Tuesday 23 December 2014

Festive greetings


May we take this opportunity to wish you all festive greetings from the team here at Inscribe Media

Thursday 18 December 2014

Helping out





A reminder that, in addition to the various free things we do, one of the paid-for services we offer is one supporting writers.

Why should you hire a professional writing mentor, though? Isn’t it enough to attend a class/workshop or a writing group? Or ask a friend or relative to comment?

Well, it depends what you want and need and bespoke mentoring from Inscribe Media can help some writers, providing the experience and expertise to -

• understand your work

• nurture you and your writing

• let you retain control of your ideas and your writing

* provide expert, specific advice about what is working and what isn’t.

We focus on major issues, such as how your story hangs together, what your characters are doing or could be doing, what is hurting your story’s momentum, what story elements are not pulling their weight.

We identify the differences between good and great and point out your writing strengths, so you become confident about what not to change.

We also give suggestions and help you establish good processes and writing goals and suggest markets for your work.

If long-term mentoring does not appeal, we run short writing courses as well.

You can find out more at http://www.inscribemedia.co.uk/writing-courses---bespoke-mentoring.html

You can also access our free downloadable writing guide at www.inscribemedia.co,uk and find loads of free tips on our blog here.



John Dean

Starting out well

I know I talk about first lines a lot in my blogs but they are so important.

One of the best ways to start a story is to instantly introduce the reader to a character who addresses us directly in a voice that is distinctive and compelling. What do I mean? Try this: “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.” — J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

The voice is distinctive, you are challenged and want to learn more about this person. It was the same with the story over the weekend, creating a character that talked directly to the reader.

And if the character is talking to the reader, the writer has a great platform on which to work.

John Dean

Our ebooks

A reminder that we have published seven ebooks in all, including the most recent, which are:


Harry’s Torment by Michael Beck
Harry’s Torment is set in the fictional east coast port of Thirlston and is centred on the heroin trade.

Unlike some other crime novels this is not a ‘who done it’ as we very soon discover identity of the local drugs baron. We see how the officers try to piece together various bits of information in their pursuit of him and how he attempts to stay one step ahead of them. This takes place alongside a personal feud between two senior customs officials and this impacts upon one of the officers in particular as he is used as a pawn in their struggle. His close working relationships with a local detective inspector also causes problems and pressures for both parties as the story comes to a dramatic conclusion.

Michael spent 38 years with Customs and Excise and took early retirement in 2005. In that time he worked in most of the disciplines within the department and was responsible for all the anti-smuggling teams in the north east of England between 1990 and 2000. He is a member of Inkerman Writers and Bennet House Writers, both Darlington based writing groups, and has written a number of short stories.





Lost Souls by Roger Barnes



When young women start to go missing in Africa, the kidnappers warn not to investigate but the police do and the women’s hideously mutilated bodies are returned. After that the investigations are stopped and a continuing flow of traumatised victims are returned alive, having being used in the most brutal and degrading ways.



This continues until another four are abducted and the British Government decides it must act and recommence the investigation, but this time using a very different approach. A Special Forces Major with an uncanny knack for finding people is teamed with an unorthodox politically incorrect police officer, and both are asked to volunteer to try and find them.

It becomes apparent that not only British women are being abducted, so a small International Strike Force is assembled to rescue them and ensure it is stopped, permanently.

Roger is a taxi driver in Darlington and a member of Darlington-based Inkerman Writers.


* We have previously published five other e-book titles. All can be obtained by keying their titles into the search field of the Kindle shop at www.amazon.co.uk Australian readers will have to purchase via Amazon US at www.amazon.com



The books include:

Global Shorts - an anthology of short stories taken from the early years of the Global Short Competition. Price £2.23

Vegemite Whiskers - a selection of some of the finest writing from Australian authors who have entered the Global Short Story Competition. Price £1.48.

White Gold by Roger Barnes A thriller by first-time author Roger Barnes taking the reader into a world of intrigue and danger set amid the poachers of Africa. £2.23

Haghir the Dragon Finder by John Dean, a comic fantasy for older children. Haghir and his hopeless comrades are dragon slayers seeking a new challenge. £1.48.

Cyber Rules by Myra King. The novel by Australian writer Myra tells the story of a farmer’s wife in isolated rural Australia. Caught up on the addictive side of the Internet, she holds a secret which may prove to be deadly. Price £2.05.

* If you don’t have a Kindle, there is a free Kindle reading app for your PC at

Find out in the e-novel Cyber Rules Find out more at www.inscribemedia.co.uk



 

 

 

 



Thursday 4 December 2014

Winners announced

Judge Fiona Cooper has selected her winners for the final Global Short Story Competition and writers from South Africa and France have taken the honours.

The £100 first place prize goes to Catherine Pritchard, of Cape Town, South Africa, for Lutho, of which Fiona says: “This story touches so many emotions and the dark background - hinted at - awakens the reader’s curiosity. Very satisfying and definitely a story to remember and think about with a style that shows the writer’s remarkable ability.”

