Thank you all for being here tonight for this little short story
review that we're going to do.
I really appreciate everybody who submitted stories and
trusted me with their their story babies to take a look at it.
I'm not going to be able to go through all of them.
Some of them just, you know, some of them were types of stories
that I, I'm not an expert in.
Some of them are you just, I, I, there were just so many that I, I chose what
we're going to talk about tonight.
I chose a whole bunch of examples of things that were either done really well
or that could be punched up a little bit.
And so I'm going to go through and share some examples of those things.
And I get a little bit of an echo here, and I'm not quite sure why,
but we'll, we'll work through it.
So how this is going to work, I will.
Take you through this and show you some examples.
If you have any questions, I'm going to mute people while I'm going through this.
But if you have any questions, you can pop them in the chat and I should see them.
And then also at the very end of when I finished going through all of the
stories, I'll ask for any questions, if anyone has any or any comments.
So if you want to keep notes while we're going along, if
anything you particularly enjoyed.
And I think that you really thought was was good.
So you have any questions, you you'll be able to ask me those questions at that.
So as I say, using everyone, just know, but if you have any questions, want to
say anything you can pop that in the chat right now, and I'm going to delighted
to see so many of you here tonight.
All right.
Well, not seeing any questions coming up there.
So I'm going to get us started.
What I like to do at the beginning of any gathering of story a day is just
take you through our code of conduct.
We are writers, we're creators.
We are sensitive people.
We don't discuss other people's ideas outside this community.
The best way that we can be.
Creative is to feel safe.
So I always try and create a place where people can be a little bit
vulnerable, but that takes everybody's agreement that we will not discuss other
people's ideas outside the community.
We won't take anyone else's story idea and use it.
That's a complete no-no.
We learn best when we trust each other.
People share vulnerable stuff about themselves, so, and there,
you know, showing, sharing your writing is vulnerable.
So we just, we just take that seriously and don't violate that trust commentary,
please be constructive and generous.
We are colleagues, not competitors.
There's no way any of us could write enough stories to end
to satisfy anyone reader.
So let's not even worry about the fact that we're all writing.
Our story's read.
There's a link there.
If you ever have any trouble with anyone in this community, it's not really ever
happened, but I like to have a link there which talks about our terms of service.
And in that link, you will find.
A place where you can send me an anonymous message or you can you know, contact
me there if you're having problems with anyone and it will be dealt with.
So that's just setting the ground rules so that we all feel safe.
Hasn't ever really been an issue, but I'd rather have the rules in place
just in case to make sure that we all.
know what we're doing okay.
So as I said, what we're going to do is I'm going to go through some of
the stories or pieces of some of the stories that people submitted so that
you can see what's working what we might want to do to punch things up.
Everything I see here tonight is intended to either highlight something that's
working or show you how you could take your story to the next level.
So don't ever think that if I'm seeing this is, you know, this could be a
little bit better if you did this doesn't mean that I'm saying you're
a terrible writer and you suck.
I know how our brains get to twist these things though.
So I'm just putting that out there right now.
If I say something that is less than a fuse of about something you did
in your writing, it's just about helping you get it to the next
level.
And if nothing's, if something isn't clear, make a note, either pop it in the
chat or wait for the Q and a session.
I'm going to try and get us through this.
I don't know how long is this going to take?
I've scheduled this for an hour and a half.
I think, I don't think we'll be here that long, but I'm also going to try
and not talk too fast because that's a little bit of a habit of mine.
Hi, I'm from Scotland in case you're wondering, and we have a tendency
to talk very fast and now I live in the Northeast of the U S, which
is not a heck of a lot better.
So if I was living somewhere, you know, like Alabama, I made it
slowed down by now, but I haven't.
So you can wave me off if I'm, if I'm not going slowly enough for you.
So with no further ado, Maybe some further, no, no further ado.
I'm going to start.
You want, you're going to see this.
You're going to see me talking a lot about openings of stories tonight, because
it's really important to get people sucked in to your story straight away.
I'm not going to identify the writers of these stories because I'm only
pulling out bits and pieces of them.
But if it's your story, you're going to recognize it.
So one of the reasons I talk about opening so much is if you can't suck
somebody into the opening of your story, they're not going to keep reading.
And I wanted to this isn't the exact opening of this story opens with a
woman at her sink, washing a glass.
She drops, it makes a noise and worries about disturbing her husband and very
that's like the first three lines.
Or so then we start talking about her view out the window.
She's looking at a Mockingbird and So she's is she supposed to have prune?
It's supposed to have been pruned and it's obscuring her view of the window
and she'd asked her husband to prune it, but of course he hadn't gotten to it.
And I thought that word, that, that little use, of course in there was so
telling, because she said, she said, she'd asked, she could have said,
she asked him to prune the offending limbs and he didn't get round to it.
He was too busy.
Any of those things would have been so much more neutral, but
that little of course tells us that there's some friction there between.
The couples, but the two members of the par the couple.
So I was intrigued by that.
And it turns out as I read into the story, everything that is
mentioned in this story is relevant.
These birds are not just window dressing, even though she's looking at the out
the window, the tree and the branches that are growing up, they come back
in the story and become important.
The crystal glass that she drops turns out to have bourbon in it, which is what
her husband drinks, when he comes home to unwind after work and like drinking
the bourbon is an important part of his life, but it's kind of inter maybe
interfering with their relationship.
Everything comes back in this story and it's very, very efficient.
So in the next section of the story Graham comes down and he has a little
word with her about the noise that she made this morning, cleaning his class.
You know, she's angry, but then she starts to self justify, but you know, like,
oh, well, he's, she's justifying him and maybe she's justifying her choice.
And again, you can see how the internal stuff and the external
stuff are working very well together.
Even the, the physical motion at the end of the story, you get the sense
in the story that the two characters are walking different paths and right
at the end of the story, the way that the move tells you, like the way they
move physically tells you more about what's happening in their relationship.
I did I, yeah, I think I had another, oh yeah.
This is very early in the story.
It's only this is only about Thurston words, the story.
And so it's very important to keep everything relevant, which
this author has done really well.
And very close to the beginning of the story, we understand
that there's some tension.
She wants to have a baby and she, you know, she wants to
have a baby with this guy.
And by this point, I'm, I think I was only like a page in, and I
was like, . And I was like, ah, you make me care about this woman.
You know, I'm like, don't have a baby, but this guy.
It was a very good job of making everything count and telling me from
both internal and external what's going on in these two people's
lives and then making me care, which is harder to do than sometimes we
think so well done to this author.
If I had to pick a knit with this story, it would be that the
husband is a lethal irredeemable.
He's there's not, he's, he's good at his job and he's, he provides safety and he's,
he's been successful, but there's there isn't really a sense of what attracted
to her, to him in the first place.
But again, it's a thousand word story.
It's about this one moment in time, we get the sense that there's,
I mean, we can read into this story that there's a lot going on.
She wants the baby she's finished, wants the security.
She wants the guy.
We don't see what attracted her to him in the first place.
It's that I'm picking nits at this point, it's worth thinking about
whether there's a way to get that in.
I'm not sure that it matters that much, so openings, very important, picking
your details so that the reader is never distracted by extraneous details.
The tree, the bourbon glass, the, the, the birds, all of them become images for other
things in the story, or they become actual actions that, that cause things to happen
really, really impressed with this story.
So well done.
Do I have, okay, next story.
This one, I also like, this was about this actually called, oh, we
didn't put one here, donate at the lost and found is what it's called.
And again, I'm not mentioning the author's names little, you know,
didn't ask them permission to do that.
So I'm just, I'm just a.
Innovating and just talking about the stories.
This is the very, very opening of the story.
And I thought this was a great opening.
