Posts Tagged Lizzie Lamb
Writing for The Weekly News
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Events, Markets, Short Story on March 6, 2016
On Saturday The Birmingham Chapter of the RNA held a Writers’ Day and I was asked to do a session on short stories. I chose to talk about writing tales with a twist for The Weekly News. 
The official guidelines for The Weekly News are on that treasure trove of information, Womagwriter’s Blog, but here are some of the other points that I made in my presentation:
Research the market. The Weekly News can be hard to get hold of but I find it more readily available in smaller newsagents and convenience stores rather than WH Smith or large supermarkets. Ask your newsagent to reserve a copy for you. Alternatively, stories that have been previously published in The Weekly News can be found in these two e-collections: House Guests and Other Stories and Old Friends.
The twist should come as late as possible in the story and will often turn the tale completely on its head BUT the reader should not be lied to. The story should make complete sense whether read with the twisted ending in mind or the ending that you hope the reader will assume is coming.
Types of Twist
- Character Identity – the small boy nervous about going to school turns out to be the headmaster
- Character Motive – the head juror is pushing for a quick verdict not because he’s in a hurry to get home but because he’s actually committed the crime and therefore wants the defendant sent down ASAP
- Location – the stranded climber is not on a mountain top but is on a climbing frame in the park
Things that (seem to) work for me:
- Having a male main character (both sexes read The Weekly News)
- Aiming at the lower end of the 1200- 1500 required words. These stories pull the wool over the reader’s eyes and the fewer words, the easier that is.
- Keep the time period for the story as short as possible (I’m talking seconds/minutes rather than days) to keep it snappy
I know that a lot of you are successful Weekly News writers and probably have your own personal set of ‘rules’. You might prefer to keep them secret from the competition(!) but if not, do they differ greatly from mine?
Finally a shout-out to some of the people who helped Saturday go with a swing:
Marilyn Rodwell who ably orgainsed the whole day
Bella Osborne who taught us how to plan our novel (and gave us post-its to play with)
Lizzie Lamb who talked about her self-publishing and marketing experiences
Alison May who educated us about editing and said it’s OK to hate your first draft
Helen Barrell who talked about all things social media
and fellow blogger Maria Smith who came and introduced herself to me – lovely to put a face to a name.
Benefit of the Pinned Tweet
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Computers & Technical, Promotion on October 8, 2015
Twitter gives you the functionality to ‘pin’ a tweet to the top of your profile. Any visitor to your Twitter profile will see the ‘pinned’ tweet first, followed by all your other tweets (including those that you tweeted after the pinned tweet).
There are two benefits to a pinned tweet:
- Gaining new followers. Any one looking at your profile can immediately see one of your own ‘best’ tweets rather than a host of re-tweets that you’ve kindly done for other people or spurious thoughts that you’ve tweeted at random. This helps people decide what you’re about and whether or not to follow you.
- Getting more and better re-tweets. When you RT someone, they may re-pay the favour by RTing one of your tweets. But it can be pot luck what they chose to RT, it may be something irrelevant. However, if you have a pinned tweet this is likely to be chosen because it’s easy to spot right at the top of your profile. So, with a pinned tweet, the RTs you receive become better quality.
It’s easy to ‘pin’ a tweet. Go to the tweet that you want to pin. Click on the three dots. Select ‘Pin to your profile page’. Note – you can only have one pinned tweet at a time, not several.
I picked this tip up last week at an event on book marketing organised by Lizzie Lamb and the Leicester RNA. There were several interesting speakers and lots of advice thrown in from the floor too. And, as always, it was good to spend a day with other writers.
Anyone else have any good Twitter advice?
Sally Jenkins 