Esther Chilton
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This week, I move away from fiction and bring you a weekly travel writing competition. ‘The Daily Telegraph‘ invite writers to send in stories of their travel experiences for the ‘Just Back‘ slot. 500 words is the upper limit and if your holiday story is published, you’ll receive £200 in a currency of your choice.…
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Well, here’s a warning if ever I saw one!:
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Can’t think of a way to open your short story and to ensure you hook your reader? Shock them! It’s important to grab your reader’s interest in the first few paragraphs. It’s even better if you can do it in the first sentence. The shock factor is a great way of achieving this and for…
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Before I launch into this week’s challenge, I wanted to mention the problems some of you are having with getting hold of my book, ‘The Siege and Other Award Winning Short Stories’. If you’re in the UK or US, it’s pretty straight forward and you can download it from Amazon UK or Amazon US. I…
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This week, I’ve found a short story market for you, which accepts stories from all across the globe – the annual ‘Ink Tears International Short Story Competition 2014‘. With the first prize a very nice £1000, it’s a competition not to be missed. There are are also prizes for the runner-up and four highly commended…
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I wouldn’t recommend this one!:
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Lower not higher! What’s wrong with the following sentence?: “I’m going to the beach this weekend,” He said. Answer: the capital ‘H’ of ‘He’. It should be lowercase and not uppercase. A lot of writers make this mistake and it’s so easy to do. But when you write using ‘he’ or ‘she’, for that matter,…
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For last week’s challenge, I wanted you to write a humorous piece and all your work made me smile. Thank you! This week, I’m going to give you a single line for a story/poem/article/anecdote. Now, this line can appear anywhere in your work – at the beginning, middle, end or somewhere in between. It’s all…

