Romantic Novelists’ Association – Birmingham Chapter
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Events on February 27, 2012
Whenever a group of writers meet together tongues never stop wagging, a good time is had by all and, most
importantly, everyone goes away fired up with renewed enthusiasm!
This was the case on Saturday at the first 2012 quarterly meeting of the Birmingham Chapter of the Romantic Novelists Association. Nine of us had lunch at the Edwardian Tea Rooms in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.
Jean Fullerton, winner of the 2006 Harry Bowling Prize, was our special guest. As well as writing historical novels based in the East End of London and giving regular talks to Women’s Institutes and other organisations, she continues to work full-time as a district nurse – so there’s no excuse for the rest of us not finding time to write!
Jean was generous with her advice and, amongst other things, emphasised that in romance novels, the author must be in love with the hero she’s created – otherwise why on earth should the reader fall for him? Also protagonists must remain ‘in character’ and not be shoe-horned into doing something not in their nature just for the sake of the plot. And in answer to a question, Jean said that there’s no need to get hung up on what is the ‘right’ chapter length or worry about making them all equal – if necessary this can be sorted with the help of an editor later.
Elsewhere around the table we discussed the pros and cons of basing characters on real people, emailing manuscripts to our Kindles in order to see them with fresh eyes and spot mistakes missed on the computer screen plus we caught up with how everyone had been doing over the last few months.
Writing can be a lonely and frustrating business, so if you get the chance to go to a workshop, class or other gathering of writers – grab it with both hands!
Mature Times and Yours
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Markets, Poetry, Short Story, Successes on February 23, 2012
I picked up a copy of Mature Times in the library this week. This is a free monthly publication aimed at retired people of both sexes and this edition (February 2012) contains the following announcement, which may be of interest to anyone writing poetry:
From next month, Mature Times will publish a reader’s poem in our Poem of the Month competition. Entries will be judged by our literary critic, Jacky Edgell, and the winner will receive a Mature Times pen set. Please submit your poem to; Poem of the Month Competition, Mature Times, Highwood House, Winters Lane, Redhill, Bristol BS40 5SH or email: editorial@maturetimes.co.uk
I also bought a copy of Yours magazine. This is a fortnightly publication, again aimed at older people and I guess more women read it than men. Usually it carries one short story per issue but this one (Feb 21 – Mar 5 2012) contains two stories, and one of those is the first instalment of a two-part story. This may be a one-off or it may be an indication that Yours is going to start carrying more fiction, including short serials. I’ve got my fingers crossed for the latter!
Finally, talking of serials, I won the competition on Womag’s blog to write the first 200 words of a crime serial!! Geraldine Ryan was the judge and provided the prize – a copy of her new book, Leave Over. This book contains two (previously published) complete serials, so I’m looking forward to reading it and maybe picking up some tips.
Novelicious Undiscovered 2012
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions on February 20, 2012
Thanks to Carol Bevitt for posting about this competition on her blog and thus bringing it to my attention. 
Are YOU Britain’s next chick lit STAR? says the blurb for this contest, which is being run by Novelicious along with Avon (HarperCollins) and Books and the City (Simon & Schuster UK).
It’s free to enter (so nothing to lose) and you only need to submit 3,000 words (and thankfully they don’t demand a pesky synopsis either). Closing date is 3rd April 2012.
There will be two winners:
The People’s Choice Award Winner – the top twenty entries as judged by the Novelicious team will be put to a public vote in June. The entrant with the most votes will win a full manuscript critique with Avon Commissioning Editor Caroline Hogg over tea and cake in their London offices. This will be your chance to get feedback on your novel and ask any questions you have about publishing. Plus the winner gets a host of other goodies (listed on the competition website here).
The Books and The City Choice Award Winner – will be chosen from the top twenty entries by the Fiction Editorial department at Simon & Schuster UK. Their choice will win a full manuscript feedback from the editorial team at Simon & Schuster plus author mentoring and meeting with Sunday Times Bestselling author of RSVP Helen Warner, along with a couple of other things listed here.
I do have one reservation about this competition and that is the public vote for The People’s Choice Award Winner. From my own, and other people’s, experience I know that these votes can turn into a popularity contest rather than an objective judgement on the writing. The person with the most friends on Facebook or access to a large email address list tends to do better because they can encourage all their contacts to vote for them. But maybe this downside is compensated for by the other winner being chosen by Simon and Schuster. And the prizes are attractive.
Before you decide whether to enter have a look at the competition website where there is an opportunity to ask questions about exactly what is required & learn from what others have asked. Also have a look at Carol’s blog post where she emphasises the importance of one of the rules which states that your work must not have been previously published – including on a blog.
