Support

A reminder that, in addition to the various free things we do, one of the paid-for services we offer is one supporting writers.

Why should you hire a professional writing mentor, though? Isn’t it enough to attend a class/workshop or a writing group? Or ask a friend or relative to comment?

Well, it depends what you want and need and bespoke mentoring from Inscribe Media can help some writers, providing the experience and expertise to -

• understand your work

• nurture you and your writing

• let you retain control of your ideas and your writing

* provide expert, specific advice about what is working and what isn’t.

We focus on major issues, such as how your story hangs together, what your characters are doing or could be doing, what is hurting your story’s momentum, what story elements are not pulling their weight.

We identify the differences between good and great and point out your writing strengths, so you become confident about what not to change.

We also give suggestions and help you establish good processes and writing goals and suggest markets for your work.

If long-term mentoring does not appeal, we run short writing courses as well.

You can find out more at http://www.inscribemedia.co.uk/writing-courses---bespoke-mentoring.html
You can also access our free downloadable writing guide at www.inscribemedia.co,uk and find loads of free tips on our blog here.



John Dean

Winners to be announced

We will announce the winners of the February Global Short Story Competition on Monday April 7.
Still time to enter this month’s comp at www.inscribemedia.co.uk where voting for our 2013 annual prize continues until midnight tonight (Mar 31) GMT.

Time running out to enter March competition

The March Global Short Story Competition has three days to run and it has received just 14 entries this time around.

Begun six years ago, the competition runs every month with a £100 first prize and a £25 prize for highly commended writers.

The competition, which has topped £10,500 in prize money handed out, has had entries from more than 50 countries over the years.
Each month’s competition is judged by Fiona Cooper, an author in North-East England, where the competition’s organisers Inscribe Media are also based. The competition can be entered at www.inscribemedia.co.uk

John Dean

Time running out to vote

Less than a week to go in our vote for the annual winner of the Global Short Story Competition.

The monthly competition, run by Inscribe Media Limited from the North East of England, was launched in December 2007 and, in addition to £125 of monthly prizes, an annual award of £250 is made.

The award is normally selected by a panel including monthly judge Fiona Cooper and competition administrator John Dean, and goes to one of the writers who was successful in the previous twelve months of competitions.

This year, though, the company is asking people to vote by reading each of the twelve monthly winners then selecting their favourite for the sixth annual prize, taking in the whole of 2013.
Voting is open until March 31 at www.inscribemedia.co.uk where the latest competition can also be entered.

John Dean

Just you and the reader

I have blogged before about entries to the Global Short Story Competition which are written in first person and one that came in overnight brings me back to the subject.

Most stories tend to be written in third person but first person has its advantages, not least that it allows the writer to talk directly to the reader. This entry did just that, using ‘you’ to refer to the reader.

First person is a great choice when you intend to write informally or casually like this because it can be intimate. That engages the reader which is what writing is all about.
Six days to enter this month’s competition at www.inscribemedia.co.uk

John Dean

Our latest newsletter

Hi

Welcome to the newsletter from the team behind the Global Short Story Competition.
Search is on for annual story prize winner

The team behind the Global Short Story Competition has launched a vote to find its annual winner.

The monthly competition, run by Inscribe Media Limited from the North East of England, was launched in December 2007 and, in addition to £125 of monthly prizes, an annual award of £250 is made.

The award is normally selected by a panel including monthly judge Fiona Cooper and competition administrator John Dean, and goes to one of the writers who was successful in the previous twelve months of competitions.

This year, the company is asking people to vote by reading each of the twelve monthly winners then selecting their favourite for the sixth annual prize. We know people enjoy reading the winning stories and we thought it would be a good idea to let them choose the 2013 winner.

Voting is open until March 31 at www.inscribemedia.co.uk where the latest competition can also be entered.





January winners announced

Judge Fiona Cooper has selected her winners for the Global Short Story Competition and writers from the UK and Australia have taken the honours.

The £100 first place prize goes to Colin Hodson, London, England, for The Stranger. Our highly commended £25 runner up prize is being divided between Florence Child, Forest Range, Australia, for Revenge, and Pam Plumb, Darlington, Co Durham, England, for Patient 129191.

The writers on the shortlist are:

Deborah J Ledford, Scottsdale, Afghanistan

Petra McQueen, Colchester, Essex, England

Kylie Orr, Upwey, Victoria, Australia

Gillian Brown, Peyriac de Mer, Aude, France

Virginie Tozzo, France

Esther Newton, Thatcham, Berkshire, England

Paul Freeman, United Arab Emirates


Honours go to writers from Spain and France in December competition
Judge Fiona Cooper selected her winners for the December Global Short Story Competition and writers from Spain and France took the honours.