We've got Connor picked up the chip, the veneer of the desk and watch
the second hand glide through its pieces on the ancient station club.
At the other end of the hall, we know where he is.
We can see it and we can see it because he's taking an action.
He's picking it chipped of a near desk.
So we knew a lot from those very few words.
We know that he is bored of his job.
We know he's in a rundown kind of place.
Turns out it's a station and he's bored.
He's watching the second hand Glade.
There are better ways to spend his time.
There's also worse ways to spend this time.
So this idea of the clock motion comes into the story again, and
again, it comes back at the end.
So, this is the, if you just look at this, I dunno.
If you can see all of the words, therapist's big enough for you, but
it's very, we knew a lot about the character within these few lanes
and he gets up and start sleep.
So next.
Before the end of the first page, we have established what he would
have been doing on new year's Eve.
If life goes on, as it always has gone on.
And we never know when we start to short story, if life is going to go
on the way, it's always gone on the promises, that there's an opportunity
for the character to change.
And we don't know if they'll take it.
So in this case, this is what would be happening.
He'd be going to the same old bar, doing the same old thing with the same
old people with that promise that the new year would bring in something new.
And he's not that confident that's going to happen towards the end of.
Of the story.
Oh yeah, there was this towards the end of the story that image of
the bar comes back in and I'm going to go back to this one for a sec.
This image of the bar comes back in and we'll find out that nothing in
his imagination about the nature of the bar has changed, but he's changed.
So the only thing I think I found distracting in this story was
there was a mention here of an alert that the character gets and
is there's an explanation of it.
And it never really comes back into the story again.
Doesn't really add a lot.
So if this author was looking for something to cut, to make the story a
little shorter, I might see you could probably get by without this bit.
Because this.
The conductor gets off the train and says to James D to corner,
who's working at the station.
Did you get any alerts?
And presumably the alert is about this, the dog, that's going to
come into the story in a second.
And he just says he didn't.
And like we get all of these lanes about the alert and what
it might be, what it wasn't.
And it doesn't really add anything to the story.
So again, if I had to nitpick, and if you were looking for somewhere to cut,
I would do this because this section doesn't relate to corner or the is daily
life, or the thing that's going to come into his life in a minute to change
it, which is a dog or that the journey of discovery that he's going to go on.
So here's the piece after that, the middle of the story goes by and
corner is shown, you know, given an opportunity to make a different decision.
And he goes back to thinking about the bar again, where he could go
tonight, where he's always gone every other year nothing's ever changed.
And the choice of words here that that the author has used, you know, the smell
of stale beer, too many different canes of cologne and perfume, the same bodies
as last year and the year before it people are knocking over cups and hoping
that the curse is going to be broken.
And then the clock is ticking again.
And the clock from the beginning comes back in again, and
this is right before the end.
And we get the sense here that, that because of what's happened in the middle
of the story and I'm not going to spoil it all, but because of what's happened
in the middle of the story, the author has brought background that image from
the beginning and given us the sense that Connor has a moment here to change.
And I'm hoping against hope that he does.
And it turns out.
That I was happy with the ending.
The ending is actually beautifully open.
Cause we've, we've established that this paragraph here that I'm showing you,
isn't the closing lines of the story.
It's sort of the resolution.
And Connor makes a decision and goes in a different direction this year.
And the ending of the story is beautifully open.
We don't get told what happens after he makes the decision.
We just get told that he makes the decision and we get to share
the feeling of hope that he has because he's made the decision to do
something new and different this year.
And that was what I was hoping for in the story.
That's what I was, I was happy to get that ending.
So you don't have to tie anything up.
Like he's going off to meet somebody new.
And I don't know what happens to them, but I don't know what happens with
this dog that turned up and changed everything in the middle of the story.
I don't know.
I don't mind.
I know enough Connor made a decision, he made the decision to change.
If he hadn't made the decision to change, I also would have known enough about him
to be like, all right, the story is over.
And then you can just put an, that a little open ending on
it, which says something about his emotion, which was great.
So I was very, very pleased with that one.
The only thing, as I say, you're a couple of little nitpicks with this one, just
couple of the secondary characters felt.
Remarkable to me, like I wasn't, they didn't have anything.
There were two secondary characters who talked to the main character and
one was given a deep baritone voice.
So I had that to hold onto every time I spoke, I was like, oh,
he's struggling right here.
The other character, James didn't have anything particular about him.
So he was a little harder to hold on to.
And one of the tips that I've picked up over the years for that is that if
you have a secondary character, who's not doing that much in the story.
You don't want to spend a lot of time on backstory or
establishing them as a character.
But if you just give them something like Theo has a deep baritone voice, maybe
James, I don't know, maybe he always wears orange shoes, you know, just something
to make him stick in the reader's mind.
So those are, those were my only two nights.
Apart from that one detail that seems to distract the story for like five lanes.
So those are just two things to be aware of as you're writing your own stories.
In our next story.
I think I went too far.
No, I didn't.
There we go.
In our next story which is set well, you can see where it says this is,
I like the opening of this one.
Again, I keep talking about openings because an opening has to do a
lot and opening has to establish.
Well, especially with short stories, you're reading through
a collection of short story rate.
They could be anything that could be anywhere unless the anthology has
a strong theme or you know, they've told you that all the stories are
set on space stations or something.
You just don't know when you pick up, when you turn the page to a new story.
So you've got to establish very quickly for the reader where we are, who we're
with when we are, what matters do them.
So this one opens, he finished his tepid French roast coffee mug next to his mouse.
So I know we're in a contemporary realistic story.
Probably he's probably working at his computer.
Like most of us do.
That's where we are.
We're not drinking French roast in a cafe in Paris.
We're not in the eating seventies where we're working with a mouse.
He heard the new hires, the recent new hires, exit the conference
room in a silent, sad, and somewhat anxious procession.
So this guy is at war.
A bunch of people have just been laid off.
That's very clear from this opening, very efficient.
And then we start getting into what happens next.
Some go to their desks, some go outside.
So very good opening establishing the scene in very few, then it's setting
and the taming in a very few words.
The only thing that kind of bothered me a little bit about this story was that
the, the hero's boss keeps telling me he has to work the whole queue today and he
has to do the cute and he has to do the cute, and it's never really explained what
the Q is until too far into the story.
There's a particular set of repetitive, boring work he has to do.
And it's, it's sort of implied, but I wasn't sure if I was
supposed to take that implication.
And by the time we got the description of what he actually does all day, it
was a little bit, it was a little bit far into the story and I was a little
bit frustrated with the multiple repetitions of the cue and the work.
Knowing what it was now, it's, it's entirely possible that this
is meant to be a sort of dystopian 1984 style, you know setup.
I just, I just wanted to know a little more, a little earlier.
I also thought that this story, which has 3000 words could be a fair amount,
shorter, and might be stronger for it.
There are a bunch of, so things, things to look for.
If you think that your, if, if you think your story might be getting a bit
long do you need all the characters?
Do you need all the settings?
And seems like in this one, there are three settings.
There's the, the main office where this guy works, there's his boss's office
and there's a break room as well.
I don't think we need all of those settings in each one of those increases
the word count and increases the team.
The transitions you have to let you know, you have to let Jim walked from
his desk to Frank's desk and back again.
So there's a lot of moving around that doesn't necessarily need
to happen in a short story.
You can just jump, he can just be sitting down in a seat in Frank's
office if you need the two settings.
And I understand in this one, the setting of, of the boss's office is very opulent.
So it does tell us something about the character and the pecking order.
And also, you know, I can understand why that's in there.
I just think the story will be a lot tighter and stronger with
some of those transitions cut out.
And with short stories, you can absolutely do that.
You don't have to explain how someone gets from one place to
another and you sleep blind lane, and you're just magically there.