Our highly commended runner up is Mandy Harvey, of Parisot, France, for Two’s Company, who wins £25. Fiona says: “Atmospheric and absorbing, this story plays with the idea of reality versus one's own perceptions and assumptions. The characters are well drawn and intriguing and the pace and imagery are very well sustained.”
The writers on the shortlist are:

Chris Bennett, Lindfield, West Sussex, England

Gillian Brown, Peyriac de Mer, France

Edward Sergeant, Scarborough, England
Winning stories will be posted on www.inscribemedia.co.uk Well done to our successful writers.



 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Monday 1 December 2014

Good writing

What makes good writing? I think good writing is good writing because it triggers responses in its readers. Readers say ‘I have been in that situation, ‘I know someone like that’, ‘what a terrible thing to be faced with’ etc etc.

If readers feel like that, it means that they are being drawn into the story. They stand next to your characters, they fear for what is about to happen, they simply must know what is on the next page.

If a reader does not really care what is happening in the story then you have lost them and your story has failed but if they feel part of it, they are experiencing the sheer power of the writer.

That’s a terrific thing to achieve - and the way to impress publishers and competition judges.

* If you wish to find out about our online mentoring programmes and online writing courses at

http://www.inscribemedia.co.uk/writing-courses---bespoke-mentoring.html

John Dean

Sunday 30 November 2014

Winners to be announced

We will announce the winners of the last Global Short Story Competition on Thursday December 4.

John Dean

Thursday 13 November 2014

Our ebooks


We have published seven ebooks in all, including the most recent, which are:


Harry’s Torment by Michael Beck 
Harry’s Torment is set in the fictional east coast port of Thirlston and is centred on the heroin trade.

Unlike some other crime novels this is not a ‘who done it’ as we very soon discover identity of the local drugs baron. We see how the officers try to piece together various bits of information in their pursuit of him and how he attempts to stay one step ahead of them. This takes place alongside a personal feud between two senior customs officials and this impacts upon one of the officers in particular as he is used as a pawn in their struggle. His close working relationships with a local detective inspector also causes problems and pressures for both parties as the story comes to a dramatic conclusion.

Michael spent 38 years with Customs and Excise and took early retirement in 2005. In that time he worked in most of the disciplines within the department and was responsible for all the anti-smuggling teams in the north east of England between 1990 and 2000. He is a member of Inkerman Writers and Bennet House Writers, both Darlington based writing groups, and has written a number of short stories.





Lost Souls by Roger Barnes
When young women start to go missing in Africa, the kidnappers warn not to investigate but the police do and the women’s hideously mutilated bodies are returned. After that the investigations are stopped and a continuing flow of traumatised victims are returned alive, having being used in the most brutal and degrading ways.

This continues until another four are abducted and the British Government decides it must act and recommence the investigation, but this time using a very different approach. A Special Forces Major with an uncanny knack for finding people is teamed with an unorthodox politically incorrect police officer, and both are asked to volunteer to try and find them.

It becomes apparent that not only British women are being abducted, so a small International Strike Force is assembled to rescue them and ensure it is stopped, permanently.

Roger is a taxi driver in Darlington and a member of Darlington-based Inkerman Writers.

* We have previously published five other e-book titles. All can be obtained by keying their titles into the search field of the Kindle shop at www.amazon.co.uk Australian readers will have to purchase via Amazon US at www.amazon.com



The books include:

Global Shorts - an anthology of short stories taken from the early years of the Global Short Competition. Price £2.23

Vegemite Whiskers - a selection of some of the finest writing from Australian authors who have entered the Global Short Story Competition. Price £1.48.

White Gold by Roger Barnes A thriller by first-time author Roger Barnes taking the reader into a world of intrigue and danger set amid the poachers of Africa. £2.23

Haghir the Dragon Finder by John Dean, a comic fantasy for older children. Haghir and his hopeless comrades are dragon slayers seeking a new challenge. £1.48.

Cyber Rules by Myra King. The novel by Australian writer Myra tells the story of a farmer’s wife in isolated rural Australia. Caught up on the addictive side of the Internet, she holds a secret which may prove to be deadly. Price £2.05.

 
 
 

 

Online mentoring and writing courses





A reminder that, in addition to the various free things we do, one of the paid-for services we offer is one supporting writers.

Why should you hire a professional writing mentor, though? Isn’t it enough to attend a class/workshop or a writing group? Or ask a friend or relative to comment?

Well, it depends what you want and need and bespoke mentoring from Inscribe Media can help some writers, providing the experience and expertise to -

• understand your work

• nurture you and your writing

• let you retain control of your ideas and your writing

* provide expert, specific advice about what is working and what isn’t.

We focus on major issues, such as how your story hangs together, what your characters are doing or could be doing, what is hurting your story’s momentum, what story elements are not pulling their weight.

We identify the differences between good and great and point out your writing strengths, so you become confident about what not to change.

We also give suggestions and help you establish good processes and writing goals and suggest markets for your work.

If long-term mentoring does not appeal, we run short writing courses as well.

