Effective Contests

Take it from a guy who's hosted over thirty contests: Not all contest's are successful. Many of them flop over. They suck. You get two entries, and you're giving away three prizes. The following is a step-by-step explanation on what users look for before entering contests:

Points
It's sad really, but even in real life if there's a job that pays little money, someone's not going to put their full effort forward.
Now I'm not saying that you have to put 1000 points into a contest, but don't expect someone to write a 20000 word story for a possible hundred points. The length of time it takes to write a story for your contest should determine the amount of points up for grabs.

Topic

Unless it's a really popular television show, book, or movie, fan-fiction contests will not guarantee you a lot of entries. If you do want more entries, offer another option. Let them be inspired by the title of the show/book/movie, instead of the topic in question.  For example, if you wanted to host a contest on a book called "The Rainbow Warriors," you might write the following:

For this contest, I'd like to see a fan-fiction of the book "The Rainbow Warriors. If you have not read it, simply use the title as a prompt."

Also, make sure your topics are broad. Narrow a topic too much and it becomes demanding of the user entering. For example, "I'd like to read stories about a couple falling in love" is better than "I want stories where a girl falls in love with a boy, but he doesn't love her and ignores her for a long time until finally he dances with her at prom and they get together."

Title, Preview and First Lines

Very, VERY important. These are why people click in the first place. First they see the title, and to lure users in your title should be catchy, and a little bit mysterious. By mysterious, I mean that the title should make users wonder what the contest is about. Calling your contest "my first contest," just won't cut the cake here. It would be about as effective as an author releasing a novel called "my first novel." Some people would buy it, but chances are that it wouldn't make the bestseller list.

The preview appears underneath the title, and should tell a bit about what the contest is about. "A contest where passions and lust collide," may be a good one for a romance contest. 

The first couple lines in a contest usually give some information on what the user will be writing about if they choose to enter your contest. Don't waste time saying things like "This is my tenth contest." If you want to mention that, mention it AFTER you've got them hooked. Comprendo?

I was searching for a contest that had all three of these things, and I came across one by tallblondie. The contest's title: "Feghoots." Preview: "Seen for the first time on Storywrite, and breathing life into a now obscure writing style, I present to you: The Feghoot. Want to learn more? Come on in.." And then, after clicking the contest link, the very first few lines explain exactly what a Feghoot is. Kudos to tallblondie. She will be recieving 50 points from me for a job well done, as will a few others who've followed this guideline before it was posted.

Spelling and Grammar

You are hosting a contest remember, and that means authority. With authority, comes the responsibility to spell things right. What if your new English teacher came in the first day and wrote on the board: "my naaamee iz misTer jakcson + i wil b ur englihs teachur."

So run your contest through spell check. Storywrite has one.

Deadline and Word Count

It's tricky to decide when to close a contest. You're allowed two weeks, but you can increase it slightly, and you can re-open a contest after it closes. If you think you will recieve a lot of entries in a short period of time (for example a contest asking for a love story, pre-writes allowed) then you'll want the contest to end within the first couple days. If you want a fresh story, written just for your contest, you may need to give some extra time.

Also, if you'd prefer a long story over a short one, and you mention that in your contest rules, you will also have to give a few extra days.

Prewrites

I'm sure if you've hosted contests before, you've noticed there is a dramatic difference between the number of entries when you allow pre-writes and when you don't. Just remember that allowing pre-writes means you're assuming that they've written something like this before, and probably don't want to write another something.
And NEVER ask for ''Your best pre-write.'' Unless you want 150 entries to read.

Background

This is easy. Just make the text stand out from the background and automatically more people will want to read it all the way through.

...

And that's pretty much all I can think of for now. I'll probably add a little more tomorrow, or the next day, but until then I look forward to seeing a lot more contests that I'm interested in entering!

Good luck!

Kevan.