Global Short Stories Competition: March 2015

Monday, 30 March 2015

Short story and poetry competitions launch

The Wells Festival of Literature writing competitions will commence on 1st April.
This year there are three prizes for winners, £500, £200, £100, in both categories plus the Hilly Cansdale local poetry prize of £100 and the Wyvern local short story prize, also £100. Entries are open to anyone throughout the world.
For the SHORT STORY COMPETITION, entries may be on any subject and should be between 1,000 and 2,000 words in length.
For the SHORT STORY COMPETITION, entries may be on any subject and should be between 1,000 and 2,000 words in length.
Rhidian Brook, the award winning novelist (The Testimony of Taliesin Jones; The Aftermath), award winning short story writer, screen writer, copywriter and broadcaster, will judge the 2015 short story competition and present the prizes.
He will also run a workshop on Sunday October 11, comparing the craft of novel writing with that of writing for the screen.
Entries in the POETRY COMPETITION should show imagination, skill and originality. They may be on any subject but may not exceed 40 lines in length.
Peter Oswald, the Poetry judge is a playwright who writes in verse. He was the first writer in residence at The Globe and he has worked with, among many others, Mark Rylance.

The deadline for all entries is 31st July 2015. Further details of the competition and entry rules will be found on http://www.wellsfestivalofliterature.org.uk

Friday, 27 March 2015

Conflict in fiction

Why is conflict important in writing? Because stories need things to happen and that usually comes out of conflict - characters argue, fight, feud etc.

It is through seeing characters in conflict that we see them at their truest, when their guard is down, when they are fighting something.
You can develop a character through conflict: the meek little parlour maid suddenly becomes the towering heroine of the story
Conflict takes the story on: a school is to be closed, two friends fall out, a community is torn apart by an event. All these types of conflict are a rich hunting ground for the writer.
Conflict can evoke a strong reaction in a reader
Conflict makes for good drama - and if that is happening then writing is easier.
It also gives you a structure for your story, a story to tell

John Dean

Getting sense of place right

It is crucial if you write about a place that the reader can see it.
You have choices: do you write rich and vivid prose to paint a word picture or do you keep it minimalist - describe a tree in a park and we all see a different tree and a different park? Perhaps we only need to say it is a tree in a park?
Whatever you do, do not make it too long, you do not have a lot of words to play with in a short story.
If you seek to describe the setting, and the reader does need something to focus on, seek to use the following components:
1 Physical characteristics - what does it look like, any quirks which bring it to life?
2 Use your reader’s senses - what does the place smell, taste, sounds like?
3 What does it feel like to be there?
Get them right and you are well away

John Dean

Wednesday, 25 March 2015

Supporting writers

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

Why it pays to persevere

Writing can be a tough business, challenging and often frustrating, but is it is always worth persevering if you have a story to tell.
Take the Indian-American writer Akhil Sharma, who has just been named winner of the second Folio prize for fiction for a novel which took him 13 years to complete.
Family Life charts an emigrant family’s search for the American dream, and after winning the £40,000 prize, the author was quoted as saying that the writing process was often “like chewing stones, with around nine wasted years when it did not go well. I’m glad the book exists, I just wish I hadn’t been the guy who wrote it.”
But write it he did. Family Life, his second novel, is an autobiographical work which tells the story of a young boy and his family who emigrate from Delhi to New York in search of a better life.
William Fiennes, who chaired the judges, praised the novel, currently a bestseller in the US, saying: ”Family Life is a masterful novel of distilled complexity: about catastrophe and survival; attachment and independence; the tension between selfishness and responsibility. We loved its deceptive simplicity and rare warmth ... This is a work of art that expands with each re-reading and a novel that will endure.”
The prize, sponsored by the Folio Society, was created last year with the aim of celebrating the year’s best English-language fiction, regardless of form, genre and geography.

John Dean

Tuesday, 24 March 2015

Festival date

I am one of the authors appearing at Darlington Arts Festival in May
Saturday May 23
2.30--4pm
A Life of Crime
Darlington Art Gallery, Crown Street Library, Darlington
Darlington-based crime writers Bud Craig, whose recently published second novel is Dead Certainty, Mike Beck, author of Harry’s Torment, and John Dean, whose latest novel is A Breach of Trust, talk about their life of crime, including explaining why they love the genre and readings from their work.
Free event

More on the festival, including its many literary events,can be found at www.darlingtonforculture.org

How to put together a short story

Different writers take different approaches when penning short stories.
Some writers opt for the beginning, middle, end approach, a traditional and proven format which has served short story writers well down the decades.
Others go for deliberately confusing the reader, creating stories which are
not clear at the start but which slowly reveal themselves. They may do it by
concealing where the action takes place, or perhaps who the central
characters are. Or keeping back the salient piece of information the reader
needs to make sense of everything.
Some writers go for the flashback approach, beginning the story with an
incident then working backwards to explain how we arrived at this moment. Knowing what happens at the end can make the events that unfold that little but more poignant.