You can find out more at http://www.inscribemedia.co.uk/writing-courses---bespoke-mentoring.html

You can also access our free downloadable writing guide at www.inscribemedia.co,uk and find loads of free tips on our blog here.

John Dean

Monday 3 November 2014

Competition closes down

It is with great regret that we have decided to close the Global Short Story Competition after more than six years in which the competition has topped £11,000 in prize money handed out and has had entries from more than 60 countries. Unfortunately, continuing low entry numbers has made it financially unsustainable. The one now being judged will be the last. All our other activities remain the same.

May we take this opportunity to thank all those writers who have entered over the years.

John Dean

Friday 24 October 2014

Office closure

The offices of Inscribe Media are closed until Oct 31 - we can answer any queries about the Global Short Story Competition then.

Of J D Salinger

I know I talk about first lines a lot in my blogs but they are so important.

One of the best ways to start a story is to instantly introduce the reader to a character who addresses us directly in a voice that is distinctive and compelling. What do I mean? Try this: “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.” — J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

The voice is distinctive, you are challenged and want to learn more about this person. It was the same with the story over the weekend, creating a character that talked directly to the reader.

And if the character is talking to the reader, the writer has a great platform on which to work.
Still 7 days to enter our latest competition at www.inscribemedia.co.uk



John Dean

Don't make these mistakes!

ave been talking recently to one or two writers about the challenges of getting published. It can be a dispiriting business so perhaps this will help. There’s a terrific survey that came out some time ago about the mistakes that aspiring writers make when approaching literary agents.

Based on responses from more than 50 agents, it included the following no-nos when submitting manuscripts to agents (and publishers, I would suggest):

* Saying ‘Go to my website for a sample of my work”

* Talking about the book’s sequel

* Pitching more than one book at a time
* Writing a submission that lacks confidence
* Writing a submission that is over-confident or pompous
* Sending a submission that has clearly not been proof-read
* Queries addressed to "Dear Agent" (or anything similar)
* Vague letters.

* E-mailed submissions with more than one agent listed in the "To" field
* Submissions that have no clue what the agent represents, or that have no clue what the agent's submission guidelines are.

Avoid these pitfalls and at least you give yourself an edge. One I would add relates to the covering letter. Do try to avoid the words ‘my mum read this and she reckons it’s the finest novel she has ever read’ or something similar. That’s a good way to get your manuscript heading its way bin-wards!

John Dean

Time running out in short story competition

Into the last 7 days of the latest quarterly Global Short Story Competition at www.inscribemedia.co.uk £100 first prize Please RT

Tuesday 21 October 2014

Great first lines

The opening lines of any story need to be good, compelling the reader to read on whether through a strong idea, a great character or the sheer quality of the writing.

These are some of my favourites

“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” — William Gibson, Neuromancer

“There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.” — C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

“Justice? — You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law.” — William Gaddis, A Frolic of His Own

.

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” — George Orwell, 1984

“Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.” — Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” — L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between

“In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ’s disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen, and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman.” — Norman McLean, A River Runs Through It

“There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.” —

Raymond Chandler, Red Wind

“He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.” — Raphael Sabatini, Scaramouche

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.” — J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

John Dean

You can follow us on Facebook

You can have your say on writing matters at our Facebook page at

www.facebook.com/inscribemedia

Getting characters right

Characters can make or break a story. You can create the finest landscapes, the greatest stories, the most remarkable writing but you cannot make your stories live unless you have characters.

This came to mind with some entries into this quarter’s Global Short Story Competition. Here’s some thoughts on how those writers got it right.

They described their physical characteristics but picked only the salient information

They made the reader visualise the person by thinking about the small things which make them stand out, make them live.

They captured their demeanour.

They described their views, their emotions, they type of character.

They did not pack the information in all at once, rather revealing the character as the story progressed.

They made sure the main characters are strong enough to carry the story on their shoulders.

And they made sure we care about them - not necessarily like but care.

Above all, their characters were REAL.

Still time to enter this quarter’s competition at www.inscribemedia.co.uk

John Dean

Try this for inspiration

Stuck for an idea for a story? Well here’s a useful way to get yourself going. Take a break from the hectic pace of life and imagine yourself in a darkened house, walking from room to room.

In the final room, the darkness is illuminated by a single shaft of light, forming something akin to a stage. Who steps into the light? You’ll be amazed what happens next. Just follow the character wherever he/she takes you.

I did this exercise with the Inkerman Writers, of which I am part, and the result was a cracking examination of the power of imagination in the anthology Out of the Shadows, published in 2013. Incidentally, the book is still available at

http://www.blurb.co.uk/b/4204019-out-of-the-shadows


John Dean

Monday 20 October 2014

Writing for theatre

I was discussing writing for the theatre with another writer the other day. Here are some thoughts on getting it right

The power of words is crucial when writing for theatre, as is a technical understanding of the staging process. Writers need to do the following:
* Think where the person was before entering the stage and where he/she goes to eg if he/she has come in from the cold remember to write cold references of actions (stamping feet etc )

* The writer needs to consider what the characters are doing as well as saying - a walk across a stage can take a long time as can a passage of speech. Find something for them do, making tea, putting the kettle on etc. It gives the scene more movement and avoids problems for actors who feel all they can do is stand like a plank and spout their lines

* Think how long words take to say and how they will play in an audience. An intimate aside in a small room can fall flat in a large theatre

* Comedy needs to big and bold, drama can be more subtle and considered (in drama, the actor can be more introspective, address the audience, reveal much about what they are thinking)

* Dialogue is crucial. The actor will make much of the business up themselves but they need guidance and that comes from the words.

