Ideas for Writers Available Here!
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Resources, Writing on February 10, 2011
Where do you get your ideas from?
That must be the question most often asked of writers and the most difficult to answer. We all know that story and character ideas are all around in us our daily life – overheard conversations, a couple arguing in the street or 2 teenagers in hoodies following an old lady.
But ideas tend to be like buses – 3 come along in a row or, no matter how long you wait, not one puts in an appearance.
If you’re suffering an ideas drought here are a few ‘ideas factories’ to kick-start your imagination:
- Sally & Cally’s Short Story Ideas Generator – this will give you a random character, setting and conflict/situation
- The Brainstormer – this is a little bit like an on-line roulette wheel. Click on the ‘Random’ button to spin the wheel and generate a conflict, adjective and person/place/thing.
- The Writers’ Idea Store in Writers’ Forum magazine – this monthly feature by Paula Williams discusses where to find ideas and also incorporates a Fiction Square. The square includes 6 each of characters, conflicts, weather, setting and objects. Roll a dice once for each of these categories in order to determine which should be in your next story.
- The Writer’s Block – this is a block-shaped book that contains ideas and story prompts on every page. It’s well worth dipping into if you’re scratching your head for something to write about.
- Sign up for the free e-newsletter produced by www.ideasforwriters.co.uk – you will receive story prompts and ideas for historical anniversaries to write about.
- Creative Writing Prompts has 346 prompts to get your pen moving.
There is no copyright on ideas. This means that it’s acceptable to re-write a well-known story such as a fairy-tale or legend. Try writing The Frog Prince from the point of view of the frog rather than the princess or modernise Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs by giving the heroine a job as a housekeeper to a group of brothers living in a large house inherited from their parents.
So now you’ve no excuse for not writing. Don’t wait for inspiration to strike – use the suggestions above to create your own!
Remember – Writers Write! (they don’t just sit around and think about it).
And the Winner is….
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions on February 7, 2011
The winner in the prize draw for the set of 3 Stieg Larsson books is:
Helen lives in Dorset and writes part-time, mainly articles and reviews. Social history is a particular favourite topic. However, she has had success with short stories, having won two competitions. She is currently working on several projects, all at different stages, from early research to about to submit. Further information can be found on Helen’s website www.helenbaggott.co.uk.
Congratulations to Helen and thanks to every one who took part by signing up for an email subscription to this blog.
Here are a couple more ‘win a book’ competitions to have a go at if you’re feeling lucky:
How to Write a Novel
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Events, Writing on February 3, 2011
As you may have gathered from reading this blog, short stories and articles are my ‘thing’. I find the prospect of
writing anything longer than about 3,000 words terrifying! I succeeded in NaNoWriMo 2009 but my 50,000 words were rambling and certainly nowhere near a coherent story.
Hence my decision to sign-up for Martin Davies’ Novel Writing Starter Kit.
Last Saturday was the big day and I came away thinking that writing a novel might actually be possible. Martin was very generous with his advice and here are the most important bits :
- Writing is a habit that gets easier the more you write. Decide when and where you are going to write. Don’t be too ambitious because that makes failure more likely. Sticking to 10 minutes, twice a week before bed is easier to maintain than trying to write for the whole of every Saturday afternoon. Remember that little bits, done regularly, will add up.
- Set a time limit for each writing session and don’t use that time to re-read or revise what has gone before. Don’t worry about the standard of your writing – just keep going.
- Write what you enjoy reading. You will have to live with this novel and its characters for months, maybe years, so it’s no good trying commercial chick-lit if you hate reading that genre.
- Don’t wait for a fantastic, original idea to drop into your lap. Most plots have been done many times over and it’s perfectly acceptable to re-tell an old tale or legend. Maybe set it in a different time period or tell it from a different point of view.
- People + Events = Change. This is the formula for a novel. Drop an event on your characters and watch as they react to the ripples and changes around them.
- Create a structure for your story. Include the main events plus the milestones that must happen to lead up to these events. This is your map for the journey ahead but remember, you can change this as you write and get to know your characters better.
- Only include subplots if they have a reason within the overall plot. For example they may give an insight into the character of your main protagonist or give necessary information to the reader.
- Know your setting but don’t go into reams of descriptions about the landscape. Feed small details to the reader and they will build their own images.