The £100 December Global Short Story Competition first place prize went to Johanna Bergstrom, of Malaga, Spain, for The Bitch Next Door. Our highly commended runner up was Ann Hebert, of St Andre-de-Najac in Aveyron, France, who won £25 for The Letter.

The writers on the shortlist were:

Thomas Smith, Sunderland, England

Alex Reece Abbott, York, England

Eowyn O’Connor

Winning stories will be posted on www.inscribemedia.co.uk Well done to our successful writers. You can enter the latest competition at the same address.




Flash fiction winner
Our judging panel, chaired by John Dean, selected the winner of our free flash fiction competition launched in October 2013. The challenge was make us feel something in more than 20 words. The £50 prize went to Lesley Marshall with:
A boy!” my husband exulted. “We’re a perfect family!”
Which we were.
Until he discovered the imperfect chromosome... and left.
Special mention to It’s a Girl by Asharika Jaward: "A girl?" they sneer. Its fate is sealed. Hers, but not hers to keep; to love, to mother

Eileen R Mueller: Scraps of rotting pumpkin, cast-off shoes.... A bitten hotdog! Starving, he shovels it down, stumbling to the next bin.

And Kirk Nesset: Catastrophe Measure The sky is on fire, our buildings bright pink. We wait where the ground shakes least, endlessly repeating our names.
Our free comps run at our Facebook page at


http://www.facebook.com/pages/Inscribemedia/183385438479538






New free flash fiction competition


The team behind The Global Short Story Competition has launched its latest free flash fiction competition. The challenge to writers for this one is produce a story with a beginning, middle and end in no more than 100 words. The deadline is May 13.Prize £50 and you can enter at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Inscribemedia/183385438479538





Hotel to stage residential writing course



Got a story to tell? Keen to be a writer? Then this residential weekend course in the North East of England at The Blackwell Grange in Darlington, County Durham, UK, could be for you.



Experienced creative writing tutor and novelist John Dean, who has had eleven crime novels published by Robert Hale and has appeared in a number of short story anthologies, will run a writing workshop on the weekend of May 16-18 2014 as part of the second Darlington Arts Festival. The weekend includes:
* Two nights Accommodation (Friday 16^th and Saturday 17^th May 2014), two breakfasts, two dinners and one lunch

* Day-long writing workshop on the Saturday followed by a morning workshop on the Sunday, including how to create characters, structure stories and invoke a strong sense of place.

The cost for the weekend is: £205 per person based on double for sole occupancy, this rate includes VAT. To reserve your place and book your accommodation : Call the Blackwell Grange Hotel on 01325 509955 , their email is reservation.blackwell@forestdale.com. Bookings must be made by Friday 18^th April and paid in full to the hotel by Friday 23^rd April 2014. Please note that minimum numbers are required for this course to run if this event needs to be cancelled you will be given a minimum 4 weeks’ notice.





Free stuff



There’s loads of free hints on writing at our blog at www.inscribemedia.co.uk and you can also check out our free writers’ toolbox, which can be downloaded off the home page at http://www.inscribemedia.co.uk/




Facebook


You can check out our Facebook page with its news, views and free competitions at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Inscribemedia/183385438479538





Mentoring and courses



For information on our online writing courses and mentoring packages at http://www.inscribemedia.co.uk/writing-courses---bespoke-mentoring.html




Nurturing new talent through our e-books


A reminder that, as part of our efforts to support and showcase new writing talent worldwide, we have published seven e-books



Lost Souls by Roger Barnes When young women start to go missing in Africa, an International Strike Force is assembled to rescue them.

Harry’s Torment by Michael Beck Set in the fictional east coast port of Thirlston and centred on investigators tackling the heroin trade.


Previously published were:
Cyber Rules by Myra King. The novel by Australian writer Myra tells the story of a farmer’s wife in isolated rural Australia. Caught up on the addictive side of the Internet, she holds a secret which may prove to be deadly.

Global Shorts - an anthology of short stories taken from the early years of the Global Short Competition.

Vegemite Whiskers - a selection of some of the finest writing from Australian authors who have entered the Global Short Story Competition.

White Gold by Roger Barnes A thriller by Roger Barnes taking the reader into a world of intrigue and danger set amid the poachers of Africa.

Haghir the Dragon Finder by John Dean, a comic fantasy for older children. Haghir

and his hopeless comrades are dragon slayers seeking a new challenge.

All the titles can be obtained by keying their titles into the search field of the Kindle shop at www.amazon.co.uk Australian readers will have to purchase via Amazon US at www.amazon.com



* If you don’t have a Kindle, there is a free Kindle reading app for your PC at

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000493771




* You can find more about the books on our website.


