short stories

  • Monday Motivations/Fabulous First Few Words Part Four

    This week’s installment in my weekly series, on how to hook your reader’s interest in the first few words of your story, moves from last week’s humour to atmosphere. By building up a strong sense of atmosphere at the beginning of your story, you ensure your reader feels part of the story straight away. Here…

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  • Originally posted on Words of Margaux:   In her collection, The Siege, Esther Newton has proven to be a versatile writer who is able to tell engaging stories, and create strong characters in a terse manner. While each story is an average of 2,000 words long, when reading those tales, the reader feels that he’s…

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  • Monday Motivations/Fabulous First Few Words Part One

    A number of you contacted me to say how much you enjoyed my ‘ABC Of Short Story Ideas’ and found it useful in helping you to come up with story ideas of your own. With that in mind, I thought I’d stick with fiction and start a new weekly series, ‘Fabulous First Few Words‘. As…

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  • Monday Motivations/The ABC of Short Story Ideas Part Four

    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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  • Monday Motivations/The ABC Of Short Story Ideas Part Two

    Apologies for interrupting my weekly series to bring you news of the launch of my book. Normal business is now resumed! But I would like to thank you all for the support you’ve given me with the book 🙂 This week, I’m covering the D, E and F of short story ideas. I hope they…

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  • My Writing Week

    As you’ll all know, the week before going away is always fraught with far too many things to do. Add to that the tiredness that seems to come with losing an hour with the clock change and I’m not doing well. Still, it can only get better! My ‘More Markets For Freelancers‘ publication for your…

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  • My Writing Week

    It doesn’t seem five minutes ago that it was half-term but next week signals the end of another term and a trip overseas. I’m looking forward to a break but with lots of marking still to do and deadlines to meet before then it still seems a long way off. Though, as always, it’ll all…

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  • My Writing Week

    My writing week got off to a flying start with a cheque in the post but that good start didn’t last long and the cheque was swiftly followed by a rejection. As a writer, it’s all too easy to take rejection personally and to focus on the bad rather than the good. Rejection is all…

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  • Somewhere to Start It can be difficult to know where to send your writing. The ‘Writers and Artists’ Year Book’ is full of agents, publishers and mainstream magazines and newsagents’ shelves are growing to fit the plethora of magazines published weekly, monthly and so on. Yet, it isn’t just a case of sending work off…

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  • My Writing Week

    Although I took a week off from my blog, I was still tutoring throughout the week, mixed in with motherly duties such as baking giant cookies and be taken on adventures on the X-box! We also managed a few trips out but now it’s nose to the grindstone with plenty of deadlines lurking on the…

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