A recap of dialogue rules:
A lot of the time, we do not speak in correct sentences/We often use short sharp phrases

We assume the listener knows a lot about us

Dialogue can impart information but we try to make that information interesting, lacing it with humour, personal interpretation etc

We can tell a lot about a person in a short snap of conversation - a few words of dialogue can say a lot about a character.

Dialogue needs to be crisp (and humour needs to hit the gag and move on, good comedy relies on timing and pace)

Needs to be in character

Must take the story on

Be not packed with extraneous information.

If you need to slot in information, find a way of doing it subtly
John Dean

Triggering that all-important reaction


A reminder that key to good writing is making the experience feel real for the reader, a major part of my teaching of authors.

You need to evoke a reaction in your reader and this is done through triggers, using your reader’s associations to evoke a reaction. How do you do that?

Well, why not start by playing on:

Their memories

Their connections to places and people

Their prejudices and preconceptions?

Their response to weather conditions - snow, rain, heat etc

Their deeply felt fears and phobias?

All this came to mind in one of our entries to the latest Global Short Story Competition which did it beautifully. You can enter at www.inscribemedia.co.uk




John Dean

Now that's funny

We get the odd humorous story submitted to the Global Short Story Competition and, as I am about to teach some classes on humour, I thought a recap would be useful.

Writing humour is very tough: people can listen to your short story without a sound and at the end they can say ‘that was terrific’ - with humour, if they ‘aint laughing or smiling at all you have failed!

Here’s some golden rules.

* Humorous characters needs just as much characterisation as others. Look at your character, work out where the humour lies. Do you have a character who is egotistical, vain, clumsy, stupid? Whatever the strong character trait is, play on it.

* Observe, write down funny things, quips, things people say etc

* Develop humour within situations - maybe take a sideways glance at life and situations

* Dialogue is crucial - keep it sharp

* Whatever you do, a light touch usually needed - sledgehammers not required. If a joke needs explaining, it has not worked

* Use pace - move on from gag to gag

* Try out your jokes - if you laugh, others may not. I always reckon if I laughed first time, it was good.
* Be brutal, if a gag does not work - or is in the wrong story - ditch it!

John Dean

VIewpoints in fiction

Yesterday we received an entry into the Global Short Story Competition which was written in first person and brilliantly so.

Traditionally, there are three main categories of viewpoint, first, second or third person. First is when you use refer to I, second person is you (as is in ‘You might have thought I would have liked that‘) and third is he, she, they, their, his, hers, him, her, etc.

Most stories tend to be written in third person but first person has its advantages as this story showed.

First person is a great choice when you intend to write informally or casually. It can be chatty, relaxed, and intimate. In this case, the narrator spoke directly to the reader as if no one else existed. There were questions, challenges and it all made for a powerful mix indeed. It was like a conversation.

However, many writers would still go for third person. Why? Well, third person creates a sense of objectivity and distance and allows the writer to get on with telling the story. Some would say that third person means the writer's feelings and personality become peripheral and that the author can simply tell the tale.

It’s all a question of choice but yesterday‘s entry showed how powerful first person can be.
Still time to enter this quarter’s competition through www.inscribemedia.co.uk



John Dean

Talking of dialogue

I am thoroughly enjoying a novel at the moment. Its sense of place and people has drawn me into the narrative and you can see why the writer is so celebrated. Venerated, even. Except, for the dialogue, which is stilted and clunky.

It got me thinking about the rules of dialogue. Dialogue is crucial to the success of any story. Good dialogue can make a story, bad dialogue can wreck it, so it is worth bearing in mind some of these rules of conversation and reflecting them in the dialogue that you write. If people talk that way in real life then so they should in your work.

* A lot of the time, we do not speak in correct sentences/we often use short sharp phrases.

* Keep your dialogue crisp - we can tell a lot about a person in a short snap of conversation.

* We interrupt a lot.

* We assume a lot. Not ‘Your brother has been murdered.’

‘What, my brother Brian?’

‘Yes, that’s him. Your only brother. The younger one.’ Keep it realistic.

* Dialogue must take the story on. Only write small talk if you need to, ie showing how tedious a person can be. If you don’t need it, don’t write it. Make sure each word does a job.

