July Writing Challenge
We have dedicated our writing challenge this month to the creation of a creative community without borders. For this reason, we have arranged it to coincide with an international flash fiction contest, organised by the César Egido Serrano Foundation.
We hope you will enter both. Since you may not enter theirs with a story which has won a previous award or been published elsewhere, write one for us and one (or two) for them. Of course, if you enter our competition and don’t get chosen, you’re welcome to send it to them. (We’re always very happy to be wrong in instances like this.)
You have a lot more chance of winning our competition but think big and try anyway. We will send the winning writer a gift token to the independent bookshop of their choice.
Here is the competition:
Write a piece of flash fiction of no more than 100 words inspired the motto from the César Egido Serrano Foundation’s competition: ‘The Word, bridging the gap between different cultures and religions’.
Enter theirs – with a different story – here, by November.
July Writing Tips
- Never preach. Your reader is not interested in issues. They’re interested in people. Engage their emotions – their minds will come along for the ride.
- Think of characters and story, rather than a worthy theme and message.
- Don’t waste your precious 100 words with explanations, or descriptions of how your characters come to be where they are.
- Show us a small, active scene in which people are doing things and/or speaking.
- In any story, no matter how small, someone always wants something and something stands in their way. They face a challenge and are changed in some way by the process they go through.
- Start late, end early. Don’t lead into your scene slowly. Throw us into the action immediately. Don’t trail away at the end. Get to the point and type The End.
