If you’ve started or are starting a new novel soon, there’s a new competition to take part in. The ProWritingAid’s Novel Beginnings competition. It’s a chance to win $50,000 with several runners up prizes of $5000. It is a slightly more expensive one to enter at $20. But your work won’t be used to train any AI or LLM. Which is good but also what you’d expect from any legit opportunity.
You need to submit the first 5,000 words of a novel. Otherwise, it’s open to folks worldwide. The closing date is March 31st 2026.
To help contestants, they have a series of webinars in the run up. I’ve booked myself in to eight as they’ll be very useful anyway for my writing education in general. They’re on topics like ‘Language and Style in Novel Writing’ and ‘Showing Not Telling.’ Each is around an hour long and they’re generally in the evening GMT except for one which is in the afternoon.
I’d assume (always a dangerous thing) that the competition will be incredibly stiff and as such it’s questionable if the $20 entry fee is worth it. However, it is being read by humans so maybe that’s a fair price for the labour entailed.
I haven’t decided if I’ll enter, however I will take the opportunity to polish up my novel beginning using these free webinars. There are other competitions regarding novel beginnings later in the year, so maybe the $20 is good value after all if you take the experience as a whole.
What competitions are you planning to enter this year?
Lorna Writes a Novel 
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