And for short story readers tasks, we don't need to be immersed in.
Every detail of the story that's for when we're reading novels for short
stories, for happy to jump around and kind of be like, oh, what happened?
What happened?
You know, like jumping around between the things what's the next week.
Let me finish this one.
So think about in your stories, what is, solutely essential in this story with all
those, those three characters and a couple of unnamed characters, which is good
because you don't want to give names to characters who don't really do anything.
And there's a couple of passing comments and a note left, and we
don't need to know about those guys.
So that was good.
But I think for this author, I would say, think about pairing this back to the
actions that are absolutely essential.
Your main character is more important than his boss, so have more.
The main character then about the boss the boss should have, yeah.
Maybe pull back on that a little bit.
His frustration, his emotions are more important than how he gets between rooms.
So build on the pieces, which established the emotions because
that's what people are coming for.
That's what people are reading stories for.
They want to experience the emotions with the with the characters.
This one had a good sharp ending with an observation which is
sort of built and it resolved.
And then all of a sudden something new happened, which
was quite satisfying emotionally.
So don't forget that once you finished the action and sort of resolve the
story piece where you were like, and then, you know, everybody came back and
did the work and blah, blah, blah, and then you get to have a little emotional
moment for the character, this character I had a, an emotional revelation and
then acted on it, which was nice.
And it ended quite quickly without too much, too much of us.
So the ending of your story can be very brief if you've wrapped up,
everything else worked quite well.
Next story.
We have a story about a man who smelled something terrible in his apartment,
and it's actually, that's in the title.
It says Paul at, and again, I didn't read it out.
Paul smells the worst smell of his life.
Something like that in the title is better than that, but it was something like that.
So the title tells you a lot and you can do that with short stories.
You can give them great big, long titles, which add to the reader's
understanding of the story.
So I really like it when the title makes me think.
And isn't just like, you know, the.
The smell, you know, that wouldn't have been as interesting as Paul's smells
and looks horrible smell of his life.
It was not that, but it was something better than that.
Anyway, this is the opening of the story.
And again, as I say, openings very important because you're
establishing the character, you're establishing the setting and the team.
So Paul is steering his reflection, toothpaste and hand reciting
affirmations in his head, which he's got from his hypnotherapists.
So, you know, he's on a journey of self-discovery, he's maybe got
some issues he's sorting through.
He's maybe got some problems he's working with.
Not that everyone who's seeing, you know, doing personal development work
has a problem, but you know, in a story you suspect the problem I had
with this opening and it's rectified in the very next paragraph, which
I'll show you in a second, but this one We get some, some stuff about
Paul's character, it was all worth it.
And then we get sleep.
Deprivation is no joke.
It increases stress login.
This does not relate part of a story.
This, this is an info dump and it would be quite not going to say easy,
but it would be quite possible to fix this, make it more compelling by
just having each of these details or maybe fewer of details, but really
relating them to something about pole.
Like, we don't get a strong sense that this is him talking here.
This is just, this could be from a textbook about sleep deprivation.
So it's all good information, but if you want to make it stronger, have find
a way to make these relate to Paul.
So for example, in the next section we get.
He's brushing his teeth, not that interesting activity, but
he makes homemade toothpaste and he has specific things.
He puts in it for specific purposes, peppermint for freshness, lavender,
for relaxed sleep, comforting, soothing for good hygiene, good health.
We're starting to learn some things about Paul here.
He's, he's talking to himself.
He comments.
He, he acknowledges the fact that he cleaned the house a few hours
before and notes of lemons still linger in the ear, in the air.
I am getting a clear sense of who Paul is and what some of
his idiosyncrasies might be.
I'm thinking it's a little bit of a clean freak.
The maybe a little bit of a control freak.
We're not quite sure yet, but he's kind of interesting to me now,
and I'm starting to see where the possibilities for the story might go.
So as a reader, I'm getting interested.
So that opening, you know, it could be a little a little tweaked, a little to
make those things applied to Paul better.
And then there is a piece I wanted to talk about.
One of the things that people often talk about with stories
writing in general fiction is that you're supposed to show, not tell.
And everyone's like, what is, I mean, it just does.
It's a pat phrase and nobody ever really goes into it and
that you're showing not telling.
So.
I wanted to there's two pieces in this story where I think the author
has, has made smart choices about whether to show, whether it's tell.
So in this one, it's not, it's not heavy.
So when you're showing something, you're taking people into the scenes so they
can experience it as the character goes through it, it slows the action down.
It involves senses.
It lets you feel like you're actually experiencing it with the character.
It's a really powerful way.
It's a really powerful technique for connecting your.
To your character and making them, you know, pulling them into your story.
We can't write the whole story that way, because that would be too much.
So but w we can write pieces.
So this piece, he goes into the, you went into the kitchen again, open the
fridge and collect every checks, every item that cleaned all the shelves.
So I'm kind of there with him.
It could be maybe stronger if there was more sensory
detail, but I'm not, I'm there.
We're taking our time.
We're going through it.
Every single item danced under his nose and went back to the same place.
So I can see that.
That's you showing me I'm there.
It's like, I'm watching the movie.
Nobody's telling you a story.
The him waving stuff under his nose.
And that phrase, every item danced under his nose is anything but a cliche.
You could have said he you know, you could find it really easily find a cliche for
smelling stuff, but this author did not.
She decided that items dancing under the news would be good.
So we're kind of in this scene.
And then by contrast, once we've been in this scene for a little while, We
switched to telling, because if we just, if we went through every action
that Paul took, it would take forever and it, you would start, your eyes
would start to glaze over because it would be just too much information.
So very smartly, the author switches to telling though the search continues,
he checks the drains, every cupboard, he looks under tables behind doors
under the couch, and you can feel like the piece is ramping up.
Just even in the language.
So we're, we're starting to sense that like time is passing, but we don't
need to spend every minute with them.
And also like the sentences, the clauses are getting shorter.
So you're kind of like pulled forward through the story and it's getting
more intense and it's pulling you in.
So there's a good example there of how to switch between deciding whether you
should be showing and lingering in the moment, if it's something important or
if you want them to really establish what the character is doing, and
then you can sort of Glade through.
The following actions, if you're just want us to know that, like this
thing went on for awhile, we don't have to live through it with them.
So just want to highlight that because it's one of the things that gets talked
about in writing, but we don't always stop to explain or show if you will,
what the what we're talking about.
So I think there's a twist in this story and it became, if I'm not
sure if the authors on the call, but in case you are when the therapist
arrived, I started to get an inkling.
So if you have any inclination to shorten or tighten or, or, you know, make it a
shorter story, maybe tightening up from that point when the therapist arrives
and, you know, getting to the ending as fast as you can, after that Be an
option, but I'm not going to prescribe that because it was, it was good.
And it was a satisfying ending because in this story or
control, freak, learn something.
And the very last words of the story reflect that I'm not gonna spoil
it for you, but yeah, it's, it's the choice of words reflects the
change that the character has made.
And that's a really good idea in your stories.
Okay.
Oh, this story opens yes, another opening I wanted to share because.
This is a great example of how to establish where you are.
So we're standing on stone steps of a kitchen entrance could be anywhere.
Have you Oak door.
Okay.
You know, not my house, but early warning morning, sun is warming
the cobblestones of the alley.
So I'm getting maybe historical fiction behind the castle, maybe historical
fiction, maybe fantasy, a lot of fantasy set in historical ish settings.
So we're listening villagers.
Okay.
I'm thinking we're definitely not contemporary realistic.
Perfect.
Same together.
The rear blue lettuce, the glue grew along the sheer shores of lake.
So now I'm thinking fantasy set in a, in a historical setting with the castle,
but I think we're in a fantasy land here.
