Win a voucher to our courses when you enter our April/May Flash Fiction Challenge

All About Writing’s latest writing challenge offers the winner a literary assessment on 5000 words of writing worth R 2750 / £ 150 or a voucher to the same value to use on one of our courses or programmes.

Your character is working with a new colleague, who has only recently been employed. In the course of this scene, we (your readers) should begin to suspect that the colleague is not human at all, but a robot. Don’t spell this out to us. Give us the details which raise our suspicions. Your character may or may not yet interpret these clues correctly.

Write no more than 250 words. Submit your entry here or paste your entry into the form below by midnight on 31 May 2021. Entry is free.

Writing Tips:

1. Don’t write “on the nose”. Try to be subtle. Always remember that readers are clever.
2. Resist the temptation to explain. Allow your details to stand for themselves.
3. Don’t labour the point. Allow us still to be wondering: are they, aren’t they? By the end of the scene, we don’t have to be certain. It’s good to leave us with questions in our minds.
4. Be very specific with your details. Don’t generalise.
5. Give your characters something to do – a task to perform. It shows your characters in action and allows us to get to know more about them.

P.S. Our flagship Creative Writing Course will give you everything you’ve always wanted to know about using detail, and writing scenes which intrigue.