Strategies That Helped Students Win the Writing Competition
The International Conference 2018 in New York City brought together undergraduate students from across the globe, including delegates from Australian universities such as the University of Melbourne, the University of Sydney, and the University of Queensland. Over three days, attendees engaged with executives, policy makers, and entrepreneurs exploring the future of work, leadership, and enterprise. Among the most talked-about offerings was the writing competition, a space where students tested not only their analytical skills but their ability to move a panel of judges with a well-told story.
For Australian applicants, the competition offered a rare chance to translate distinctly local experiences, from the boom-and-bust rhythms of Pilbara mining towns to the multicultural energy of a Sydney suburb, into essays that could resonate with an international audience. Storytelling, more than polished prose or impressive vocabulary, often proved to be the deciding factor between a shortlisted entry and one that faded into the pile.
Many students arrived believing that the strongest essays would read like policy briefs or business cases. The winners tended to do the opposite: they trusted a human narrative to carry their argument. What follows unpacks the storytelling principles that separated standout entries from solid-but-forgettable submissions.
The power of narrative in competitive writing
Panels rarely remember an essay for its thesis statement. They remember the moment a writer's argument became a story they could see and feel. Narrative gives abstract ideas a body, a setting, and a voice that lingers after the paper is filed away. In a competition judged by senior leaders juggling back-to-back panels, that emotional residue is what tilts the score.
Strong narrative writing also builds trust. When a writer opens with a specific scene, such as a shift handover in a Kalgoorlie mine, a queue at a Brunswick bakery, or a boardroom in Barangaroo, the reader immediately senses that the rest of the essay will be grounded in reality. That grounding makes the analytical claims that follow easier to accept, because the writer has already shown they understand the texture of the work being discussed.
Crafting an arc that mirrors a business case
A common misstep is to treat storytelling as decoration layered on top of an argument. The strongest competition entries wove narrative and analysis together so tightly that separating them felt artificial. A useful structure borrowed from journalism, moving from situation through complication to resolution, translated neatly into the kinds of problem-solution essays the competition invited.
Writers who won often began with a small, concrete moment of disruption, then widened the lens to show systemic forces at play. A student writing about automation, for example, might start with a single worker at a Brisbane distribution centre learning a new inventory system, then zoom out to national productivity data and the federal government's Industry Growth Centres Initiative. The arc gave the data a face, and the face gave the data weight.
Opening with a scene that anchors the reader
The opening lines of a competition essay are read more carefully than almost any other paragraph. Judges often skim dozens of submissions before pausing for one. A scene-based opening, set in a specific time, place, and sensory detail, earned that pause far more reliably than an abstract claim.
Writers who struggled often tried to compress their entire argument into the introduction. Those who succeeded treated the opening as the door, not the house. The table below compares four common opening approaches and the kind of reader response each tends to produce.
| Opening approach | What it does | Typical judge reaction |
|---|---|---|
| Abstract claim | Sets the thesis in general terms | Skimmed quickly; no reason to slow down |
| Personal anecdote | Introduces a single protagonist and moment | Engaged, but only if the anecdote is specific |
| Striking statistic | Surprises with scale | Memorable, but often lacks emotional hook |
| Scene-based opening | Places the reader inside a moment | Pauses the reader; sets up trust and curiosity |
The scene-based approach consistently outpaced the others because it did double duty. It conveyed information and emotion at the same time, which freed up the rest of the essay to deepen rather than re-establish the argument.
Drawing on Australian experience and workplace realities
Australian applicants had a natural advantage they sometimes failed to recognise: the country offers an unusually rich laboratory for stories about work, mobility, and reinvention. The shift from manufacturing to services in Geelong, the rapid expansion of the resources sector in Western Australia, the rise of the startup scene in Surry Hills, and the cultural diversity captured by a single Melbourne tram route can all anchor a powerful narrative.
The fair-go ethos that runs through Australian workplaces also gave writers a useful ethical frame. Stories about apprenticeships, mature-age graduates returning to TAFE, or workers retraining through programs linked to the National Skills Commission resonated because they reflected a widely shared national value. The risk was leaning on stereotype. Winners used local colour as texture, not as costume, letting the workplace itself reveal the argument rather than waving a flag at the reader.
Revising for clarity, rhythm, and emotional weight
The first draft of a competition essay is rarely the one that wins. Past winners consistently described cutting their opening paragraphs in half, then cutting them in half again. They read their work aloud, listening for places where the rhythm stalled or where a sentence tried to do the job of two.
A simple revision checklist helped tighten entries: replace abstract nouns with concrete verbs wherever possible, cut every clause that did not advance the story or the argument, read the piece aloud and mark every breath, and check that each section ends with a sentence the reader wants to remember. Many writers also shared drafts with classmates outside their discipline, mimicking the cross-functional feedback they would receive in a graduate role. A commerce student asking an arts friend to read a piece on infrastructure often surfaced assumptions the writer had stopped noticing.
Standing out without sacrificing substance
Storytelling can seduce a writer into prioritising drama over evidence. The competition rewarded entries that understood both as obligations. A vivid anecdote earned the right to make a claim only when it was followed by a number, a citation, or a clear logical step. The reverse was equally true: dense data without a human frame rarely advanced past the first round.
What separated the very best entries was restraint. They trusted the reader to draw conclusions, resisted the urge to explain every metaphor, and let one well-chosen detail carry the weight of an entire paragraph. That confidence, more than any single technique, is what storytelling ultimately gave the winners, the quiet assurance that a well-built story can do the work of a hundred adjectives.
For students preparing for future iterations of the conference, the practical takeaway is straightforward: choose a moment worth telling, build an argument worth believing, and trust the intersection of the two. That intersection, more than any prize, is what shapes a writer long after the judges have moved on to the next stack.