Do you have any coding advice that you use to make your story look more "pretty" / "nice to look at" kinda thing?:
I usually center my one-shots and sometimes make them a size smaller. Also I add a lot of gaps between dialogue and other writing to help it stand out more.
When in a writing competition, how do you stay optimistic about your competitors which seem much better than you?:
Look at all their brilliant forms, then take what you like the most about each one and use it at inspiration.
When you have to make a story a certain word count, (my limit is 14k words) how do you balance trying to stretch the story out but it's NOT boring filler and is actually interesting and adds to the story?:
I'd say do a bit of planning, decide roughly how long each part of the story should be, that should help you stay within the limits.
Any other advice to help me not get murdered in this competition?:
Nope, but gl!
have you ever been inspired to write a story by a song? inversely, are there any songs that remind you of your current or most recent project?
No and no
what do you enjoy in a writing style most? how would you describe your own writing style?
I highly prefer reading third person, because I feel like description and dialogue can be very evenly balanced, with first person there's a lot of internal dialogue obviously and I simply think that the descriptions suffer bc of it? Also I haven't read a modern 1st person book and really liked it compared to some of the 3rd person books I've read.
I'd describe my own style probably as third person omniscient, since I really like the freedom to jump around from one character to another, or be telling the story totally detached from any character's viewpoint.