And then we get a few lines later.
The queen.
At the castle people admire the brilliance of her bright blue skin.
So, all right.
Cementing for me that we're in a fantasy story here, and this is
what nine lanes in or so, so that's, that's pretty impressive established.
Facts there.
One thing I would point out here, if you are looking for ways to shorten
your stories, often when we're writing, we say the same thing multiple
times, just because we're writing and again, with complete understanding
that this is story that they may, and these are first drafts and that
you finished them at all is amazing.
So any knits I'm picking are just, you know, I'm sure these are things that you
might catch on a rewrite, but here we all we have the early morning sun was already
warming the cobblestones of the alley.
And then down here we have the rising sun warming me as I surveyed my surroundings.
Like we know she's surveying her surroundings cause we're,
we're going through it with her.
We've already established that the sun is both rising and warm.
So, you know, these canes of repetitions are things that you can strip out.
If you need to take them up a story or get it down to a particular
word, count to enter it into a competition or submission call.
So those kinds of things are the things that you can be looking for.
This I thought was a very good way of giving us information about the character
without, without doing an info dump where we say, and I was 10 years old.
Instead we have a conversation going on between the character
and the Mead and the Mead.
Probably thought I was only seven or eight because I'm so small, but that's okay.
Most of the villagers thought that I liked the fact that not
many people knew I was really 10.
So I liked that lane because it's not just, I was actually 10 it's.
I like the fact that most people thought I was younger than I was.
It tells me something about the character that she's got a sense of herself.
And she's got things that she likes and she's, she's a little bit like she's
quite pleased with herself, you know?
So I got that from the language without.
So it's, it's an example of information and a sentence.
That's doing two things at once.
It's giving me information and it's telling me stuff about the
character without actually telling you there's another example coming up.
Yeah.
Where she smoothing back her hair.
She's alive to grow it longer now.
So the good soap made it Curlin soft green-lit so I'm learning
about the life in the castle.
There's good soap there.
So her life before did not have the good soap and I'm learning that her
hair is and you know, so I, now I can start to picture her, but I haven't
been given a scene where she's looking in a mirror or someone comments
on her hair or anything like that.
It's just all kind of organically coming out into the story.
So some put some great ways to include.
Information and description for your characters without falling into the
traps of having them wake up and look in a mirror and scrape themselves,
which now that I've mentioned it, you will start to see it everywhere.
Even in like, you know, like best-selling books, you'll start to see that.
And you'll be like, ah, how many times I have to see this?
So this is much better.
As a way of describing characters our character leaves the castle while she goes
at her mission to get the latest discovers it's delicious and kind of addictive.
And so, although she's supposed to be rushing back, she ends up in the
field stuffing letters in her face, and apparently it tastes better than.
Iceberg because she can't stop using it.
So at this point, the second bell rings, she realizes she's, she's running late.
And I like this sentence, this, this piece, because a lot of this
has been quite long sentences, but now we've got, I was meant to go.
I didn't want to leave.
I wanted to eat more.
It's got that kind of like addictive shorts to cattle, you know,
feeling so that the language is actually reflecting the emotion.
And it's actually telling us something about what's happening
and about the character without her having to say it was so addictive.
So nicely done.
There were just a couple of places where you want to be aware,
especially if your character is younger or from a different time.
And there was another, there was another example from another story, leisure,
Wellpoint, this insight, you want to make sure that their internal thoughts are.
Consistent with who they are.
I like the fact that here, it doesn't say, I thought something didn't seem
right, but I couldn't put my finger on it.
Cause like, if you say I thought, or I felt it kind of distances the reader
from the moment it's as if they're telling you the story from later on.
So she doesn't say that, but you just say something didn't quite seem right.
And I couldn't put my finger on it, which is, I don't know what
a 10 year old say that maybe it implies to me that there's an older
narrator later telling us this story.
So just that's something just to watch out for make sure that your
character's internal thought thoughts reflect who they are in this story.
There were two things that happened at the end that were a little surprising.
My surprises at the end are good.
One of them.
I think it should have been foreshadowed a little earlier.
There's a thing that shows up and there's been no indication before that, that it
could have the, this could have shown up.
Like at the beginning of the story, if one of the characters had looked
up at the sky nervously that might have tipped me off to the fact that
something was coming from up there.
So when it, when it arrived, I kind of missed it and I had to read it
twice to see what had just happened.
Cause I wasn't expecting, and I think it's come from up there because I
hadn't been cued to be aware that there was anything I would say the castle
that could impinge on their life.
So just some foreshadowing earlier on, if you're going to have a big
twist at the end, make sure you just drop in a couple of little things.
And the other thing that happens at the end of this story is
a big shift in perspective.
So it goes from being told by one character to.
Picking up from another character's perspective, right.
At the end, which is fine.
The only thing I would say there is that you have to leave a lane, leave a blank
lane, so that it's clear to the reader.
Is that just sort of a convention that's developed that you leave a
blank line, you put hash mark in the middle of it or the win thing
or something in the middle of it.
Just to let us know that we're shifting to an EU perspective
name and then you're like, oh, so just a little technicality there.
This is another story which does a good job of I'm going to just
check and see how I'm doing.
And I look in the chat.
If anybody has any of these, this question, in fact, I'm going to
throw them at my pictures here and see, I can see some faces.
Can't see all the faces, but I can see some faces.
You look okay.
Fairly happy.
Is this making sense?
Do you have any questions in the meantime, is there anything I'm
missing or that you want to go into?
Because otherwise I'm going to keep rolling along here.
I've got a few more stories to share with you and then some more information and
then we'll do the Q and a before that let's see any questions in the chat here.
And I don't have access to for livestream chat right now.
So hopefully that's going okay too.
All right.
So this story I wasn't sure if this was because of the name prem lead.
I wasn't sure if this was a whole story or if this was a partial
story that was like, Preface to a novel or something, but either way,
it kind of, it stood alone well.
And it opens again, opening very effective.
Jose has been watching them for weeks when we're firmly in his head.
We're not being told anything.
Cause whenever he can sneak away, it's getting dark.
He sees them loading boxes.
He S he sees them doing this.
I thought it did a good job of painting where we are now.
There wasn't a deep line at the top of this that said Lisbon 15
something or other, and I cut it off.
So I wasn't sure if it was actually going to be included in the story.
I think it might be a good idea to include that in the story.
But then it's just confirming everything that's being said in here.
When the Atlantic there's a slight drizzle soaking through his clothes,
I'd push feeling, feeling that rather than being told that, like,
what does it feel when you're.
Wherever he's wearing.
Is it scratchy?
Is it, is it heavy?
Is it cold?
Is it miserable or is it quite nice?
Cause it was warm anyway.
I'd be interested in, in the sensations of that a little bit.
And again, you know, he hears shoting all around.
Maybe, instead of saying he hear shouting, we could hear her that language sense.
Is it is it in his own language?
Is it, does it sound guttural and weird because it's foreigners?
I think it turns out is in his own language, but that
we don't know that right now.
So you could give us some clues.
But here at the end of this opening, we get surely there's a place
for him on one of these ships.
So we get the sense that we're in his head.
We're not told he was thinking that there was a place for him on one of the ships,
which would have been a little more.
Arm's length.
We're actually right in his head.
And and we've got this sense of longing.
Surely there's a sense of, oh, there's a police frame on these ships.
We don't know why he wants to be on this ship, but we get a sense that
he really, really wants it badly.
And then in the next, I think it's right after that in the next paragraph, he is
trying to get taken on to the Armada.
So again, reinforcing the time and the historical events that are happening.
But those, he has approached knew that his father is a famous Lithia in Lisbon.
So we've got we've got a sense of where he is in society.
We've got a sense of where he is in the world.