Contacting us



You can contact us as deangriss@btinternet.com




Thank you for all your support

John Dean

Inscribe Media

　

　

　

　
　
　

　

　

The call of the character

The other day, while preparing a creative writing class, I came across this quote from author Alex Jenson: “If you are thinking about writing a book or a story or have started one already, one of the major issues that you will confront is how to create great characters that come across as fully three-dimensional and credible to your potential readership. And for me, that means that the person must be real. The more you believe that you are writing about a 'real' person, while at the same time maintaining control of your new fictional world, the better for you. In effect you are creating a place that is neither fully in the real world nor fully in your own head - I call this the writing dimension - it is a world separate from reality whilst also being partly separate from your own imagination. Once you tap into this space, your characters will be fully three-dimensional and not 100% in your control. Although you have created them and know them up to a point, they will still be in a position to surprise you. And is that not what storytelling and real life is about? Surprise. Once your characters start surprising you, doing things that even you did not imagine, then you are experiencing the true magic of writing.”
I asked my class to write a piece of homework only if their character called them to do so. Expecting most would not have written anything, so off-beat was the homework, I planned a full session for the next week. Didn’t need it! The way the characters started talking to the writers in the class was remarkable. Worth trying yourself if you at a loose end.
John Dean

How a tree-strewn hillside inspired a novel

I’m one of those writers who is inspired by places, a theme I return to time and time again in my teaching. An example of how it works: it was a hillside strewn with fallen trees that inspired my latest novel To Die Alone, published in 2010.
The novel, the second to feature Detective Chief Inspector Jack Harris, had its beginnings during a family holiday on the Isle of Man.
Although my characters live and work in the North Pennine hills, something about the Isle of Man scenery struck home.
The idea came when we went for a walk on a wet and windy morning. Our attempts to follow the path along the river valley were repeatedly thwarted by trees that had been brought down by the ferocious winds the night before. It was quite a sight, a reminder of what Mother Nature can do when she is angry.
Standing there and surveying the hillside, my connection with the place took over and a storyline unrolled itself there and then, a story that starts with a man alone and fleeing for his life on a tree-strewn hillside.
Knowing that such a landscape would slot beautifully into the North Pennines, I picked up the hillside and moved it over to the world inhabited by Jack Harris. One of the beauties of being a writer is the ability to do a bit of tidying up on the map.
As I stood there, I firmed up the idea, which evolved into the discovery of the dead man and his dead dog on the northern hills, the latter torn apart by another animal. Jack Harris has always loved animals more than humans so it seemed a nice touch that he be more moved by the dog’s death than the man lying dead in a copse a few metres away.
As police investigate, it turns out that the dead man‘s life is full of secrets and those discoveries lead Harris and his team into a dark and murky world which raises the spectre of a killer stalking the panicking northern hillside communities. And all from a thwarted walk in the Isle of Man.
Sense of place has always been important to me as a writer. So many of my ideas have come not from snippets in newspapers or overhead fragments of conversation, but from the overpowering sensations presented by places, be they rural or urban (my other strand deals with DCI John Blizzard in a grimy northern city).
I think that connection with places is what shapes my own reading when it comes to crime fiction as well.
As a young boy, I loved the Sherlock Holmes stories and, yes, I was drawn to the wonderful creation that is Holmes, but what also struck a chord with me then, and does so now, was the evocative way in which Arthur Conan Doyle painted 19^th Century London. Yes, I know he had to go into more details because in those days many people had not been to London but for me, his description, weaved as it is into the stories, is beguiling and inspiring.
I feel the same when I read about Rebus. Ian Rankin draws you into a dark and disturbing world that exists behind Edinburgh’s popular façade and the stories are all the better for the way he paints pictures with his words.
Yes, I know that writers debate endlessly the role of description in fiction, that it is increasingly archaic given the nature of modern readers, but for me, I like to be given a sense of where I am. Yes, I like imagining things but I also like the writer to point and say ‘look over there.‘
After all, if a place inspires a writer, can not it inspire a reader as well?John Dean

Creating tension

I read a lot of short stories, as you can imagine, and those that work do so for many reasons, key among them is the ability to create and retain tension.

So how do you create tension to stop that happening? Here’s some thoughts:

1 Put the reader in the situation. What does it feel like to be there?

2 Use the things at your disposal - the senses, is it cold, is it creepy, is your character affected by this: is a brave character suddenly scared, is a cool character panicky?

3 Create a sense of immediacy. Focus on people and their feelings in order to make the reader feel as if he or she is there.