- Similarly with character descriptions, less can be more. Show your hero’s characteristics through action where possible.
- Don’t get bogged down by research. If you’re unsure of something when writing don’t stop the flow to find out, put a question mark and look it up later.
- Keep your first novel simple. You will gain confidence from finishing it, whether or not it is published, then you can move on to a more complex story/structure.
Sounds simple doesn’t it? Just stick to Martin’s mantra of ‘Writers Write!’ and you can’t go far wrong in turning yourself from ‘someone who likes the idea of writing a novel’ into ‘someone who has a completed novel under their belt’.
So, fired up with enthusiasm, I am now publicly setting myself the goal of writing a 30,000 word My Weekly pocket novel and I’m going to start by brainstorming some ideas…
My writing buddy, Helen Yendall, also attended Martin’s workshop – you can read her take on the day here.
P.S. Only one day left to enter my free prize draw!
Markets for 500 Word Stories
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions on January 31, 2011
Not got much time for writing? Fancy trying something short and sharp? Have a look at these competitions for 500
word stories. But beware, just because they’re short it doesn’t mean they’re easy. It’s very difficult to get a beginning, middle and end, plus a bit of character development into 500 words.
- The Flash 500 Competition is a quarterly competition with an open theme, the next closing date is the 31st March and there is the option of receiving a critique on your story. Entry fee is £5 and there is a £250 first prize plus publication in Words with Jam
- Emerald Writing Workshops also run a quarterly competition with the next closing date being 28th February. The theme varies and the for the current competition the story must be set in an airport. Previous winning entries plus the judge’s comments are available on the website. Entry fee is 5 second class stamps for a total prize fund of £75.
- Spilling Ink Review have a flash fiction competition for stories up to 500 words in length. The closing date is 1st April 2011 and it is an open theme. Prizes are £250, £125 and £50 plus a free copy of their annual print anthology. Entry fee is £5
But if they all sound like too much hard work then take the easy option and enter my free prize draw instead.
Good Luck!
National Trust Poetry Competition
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Poetry on January 28, 2011
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The National Trust is calling for poems inspired by a special outdoor place for their Landlines Competition.
The prize is something money can’t buy – a special day with National Trust staff at either an outdoors location or behind the scenes at one of the NT properties in the winners’ chosen region. In addition the winners in each category will have their poem published in the autumn 2011 edition of National Trust Magazine. The winners and five runners-up will also receive a copy of Ode to the Countryside – the NT collection of poetry celebrating the British landscape.
The judge is the poet and broadcaster Ian McMillan. He says, “The open air, the layers of landscape, the endlessly changing weather and the way that buildings and places can evoke memory are all grist to the poet’s mill.”
So it should be easy to find plenty of inspiration to get you going!
There are two categories – ‘Under 16′ and ’16 and Over’. Only one poem per entrant is allowed and each poem should be no longer than 20 lines. There is no entry fee.
The closing date is 31 March 2011 and entry is by email or post. For full details of where to send your poems click here.
And don’t forget, there’s only a week to go before I draw the winner of the Stieg Larsson books. Details are here.
Brit Writers’ Awards 2011
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions on January 25, 2011
The Brit Writers’ Awards is a major competition with a massive £10,000 prize for the eventual winner and it’s principally aimed at unpublished writers. It promises a glittering awards ceremony for the finalists which will be attended by major publishing houses, celebrities and international media representatives.
The entries will be judged in 8 different categories:
- Poetry
- Short stories
- Novels
- Non-fiction
- Stories for children
- Songwriting
- Stage/screenplay
- Published writer of the year
Tempted by the size of the prize fund and the description of the awards ceremony I entered this competition last year (its inaugural year). I was disappointed with it on several counts:
- From the beginning I was sent emails trying to sell me tickets to the awards ceremony
- The closing date for entries was extended (which doesn’t seem fair to those of us who had worked and submitted to the original date)
- The announcement of the results was postponed more than once
- Postings on the Writers’ News Talkback Forum indicated that the awards ceremony was disappointing
When I saw the announcement of the 2011 awards I decided that my grumbles might just be down to teething problems in the competition’s first year and, since Writers’ News subscribers qualify for free entry, it might be worth giving it another go (especially since there is no set theme and therefore I could choose one of my existing stories to send in).