Beginning your short story

However you start your story, the beginning should have The Question, something that hooks your reader. You need to grab them from those first lines.

One way do to this is intrigue the reader. For instance, “Bill Bloggs was dead” may give the end away but the readers wants to find out why he died and if he deserved it.

The dropped introduction can also work: “Betty was a pleasant woman. She would do anything for anyone. Everyone liked old Betty. A true angel, they used to say. Which was why it was such a shock when she was killed by a Mafia hitman.”

There is another way of hooking readers, in which the writer can draw us in with the sheer quality of their writing, as in books like Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee.

Whatever you do, remember that all stories begin in the middle - the people you write about have already plenty of history. What you are doing is catapulting the reader into their life.

The middle of the story

The middle is there to keep the story going, fill in gaps, create tension and allow the story to develop but it should only be as long as if needed, not overwritten or underwritten.

Write your short story in a series of episodes, maybe only a few lines long. Short stories are a series of small chapters, maybe only a few lines but representing a development in the story.

This requires really effective writing because, whereas in a novel you might have eight or nine pages to recount an incident, that luxury simply does not exist in a short story.

If you take our competition, our limit for a story is 2,000 words. Sounds a lot but not if you let your episodes run too long.

So, how do you achieve such tight writing? Well, it might be that you describe a location in a line rather than a paragraph, produce only sparing details of your character or recount a conversation in four snatches of dialogue rather than a page.

Many winning short story authors in competitions around the world have been those who achieved such effective writing.

All of this is not to say that when you write a novel, you can waffle on to your heart’s content. Indeed, the disciplines of short story writing can be invaluable when you tackle a novel. Whatever you write, every word must do its job. it’s a good mantra to live by.

The end of the story

There are all sorts of ways of ending a short story but the most popular is some kind of twist, something that startles the reader, or perhaps makes sense of the rest of the story. On the other hand, you may go for a poignant ending.

There is also a growing trend for stories that simply stop.

Any of these is fine: the really important thing is that you do it well.

John Dean

A slice of life

I teach classes about short stories and remind my students that a short story is a slice of life.
As such, it works best if you narrow the time frame and geographical location of the piece. One plot, two or three characters and no more than two or three locations fit best into a short story.

John Dean

If it can happen to JK Rowling....

I think a lot of people will recognise the experience recounted to the Scottish Herald newspaper by JK Rowling, who has spoken about her frustration after receiving often terse rejections from publishers for her Harry Potter and Robert Galbraith crime novels.

The Edinburgh writer took to social media to describe some of the rude snubs she has received from the industry over the years.

The rudest rejection I ever had (and I’ve had plenty of rejections) was from an agent who scribbled a vulgar message on a rejection card for sending four sample chapters not three. Courtesy, as they say, costs nothing.

John Dean

Monday, 23 March 2015

Young writers

Returning to my occasional theme of young writers, we run an open mic for writers in our home town of Darlington (next one Thursday March 26, Voodoo Café, 7pm)and several of the writers who read are teenagers.
They remind me of me at that age, writing feverishly, honing their craft, making mistakes and learning from them.
I know a lot of youngsters who write (my 16-year-old daughter is part of a circle of them and I take creative writing sessions in schools) and in an age when exam pressures threaten to crowd out young people’s creativity, it’s a joy to see.

John Dean

Friday, 20 March 2015

Applying the laws of flash fiction to longer works

As a writer, I am very interested in the idea of flash fiction and the way it can help writers specialising in other formats.
Flash fiction, as I am sure you all know, is very short writing: some stories can be as short as six words, even less.
I know that flash fiction is not for everyone but I believe it does have applications if you are writing short stories because of the way it concentrates the mind.
It might be that you are tempted to spend two or three paragraphs describing a place or a person. That could well be fine but how much better in a short story if you can do it in a single line? Why so much better? Because it leaves you those other paragraphs to take your story on.
I am one of those writers with split opinions about flash fiction. I like the idea of novels - after all, I do write them - in which writers have the time and space to develop their themes, where you can devote half a page to describing something if the story requires it, but I can also see the advantage of an economical way of writing as promoted by the supporters of flash fiction.
Even though my novels run to 65-000-70,000 words, I have increasingly embraced the idea of economy, taking out words, lines, paragraphs, sections, extraneous material, all in the interest of creating a sense of pace and focus.

John Dean

You gotta laugh

There’s an old saying that if you are not a humorous person, don’t try to write humour.

Well, it is only part-true. It is certainly the case that a straight-laced, humourless person might well struggle to write side-splitting comedy but if you are an author, that might not be a good enough excuse.