4 Create word pictures. Use imagery to write visually.

5 Keep it simple - do not overdo it, not too flowery, nothing that will slow things down

6 Use dialogue to set the pace. Good dialogue carries dramatic impact, advances the story and develops character

7 Tension builds so write in spikes - tension, relax, tension relax. As your story comes to an end, build the tension to a crescendo.
John Dean

Writing for film

Occasionally, I get involved in film-making and am fascinated by the way the writing changes with the medium.

So, how do you take advantage of your cracking idea and write a film script? Here are some thoughts:

* Read plenty of scripts and see how the experts do it - get used to how the script looks on the page. Then watch the film itself and see how the script translated when filming actually began.

* About half of the content of a screenplay should be dialogue and the other half should be visual.

* Keep camera directions to a minimum. Let the filmmakers decide how to film the script.

* Action is important you need to keep the story moving.

* Keep the story well paced - generally, one screenplay page is one minute of screen time.

* Develop true-to-life characters. Know their history and why they react to events the way they do. And keep it consistent: if they are aged fifty in one scene make sure you do not have them celebrating their sixtieth birthday in the next unless it is part of the plot.

* If it helps, focus on a few key details that tell us what kind of person your character is. Maybe the person cannot wear a tie smartly, maybe their clothes are always grubby, maybe they never look anyone in the face. And when you write your scene, ask yourself if your character would really react like that?

* Before you write your script, write a list of scenes you want to include and what happens in each one. That way you can make sure your story develops in the right way.

* And finally, keep the balance right: you don’t want the first half of the film to be all dialogue, followed by 45 minutes of car chases.
John Dean

Helping each other

We have watched with pleasure as the writing careers of many of our winners have developed and they have broken into print - indeed, we report on a few of them in these blogs.
Our commitment to short stories run deep but, since we are a small company who does not receive any subsidy and does not have a big marketing budget, our capacity to continue running the competition and paying out prize money is based on attracting entries. And that means making sure that people know about our competition site here at www.inscribemedia.co.uk

Which is why we thank each and every one of you who has promoted the competition on your blogs and social media sites. And why we would love you to keep doing so. Or give it a mention if you have not done so before. We'll do the same in return.

John Dean

The triangle

Good story writing depends on many things but can be boiled down to three factors, the triangle.

At the top is the narrative, a strong story, plenty of pace, a tale that enthrals the readers.

At one bottom corner is a sense of place, a strong sense of where the action is taking place.

At the other corner is a sense of being, the creation of characters strong and interesting enough to carry the story.

Get the triangle right and the rest flows from it.
John Dean

Getting the voice right

Two entries into the Global Short Story Competition over the past 24 hours worked because of the voice used by the authors.
Voice is what the reader hears when reading the story, the narrator of the story be it third person or first person.
Writers use several types of voices to narrate stories and the key thing is that that voice remains consistent, that it is the same throughout.
The stories that came in were split; one used a conversational voice (first person), where it fees like the narrator is engaged in a conversation with you, the reader, the other used formal voice (third person) where the narrator is detached from the main character but still gives powerful insights into their personality.
Both worked because the voice engaged the reader, made it feel real.
John Dean

So how short is short?

I am often asked ‘How long is a short story?’ Well, perceived wisdom is that short stories can be anything from 500 to 6,000 words.

Anything under 500 words tends to be labelled ‘flash fiction’ or ‘micro fiction’, still a short story, of course, but now very much a distinct genre of its own.

Most writers contend that a short story is something that can be read comfortably in one sitting (it‘s why they were invented in the mid 19^th Century). Anything over 6,000 is seen as moving into novelette or novella territory

Popular magazines, long supporters of short stories, tend to accept work of between 1,000 – 2,000 words, more literary ones go for longer and competitions vary (the Global Short Story Competition has a top limit of 2,000 words, for example).

Best answer to the question, though? The story is as long or as short as it needs to be, not a word less and certainly not a word more.
* You can enter this month's Global Short Story Competition at www.inscribemedia.co.uk)

John Dean

So what if your mum liked it?

I have been talking recently to one or two writers about the challenges of getting published. It can be a dispiriting business so perhaps this will help. There’s a terrific survey that came out some time ago about the mistakes that aspiring writers make when approaching literary agents.
Based on responses from more than 50 agents, it included the following no-nos when submitting manuscripts to agents (and publishers, I would suggest):
* Saying ‘Go to my website for a sample of my work”
* Talking about the book’s sequel
* Pitching more than one book at a time
* Writing a submission that lacks confidence
* Writing a submission that is over-confident or pompous
* Sending a submission that has clearly not been proof-read
* Queries addressed to "Dear Agent" (or anything similar)
* Vague letters.
* E-mailed submissions with more than one agent listed in the "To" field
* Submissions that have no clue what the agent represents, or that have no clue what the agent's submission guidelines are.
Avoid these pitfalls and at least you give yourself an edge. One I would add relates to the covering letter. Do try to avoid the words ‘my mum read this and she reckons it’s the finest novel she has ever read’ or something similar. That’s a good way to get your manuscript heading its way bin-wards!

