Words or Less Answers - Lesson One - Get your creativity Flowing!
October 31, 2008 by admin
Filed under Creative Answers, winning hints and tips
Over the last couple of days I’ve listed a few competitions that require a “words or less” component. Otherwise referred to as a “tie breaker” answer.
I know that many readers may shy away from these competitions as they don’t feel confident that they can write a winning answer. I’ve written about hints and tips to entering creative competitions before, but nothing really about how to craft your answer.
This time around I will focus on how to get your creativity flowing for the particular answer you are trying to draft.
Some questions and competitions don’t require much thought. In fact sometimes, a great answer will pop straight into your head and you write it down and voila a winning entry is all yours. I absolutely recommend if something unique pops into your head when you first read the question, then use that answer. Most times though, I find i have to put a bit of thought into what I write.
For this purpose I am going to create a fake question just to give you some ideas and inspiration to follow when you are writing your own.
Question: Answer in 25 words or less why a new car would change your life
First step - Write out all the creative words or ideas that you first get pop into your head.
*** This can include things such as wheels, clutch, ride, drive, fast, road, kids, family, shiny, paint, desire, exhaust, tyres, windows, speed, luxury… you get the picture.
Second Step - Take a look at the words you’ve written down and see what pops out to you as your favourites. In this case I am going to say clutch, desire, exhaust, paint, luxury, wheels
(as I am writing this I have no idea what the final answer will be, this really is a process I would follow so we’ll see how it goes.)
Third Step - Start to craft your answer using your creative words. I generally create rhymes, but there are many people who do really well without rhyming and in fact there are promoters that can’t stand rhymes so the choice is up to you.
**** My answer - using the words clutch, desire, exhaust, paint, luxury, wheels
I’m “exhaust”ed being a mum, “Clutch”ing at my desires, I’d “wheely” love to have some fun, and a brand new set of “tyres”
As you can see, I ended up using the word “tyres” but I’m happy with the final result. It takes a bit of fiddling with words, but the end result is definately worth it.
I hope that helped
Thanks for this post. You’ve really got me in “comp-ing” mode, much to my mothers delight! It’s great to have some concrete tips like this post! Would never have come up with such a witty answer myself!
Now that’s really creativity. Playing with rhymes is a great tip for me who loves to play with phonemes and minimal sound pairs.
As for my general rule in entering contests, I believe that these contests should be simple enough so you can encourage more participants.
Now I can see why you’re so successful at winning competitions. You have a real gift for it!!!
@Louisa - Thanks for the feedback, it’s great to know that other people are finding the stuff I write useful
@Nhil - Rhymes are often fun and pretty easy to write, just go with it and have fun, you just never know what might win…
@Lightening - Some of the answers I submit are REALLY bad LOL, when I just couldn’t be bothered. Writing stuff like this is as much motivation for myself to stay creative to win as it is to inspire other people and teach others how to stand out a little when entering.. Give it a go, you might surprise yourself
I’ve been totally o’ding on rhymes since this post!
@ Louisa, It guess worse…… when you start thinking in 25 words or less… it seriously does happen
Interesting, the only problem I have is that if I go with the first thing that pops in my head I am most likely to get myself in trouble. I much prefer jotting words down and being more constructive.