* Do not pack dialogue with extraneous information. Dont write like this:
‘I saw William, although everyone calls him Bill, my neighbour of ten years in Acacia Avenue, in Darlington, and observed that he was his normal glum self, to which we - that is my wife, Edith, and I - have grown accustomed in the weeks since his wife left him for a younger man and filed for divorce. I assumed that the darkness which seems to have assailed him since then has not lifted. If you need to slot in that information, find a way of doing it more subtly: ie Saw Bill this morning. His usual gloomy self. The divorce really has knocked him backwards.

John Dean

Friday 17 October 2014

Google ranking

Delighted to say that if you key ‘short story competition’ into Google, the Global Short Story Competition comes up third out of 2.8 million listings. Thank you to everyone whose visits make that possible.
You can check us out at www.inscribemedia.co.uk - 15 days to enter this quarter’s competition, £125 in prize money up for grabs.


John Dean

Truly global

Our current stats for readers reading these blogs show the top ten at the moment is people from:
The United States

Russia

Netherlands

Germany

United Kingdom

Ukraine

Australia

India

Poland

Brazil



John Dean

So does your character like pizza?

Good writing, as I have mentioned before in my blogs, is about details, the little things that add grit and reality to your stories.
Here are some thoughts:

Ask questions about your character. What does your character look like? How does he/she walk or talk? Does she part her hair? What kind of clothes does he wear? What nasty habits etc? And which facts are relevant?

Ask yourself questions about your character's tastes, his/her attitudes toward life. What type of music does she like? How does she feel about work, religion, politics etc? By asking your characters these questions, you’ll have a better sense of the type of details you'll want to include in your story.

Create details about your settings. What does your character's living room look like? Is it messy or is it tidy? Are there paintings on the wall etc etc? Create details that bring the settings to life.

Remember, though, don't be excessive in using details. While these details can be helpful in creating a world for your story, most readers today simply don't have the patience to sit through five or six pages of these details. Use only what is necessary.
John Dean
 

Indian writers

We receive the occasional entry from Indian writers. Indian writers have enjoyed quite a bit of success in the Global Short Story Competition over the years and their stories so often provide a beguiling mix of fine writing and powerful emotion.
That we receive stories from India is not surprising. Researching this blog, I came across an article published in the Guardian and written by writer Anita Desai, in which she said: “By the number of manuscripts that arrive daily and hourly from India on the desks of British and American agents and publishers, I would guess no country has more aspiring writers than ours.”
Here’s to hearing from more of them. You can enter at www.inscribemedia.co.uk

John Dean

Thursday 16 October 2014

Writing ghost stories

The Open Mic nights for authors in North East England continue on Thursday October 30 and, since the event is so close to Halloween, we are hoping for some ghost stories.
So how do you write a ghost story? It is, of course, a classic genre but one that seems less popular today. Pity, because it is immense fun to write. 
Ghost stories need subtlety. The golden rule is that less is definitely more when it comes to ghost stories (not a bad maxim for most writing, actually). None of those characters clad in flowing white sheets going ’woo, woo’, more about making the ordinary scary.
Take an example. My grandmother was not scary but she would be if she walked into my office now because she had been dead for 20 years. I’m not being disrespectful about her but it does make the point.
Similarly, I hope I am not frightening but I sure as Hell would be if I turned up in your living room at midnight with a strange smile on my face. The ordinary in the extraordinary setting works well in ghost stories.
You also have to understand the psychology of the reader and what scares them. With me, it’s mirrors at night (who is standing behind me, dare I look?) with others it may be darkness, empty houses etc. You are teasing the reader.

There are some other considerations:

* The impact of media - what scared once does not scare now. In a world of the Chainsaw Massacre and its modern cousin Saw, we are less scared by that kind of material. Ghost story writing has to be more subtle - it is why the Blair Witch Project worked, it played on the viewer‘s mind. So should ghost stories.

* Ghost stories tend not to work if you go for shock horror. A man wielding a weapon may be scary but which sends more shivers down the spine out of the following two examples? Again using a movies theme, which frightened you most in The Shining - the mad Jack Nicholson punching his way through doors or the spectral children glanced only briefly at the end of the corridor? Yes, I know we are blurring the distinction between ghost stories and horror but you get the point. Same rule is true for writing ghost stories.

* So go for normal and contrast it. My office is fine but put the lights off, have a breeze running through it, a strange voice which I can’t quite make out, and it changes. Then I’m anybody’s. In fact, I wish I had not just written that sentence.

* Build tension in the story by hinting at something horrible to come. Good ghost stories begin with normality, and gradually let things develop. It is a gamble: you have to keep the reader interested with the quality of your writing.
Ghost stories need so much to work well - strong characters, great sense of place, use of darkness, weather, sound, phobias, psychology etc - but when they do, they leave the reader glancing over their shoulder for the rest of the day.
* The open mic nights, supported by Darlington for Culture and which offer a forum for writers to read their material and audiences to enjoy it, run at Voodoo Café/Cantina, 84 Skinnergate, Darlington, on the last Thursday of the month. Each session starts at 7pm and the cost of entry is £3 paid on the door. More information is available from Inscribe Media Limited at deangriss@btinternet.com




John Dean


Fair to middling

Another excellent example of the storyteller’s art came into the Global Short Story Competition yesterday.
It started in the middle of an event, things had already happened, momentum was already building and the reader’s task was pick things up as the narrative unfolded,
By plunging the reader into the story from the off, it kept the reader hooked. Done right, it can be an effective way of beginning a story.
Plenty of time to enter the competition at www.inscribemedia.co.uk - closing date October 31.