Then I read that Writers’ News/Writing Magazine have withdrawn their association with the Brit Writers’ Awards because they were ‘increasingly concerned at Brit Writers’ development into a financial operation’. apparently they have introduced something called ‘Your Book Your Way’, a paid scheme that helps authors self-publish but using partners approved of by Brit Writers. They are also behind the ‘Publishing Programme’ that offers 15 writers a year’s editorial development and guaranteed publication – at a cost of £1,795 per participant.
So now I’m not so sure about entering. Has anyone else any experience of this competition? Do you plan on entering this year?
The Brit Writers’ Awards are a big step up from my claim to fame this week – a letter in the Jan/Feb issue of Tesco Magazine and it wasn’t even the star letter so I didn’t get my hands on the prize of a weekend break in London. But if at first you don’t succeed, try, try and try again – so I’ve just whizzed off another one to them. For some hints on writing letters for publication click here and for my free prize draw click here.
Short Stories for the Weekly News
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Markets on January 21, 2011
The Weekly News prints three short stories a week. However, it is a market that is sometimes overlooked by writers targeting women’s magazines because it is published in newspaper format and can be difficult to find in the
newsagent. I buy my copies in WHSmith or Tescos.
The Weekly News is aimed at a family audience of males and females across all ages. The short stories accepted for publication reflect this. It is not a market for romance or anything too ‘female’ orientated. In an interview for a past issue of Writers’ Forum Jill Finlay, the fiction editor said, “We like funny stories or happy endings but also something slightly darker, edgier – blackmail, the occasional murder – but please, more black humour than shock-you crime.”
Jill is also a fan of twist in the tale endings and topical stories.
Stories range in length from around 800 to 2000 words. They are generally written in the third person and often from a male point of view.
I studied a couple of recent issues and in the first all three stories had a twist ending although they covered different topics:
- A story that appeared to be about a manned mission to Mars turned out to be children playing a game
- A story that appeared to be about a pilot flying a plane turned out to be a man driving to the airport and back in the middle of the night to lull the baby to sleep
- A disgruntled train commuter on her last journey to work before she switched jobs – to Customer Services Manager for the train company.
In the second issue I looked at, twists were popular again:
- A supermarket car park attendant issuing cash fines to customers parking illegally in disabled spaces turns out to be an ordinary woman just pocketing the money for herself
- A lady joins the gym to get fit for her 50th birthday party but hates it. However she does find a keep fit routine that suits her and is able to make a grand entrance to the party – as a belly dancer.
- A lady in bed and unable to sleep yet again because of the noise from the party next door. She finally cracks, gets up and goes to the shed to get something before joining the party – with two bottles of wine.
Some of the plots above may have lost something in my re-telling (apologies to the authors) but you get the idea of the type of thing that Jill Finlay chooses for The Weekly News fiction pages.
Submission is by email only to jfinlay@dcthomson.co.uk. Further detailed guidelines can be found on Womagwriter’s Blog.
And if you’re visiting my blog for the first time, click here for details of my free prize draw.
Improve Your Reader’s Mood
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Books, Competitions, Markets, Writing on January 17, 2011
As you write do you consider how your words will affect your reader’s mood? Will he be uplifted to a better place or left wondering whether or not to slit his throat? 
The Reading Agency and BBC Headroom have worked with reading groups to identify a selection of ‘Mood-busting Books’ that should leave you with a smile. The list includes The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell and The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith.
I think it’s hard to write something that makes a reader a happy. It’s so much easier to make a story out of tragedy or misfortune – after all if everything is going swimmingly for your characters, where’s the conflict that we are told is an essential element of every piece of fiction? A death, divorce or double-dealing fraudster immediately threw up dozens of plot lines but it’s harder to make a compelling piece of fiction out of happy family life. Making your reader feel good is much more of a challenge than making them feel sad.
Judges of short story competitions often complain that there are too few entries that make them smile. Imagine wading through a couple of hundred stories dwelling on the harsher side of life – the one story that can make you laugh and raise your mood must make it to the short list.
So why not read one of the mood-busting books above and then practise some ‘feel-good’ writing – January is dismal enough without making it worse with massive amounts of melodrama.