I wasn't a hundred percent sure what Elithia was.
I thought it was maybe someone who made loose with ours, something like that.
I wasn't sure, but I was willing to just go with it on context clues.
He, his father's famous.
There's an opposition to his desire to run away and go, go to the sea.
He's supposed to be taking on the family business.
And then usually he does, even though he usually does very fine, what would work.
He's sure he could at that to the carpentry needed on a ship.
So that's confirming for me that the lithium lithium is something to do
with, you know, building instruments.
Usually he's doing fine work on small things.
He's, he's reckons he's got some skills that will transfer.
So I've got a sense of who he is, where he is, what he wants and what's opposing him.
So it's really compelling opening.
And it continues on the only thing is here before, where we had surely
the place frame on this ship.
Now we have our things was, Hey, this is where I belong, which
just is a little less elegant.
I think that if you use the same approach to the surely, there was
a place for him on the ship to this, this is where he belonged.
We would stay in the story and we'd be with him, you know?
And this is some fairly like high level advanced techniques here.
Not that there's anything wrong with these storytelling.
This is just stuff that'll take you to the next level.
My only probably knit with this was I didn't get early on why
he wanted to go to sea so badly.
Like he wants to join the largest seafaring action to be mounted by the
king of Spain against their British enemy.
K.
But why does he.
He just wants to be on the sea.
Okay.
That's a little more interesting.
And later on, we do get a little bit more about what about his experiences
on water and how it's a very visceral thing for him, but just like I would
lean into that one maybe a little earlier, cause I, I wasn't quite
sure why he wanted it so badly.
Again, with back to the thought of when you're writing in close third
person, like so many of us are, you know, he said, or first person
you're in the character's head.
And so they're the words that you use to describe stuff should be words they use.
I'm not sure a young man in love would refer to his girlfriend
as his nascent, sweetheart.
I just don't think that's a word that would have been in his head.
It's a word we would use because we're writers and we like words,
but I eat it that sort of kicked me out of his head a little bit.
And then in another example of this, sorry to pick on you this
is not really picking on you.
This this happens in a lot of stories.
I just saw it here telling the time 2:00 AM.
I am working since 6:00 AM, I think in a rural Medi-Cal.
Setting.
And I know that Southern Europe had had good clocks at that unit
and cathedrals at that time.
So maybe I'm wrong, but I just don't think he would have said 2:00 AM.
I think he would've said the depth of the nights and 6:00 AM might have
been, you know, when the fishermen started to come home or something.
I just think that we, this character would tell time in a more natural way.
So think about that.
There's a writer I've just finished reading Anthony DORS, the cloud
cuckoo, no Koku land, his latest novel.
And it's set in lots of different places.
One of which is Constantinople in the 1450s or something.
And So instead of telling time like this, seeing it was 2:00 AM or instead of
measuring things in meters, everything is, is measured in much more natural terms.
You know, it's the length of time.
It takes you to walk somewhere or it's vespers or it's, you know, the era before
the, the, the sun comes up, you know?
So just something to think about if you're writing, especially if you're writing
in worlds that are not contemporary realistic, think about how your characters
would measure things, tell team, see things, what reference points do they
have and try and cut out anything that smacks of this modern moment.
If that's not where you're writing, sometimes it's easier.
You know, sometimes there's certain things where you can just, it's
going to be awkward for the reader.
If you make up like a whole new measurement system, but, you know,
in this case, Farmers measured time.
By the time it takes to get the toes into the buyer, you know, it's it, wasn't
often clock boned, the existence I've hammered that point enough to something
for everyone to be thinking about.
The ending of this story, which I don't think I've shared is is great because it,
it was one of those ones where something changes and the characters decision
is sort of taken out of his hands, but for now, and I think the words for now
are actually used, and it gives me the sense that, oh, there's something more
like maybe next year the character will get to do, get to go to sea.
And so I, as a reader start imagining that, and then I start thinking,
Ooh, I want to feel good to go, oh, I wonder what happened next.
And then I'm thinking about your character after the story's finished
and then I'm remembering it.
And then you made a fun.
Right?
So think about leaving your stories.
Leaving your reader wondering a little bit at the end, but
what made it might come next?
You could save for now or until next year, like this story did and just leaves
the reader invested in your characters.
Oh, one more thing I wanted to point out that was done in this story,
which you may have meant to take out and I'm really glad you didn't.
Cause it gives me a chance to talk about it was when you're working on
something and you, you want to put in some details that will really punch up
the story and make it seem realistic and make the reader feel right at home.
But you just don't know the detail yet.
Put a note in like this capital letters, square brackets, whatever it is.
Note to self research, don't break the flow of the writing to go and find
out how many tuning picks there are.
And Aleut just write research and then come back to it later.
So thank you for even that little thing, whether you meant to or not.
All right.
This is called narrow sidewalks and cheap heals and it starts.
Just, it comes on strong with such a strong voice.
So I wanted to talk about this one.
It's only 715 words.
Narrow, narrow sidewalks and cheap Hills.
You always said that's what started everything narrow sidewalks.
And GPLS sorry to tell you that, that isn't the truth.
So there's a voice, right?
You know, you are.
The character's head there.
They've got attitude.
The way they talk is distinctive.
I saw you coming from a mile away.
I just didn't care.
You have to keep reading.
Right.
And one of the things that this story does really well is it takes, it has
bags of voice all the way through.
Again, it's once very taught.
Nothing is wasted very efficient use of language.
And one of the things that they do very well is bring back these certain phrases.
So narrow sidewalks and cheap heals comes back.
There's another phrase that comes in.
I guess we started with a lot of tears and a little blood because
somebody falls over and then.
Yeah, those two ideas come in in the middle of the story and they come back
around at the end of the story and it just feels really complete, even though
it's such a short story and we don't ever learn the characters names we hear
about their friends, we don't get to meet them, but we hear what they've said.
We, we visit, we spend a moment on a doorstep, but not a lot of scenes
and a lot, a lot of transitions.
It's just all character and voice.
And these phrases that come round and just like loop us back into the story.
So that was a really interesting one paying attention, especially with flash
fiction, having a distinctive image, like those narrow sidewalks and the TPLs
and, and the idea of, of blood, because somebody has cut their head from falling
Having vivid images like that, but not too many of them is a really great technique
for flash fiction, which this is.
So if you're working on flash fiction, that's something to
think about and bear in mind.
Oh, I've got your name on this one.
Sorry.
I meant to call the names off.
This opening is great.
The only thing about this opening that I thought it was a little weakened
by this this parentheses part here, it starts off, he slams his fist
into the one's who is colored wall.
If you go straight to nothing happened, no thud, no shaking of pictures or something.
You know, like if you, if you've gone through all of that, it would
be like kind of rollercoaster ride.
But we've, we've sort of taken the, the violence of the slamming, the
fist and the wall, which is going to go into the sort of faintly comedic.
Ghostly hand going through the wall and then Liam's personality
coming through with Jesus.
I can't even manage to haunt.
We've been slowed down for having that emotional impact by this,
this whole parenthesis, which I don't think adds anything that
can't get later in the story.
It turns out it was his house.
We're going to find that out.
What he actually saw was another sheet of gray, pinky gray, that pinky gray, really
great against the violence of the slam.
So for me, that, for me, this was like, ah, you know, w it was
a little unbalancing, not not a difficult fix though, because
you could just take that out.
And it would be very, very effective, punchy opening, literally.
It's a ghost story, but we don't find out how he died.
And I kind of want, wanted to know, because I, I wanted to know a little
bit about, I feel like, you know, dying would be a fairly pivotal moment for
you and it would have an impact on how you see everything afterwards and
like any other big transition life.
So I kinda wanted to know a little bit about how he died and how
that was playing out for him.
