your Creative Nonfiction and Delight Your Readers.

Happy writing,

Kelly