John Dean

Hotel to stage residential writing course

Got a story to tell? Keen to be a writer? Got a character chatting away to you? A story waiting to get out?

Then this residential weekend course in the North East of England at The Blackwell Grange in Darlington, County Durham, UK, could be for you.

Experienced creative writing tutor and novelist John Dean, who has had eleven crime novels published by Robert Hale and has appeared in a number of short story anthologies, will run a writing workshop on the weekend of May 16-18 2014 as part of the second Darlington Arts Festival.

The weekend includes:
* Two nights Accommodation (Friday 16^th and Saturday 17^th May 2014), two breakfasts, two dinners and one lunch

* Day-long writing workshop on the Saturday followed by a morning workshop on the Sunday, including how to create characters, structure stories and invoke a strong sense of place.

The cost for the weekend is: £205 per person based on double for sole occupancy, this rate includes VAT

To reserve your place and book your accommodation : Call the Blackwell Grange Hotel on 01325 509955 , their email is reservation.blackwell@forestdale.com.



Bookings must be made by Friday 18^th April and paid in full to the hotel by Friday 23^rd April 2014. Please note that minimum numbers are required for this course to run if this event needs to be cancelled you will be given a minimum 4 weeks’ notice.

　

About the Blackwell Grange Hotel


The Blackwell Grange Hotel, Darlington, County Durham has a long history, having been built as a private home by the Allan Family. Building commenced in 1693 and was finally completed in 1717, with the property being passed down through the family until 1953.



Blackwell Grange Hotel is set in nine acres of countryside with ample car parking and a leisure club which includes a small gym and swimming pool. The hotel has Free wi fi throughout the hotel.

The hotel is across the road from the Victorian South Park, with its formal gardens, and is 15 minutes walk from Darlington Town Centre.


Directions from the South

Exit the A1M at J57, follow the A66 towards Darlington, take the A167 at the second round about and the hotel is on the left hand side, it takes approx. 4 minutes from J57

Directions from the North
Exit the A1M at J58, take the A68 for Darlington. Travel to Cockerton Village. At the junction turn left then at the next mini roundabout turn right. Then take the first exit onto Carmel Road North – B6280, signposted Yarm A67. At the Elmridge Garden Centre roundabout go straight across and follow the road to the next roundabout and take the first exit to Darlington town centre. The Blackwell Grange is situated a few hundred meters along on the left.

Website - http://www.forestdalehotels.com/Hotels/Northern-England/Blackwell-Grange-Hotel,-Darlington





About John Dean



More information about John Dean can be discovered at www.inscribemedia.co.uk or www.johndean.ning.com





　

　

　

　

　

Mentoring and workshops

A reminder that, in addition to the various free things we do, one of the paid-for services we offer is one supporting writers.

Why should you hire a professional writing mentor, though? Isn’t it enough to attend a class/workshop or a writing group? Or ask a friend or relative to comment?

Well, it depends what you want and need and bespoke mentoring from Inscribe Media can help some writers, providing the experience and expertise to -

• understand your work

• nurture you and your writing

• let you retain control of your ideas and your writing

* provide expert, specific advice about what is working and what isn’t.

We focus on major issues, such as how your story hangs together, what your characters are doing or could be doing, what is hurting your story’s momentum, what story elements are not pulling their weight.

We identify the differences between good and great and point out your writing strengths, so you become confident about what not to change.

We also give suggestions and help you establish good processes and writing goals and suggest markets for your work.

If long-term mentoring does not appeal, we run short writing courses as well.

You can find out more at http://www.inscribemedia.co.uk/writing-courses---bespoke-mentoring.html
You can also access our free downloadable writing guide at www.inscribemedia.co,uk and find loads of free tips on our blog here.



John Dean

Let's get personal

Yesterday we received an entry into the Global Short Story Competition which was written in first person and brilliantly so.

Traditionally, there are three main categories of viewpoint, first, second or third person. First is when you use refer to I, second person is you (as is in ‘You might have thought I would have liked that‘) and third is he, she, they, their, his, hers, him, her, etc.

Most stories tend to be written in third person but first person has its advantages as this story showed.