To get the creative juices flowing, here are a few places to target with your smiley stories and pick-me-up poems:
- The Marple Short Story and Poetry competition is offering a special prize for the best humourous poem submitted
- East of the Web publishes short stories online and has a humour section – unfortunately there is no payment other than a page to publicise yourself, including links to your own blog/website.
- Chicken Soup for the Soul publishes inspirational books, comprising a selection of short pieces on a particular theme designed to encourage, comfort or amuse. They are currently looking for submissions around themes such as weddings, Canada and marriage. The full list is here.
And if you just want something to cheer yourself up during these grey weeks – enter my free prize draw.
Two American Short Story Markets
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Markets, Writing on January 13, 2011
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The beauty of the internet is that it brings the world into our living-rooms. We can target markets across the globe without worrying about the cost of international postage and how to include a stamped addressed envelope for a reply.
Here are two American websites to which I’ve submitted work:
- Long and Short Reviews specialises in romantic fiction. Their main function is to review full-length novels, however every Thursday they publish a short story. Stories must be between 1000 and 1500 words and contain a strong romantic element and a ‘happy ever after’ or at least ‘hopefully happy ever after’ ending. Payment is minimal ($5 plus a free 1 month advert if you have a book that you want to promote) but they include a short biography with each story in which you can include your website/blog. Full submission details are here. I submitted a story originally written for the UK women’s magazine market. It had done the rounds here without success but I didn’t want to consign it indefinitely to my desk drawer. The story is available to read here on the Long and Short Reviews site. By the way Long and Short Reviews has a sister site, Whipped Cream, that deals with erotic fiction – so don’t be shocked if you see that mentioned in the submission guidelines on the site!
- The second market is a regular competition organised on the Readingwriters site. Each competition has a different theme and varying word count so you need to check the current requirements. I like these competitions because they are free to enter but offer a $100 prize and the judging procedure allows you to see how near (or otherwise) you were to winning. The stories that got through the first round of judging are listed on the website, then a bit later those that got through the second round of judging and finally the winner’s name plus ‘honourable mentions’ are published. The winning story is posted on the site along with a critique by the judge.
So why not send your work across the pond and see if you can make it big in the US!
Failing that, sign up for email updates to this blog and enter the prize draw for a set of Stieg Larsson books. For details, click here.
The Other Hand by Chris Cleave
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Books on January 10, 2011
If you’re trying to find a way of structuring your novel take a look at The Other Hand by Chris Cleave, which was shortlisted for the 2008 COSTA Novel Award. It is a compelling story about two very different women. Their first meeting is brief and takes place before the story begins but two years later their lives collide again.
Point of view in the book alternates, a chapter at a time, between these two main protagonists. Each character’s version of events deals with the present day and also includes flashbacks over the previous two years. But the really clever bit in this book is the way author drip feeds information to the reader – just as we think we know the history of these two women, another surprise is dropped in.
Chris talks about the structure of the book on his website and the difficulties that he encountered. He says, “Using two narrators is difficult though. To differentiate their vocabulary, grammar and idioms is quite straightforward if you make an effort to understand and inhabit the characters, but the hard thing is how you handle the overlaps and the gaps in the characters’ knowledge. When both narrators have witnessed an event, which one will you choose to recount it? Or will you let both of them tell it, and play with their different perspectives on what they’ve seen?”
Chris’s difficulties are compounded by the fact that he is a man trying to get inside the minds of two women from very different backgrounds. But Chris sees that as an advantage – because he must concentrate so hard to become a character so different from himself, there is no danger of him accidentally using his own voice instead of that of his characters.
He describes a novel as an intricate engine and says, “if you change one little piece here, it can throw the whole thing out of equilibrium way over there.”
The terrible events in this book haunt the reader because they are probably happening to someone, somewhere, right now. I’d love to tell you more about the story itself but the blurb on the back of the book reads, “once you have read it, you’ll want to tell your friends about it. When you do please don’t tell them what happens. The magic is in how it unfolds.”
And how the story unfolds is all down to the clever structure – something the Telegraph describes as “a feat of literary engineering.”
It’s a book well worth reading (if you’re in the US, this book is available there with the title ‘Little Bee’).
And if you fancy some free books to read don’t forget the easy to enter prize draw running on this blog. Click here for more details.
Sally Jenkins 
