How Competition Shows Can Teach Authors About Submissions
In 2025, I submitted to 25 literary magazines and got accepted into eight. Honestly, that’s really good numbers. Plenty of authors throw submissions at the wall—racking up 60-plus rejections and only a handful of acceptances. But while I was watching competition shows on Netflix (Face Off, baking shows, makeup competitions, fashion design challenges, even monster creature design), I realized they all had something in common that relates to writing submissions.
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The setup is always the same: the judges give the artists/designers a briefing, and the contestants must hit that brief using the tools provided. Almost every single person who gets sent home is someone who didn’t hit the brief or didn’t execute it well enough. And isn’t that exactly what happens in publishing?
Literary magazines put out submission calls—their briefs. As authors, it’s up to us to read those carefully and not only stay on task with what they’re asking for, but to execute that request fully and at the best of our abilities.
For example: If a literary magazine is calling for Monster Mermaid Horror, then give them Monster Mermaid Horror. They want a clear monster. They want a clear mermaid element. And they want all of it wrapped in the horror genre. If you only send them horror? Rejected. If you send mermaids but forget the horror? Rejected. Hitting the brief and executing it well immediately puts you light-years ahead of about 80% of the submissions.
And I can tell you this from the other side too. As I’ve grown in my craft, I’ve volunteered to read slush piles for literary magazines. Most rejections happen because writers didn’t actually follow the call or they didn’t execute the brief well.
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So, what’s the takeaway? Learn from those competition shows. If the judges (aka editors) give you a brief (aka submission call), then make sure you’re hitting every element and executing the genre completely. Doing so won’t just improve your chances of acceptance—it will make you a sharper, stronger writer overall.
Good luck out there, fam. You got this!