First person is a great choice when you intend to write informally or casually. It can be chatty, relaxed, and intimate. In this case, the narrator spoke directly to the reader as if no one else existed. There were questions, challenges and it all made for a powerful mix indeed. It was like a conversation.

However, many writers would still go for third person. Why? Well, third person creates a sense of objectivity and distance and allows the writer to get on with telling the story. Some would say that third person means the writer's feelings and personality become peripheral and that the author can simply tell the tale.

It’s all a question of choice but yesterday‘s entry showed how powerful first person can be.
Plenty of time to enter this month’s competition through www.inscribemedia.co.uk



John Dean

Simply the best

The longlist for UK newspaper the Independent’s Foreign Fiction Prize 2014 L has been published. It includes:

Sinan Antoon The Corpse Washer (Arabic; translated by the author) Yale University Press

Hassan Blasim The Iraqi Christ (Arabic; trans. Jonathan Wright) Comma Press

Julia Franck Back to Back (German; trans. Anthea Bell) Harvill Secker

Sayed Kashua Exposure (Hebrew; trans. Mitch Ginsberg) Chatto & Windus

Hiromi Kawakami Strange Weather in Tokyo (Japanese; trans. Allison Markin Powell) Portobello Books

Karl Ove Knausgaard A Man in Love (Norwegian; trans. Don Bartlett) Harvill Secker

Andrej Longo Ten (Italian; trans. Howard Curtis) Harvill Secker

Ma Jian The Dark Road (Chinese; trans. Flora Drew) Chatto & Windus

Andreï Makine Brief Loves that Live Forever (French; trans. Geoffrey Strachan) MacLehose Press

Javier Marías The Infatuations (Spanish; trans. Margaret Jull Costa) Hamish Hamilton

Hubert Mingarelli A Meal in Winter (French; trans. Sam Taylor) Portobello Books

Yoko Ogawa Revenge (Japanese; trans. Stephen Snyder) Harvill Secker

Audur Ava Ólafsdóttir Butterflies in November (Icelandic; trans. Brian FitzGibbon) Pushkin Press

Jón Kalman Stefánsson The Sorrow of Angels (Icelandic; trans. Philip Roughton) MacLehose Press

Birgit Vanderbeke The Mussel Feast (German; trans. Jamie Bulloch) Peirene Press

More information is available at http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/independent-foreign-fiction-prize-2014-our-longlist-reveals-a-fictional-ecosystem-of-staggering-diversity-9174923.html
John Dean

The J K Rowling effect

The power of fiction is today underlined with the news that, on the eve of International Women’s Day, children’s author J K Rowling has been voted the most inspirational businesswoman in a survey of UK freelancers by Crunch Accounting.
Earning 23 per cent of all votes, J K Rowling beat a high profile field of business personalities, including online shopping entrepreneurs and creators of notonthehighstreet.com Holly Tucker and Sophie Cornish (voted by 16 per cent) and The Body Shop founder Anita Roddick (16 per cent).
Other female leaders who also received recognition were Martha Lane Fox CBE, member of the House of Lords and former UK Digital Champion who co-founded lastminute.com and (14 per cent) and football managing director and TV personality Karen Brady (12 per cent).
The research was conducted to celebrate International Women’s Day (8^th March) which is a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future, with 400 events scheduled across the United Kingdom.
Laura Hughes, Accountancy Training Manager at Crunch Accounting, said: ”We conducted the research to understand which high profile women are setting the best example and inspiring the freelance business community – a group that now makes up 14.5 per cent of the country’s total workforce, with 4.37 million self-employed currently working in the UK.
“The results have been really interesting. Women from across the digital and creative industries received far more votes than the corporate heavyweights, like Santander CEO Ana Patricia Botín. Above all however, the results remind us of the diverse and varied range of female business personalities that the UK has to offer, a fact well worth celebrating on Saturday for International Women’s Day.”
The survey was run by Crunch Accounting, which combines cloud software with expert accountants to provide a complete business accountancy service.
The full list is:

· JK Rowling, author - 23%
· Holly Tucker & Sophie Cornish, founders of notonthehighstreet.com - 16%
· Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop - 16%
· Martha Lane Fox, founder of lastminute.com – 14%
· Karen Brady,vice-chairman of West Ham United - 12%
· Justine Roberts, co-founder of Mumsnet - 7%
· Juliet Davenport, Chief Executive of The Good Energy Group - 4%
· Victoria Beckham, global fashion entrepreneur - 3%
· Carolyn McCall, chief executive of easyJet - 3%
· Ana Patricia Botín, CEO, Santander UK - 2%
· Christine Hodgson, executive chairman, capgemini - 1%
· Liv Garfield, CEO Severn Trent - 1%

