fiction
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My name is? It’s so easy to fall into the trap of changing a character’s name half way through a story. For example, your story might start off being about a boy called Joshua only for him to morph into a character called Jason towards the end of the story. This shows that you’ve been…
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Not many of us have the luxury of becoming a full-time writer as soon as we start out. Instead, it’s a case of snatching hours and minutes here and there in between the day job and all that life throws at us. The same can be said for where we write. A lot of writing…
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My writing week is going well, with several submissions sent out and an article published in The Guardian at the weekend. I recently covered this as a market (see Markets For Freelancers) so if you’d like to see an example of the type of piece they publish, you can find my article if you click on the…
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Cringeworthy Clichés Building on my advice about short story endings yesterday, comes another tip about short story writing and that’s to watch your use of clichés. Over-used clichés such as, ‘Her skin was as white as snow’, ‘He looked outside and saw it was raining cats and dogs’ and ‘She looked as light as a…
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A couple of years ago, I wrote a tips piece for The Writers’ Bureau’s on-line magazine, ‘E-Zee Writer’ about how to grab your readers’ attention in the opening to your story: http://www.writersbureau.com/e-zee-writer/september-2011/page4.htm Having hooked that interest, you need to keep it there and then finish the story on a high, leaving readers feeling as if…
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A New Term It’s the first day of the school term and so I’ve had the house to myself once more and plenty of opportunity to start the big catch up. I’m concentrating on the tutoring work first as that has priority, though somehow I’ve managed to more or less stay on top of things…
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By Post or E-mail? Even though we live in an electronic age where more and more publications are accepting work by e-mail, some still prefer postal submissions, especially from someone writing for them for the first time. So make sure you research this carefully. If a magazine only accepts work by post, don’t think you…
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Yesterday, in my blog, I gave details of a fantastic flash fiction competition, ‘Flash 500’. Winning a flash fiction competition can give you a tremendous boost and spur you on to write for other publications and enter other competitions. That’s exactly what happened to me. The following story is the first piece of flash fiction…
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After a bank holiday at the beginning of the week, I keep having to remind myself which day of the week it is. It really feels like a Tuesday but as it’s already Wednesday, my deadlines are looming even closer. Though, school starts back next week so I should be able to catch up quite…
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Dramatic Dialogue In a short story, you need to hook your reader’s interest straight away. If your opening paragraph is too long or you waffle, you’ll lose his interest. Try opening your story with dialogue. It instantly makes your reader feel part of the story and privy to the conversation that’s taking place. Here are…
Esther Chilton 