Finally, to show that real people do win competitions like this, have a look at Patsy Collins’ reaction to winning a novel writing competition – and getting her book published as the prize! Well done, Patsy!
How Do You Create Your Characters?
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Resources, Writing on February 16, 2012
How do you make the people in your fiction (longer fiction especially) well-rounded, believable individuals that the reader might care about?
In short stories it isn’t always necessary to know all the details about a character, for example it may be enough to know that the heroine is a grandmother and not her exact age or her previous profession (if any). But when attempting to write something longer, facts like these become important so that the writer can concoct a suitable back story for the lady, so it may be useful to know in what decade she was a teenager, at what age she left full-time education and whether or not she became a working mother. The life which the grandmother lived before the novel opens will have a bearing on how she acts and reacts within the story – so both the author and the reader need to know what went before.
Some writers advocate filling in a questionnaire about each character, covering physical appearance, hobbies, education etc (a sample questionnaire can be found on Stewart Ferris’ website here). This is a useful way of keeping track of facts such as eye colour and height (easy things to forget as you get deeper into the plot).
However, I find it very hard to just jot down a sentence or two about the big things such as a character’s personality, attitude to life and motivation. In order to get know a protagonist I have to start writing scenes from his or her point of view. It’s only as I write that I realise what I don’t know about a character and therefore what I need to put into their back story to make them act in a certain way in the present. This means I don’t do much planning before I write because I have to write in order to create the characters.
Some writers cut pictures from magazines and use these as prompts for their characters. But this only covers their physical appearance – so I’m not sure it would help me.
Nicola Morgan advocates interviewing your main character (her list of suggested questions is here and they are pretty searching!) Most of these I couldn’t have answered when I initially decided on the people I needed in my story but now I’ve written a bit from each point of view I’m going to pretend I’m a chat show host and start asking questions.
What about you – how do you develop your characters?
Moving On From Short Story to Novel
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Authors, Books on February 13, 2012
I’ve been reading Della Galton‘s new book – Moving On from Short Story to Novel. 
It’s written in an easy to read friendly tone and does what it says on the tin – it explains the different techniques required for writing full length fiction compared to short stories.
When I attempted NaNoWriMo a couple of years ago I fell into the trap of thinking that to fill the pages of a novel it was necessary to pack it with action. I had something new happening all the time. Della explains that this is not the case, what is needed is more depth – i.e. more characterisation, detail of setting etc. She uses examples from her own novels and stories, including a synopsis (great to see a successful synopsis ‘in the flesh’!) and a chart showing how to keep track of what’s happening in each chapter (one of those things that you see and then say – that’s obvious so why didn’t I think of it? Sometimes we just need these things pointing out).
Della also explains the concept of a theme within a novel. Something that I’ve always thought sounds very literary and highbrow but in fact it’s something that many writers do unconsciously. Theme boils down to the focus of your novel and, according to Della, if you can identify that theme then both plotting and editing become easier.
The only downside to this book is that it’s not available on Kindle and incidentally, it’s written in such a way that a novelist could use it as an aid to moving to shorter fiction.
Now all I have to do is put all this brilliant advice into practice…
Erewash Writers’ Group Open Short Story Competition 2012
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions on February 9, 2012
Debbie Wilkinson has been in touch to ask me to give a mention to the Short Story Competition that Erewash Writers’ Group is running – and it has a charity element.
The competition has an open theme. All ages are eligible and it closes on 27th June 2012. There is a maximum word count of 1,500.
The prizes are £60, £30, £15 and there is also a £25 donation (likely to increase if a good response to this competition is received) available to either a UK charity or voluntary group. Entrants can nominate their favourite charity or voluntary group with every entry. Names will be put into a hat and one drawn at the close of the competition. Full details about this charitable donation are here.
The entry fee is £3 but additional entries by the same person attract a discount.
The competition judge is Keith ‘Carrot Nappers’ Large. His humorous fantasy ‘The Tisbech Terror’ won first prize in Freelance Market News’s 2010 short story competition, along with a piece of reverse creativity, adapting his stage play ‘Whine Fever’ into a short story to win the 2011 PCS/Words national competition. You can read his biography on the competition website.
The full details for the competition are here.
So why not have a go and increase that charitable donation fund!
Kindle Talk
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Authors, Books, Computers & Technical on February 6, 2012
I’ve finally got round to buying a cover for the Kindle I received at Christmas. It’s a bright pink neoprene zip-up sleeve.