A global writing family

Underlining the global nature of our competition, according to the latest statistics the top countries from which people currently view this blog are:

1 United States

2 United Kingdom

3 France

4 Germany

5 United Arab Emirates

6 India

7 Norway

8 Australia

9 Ukraine

10 Canada

If you take it over the past year the site has been running, the stats are

1 United States

2 United Kingdom

3 India

4 France

5 Germany

6 Australia

7 Russia

8 United Arab Emirates

9 New Zealand

10 Latvia
So many writers!

John Dean

Taking the next step

We are seeking to expand the Global Short Story Competition but need funding to do so.
The competition was established six years ago and is now run by Darlington-based Inscribe Media Limited, whose director John Dean was one of the four founders and is a creative writing tutor and published crime novelist.
The idea was to give a voice to aspiring writers around the world and support the efforts to save the short story. We want to encourage writers as best we can and to make the point that storytelling is a truly global pasttime, that great stories are being written every day the world over.
We’re looking for those writers striving towards their big break but will happily take stories from anyone. What we want to do is showcase talent that, in many cases, is not yet widely recognised. Also, we like to see writers earning money from their writing - we have already paid out more than £10,500 in prize money.
Its selling point is that it is monthly and international. It‘s a strong combination. Entrants come from all over the world but a lot from the UK, Australia, New Zealand, America and Continental Europe. We would love more from the likes of Asia, Africa and South America and are working towards that.
Some of our winners have taken great encouragement from their success and gone to break into print and we delight in that. We post the monthly winner and highly commended stories on our website and have also published several ebooks featuring writers who have entered the competition, both anthologies and novels.
We would like to see many more stories coming in each month. If we bring more income in, we can run more, genre-driven competitions as well but we are dependent on income from the competition as we are a small company.
To expand, we plan to launch additional competitions, each of them annual. The first three would be: Crime writing, Sci-fi fiction and Horror/ghost fiction.
If you are interested in becoming a sponsor or finding out more, please contact John Dean at deangriss@btinternet.com

Getting it right from the word middle

Yet another entry to the Global Short Story Competition today illustrated perfectly the art of beginning a story.

As I have mentioned on previous blogs, no story begins at the beginning. What is important is the reader feels that they have walked in in the middle of something.

This story did just that, giving the reader the impression that they had to run to keep up, a powerful sensation and a good reason to keep reading.

John Dean

January winners announced

Judge Fiona Cooper has selected her winners for the January Global Short Story Competition and writers from the UK and Australia have taken the honours.

The £100 first place prize goes to Colin Hodson, London, England, for The Stranger, of which Fiona says: “It is very hard to judge stories, and I feel it is important that a story includes both feeling and technique. This sparse story has both, and also conveys that elusive quality of atmosphere. Not a word wasted and, although there is a conclusion, one’s imagination goes beyond with many implicit questions which are intriguing.”

Our highly commended £25 runner up prize is being divided between Florence Child, Forest Range, Australia, for Revenge, and Pam Plumb, Darlington, Co Durham, England, for Patient 129191.
Fiona says: “I had to have two runners up, since it was not possible to choose between these stories.

“Cinematic and original in concept, Revenge swept me into the land of so many movies, where people bowl through like tumbleweeds make their impression then vanish away over the horizon - excellent writing and I was left wanting more.

“Patient 129191 story drew me in with its very peculiar world view, which became the skewed reality of the whole narrative. Brilliant twists and turns on every page sustained this story and, as with the other two I have chosen, I wanted to know more. I am also convinced that all three winning writers should carry on writing and explore the idea of a longer piece of work.”
The writers on the shortlist are:

Deborah J Ledford, Scottsdale, Afghanistan

Petra McQueen, Colchester, Essex, England

Kylie Orr, Upwey, Victoria, Australia

Gillian Brown, Peyriac de Mer, Aude, France

Virginie Tozzo, France

Esther Newton, Thatcham, Berkshire, England

Paul Freeman, United Arab Emirates
Winning stories will be posted on www.inscribemedia.co.uk Well done to our successful writers. You can enter the March competition at the same address.


John DEan



　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

Worth taking a look

We can heartily recommend this website, run by Chris Westlake, and not just because it will soon feature an interview with our very own John Dean about the Global Short Story Competition!.
The website at chriswestlake.co.uk will feature author interviews and book reviews and is a must for any interested author

In praise for Myra

Worth checking out this excellent review for the e-novel Cyber Rules, by Australian writer Myra King at http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/B007Y67772/ref=cm_cr_dp_see_all_btm?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

Cyber Rules deals with Anthea Stevenson, a farmer’s wife, midlife-challenged and living in an isolated rural Australia.