John Dean

Wednesday 15 October 2014

Hints on show and tell

This is the last of the handy hints from our free writers’ toolkit . The full guide can be downloaded from the home page of our website at www.inscribemedia.co.uk




Show and tell
There is a growing debate within writing circles about what has become known as ‘show and tell’.

No, this is not about small children excitedly showing manky things found on the beach to their classmates, rather an important writing technique.

The argument goes like this: for you to truly engage your reader, you must make them feel that they are there when the action is happening.

It matters because if you fail to draw your reader into the story, your tale will lack something, an immediacy, a sense of drama, a sense of narrative.

How do you do it? Think of it like this: reach out a hand to your reader and say ‘come into my world, walk alongside me.’ Do that and they are hooked.

John Dean


Handy hints on writing humour

#These are some of the handy hints from our free writers’ toolkit . We’ll be running a few more over the days to come but the full guide can be downloaded from the home page of our website at www.inscribemedia.co.uk




 


Humour
There’s an old saying that if you are not a humorous person, don’t try to write humour.

Well, it is only part-true. It is certainly the case that a straight-laced, humourless person might well struggle to write side-splitting comedy but if you are an author, that might not be a good enough excuse.

Why? Because humour is vital to creating good fiction. Even if you are not writing an out-and-out comic piece, humour has a role to perform.

For a start, it can create light against the dark. Take an example: you are writing a sinister piece with the tension building as the tale unfolds. You might decide to keep the tension going right to the end, which would be one way of writing it.

However, you might decide that a flash of humour, a single line of dialogue by a character, could momentarily ease the tension, cause the reader to relax slightly, and provide an even greater impact when you suddenly strike with the next piece of drama, or horror or fear. Ghost and horror writers know that trick well - they are past masters at toying with their readers.

Humour also works well with novels because a relentlessly heavy theme in a story can benefit immensely from the odd break for something a little lighter.

There is another good reason for using humour in your writing because it reveals things about your character and can show another side to them that the reader might not have seen before. Or it can reveal in a brief conversation the depth of two people’s relationship.

And it does not need to be side-splitting humour, that is not the intention: it has other roles to perform.

As one critique of the great William Shakespeare said: “Humour is a tool that allows us to see the subtle details of their minds; a glimpse at the inner workings of each character’s personality. It is through the humour that Shakespeare employs that we are able to see “roundness” in characters that could be otherwise doomed to exist as “flat” characters. Shakespeare uses humour to give his players new life, to help them expand beyond the bounds of mere characters and turn into real people.”

And look how well he did!


John Dean

Why the short story exists

One of the beauties of the short story is the way it allows you to tell stories which would not exist but for the genre.

What do I mean? Well, a story came into the Global Short Story Competition overnight which illustrates the point perfectly, dealing as it does with the interaction between two people on a bus trip and the way the experience profoundly effects one of them.

It’s an episode, a fragment of a life, and deftly told in just under 1,800 words. Wouldn’t work in a novel, or at least not on its own, but works beautifully in a short story. It’s why the genre was created.
Plenty of time to enter this quarter’s competition (closing date October 31, first prize £100) at www.inscribemedia.co.uk

John Dean

Tuesday 14 October 2014

More hints on engaging your reader

These are some of the handy hints from our free writers’ toolkit . We’ll be running a few more over the days to come but the full guide can be downloaded from the home page of our website at www.inscribemedia.co.uk




 
Triggering a response from your writing

Continuing my theme of evoking reactions in your reader, I think that good writing is about triggers - words, phrases, images, places, sensations - that reach deep into the readers mind.

That reaction will be based on something the reader has actually experienced, or maybe something that the reader dreads ever having to experience. It is why horror and ghost stories work so well.

Yes, you are messing about with the readers head, yes, you may be forcing them to confront difficult truths, but isnt that sometimes what writing is about?

If every story, every book, was about sugary-sweet people in lovely situations, then writing could never really move the reader as it should.

So, yes, writing can, on occasion, make the reader feel uneasy, uncomfortable, scared even, but, lets be honest, isnt that sometimes the way we feel in our daily lives anyway? Its simply art reflecting reality.



Keeping it short

All writing is about every word doing its job but that becomes an even more pronounced skill when you are writing something short, like a poem or a story.

We do receive entries which are not 2,000 words long but 200 words instead - and that is an art form in itself.

The length means that the writers had to make every word do its job and discard every word, every thought, every element of the story that slowed it down. Those stories were stripped to their basics.

Did they lose anything for that? Not really. They may have left the reader to work out a lot, think through what they were being told and where it was happening, but many of them remained powerful pieces of writing for all that.

