Esther Chilton
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This week’s market is for UK and Irish residents. Purple Pumpkin Publishing have just started to hold regular short story and flash fiction competitions. There’s a competitions page on their website, which gives details of all the up and coming competitions. Entry is free. A small cash prize is offered to the winner and each…
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This week’s is a very interesting one…
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This week, it’s on to M,N and O: M is for money: They say money is the root of all evil. Your story could centre around this theme and feature a character who will do anything for money. Perhaps he goes a step too far and gets his comeuppance. Or your story could be about…
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Say no to head-hopping! Adding a character’s thoughts to a story can help the reader to connect with the character. You can do this for more than one character but don’t use more than one character’s thoughts in the same scene. If you constantly hop from one character’s thought to another, it can be very…
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I asked for chills last week with my challenge for a ghost story or poem. Thank you to all those who entered. You can see the results below. This week’s challenge takes you from a ghostly theme to a humorous one. I’d like you to make me smile or laugh out loud. You can send…
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You’ll need to get your skates on if you want to take advantage of this week’s market, ‘The Costa Short Story Award‘. The annual competition has a closing date of Friday 1st August 2014 and the entry must be sent by 4pm. Stories on any theme are invited and there’s a word limit of 4000…
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Well, that’s good to know!
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Another week and it’s onto J,K and L. I hope these ideas kick-start your short story writing week: J is for job: The job of your main character opens up all sorts of story possibilities. Your character could be a spy but his family think he’s a boring office worker. Perhaps the family’s lives are…
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Bashing the background on the head! When you’re writing a short story, it’s easy to get sucked into telling the reader too much about your characters’ backgrounds. This slows the pace of the story down. The reader wants a story so it’s important to only include any background information that’s essential to the story. You…
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Last week’s ‘last line’ challenge caused a few problems with some writers contacting me to say they’d sit this one out. So I thought I’d keep this week’s new challenge simple and give you a theme: A ghost story/poem. I want to feel goosebumps as I read it so the scarier the better! Huge congratulations…
Esther Chilton 