For many years she has harboured a dark secret. Now caught up on the addictive side of the Internet, she holds another secret, one which ultimately may prove to be far more deadly.


About Myra King
Myra King is an Australian writer, and a member of SINC, living on the coast of South Australia. She has written a number of prize-winning short stories, including first prize in the UK-based Global Short Story Competition, and has a short story collection, City Paddock, published by Ginninderra Press.

In 2010 her short story, The Black Horse, was shortlisted for the US Glass Woman Prize. And in 2011 her story, The Trousseau Box, was story of the week in Short Story America.

She has upcoming (or recent) work in Boston Literary Magazine, Eclectic Flash, Meat for Tea, eFiction, Red River Review, Fast Forward Press, Illya’s Honey Journal, San Pedro River Review, The Fiction Shelf, and The Foundling Review.

Her work has also appeared in The Pages, Herons Nest, BuzzWords, Eclecticism, Every Day Poets, Meuse Press, Dark Prints Press and A Hundred Gourds.

Cyber Rules deals with Anthea Stevenson, a farmer’s wife, midlife-challenged and living in isolated rural Australia.

For many years she has harboured a dark secret. Now caught up on the addictive side of the Internet, she holds another secret, one which ultimately may prove to be far more deadly.

A proportion of the funds raised from sales of the e-book will go to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Doctors Without Borders, an international, independent, medical humanitarian organisation that delivers emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, natural disasters and exclusion from healthcare. MSF offers assistance to people based on need, irrespective of race, religion, gender or political affiliation.


About Myra King
Myra King is an Australian writer, and a member of SINC, living on the coast of South Australia. She has written a number of prize-winning short stories, including first prize in the UK-based Global Short Story Competition, and has a short story collection, City Paddock, published by Ginninderra Press.

In 2010 her short story, The Black Horse, was shortlisted for the US Glass Woman Prize. And in 2011 her story, The Trousseau Box, was story of the week in Short Story America.

She has upcoming (or recent) work in Boston Literary Magazine, Eclectic Flash, Meat for Tea, eFiction, Red River Review, Fast Forward Press, Illya’s Honey Journal, San Pedro River Review, The Fiction Shelf, and The Foundling Review.

Her work has also appeared in The Pages, Herons Nest, BuzzWords, Eclecticism, Every Day Poets, Meuse Press, Dark Prints Press and A Hundred Gourds.
John Dean

　

What makes a good writer?

The other day a writing student asked me what qualities must a successful writer have? I replied always be willing to learn, never be afraid to try something different and always bear in mind that good writing is good writing because of the detail it contains. Little lines, images, lines of dialogue can bring it crackling to life. Oh, and never ever write padding! And never use exclamation marks when they are not needed like I did there.

John Dean

The age of the novella?

I was recently talking to a writer about his latest crime novella. As a result, I have been researching the world of short novels and it seems to me that their time could be upon us because of the e-book revolution. Folks are happy to read 30,000 words of story on their hand-helds - particularly on holiday when a book that can be finished in a day or two is welcome.
So what exactly is a novella? Well, it’s an extended short story in many ways, constructed in episodes but written in a tight and clipped way to guarantee pace. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards defined the novella as having a word count of between 17,500 and 40,000. Other definitions start as low as 10,000 words.
There are plenty of writers who can see the sense in the idea. I know some who would love us to run a short story competition with a word limit around that figure because they feel that 2,000 words simply does not give enough space for the story to breathe.
Why are novellas so effective as a genre? Well, usually I write novels that run to 60,000-70,000 words but this one has seen me cutting back big-time. An eight page scenes becomes two pages, a, 800 word passage of dialogue becomes 200, if that. It’s the mantra I teach to the many writers with whom I work across the world - does your story need those words, can they come out, will the story really suffer if they do? They’re good questions all writers should ask.

John Dean

New competition opens for entries

The March Global Short Story Competition is open for entries.
Begun six years ago, the competition runs every month with a £100 first prize and a £25 prize for highly commended writers.
The competition, which has topped £10,500 in prize money handed out, has had entries from more than 50 countries over the years.
Each month’s competition is judged by Fiona Cooper, an author in North-East England, where the competition’s organisers Inscribe Media are also based. The competition can be entered at www.inscribemedia.co.uk
We will announce the January winners on Friday March 7.   * There is plenty of time to enter Inscribe Media’s latest free flash fiction competition at its Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Inscribemedia/183385438479538 or accessed through www.inscribemedia.co.uk

John Dean