Why? Because humour is vital to creating good fiction. Even if you are not writing an out-and-out comic piece, humour has a role to perform.

For a start, it can create light against the dark. Take an example: you are writing a sinister piece with the tension building as the tale unfolds. You might decide to keep the tension going right to the end, which would be one way of writing it.

However, you might decide that a flash of humour, a single line of dialogue by a character, could momentarily ease the tension, cause the reader to relax slightly, and provide an even greater impact when you suddenly strike with the next piece of drama, or horror or fear. Ghost and horror writers know that trick well - they are past masters at toying with their readers.

Humour also works well with novels because a relentlessly heavy theme in a story can benefit immensely from the odd break for something a little lighter.

There is another good reason for using humour in your writing because it reveals things about your character and can show another side to them that the reader might not have seen before. Or it can reveal in a brief conversation the depth of two people’s relationship.

And it does not need to be side-splitting humour, that is not the intention: it has other roles to perform.

As one critique of the great William Shakespeare said: “Humour is a tool that allows us to see the subtle details of their minds; a glimpse at the inner workings of each character’s personality. It is through the humour that Shakespeare employs that we are able to see “roundness” in characters that could be otherwise doomed to exist as “flat” characters. Shakespeare uses humour to give his players new life, to help them expand beyond the bounds of mere characters and turn into real people.”

And look how well he did!

John Dean

Open mic to be held

The Open Mic night for authors season continues on Thursday March 26. The nights, supported by Darlington for Culture and which offer a forum for writers to read their material and audiences to enjoy it, run at Voodoo Café/Cantina, 84 Skinnergate, Darlington, on the last Thursday of the month. Each session starts at 7pm and the cost of entry is £3 paid on the door.
More information is available from Inscribe Media Limited at deangriss@btinternet.com

Crime fiction course

A reminder that crime novelist and creative writing tutor John Dean is launching an online Crime Fiction Course.

The online course, which runs in eight parts and can begin at a time and date to suit the student, will help writers to improve their technique and improve their chances of being successful, either in competitions or admissions to publishers.

When they enroll, students will be offered ongoing one-to-one feedback on their work, be it short stories or novels.

John, whose latest novel A Breach of Trust came out in January 2015, and who is a member of the UK-based Crime Writers’ Association, said: “Writing can be a lonely pastime and my aim is to help aspiring writers to improve their technique and improve their chances of being successful in a very competitive market.

“Crime fiction remains hugely popular and, hopefully, I can help aspiring writers to develop their ideas, and because it is online it does not matter where they live. In recent years, I have worked with writers from everywhere from Croatia to Australia and New Zealand.”

There is no official certificate of qualification at the end of the course, which will be led by John and features:

• Personal attention

• Exercises and practical work

• Discussions by email

• Because the tutor is on line, you can do the work at time and pace that suits you

Themes to be included are:
An examination of where ideas come from - what triggers ideas in writers?

Once you have the idea, how do you develop it? The course will look at the art of plotting

How can you use places and landscapes to aid your story telling?

How do you pick characters to do the job? What are their functions in storytelling? This will include a look at creating villains

How conflict can be used to develop stories that assume a life of their own

That all important start to your story - how do you grab the reader right from the off?

Writing with pace - how do you produce a narrative that keeps your reader turning the page?

Pulling it all together - how to produce the finished piece of work.

Editing - how to make those changes that make all the difference.

Pitching to publishers and agents

The course costs £75. For further details you can contact John at deangriss@btinternet.com

Inscribe Media’s website, which also has details of other courses and the company’s mentoring programme, can be found at www.inscribemedia.co.uk

Building momentum from the start

Here’s some thoughts on starting short stories.
The first cardinal rule of opening lines is that they should possess most of the individual elements that make up the story. An opening paragraph should have a distinctive voice, a point of view, a rudimentary plot and some hint of characterisation. By the end of the first paragraph, we should also know the setting and conflict, unless there is a particular reason to withhold this information.
You might be tempted to begin your narrative before the action starts, such as when a character wakes up to what will eventually be a dramatic day. Far better to begin at the first moment of something interesting happening, though, which is more likely to grab the reader‘s interest.
If you feel compelled to begin a story with dialogue, keep in mind that you’re thrusting your readers directly into a story in which it’s easy to lose them early on. So keep the dialogue to a minimum. One way around this is to begin with a single line of dialogue and then to offer some context before proceeding with the rest of the conversation.
Sometimes a story evolves so significantly during the writing that an opening line, no matter how brilliant, no longer applies to the story that follows. The only way to know this is to reconsider the opening sentence once the final draft is complete. Often a new opening is called for.