And if he doesn't know, I kind of want you to know that too.
Like maybe he doesn't know that's okay too, but I was wondering about it and
it was distracting me from the story.
So that's just a potential but if you bet you can ignore or not I
liked his voice Wait is that right?
Oh no, we missed a bit.
I thought I missed a bit, there was a lot of good voice in this, and there was one
piece where I think of maybe it's later.
One of the things I wanted to mention is just a technicality.
When you are formatting for submission this here has been done manually.
So in on your, presumably on the writer's word processor, this looked like the
end of the page, but when you import it into another word processor or
something, Necessarily flow the same way.
So if you can always click on this double click on this top part of the
page here, it'll bring up a header and you put your stuff in once and then
you never have to worry about it again, because what, by the time we get to the
third page, it's halfway down the page.
And you know, that just makes it harder for editors.
If they're going to import your story into something.
So you never want to make life harder for editors, you want to
just always make it smooth for them.
So you can just double-click up there and use that the hitters, but that's
just a, is that a bunch of technical stuff like that when you're submitting
stories that just, you know, you can get into the habit or learn, you know,
learn little tricks for making it easier.
And I used to do a lot of layout work, which is why I picked up on that one.
I don't think it would make a Rica, a submission deal.
This is the one I want to talk about his voice.
There's a lot of stuff with, with Liam, you know, where he's, he's got
a good, we get a good sense of him as a, as a teenager, who's, who's no
longer, you know, going to age you know, stopped administratrix or it would
have been as trying to get her tracks.
I mean, it was a very natural way to speak.
It's a very conversational experience.
So I thought that was really nicely done for this story.
I, there was a a nice buildup to your, him solving a problem.
And then just the last lane seemed very abrupt.
It was another one of these things that hadn't really been foreshadowed earlier.
And again, this might be because we're writing a story a day maybe,
and like the day ends and you're like, I gotta put landing on this thing.
If I wanted to, you know, like If I wanted to make this a little
more of a satisfying ending, I might fresh out of this other more.
And if it was for shattered, I apologize.
I didn't see it.
I've been reading all the stories, but maybe that just means it needs
to be fostered more strongly because it was a really nice, really nice
story about, you know, some, a ghost.
He wasn't, he wasn't term self-absorbed really which was nice.
All right, moving on.
I think how are we doing here?
Oh yeah.
I wanted to say one of the nice things about this story as well.
Is that a story's internal logic has to hold up.
This is not a realistic.
Story in the sense that it's got a ghost in it.
And so you might think, ah, ghost, anything goes it's paranormal.
We can do anything we won't know in the internal world of
your story has to make sense.
And this story does that because we've established that Liam's arm.
Most of the wall we've established that like he can't touch stuff.
He can't be heard.
He can't interact with the world.
And then all of a sudden we see that, that the two live women in the
story are staring at something on the table and it's pedals that Liam has
pulled absentmindedly off a flower.
So he can interact with the world.
The writer could just have had, as you know, that could just have happened.
But smartly, the, the author has the character stop and go, wait a minute.
Okay.
There's something here.
Number one, I can affect the physical world.
Number two, number three, number four.
So like the, the internal logic of the world holds.
And if you need to draw attention to something like
that, then have a character.
Think about it.
Very nicely done.
All right.
Where am I going from here?
I was going to put up a whole bunch of cliches and talk about that bots.
I don't think, I mean, there's, there were examples in some of the stories
where people said things like a lot of people were, were, were shocked,
speechless, a lot of people their hearts raised and you know, there's nothing
really wrong with writing like that.
It's just it doesn't do anything for the reader.
It's just kind of wallpaper that that's in the background.
And if, whereas, you know, if somebody had said he took a great big sniff of
something out of the freezer, I heard the fridge items danced under his nose.
It's a different way of talking about things, which allows you
to inject some personality, both into the narrator's voice.
Or into the character's voice.
So I'm going to push you all to take a look at your stories.
And anytime you see anything, which is just a phrase, which came to you, you know
like I say her heart was racing her years, her blood pounded her her blood run cold.
Did it, you know, can you find another way to describe that?
Yeah, there's a sense that, that makes sense because there is a sensation
when you're frightened that like, that, that sensation of your blood running
called, there might be a different way.
You can see it.
And similar to the characters who had you know, may be able to measure time
differently based on where they are.
If you can find a way of describing a physical sensation without using a
cliche, but instead using something that's very specific to your character, their
outlook, or your narrator's voice, then you're just going to make the reader
pay attention that little bit more.
You can get pulled into your story a little bit more, and
remember you that little bit.
So that's what I have for the stories.
And look at that.
I came right up on the hour.
I do have some more information that I want to share with you after that.
But I did want to just stop for a moment and ask if anyone has any questions.
It's a ton of information I just threw at you.
I know I talk, I talked a lot but hopefully some of that
was helpful illustrative.
And do you have any questions or anything that you'd like to follow up with with me?
You can either unmute or post in the chat and again, apologies
for anyone watching your lives.
Do you, I don't have access to your chat.
I hope you're behaving.
I shouldn't have said that know.
Okay.
So in the story of it, Paul.
I heard the informational blurb as his voice.
Okay.
That's yeah.
So I was saying it was kind of an info info dump and it might be a little bit
like something that could come out of out of Wikipedia entry, but somebody
is, you know, I'm getting pushed back on that and that's fine because every reader
reads things, you know, differently.
So great.
It D it, did you know that that's encyclopedia tape explanation of
something does seem very consistent with who Paul is for sure.
And perhaps if it had been a couple of paragraphs later, I'd
have had a stronger sense of that.
So I could entirely be wrong.
So that thank you for pointing that out.
You know, that threw me a little bit out of the story, but it went
through everyone out of the story.
So again, that's actually something I should mention is that if somebody
tells you to change your story, You don't have to, if somebody tells you
how it hit them, just hit them that way.
I mean, if everyone tells you something that isn't sitting right,
then maybe you should pay like, well, maybe there's something you can do
differently in there to tweak it.
But if one or two people are like, I didn't understand the ending.
You'd be like, all right, thank you for your feedback.
Cool.
And you're under no obligation to change anything.
If you want to get it published for the particular publication and you
get that feedback from the editor and they're going to pay you then.
Yeah.
Maybe that has a heavier weight on it.
Or if 15 readers have told you the same thing and only 16 people have read
it, then maybe you pay more attention to it and think, can I fix this?
Is there a different way I could say that, but yeah, you get to
decide oh yeah, that's a good point.
Some of the tables where it were really good Nesting story I thought was
particularly good because it was about birds building and asked and about a
woman wanted to get pregnant and it was sort of subtle until he got to the end.
And then you were like, oh right.
Okay.
That makes sense.
Precious cargo was the, the girl who was going out to fetch letters.
It it's kind of intriguing because you don't know what the cargo is going to be.
And a title's going to try and do a few things.
It wants to pull the reader in and make them go, oh, what's that about?
So it can either do that by posing a question or by being a little
mysterious, like that precious cargo, what's the prejudice cargo going to be.
Which makes me think I may have some questions for you, but at the end of.
Maybe something happened that I didn't realize.
Oh, okay.
Now I'm, now I'm thinking that, that that's a take when we have even more
weight, because quite often when you get back to, when you get to the
end of the story, the title means something different, which is always
fun because then you make the reader feel clever and then they like you.
So yeah, I'm wondering, I'm trying to think of any of the other stories I liked.
Oh, they're slipping out of my head now, but there was the lost
and found at the end of the lane.
Was it particularly a title that I liked because it was about a lost and found in
a station that wasn't the end of lane, but it was also the end of the year.
And it was someone who was really kind of at the, you know, dead
end of everything and had no ambition or hope for the future.
