Friday February 7 will be Winners Day.
Firstly, we will announce the winners of the December Global Short Story Competition. 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
Secondly, we will announce the winner of our recent free flash fiction competition (£50 prize).
* There is plenty of time to enter Inscribe Media’s new 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
Thursday, 30 January 2014
Wednesday, 29 January 2014
Have you created a cardboard cut-out?
My teaching of writers is based around the idea of engaging the reader and much of that comes from creating compelling main characters.
Most leading characters tend to be a Dynamic Character (sometimes called Round or Developing), a character who changes during the course of a story or novel.
I always think it helps to see how much you know about your character - you may not use all the information but it informs your writing, especially when it comes to changing them as the story progresses.
Here’s your starter for ten
1 Where does your character live?
2 How old is your character?
3 Have you got the right name for him/her?
4 What does your character look like?
5 What kind of childhood did he or she have?
6 What does your character do for a living?
7 What does your character do as a hobby
8 How does your character deal with conflict and change?
9 Who else is in your character's life?
10 What is your character's goal or motivation in this story?
Struggle with any of them and there’s more work to be done in developing them. Struggle with them all and congratulations, you have created a cardboard cut-out!
John Dean
Tuesday, 28 January 2014
Bill Bryson on writing
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His comments, provided when he announced his support six years ago and as relevant now as when he penned them, should inspire all writers.
Bill, authors of books including Notes from a Small Island, said: “From as far back as I can remember, I have been blissfully enchanted by the art of storytelling.
“I once read that the skill of a great writer or storyteller is the ability to capture the reader and seduce them into accompanying you on your journey – a journey which so often is loaded with personal experiences, prejudices and imagination. This is a maxim that I have often thought of but at times found so difficult to fulfil.
“The demise of our traditional communities and the compromises of modern family life mean that, for many, the telling or re-telling of stories is a forgotten craft as the demand for multimedia experiences and the mind-numbing repackaging of tired tales continues to rise.”
“It is wonderful therefore to hear that a competition has been developed to showcase new creative talent and, in, turn create a community of writers and story-makers across the globe.”
John Dean
Middles
I often hear aspiring writers say ‘I know the beginning to my short story and I know the end - it’s the middle bit I struggle with‘.
Ah, middles! Here are some thoughts on getting them right. When an aeroplane takes off and lands, it’s interesting, but the middle can get boring. Too much of the same thing.
Same with stories but if you think that the middle is there to keep the story going, rather than filling the bit between the beginning and the end, it may help.
The middle allows you to develop the plot, create tension, allow the development of layers of the story, let the characters grow. It’s not padding, it has work to do.
Middles should be as long or as short as needed, not overwritten or underwritten; unless you are given a set target, let the story dictate the length. We set a top limit of 2000 words for the Global Short Story Competition but many writers go for much less because that is all that the story requires.
Resist the temptation to pack too much intro your middle - concentrate on one story, perhaps just one or two main characters. Introduce too much, too many characters, sub-plots, and you may end up doing it all badly.
It may help to write in episodes (like short chapters) to keep the pace going and allow the story to build to the ending.
Still time to enter this month’s competition at www.inscribemedia.co.uk
John Dean
Ah, middles! Here are some thoughts on getting them right. When an aeroplane takes off and lands, it’s interesting, but the middle can get boring. Too much of the same thing.
Same with stories but if you think that the middle is there to keep the story going, rather than filling the bit between the beginning and the end, it may help.
The middle allows you to develop the plot, create tension, allow the development of layers of the story, let the characters grow. It’s not padding, it has work to do.
Middles should be as long or as short as needed, not overwritten or underwritten; unless you are given a set target, let the story dictate the length. We set a top limit of 2000 words for the Global Short Story Competition but many writers go for much less because that is all that the story requires.
Resist the temptation to pack too much intro your middle - concentrate on one story, perhaps just one or two main characters. Introduce too much, too many characters, sub-plots, and you may end up doing it all badly.
It may help to write in episodes (like short chapters) to keep the pace going and allow the story to build to the ending.
