October Writing Challenge and Writing Tip for the month

 In Tips for Writers, Writing Competitions, Writing Exercises
The differences between writing a book and a script

Image courtesy nikkorsnapper

A story doesn’t consist of a series of unrelated events. Everything that happens is linked causally or psychologically to what came before and what follows. People often forget this, particularly when they’re writing non-fiction. They think that, because the events are “true” and “really happened”, they don’t have to give any thought to the flow of the story.

The woman gets lost on a mountain walk and dies. A man leaves his mistress. These two events don’t make a story. But how about: the woman gets lost on a mountain walk they were meant to be doing together. Filled with guilt, the man leaves the mistress he stayed behind to see.

That’s a story.

For this month’s competition, we’ll give you two prompts. Try to link these within a single scene so the one causes the other or creates a psychological reaction out of which the second event stems. Write no more than 250 words.

The prompts are:

Elsie injures her hand.
John burns a painting on the lawn.

The deadline is midnight on 31 October. Paste your entry into the body of an email and send it to trish@allaboutwritingcourses.com

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