So that was quite, that was quite a good one too.
Anyone else have any other questions?
Well, I'm going to push on here as just a little bit more information.
I want to go over what we, what we did.
And we've talked about openings and endings, just to kind of summarize
some of this stuff sticks in your head.
And we think about all that stuff.
I just threw at you when we talked about openings and endings we talked about
character arcs, you know, characters who have an opportunity for change and
either take it, or don't sometimes they have the choice taken away from them, but
they still are hunkering for something.
Maybe next year, we talked about voice authorial, voice and character, voice.
It's all about the choice of your words and the choice of the things that the
characters see, the, the choice of what you reference and the metaphors you make.
So it's about perspective.
You know, if you're going to jump between two different perspectives,
how to manage that, you know, And how you're going to, to keep within
strongly, within one perspective, by staying inside their, their thoughts.
We talked about foreshadowing, which if you're going to have a twist at
the end of your story, you want to make sure that you're first shadowing
it, not heavy handedly, but a little foreshadowing goes a long way.
We talked about learning techniques from other writers.
I've talked about Anthony Darra with his cloud cuckoo land and the way
that he handles telling time in a medieval situation we talked about
concise rating and impact in those flash fiction stories, which were.
Tight on detail vivid with their metaphors and that improves all of your writing.
If you, if you work on that kind of thing, it improves your novel.
Writing improves your journaling, it improves your business writing.
If you can like really be concise and get the most powerful image down.
It's a great thing to practice.
In, in short story writing, we talked about conflict and stakes.
You know, you can set up what the character desires really early on, and you
can show us what's in opposition to them.
Without being heavy handed at all, someone got some really
nice examples of that today.
We talked about some of the short story pitfalls, you know, the things that we
can trip up on repetition sometimes.
And sometimes that's just a process of writing the first draft and
none of this stuff should stop you from doing your first draft.
Just like let it all out.
Write the ugliest thing you need to, to get the words or the bar, the
skeletal skeletal thing that you, you have to write to get it all out there.
And with either of those things, whether you start with a bloated
monkfish or whether you've got little skeleton, you can, you can fix all
of that in the, in the revisions.
So what else do you need to do?
No.
I mean, you guys have been writing with me all month.
It's been fantastic.
We've been looking at looking at, you know, top lane of all of these
things to improve and to, to keep this going, you are going to want to do
deep dives into craft techniques and, and craft topics as you go forward.
You're going to need to be thinking about tricks for, for tough days.
You develop some through this month already.
You can get them from other people.
You're going to want to think about deadlines once the monthly
challenge challenges over what are you going to use for deadlines?
So there's when you start you thinking forward, you know, outside
may, what are you going to need?
And have you developed a framework yet for fitting racing into your life?
For good.
Oh, a structured practice among friends.
There's some people here, you know, you've been in writing sprints with us
you know, from writing and the challenge that practicing with other writers
and, and sort of being on this journey together is really, really helpful.
And sustained focus.
How are you going to sustain this focus after the month is over?
So at this point, I'm going to tell you that you have a choice.
You can make a personal commitment to your writing, to go it alone.
Plenty of people do.
And some of them even make it stick.
But let me ask you, have you ever embarked on a racing push before full of enthusiasm
and good intentions only to have it Peter out, you miss a day and then you
feel guilty and old habits take hold and let's structure the challenge in place.
You're going to need some too.
You're going to wake up and.
Sort of, it's very easy to wake up one day and realize that week's gone by
and you haven't written anything and you're kind of grumpy and out of sorts.
And we've all been there and the fear of it happening again it takes Holden
it Anik and months can go by or even years before we start writing again.
And then we come back to it and we've wasted all that time.
And it's just, it's not a healthy way of doing things.
So over this past few weeks, you've accomplished more and seriously
give yourself credit for this.
You've accomplished more over the last three weeks than many
would be writers will do all year.
You really have, and you did it because you showed up and you learned new things
and you were with other writers and you were willing to put your thoughts
out on paper and you're here tonight.
And you're here in the heart of the story at a community, which is what I once
told you about a little bit every year.
I see people go through the challenge and achieve so much, and then you fall off
the edge of the world until next year.
And they realize they're not making progress until the next
challenge comes along and it could be a blog writing challenge.
It could be a novel writing challenge.
We respond to deadlines but when you're jumping around between all of
that stuff, you're not really making consistent progress in one area.
So do you want to continue to struggle on a loan jumping from shiny object to shiny
objects and stopping when it gets hard and regretting all of that wasted time?
Or do you want to stay on the writing path this time learning new skills and
just keeping going on in a structured.
Over the next couple of months, getting the, getting the help you needed from
me in a way to re group of writers, to guide you and push you and help
you write a lot and write better.
So you can finally go from someone who wishes they were writing or who only
writes when they're inspired to someone who's turning out stories regularly,
engaging with the world in an excited way.
It's your sandbox.
It's your inspiration.
When you're racing, the whole world is enticing.
You go, you want to be someone who's eager to write, not dreading doing it wrong.
Someone who's ready to send their stories out into the world and have an impact.
I don't think it's overstating it to say that when you approach your
writing with integrity and joy, you're making yourself better.
You're improving the lives of the people you love because you're more fulfilled.
And your stories connecting with other readers brains are
making the world a better place.
Do you want to be able to write whenever you have a free moment,
you want to be able to finish stories, not just start them.
Do you want to have a confidence that your writing is getting better all the time?
Do you want to have develop a personalized writing practice
that works for you every time?
And do you want to feel like you're living the life you were born to live?
Are you ready to get that excitement, that satisfaction and pride in your life?
Are you interested in getting there now or someday?
And are you ready to do what it takes to get there?
If so, I'm delighted to introduce you to the story of day.
I write your course.
Which is coming up next month.
It's a six month Mo module six module, not six months, six module journey
through the short story, from the importance of ideas, how to develop
those ideas into irresistible stories, from creating compelling characters, to
hooking readers, with conflict, we'll look at tiny tails and flash fiction
to longer more traditional forms.
And you'll progress through a structured framework that will develop
your story skills while helping you build a practice that lasts.
And you'll do it in an online portal where you can access the lessons and
work on them at your own pace while also having opportunities to get together
with your fellow writers for some Q and a calls and coaching from me.
This challenge has given you more confidence to know that you can rate.
And the eraser course is designed to build a framework that supports your
practice going forward so that you never give up on your writing again.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it is to join us.
You write between six and 10 stories over the next eight weeks or so, so that
you can learn what you write to love.
Learn what you love to write.
You can write, learn how to rate it better.
What tools and practices help you specifically become a better and
more prolific writer so that you can share more stories with readers and
begin to hear that magical feedback.
I loved your story because, or thank you for writing this story.
It made my day better.
Do you want to be able to write whenever you have a free moment,
I'm going through things twice.
Look at that.
I'm trying to, I'm really, really stressing this, this, this stuff
that you want for yourself.
I write to, it gives you a structured path through essential storytelling skills.
It helps you to keep the momentum going.
It helps you to connect with other writers who are going through this.
And believe me, when I say that writing is not a solitary occupation it can be,
but it's just so much harder, although we're a lot of us are introverts.
We're not antisocial and we are social animals.
So connections with other writers, people who understand why you want to
play with your, when your friends are really helpful on days when it seems
like you're just maybe out of step with the world and you want to build a
personalized practice that works for you.
You can tell yourself, you can get these things by lurking in a Facebook group for
writers or writers, forum, or following your favorite writers on Twitter.
But it is harder to translate that into practice.
And you can ask me how I know cause I did it for far too.
And it's restricting to pull rating technique books off the shelf and
practice one technique here, and one exercise there and never really feel that
you're making any structured progress learning, you know, a particular thing.
