December Short Story Submission

Welcome to December’s Interactive Short Story submission post.

I’ve been a little busy and will hopefully publish November’s short story by the end of this week, I hope you are looking forward to it.
But time waits for no writer, and it is time for a new story and I need your short story ideas!

What I Need From You

• Character(s) – Protagonist, Antagonist, love interest, etc. Anyone you feel is important. (names optional)
• Setting – Where does the story take place?
• What happens – eg. Orange moves into the Fruit Bowl.
• Inciting incident – what changes? eg. Orange is a bit old and starts to go mouldy, the rest of the fruit in the Fruit Bowl try to work out a plan to get Orange out.
  
• A small detail – something you want me to work in to the story. (optional)

You don’t have to include all of those details, though the more detail the better. If there’s something you want to add that you feel is important please do. Try and think of something that would, how shall we say, make it tricky for me. I dare you.

Try and put your idea into a short sentence or two, remembering that these submissions will go to vote, keep it snappy.

Submissions will go to reader vote on December 14th 2013 and will be open until midday on December 21st 2013.

I will write your idea as a short story for publishing on this blog.

Thank you for submitting an idea. Without you this blog won’t work.
I look forward to reading your ideas.

– Andrew

Rules

• Please do not use existing works in your submission.
• Only submissions made in the comment section of this post will be counted, submissions made anywhere else will not be included.
• I have final say on which 5 story ideas go to the vote, apologies if yours is not chosen.
• Submissions made after 10.00pm GTM on Friday 13th December will not be eligible for voting.
• By submitting a short story suggestion you waive all rights to that story. The copyright to the completed short story will be mine exclusively. By submitting a suggestion you are agreeing to this.

Thursday Thoughts: Back on Track

 

Hello Blog-babes,

Today is a little blog about the state of my novel and a problem that I doubt is unique to me.

I’ve actually been struggling to write recently. My struggle hasn’t been in terms of putting words on metaphorical paper, it has been in an acceptance that the words are the right ones. Or even good ones.

For two weeks I have been writing small sections of prose. Where I had once managed to average about 5,000 words a day I was suddenly having to drag myself to reach 1,000. Each day I would read back over the previous day’s efforts and rip it out and try it again. It was torturous, slow and demoralising. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what I was writing, but I was falling into that trap of writing without saying anything. Actions would come and go with ne’er a purpose between them. It’s frustrating reading your own work and realising that you are not reaching the potential you know is there.

Aside from the story/character exercises I’ve previously blogged about – which did help! – one other invaluable tool to the writer is: discussion. If something is knotted up and you know that no matter how you try you can’t work around it… talk to someone. We have an amazing capacity, when we really need to, of making ourselves understood to other people. By trying to explain the beats and narrative of what you are trying to write to someone else, if they are not understanding it you will find yourself instinctively rephrasing your point for clarity, this continues until the other person understands. You are refining and streamlining your problem to its clearest form so that it makes sense to another, and importantly also to yourself. If you’ve got a good friend who is willing to be talked at, sit them down with a nice cup of tea and have at it.

I did this last week, set out what Evin is going through, what actions I’m writing and thematically what the section is about. And lo, I set about writing again and the words are flowing clearly and the action is moving purposefully forward.

Let your inner editor come out for a while when you both need space to breath, it will help.

I’ve also been exploring options for presenting the short stories I publish on this blog in a form that allows for them to be read on e-book/smart phone/tablet devices as an alternative to you only being able to read them on the blog itself. I had a play with Apple’s iAuthor, but I’m not sure if it’s the tool for me. I’m not sure if I’ll get anything finished before the next story is published, but hopefully soon after. And there’s one other thing that I have planned. But more on that at a later date.

– Andrew

(Also, Blog-babes?! Oh dear, that won’t do. I gotta think up a good collective term for you fine folks)

 

Thursday Thoughts: November Disappointment

Hello,

Bit of a disappointing month as there have been no submissions to the interactive short story aspect of the blog. In lieu of this I will write up a short story based on the example I used in the suggestion post on the 1st. Which was:

[character x] and [character y] find a sack full of money and a severed finger. When they return home with the money they receive a phone call telling them that they must double the finances in the sack within a week or face the same fate as the owner of the severed finger.

If anyone has any comments or feedback they’d like to give about the process of the short story submission and how I could improve it to generate some interest in the monthly event I would be grateful to hear it.

Hopefully things will pick up in December. If you’ve enjoyed this blog so far please follow, share, reblog, repost, like and tweet this to your friends.

Have a wonderful day.

– Andrew

 

 

Last Chance For November Submissions

Hello WordPress friends,

Tomorrow is the 14th which means, if so called “calendars” are to be believed, today is the last day to make suggestions for November’s short story.

Your suggestion can be anything: serious, funny, romantic, sad, abstract, whatever you feel like to be honest. Please check https://ardavidsonwrites.wordpress.com/2013/11/01/november-short-story-submission/ for details.

Share this post and help me get some suggestions for my November story. I can’t do this without you.

– Andrew

 

November Short Story Submission

Welcome to November’s Interactive Short Story submission post.

I hope you enjoyed October’s story, but it’s time for a new story and I need your short story ideas!

What I Need From You

• Character(s) – Protagonist, Antagonist, love interest, etc. Anyone you feel is important. (names optional)
• Setting – Where does the story take place?
• What happens – eg. [character x] and [character y] find a sack full of money and a severed finger.
• Inciting incident – what changes? eg. When they return home with the money they receive a phone call telling them that they must double the finances in the sack within a week or face the same fate as the owner of the severed finger.
• A small detail – something you want me to work in to the story. (optional)

You don’t have to include all of those details, though the more detail the better. If there’s something you want to add that you feel is important please do.

Try and put your idea into a short sentence or two, remembering that these submissions will go to vote, keep it snappy.

Submissions will go to reader vote on November 14th 2013 and will be open until midday on November 21st 2013.

I will write your idea as a short story for publishing on this blog.

Thank you for submitting an idea. Without you this blog won’t work.
I look forward to reading your ideas.

– Andrew

Rules

• Please do not use existing works in your submission.
• Only submissions made in the comment section of this post will be counted, submissions made anywhere else will not be included.
• I have final say on which 5 story ideas go to the vote, apologies if yours is not chosen.
• Submissions made after 10.00pm GTM on Wednesday 13th November will not be eligible for voting.
• By submitting a short story suggestion you waive all rights to that story. The copyright to the completed short story will be mine exclusively. By submitting a suggestion you are agreeing to this.