Still time to enter this month’s competition at www.inscribemedia.co.uk
John Dean
Friday, 24 January 2014
Festival events
John Dean is delivering two master classes and a weekend residential creative writing course as part of the Darlington Arts Festival, which takes place in Darlington, County Durham, UK.
They are:
Saturday May 3 Crime Writing Masterclass,
Crime novelist John Dean presents a day-long workshop at the Friends’ Meeting House, Skinnergate. Time 10am-4pm
Want to create the perfect villain? Being driven to murder? Then this masterclass from the creator of the John Blizzard and Jack Harris crime novels is for you.
Tickets £25. Places can be booked in advance by contacting John Dean at deangriss@btinternet.com, tel 07889 554931
Saturday May 24 Children’s Writing Masterclass
John Dean presents a day-long workshop at the Friends’ Meeting House, Skinnergate. Time 10am-4pm
Fancy writing for children? Learning the dos and don’ts? Then this masterclass from the creator of Haghir the Dragon Finder is for you.
Tickets £25. Places can be booked in advance by contacting John Dean at deangriss@btinternet.com, tel 07889 554931
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 16th and Saturday 17th 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 18th April and paid in full to the hotel by Friday 23rd 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.
Spreading the word
As you may know, we moved our Global Short Story Competition website to www.inscribemedia.co.uk a year ago.
However, some folks still use the old web address, whose year-long divert has now ended, so they end up being taken somewhere else unconnected to our competition.
We would love it if you could help us grow the competition (£10,500 in prize money handed out already) by spreading the word to other writers about the new site. Thank you in advance for your help.
John Dean
However, some folks still use the old web address, whose year-long divert has now ended, so they end up being taken somewhere else unconnected to our competition.
We would love it if you could help us grow the competition (£10,500 in prize money handed out already) by spreading the word to other writers about the new site. Thank you in advance for your help.
John Dean
Short story or novel?
During my teaching of authors, I often hear new writers say that they’d rather try a short story rather than a novel. I can understand that - it takes a shorter time to write and is less complicated when it comes to structure - none of those pesky sub-plots!
However, it is worth remembering that most new prose writers have the beginnings of at least one novel in them. They’ll have an idea which is so much bigger than a short story.
The trouble is that many new writers will get to chapter four or five and give up because they don’t have the confidence or stamina to keep going. Writing a novel is a big old undertaking.
So, yes, short stories can be the best place for new writers to hone their craft but don’t discount the idea of a novel if it keeps calling you.
Also, don’t be beguiled into thinking that short stories are the easiest option. Those people who say writers who cannot write novels write short stories are missing the point.
It takes real skill to write a short story that’s effective - you need to consider everything that also goes into a novel, plot, characters, setting, structure, pace etc, and all without the wordage you get with a novel.
It is an art form in itself and some writers are happy to spend their life writing short stories.
So how do you know which form you are drawn to? Well, if it takes you five minutes to tell someone the plot of your story, you’ve got a short story; if it takes 20 minutes and you’re still talking, you’ve got a novel!
John Dean
However, it is worth remembering that most new prose writers have the beginnings of at least one novel in them. They’ll have an idea which is so much bigger than a short story.
The trouble is that many new writers will get to chapter four or five and give up because they don’t have the confidence or stamina to keep going. Writing a novel is a big old undertaking.
So, yes, short stories can be the best place for new writers to hone their craft but don’t discount the idea of a novel if it keeps calling you.
Also, don’t be beguiled into thinking that short stories are the easiest option. Those people who say writers who cannot write novels write short stories are missing the point.
It takes real skill to write a short story that’s effective - you need to consider everything that also goes into a novel, plot, characters, setting, structure, pace etc, and all without the wordage you get with a novel.
It is an art form in itself and some writers are happy to spend their life writing short stories.
So how do you know which form you are drawn to? Well, if it takes you five minutes to tell someone the plot of your story, you’ve got a short story; if it takes 20 minutes and you’re still talking, you’ve got a novel!
John Dean
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