And that's why I built the IMH major course.
And it's a mix of craft, essentials and lessons that will build your
writing practice into your life as it really is not some hypothetical
team when you can get a shed in the woods and take three months off.
So what is in the IRA?
Of course, that makes sense.
There's six modules.
Each one has two lessons on workshops as the lesson and a workshop in each one.
So you'll actually do some writing and then there'll be exercises that
help you with your mindset stuff.
You'll have two writing assignments a week.
You can do one or both, depending on your ambition.
One will be tiny stories.
One of the slightly longer one, there are bite-size exercises.
Everything is broken down into manageable chunks, which you've seen.
If you've been going through the fun size challenge, that's the kind of,
I like to keep things bite size for you so that it's not overwhelming.
And there's a dedicated online portal with video transcripts
and worksheets in a second.
But you can complete at your own pace, but I won't overload you.
Cause I want to make sure you have plenty of time to write and we also have Q
and a calls because it's a chance for you to ask me clarifying questions.
It's a chance for you to meet some of the other writers in the course, but it's also
a deadline because I started running this course without the Q and a calls and I
noticed that people were doing a few weeks and then forgetting to open the course.
You know, it just kind of sat there on their hard drive.
And when I give them wait, come to the meeting next Wednesday all of a sudden
module three and four started to look a lot more interesting to open and read.
So I know writers, we need deadlines.
It's, you'll, you'll retain access to all of the material after the course,
but you know, having a deadline to get through it at least one time before you
go back to things is a wonderful thing.
So at this point, you're probably wondering what the investment for a course
like this is when I offer my workshops.
They are at least $97 each.
So there's six of those, which adds up to that big number.
The six lessons on the practice.
I don't actually make them available to anybody, but if I did, that would be.
300 bucks.
I'm launching a new weekly writing prompt service soon and 12 writing
prompts would fill three months and that would be $30 worth.
And then if you all, if you sign up for this round of IRAs or you
get to come to those bonus Q and a calls, I don't offer one-to-one
coop consulting coaching very often.
But if I did these calls would cost you lat.
And frankly, it's kind of better when we do things in a group because
you get the wisdom of a whole group.
So these calls have been a wonderful addition to this course.
So that would bring us to that scary number, which would still be a bargain.
If you compared it to eight weeks of an MFA program at a private university,
which would cost you like $21,000.
I am not kidding.
I looked up so I could charge people $2,000 and work with a small number
of people, but honestly, I'd rather work with as many people as I can and
harness the power of the crowd and get as many stories out there as I can.
It's just more fun.
I want the community to contain the most motivated writers I can find.
And I understand that having $2,000 laying around to take a writing course is really
a measure of a person's motivation or commitment that is more likely measured
by reading my emails, turning up.
Doing challenge prompts.
So essentially I want people like you to spend the next two months refining your
storytelling skills and building a writing practice in what I believe to be the
fastest and best way to write and write.
Well, I want you to join us and I want you to experience that
and have so much fun doing it.
That you'll help me spread the word and tell your friends next time.
Right?
So I'm inviting you to join this round of the IRAs course for 4 97, 490 $7.
That's us as I was putting together this message though, I thought fine.
That's great.
All of those things are good, but when I think about what you could achieve in
the next two months with other committed raters, all of those materials I'm
providing for you for that investment, I got so excited thinking about the amazing
progress you're going to make that I thought, Hmm, what else do you need to
really get you the results that you want?
I realize I have already got these two workshops attained to right workshop
on the idea generator workshop.
One will help you figure out where the team leaks away to and where you can
find or make time for your writing, how to track it, how to make smarter
choices, and even how to negotiate with the people in your life to get the
space you need for the coming months.
Focus on writing.
I thought, well, I'll get that to you too.
And then I thought.
Often I'm worried that they don't have ideas or good enough ideas for stories.
And I realized I have a workshop called the idea generator workshop.
It gives you tons of ideas about where to find ideas and store them and track them.
And a lot of it was just a subject I've written about for retro's
digest magazine in the past.
So when you join the major workshop, you'll get lifetime access to those
two, even before module one releases.
So next on Friday, the 27th module zero will open up for you.
And then I thought I've built an amazing Set of resources for the
superstars last year, during the story at a challenge, every day of
the challenge, I did a video pep talk and lesson on each of the prompts.
I did a video, audio, transcripts, all of that stuff.
And I put it all in its own little online home, and then I bundled it
together and offered it for sale.
But I'm going to throw that in for you as well.
So when the challenge ends not when the challenge, when this course ends,
you'll actually have another 31.
Day's worth of prompts and lessons that you can dip into,
which you'll have access to.
And you can go through at your own pace over the next year.
So I'm opening that up.
That's called the story of the challenge plus and that will get thrown in as well.
When you, when you sign up.
I also thought once these people have all these stories in their
hands or on their hard drives, what are they going to do with them?
Not everyone here will want to publish their stories, but if you're
interested in submitting to journals and magazines, there is a lot to learn.
So I've taken my decades of experience with that.
And I have put it together into a workshop for my story at a
superstars group this year.
And yes, there are worksheets and checklists.
How did you guess.
And I'm actually, I've never offered that to anyone else yet.
So but when I do it will not be cheap.
And because it's a repeatable system that you can use just takes all the trouble
out of submitting, submitting your story.
So I'll throw that in as well, because once you have the stories, you might
want to do something with them.
And I thought that would be useful because I want you to succeed.
And I've put a lot of thought into what that looks like.
So no matter whether you simply want to build a writing practice, or if
you want it to be sending stories out to magazines, I've got you covered.
So, this is what you get.
You get your rights, your IRA, your course, the taint rate and the I
generator idea generator workshop, you get the bonus Q and a calls.
We'll make you sign up for this room.
You know, you can you can sign up at other times of the year, but we're only
doing the QA calls right now story to challenge plus content, which is 31
lessons and prompts that will come out at the end of your course and the six
points of it, your story submission workshop, which is the most full.
And I should probably rename it and he's come up with a better name for that.
But the submission workshop just doesn't sound right.
So if this all sounds good to you, including the 14 day money back
guarantee, because if this course isn't right for you, I do not want
you wasting your time and money here.
I want you to go find the course that does work for you.
So if you don't like it, you can just email me and I will refund your money.
If all of that sounds good, it sounds like something that you
need to help you be able to say those three little words I am on.
Then, how do you get involved?
Well, you can go to this URL, which is on the screen and I
will put it in the chat as well.
And if you're interested, I would love to have you the course starts
on the 3rd of June and we will have three of those Q and a calls spread
throughout the course on, at the beginning one in the middle at the end.
And this coming Friday, you'll get access to all of those.
The, the two writing workshops, the course calendar, there's a Google calendar.
You can S you can sync with.
So you always know what's happening with the course and will have links
to all of the call links much like this one tonight, you'll get to
talk much, much more on those.
I will not be talking this much on those calls because you'll have
questions and we'll be able to crowdsource some answers for you.
So if that's of interest to you, and you're interested in starting
the process of becoming a writer who writes, he writes regularly, and who
writes in the company of some of the most supportive writers that I've
ever met, then I hope you'll click the link and join us in the meantime.
Thank you for being here tonight.
I hope that the short story review is helpful.
There's more of that coming throughout the year, I did critique weeks
which I'll be offering as well.
And.
So, if this has been of interest, I hope you'll, you'll think about
joining us and taking what you've achieved so far this month and putting
a structure in place to keep it going for a little bit longer so that you
get a real sense that this is your life and that you have a right to right.
And the world needs your stories.
Thank you for being here.
This link will be active until the course starts on the 3rd of June, but you
know, if you want early access to all of this stuff, I hope you'll join us soon.
Thank you.
Good nights and keep writing.