So when people send in requests asking how long their story should be, we always remind them that our top limit is 2,000 words (for ease of reading by our judge) but as to the bottom limit? Well, it is how many words you need to tell the story. That’s the true of storytelling and always will be.


Tackling the difficult subjects
One of the things apparent in the stories that come in to our competition is the way writers tackle difficult subjects.

There are various reasons for this, one of which is, of course, that difficult subjects make for dramatic stories. A story about two people getting on really well for 2,000 words can tend to be a touch on the boring side. Introduce something spiky into the narrative and your story comes alive.

Another reason writers tackle tough subjects is because their words can have an effect on those who read them, that they can, in some small way, challenge the way people view the world.

It is not the same for every writer - some stories are there purely to entertain, to make the reader laugh, to make the reader smile, without challenging them at all.

But for those who do tackle difficult subjects, there is one rule above all: keep it real. It makes sense to write about what you know. If you have not got that experience, research you subject before you start writing.
John Dean

Handy hints on writing conflict

These are some of the handy hints from our free writers’ toolkit . We’ll be running a few more over the days to come but the full guide can be downloaded from the home page of our website at www.inscribemedia.co.uk





 
Conflict - why does it matter?

Why is conflict important in writing? Because stories need things to happen and that usually comes out of conflict - characters argue, fight, feud etc.

It is through seeing characters in conflict that we see them at their truest, when their guard is down, when they are fighting something.

You can develop a character through conflict: the meek little parlour maid suddenly becomes the towering heroine of the story

Conflict takes the story on: a school is to be closed, two friends fall out, a community is torn apart by an event. All these types of conflict are a rich hunting ground for the writer.

Conflict can evoke a strong reaction in a reader

Conflict makes for good drama - and if that is happening then writing is easier.

It also gives you a structure for your story, a story to tell



Writing from the heart
Emotion is something of which some writers are wary, preferring to produce work without revealing too much of themselves.

However, for many other writers, there cannot be fiction without a sense of themselves in it.

For some authors, there is always part of them peering through, their fears, their hopes, their aspirations, their take on life. They may not say ‘and this is me’ but it is there all the same. For many authors, writing has to be a deeply personal art.

Of course, it is not all autobiographical - many writers write characters and scenes which readers find abhorrent and use language and ideas with which readers might not agree but which need to be there because they reflect the world about us.

However, in there somewhere are also tantalising glimpses of what the writer really thinks of the world.


John Dean

Monday 13 October 2014

The clock counts down

The latest quarterly Global Short Story Competition has 18 days to run.

Begun more than six years ago, the competition has until now run on a monthly basis but has switched to one which runs for three months at a time, with the new one running from August 1 to October 31, 2014.

The prizes continue to be £100 for the first prize and a £25 prize for highly commended writers. The entry fee remains £5.

The competition, which has topped £11,000 in prize money handed out, has had entries from more than 60 countries over the years.

Each competition is judged by Fiona Cooper, an author in North-East England, where the competition’s organisers Inscribe Media are also based.
The competition, which has been supported by best-selling author Bill Bryson since it was established six and a half years ago, can be entered at www.inscribemedia.co.uk


John Dean

Tips on conflict

These are some of the handy hints from our free writers’ toolkit . We’ll be running a few more over the days to come but the full guide can be downloaded from the home page of our website at www.inscribemedia.co.uk




 
 


A word to the wise - creating good dialogue
Dialogue is crucial to the success of any story. Good dialogue can make a story, bad dialogue can wreck it.

Bear in mind some of these rules of conversation and reflect them in the dialogue that you write.

A lot of the time, we do not speak in correct sentences/we often use short sharp phrases.

Keep your dialogue crisp - we can tell a lot about a person in a short snap of conversation.

Dialogue must take the story on.

Do not pack dialogue with extraneous information. Dont write like this:
“I saw William, although everyone calls him Bill, my neighbour of ten years in Acacia Avenue, in Darlington, and observed that he was his normal glum self, to which we - that is my wife, Edith, and I - have grown accustomed in the weeks since his wife left him for a younger man and filed for divorce. I assumed that the darkness which seems to have assailed him since then has not lifted.
If you need to slot in that information, find a way of doing it more subtly: ie Saw Bill this morning. His usual gloomy self. Not sure hell ever recover. The divorce really has knocked him backwards.
John Dean

Saturday 11 October 2014

Hints on character and place in fiction

These are some of the handy hints from our free writers’ toolkit . We’ll be running a few more over the days to come but the full guide can be downloaded from the home page of our website at www.inscribemedia.co.uk
 



A sense of place

It is crucial if you write about a place that the reader can see it.

You have choices: do you write rich and vivid prose to paint a word picture or do you keep it minimalist - describe a tree in a park and we all see a different tree and a different park? Perhaps we only need to say it is a tree in a park?

Whatever you do, do not make it too long, you do not have a lot of words to play with in a short story.