I wanted to use the Kindle for a while before deciding whether to go for the book-like cover or the sleeve – but I couldn’t start on the e-books until I’d finished the ‘proper’ book I was already part way through (Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult – not as good as some of her others, I thought).
Before I started using the Kindle I was a bit worried that it wouldn’t feel like a book and I wouldn’t be able to get engrossed in the story. But it was no problem, the page turning becomes automatic and the fact that it’s an electronic device doesn’t reduce the enjoyment. A colleague at work said he was so involved in what he was reading that he totally forgot it wasn’t a book and reached his hand over to turn the page manually.
The only thing I find frustrating is the choice of font sizes. I was hoping to find one that would let me read without wearing my glasses but my ideal size seems to fall in the middle of two choices – so I still put the specs on.
So far I’ve worked my way electronically through A is for Alibi by Sue Grafton, How to Make £10 in 10 Minutes by Linda Lewis and I’ve just started Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (am I the only person never to have seen the film or read the book?).
Now, I’m wondering about downloading Write a Great Synopsis by Nicola Morgan. I think I’m going to need it to stand any chance of getting an entry ready for the Good Housekeeping Novel Writing Competition – it’s not going too well at the moment! Is anybody else struggling?
Persistance Pays
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Markets, Successes on February 2, 2012
Most of us have ‘favourite’ stories, poems or articles that for some reason have never made it into print. For some
Image via Wikipedia
reason we particularly like these pieces but it seems no-one else does! Recently I resurrected a couple of stories which had unsuccessfully done the rounds but which I thought had a strong idea behind them.
The first was a ‘twist in the tail’ about a fortune-teller and was based on an anecdote that a work colleague told me. It was rejected by both Take a Break Fiction Feast and The Weekly News. I managed to distill the essence of the story down into just 60 words and emailed it off to Real People, which publishes a 60 word story each week and pays £25. And finally my fortune-teller tale found a home! It was published a couple of weeks ago and now I feel that I can stop fretting over that ‘favourite’ and move on.
Similarly, another story, set partly in the early 1980s and partly in the present day, had flopped in a couple of competitions and had been rejected by Woman’s Weekly. It then also got turned down by My Weekly – but this time with a few words about why it wasn’t quite right. I took notice of the comments, reworked the story and sent it off yet again – this time to People’s Friend. This week I had an email from one of the People’s Friend fiction team saying that they liked the story, but also listing a number of changes that would be necessary before it could be considered for the magazine. So now I’m editing the story yet again and crossing my fingers that when I re-submit it, People’s Friend will say ‘Yes’ and finally give my story a home.
So if you’ve written something you really love but can’t seem to get it accepted anywhere – keep trying. Persistance can pay!
CheerReader Humourous Short Story Competition 2012
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions on January 30, 2012
Here’s a nice contrast to the competition I mentioned last week about death and dying.
Brian David from the CheerReader website has asked me to give their quarterly short story competitions a mention – and they want stories that will make the reader laugh.
The theme for each competition is – anything, as long as it’s funny. 100 Euros is the prize on offer for the winner in each of the 4 competitions. The winner plus commended stories will be published on the website.
The maximum word count is 1500 and the entry fee is 5 Euros (payable via PayPal). The closing dates are March 15th 2012, June 15th 2012, September 15 th 2012 and December 15th 2012. Winners will be announced 2 weeks after each closing date.
There are plenty of stories on the website to give you an idea of what goes down well with the organisers. Have a look here.
The full competition details are here.
How to make £10 in Ten Minutes
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Books on January 26, 2012
Cover via Amazon
I was one of the many who received a Kindle for Christmas and one of the first books I downloaded was Linda Lewis’ new book How To Make £10 in Ten Minutes. Linda is a prolific Womag writer, competition judge, columnist etc.
Her book is short and to the point. It gives useful advice on how to find the material that the weekly women’s magazines (and to a lesser extent other publications) thrive on. For instance, lots of magazines pay for Tips that either save money or make life easier – but how do you find tips to submit? Linda explains.
I was tempted by the book because you can download the first chapter for free, which I did. After reading it, I decided it was worth paying 89p to read the rest. Now all I need is one successful submission following Linda’s advice and I’ll be quids in!
By the way, did anyone else see the bit in the news that said around 20% of those who received a Kindle for Christmas haven’t used it? In contrast, only 9% of iPads have remained unused – probably because you don’t buy someone an iPad ‘on spec’. If I was spending all that money I’d want to be sure that it was something the recipient actually wanted!
Can you guess what the most unused present was? Smellies and toiletries.
Read the full story here.
Sally Jenkins 