John Dean

Politicians on authors and publishing

It is worth checking out what the main parties would do for authors and publishing if they come into power at the UK General Election in May, at http://www.alcs.co.uk/ALCS-News/2015/March-2015/Election-Special

John Dean

Monday, 16 March 2015

First book prize open for entries

Submissions are now sought for this year's Polari First Book Prize. Now in its fifth year, The Polari Prize is for a first book which explores the LGBT experience and is open to any work of poetry, prose, fiction or non-fiction published in English by a writer born or resident in the UK within the twelve months of the deadline for submissions (this year 1st February, 2015). Self-published works in both print and digital formats are eligible for submission.

Works should be submitted by the publisher. Self-published works should be submitted together with a letter explaining why the book was self-published.

All submissions must be received by May 1st. The long list will be announced in July, followed by the shortlist in September. The winner will then be revealed at the London Literature Festival in October at the Southbank Centre.

Societe Generale sponsors the prize, while partners include WH Smiths Travel and Square Peg Media, publishers of g3 and Out In The City.

Judges for the 2015 prize include author, journalist and host of Polari literary salon, chair Paul Burston; Rachel Holmes, author and former Head of Literature & Spoken Word at the Southbank; literary critic, Suzi Feay; writer, critic and broadcaster, Bidishe; author and comedian, VG Lee; and writer and editor Alex Hopkins.

For further details of how to submit a book for this year's prize, please email paulburston@btinternet.com

Storytelling

All across the world can be found great storytelling traditions dating back thousands of years. From Africa to Europe, North and South America to Australasia and Asia, with its Indian epic tales and the storytelling tradition in China dating back to 206BC, the telling of stories has been part of cultural development.

This train of thought was prompted by recent figures that once again confirmed that this blog receives visitors from all over the world.

But why use the phrase ‘storytelling’ rather than writing? Well, a New York Times article reported that researchers found that the human brain, wherever it may be in the world, has an affinity for narrative construction, with people finding it easier to remember facts if they are presented in a story rather than as a list.

All we do is write them down!

John Dean

Friday, 13 March 2015

Making your reader feel emotions

Sometimes, you read a story dealing with a tough theme and think ‘good set up, decent writing and yet something is missing. Something essential.’
For me, if you are going to tackle a tough subject - serious illness, death, betrayal, separation - the best writing is the writing in which the author plunges him or herself deep into the action and drags the reader with them whether the reader wants to go or not.
After all, good writing is about making your reader experience something. Anything.

John Dean

It's all in the planning. Or is it?

I had an interesting discussion with some of my students about planning this week.

Some advocated writing and seeing where it takes you, others liked to plan in advance.

But why plan? Well, outlining your plot in advance won’t limit your creativity, there is always scope for stories to change, but it does help order your thoughts and ensures a good plot that doesn’t stray too far off topic.

So, do you plan? You can tell us on our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/inscribemedia

John Dean

Thursday, 12 March 2015

Structuring stories

One thing that is interesting me at the moment is the way writers play with structure in short stories.

Many writers go for the traditional idea of a beginning, middle and an end told in simple narrative form but a significant number opt for flashback.

Both are effective although flashback does carry the gamble with it that you know what happens at the end of the story. Nevertheless, flashback can work very well. Just look at the Colombo television detective show to see how knowing the end does not ruin the enjoyment of the rest of the story.

A number opt for diary entries, taking the story day by day. I think this is a terrific way to do it because it gives your story a natural structure right from the off.

Diaries were hugely popular as a fictional tool in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries and had started to die off a little before Bridget Jones returned the genre to mass appeal in the Nineties.

I think that another reason why diaries are so popular is the Net and the way writers are increasingly using the structure and language of blogs, texts and emails to tell their stories.

Of course, one drawback with diaries is you can only tell the story from one viewpoint so cannot switch to other scenes, other people etc. But in the short story, the single viewpoint approach can work brilliantly.

John Dean.

Crime fiction course is launched

A reminder that crime novelist and creative writing tutor John Dean is launching an online Crime Fiction Course.

John, author of 12 novels published by Robert Hale, and the creator of DCI John Blizzard and DCI Jack Harris, also runs Inscribe Media Ltd, which is based in Darlington in North East England, which will be offering the course.
The online course, which runs in eight parts and can begin at a time and date to suit the student, will help writers to improve their technique and improve their chances of being successful, either in competitions or admissions to publishers.
When they enroll, students will be offered ongoing one-to-one feedback on their work, be it short stories or novels.
John, whose latest novel A Breach of Trust came out in January 2015, and who is a member of the UK-based Crime Writers’ Association, said: “Writing can be a lonely pastime and my aim is to help aspiring writers to improve their technique and improve their chances of being successful in a very competitive market.
“Crime fiction remains hugely popular and, hopefully, I can help aspiring writers to develop their ideas, and because it is online it does not matter where they live. In recent years, I have worked with writers from everywhere from Croatia to Australia and New Zealand.”