If you seek to describe the setting, and the reader does need something to focus on, seek to use the following components:

1 Physical characteristics - what does it look like, any quirks which bring it to life?

2 Use your reader’s senses - what does the place smell, taste, sounds like?

3 What does it feel like to be there?


A sense of being

Creating characters

You can create the finest landscapes, the greatest stories, the most remarkable writing but you can not make your stories live unless you have characters. They are your vehicle to tell the story.

Characters have jobs to do within the story, making things happen, imparting information, allowing other characters to react to them etc

They should also be realistic (unless in over-the-top comedy where stereotypes can sometimes work) - your reader should feel that your characters can actually walk into the room.

When creating a character, describe what they look like and how they move, speak, react, dress etc but also try to get into their head - how do they think?

Keep secrets, reveal the character as the story progresses.

John Dean

Debut novel wins prize

Paul Kingsnorth has been announced as the winner of the second annual Gordon Burn Prize for his debut novel The Wake.

The announcement, made at a special event at Durham Book Festival in North East England, came after deliberations by a judging panel which comprised actor Julian Barratt, poet John Burnside, artist Sarah Lucas, and last year’s inaugural prize winner, novelist Benjamin Myers.

Set in the three years after the Norman invasion of 1066, The Wake tells the story of Buccmaster of Holland, a man from the Lincolnshire Fens, who, with a fractured band of guerrilla fighters, takes up arms against the invaders. It is a post-apocalyptic story of the brutal shattering of lives, a tale of lost gods and haunted visions, narrated by a man bearing witness to the end of his world.

Judge Benjamin Myers said: “The ‘shadow tongue’ vocabulary that is the novel’s architecture automatically makes The Wake a unique entity, yet it is so much more than a dazzling display of linguistic flair.

“Paul Kingsnorth creates his own world – that of an old England that is both familiar yet utterly alien – and pulls you in to bear witness to our own bloody history first hand. Poetry, landscape, mythology and language are shot through with fleeting flashes of violence on which modern society is founded. Months after first reading it, part of me is still within this novel, and I truly believe future generations will regard The Wake as a classic.”
Paul Kingsnorth is the author of two non-fiction books, One No, Many Yeses (2003) and the highly acclaimed Real England (2008), as well as a collection of poetry, Kidland (2011). A former journalist and deputy editor of The Ecologist magazine, he has won several awards for his poetry and essays. In 2009, he co-founded the Dark Mountain Project, an international network of writers, artists and thinkers in search of new stories for troubled times. Much of his writing can be found online at www.paulkingsnorth.net. The Wake is his first novel.
The Wake is published by Unbound, a crowdsource funding platform, whose investors include actor Mark Rylance.

The Gordon Burn Prize, run in partnership by New Writing North, Faber & Faber, and the Gordon Burn Trust, was conceived to pay tribute to the legacy of the late author. Newcastle-born Gordon was a literary polymath, writing on subjects ranging from celebrity to serial killers, politics to contemporary art, sport to the media.

The shortlist for the prize this year was: The Valley by Richard Benson (Bloomsbury), The Kills by Richard House (Picador), The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth (Unbound), The Trip to Echo Spring by Olivia Laing (Canongate), American Interior by Gruff Rhys (Hamish Hamilton), and The Free by Willy Vlautin (Faber & Faber).


Friday 10 October 2014

Structuring your story

#These are some of the handy hints from our free writers’ toolkit . We’ll be running a few more over the weeks to come but the full guide can be downloaded from the home page of our website at www.inscribemedia.co.uk

 




Beginning your short story
However you start your story, the beginning should have The Question, something that hooks your reader. You need to grab them from those first lines.

One way do to this is intrigue the reader. For instance, “Bill Bloggs was dead” may give the end away but the readers wants to find out why he died and if he deserved it.

The dropped introduction can also work: “Betty was a pleasant woman. She would do anything for anyone. Everyone liked old Betty. A true angel, they used to say. Which was why it was such a shock when she was killed by a Mafia hitman.”

There is another way of hooking readers, in which the writer can draw us in with the sheer quality of their writing, as in books like Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee.

Whatever you do, remember that all stories begin in the middle - the people you write about have already plenty of history. What you are doing is catapulting the reader into their life.

 


The middle of the story
The middle is there to keep the story going, fill in gaps, create tension and allow the story to develop but it should only be as long as if needed, not overwritten or underwritten.

Write your short story in a series of episodes, maybe only a few lines long. Short stories are a series of small chapters, maybe only a few lines but representing a development in the story.

This requires really effective writing because, whereas in a novel you might have eight or nine pages to recount an incident, that luxury simply does not exist in a short story.

If you take our competition, our limit for a story is 2,000 words. Sounds a lot but not if you let your episodes run too long.

So, how do you achieve such tight writing? Well, it might be that you describe a location in a line rather than a paragraph, produce only sparing details of your character or recount a conversation in four snatches of dialogue rather than a page.

Many winning short story authors in competitions around the world have been those who achieved such effective writing.

All of this is not to say that when you write a novel, you can waffle on to your hearts content. Indeed, the disciplines of short story writing can be invaluable when you tackle a novel. Whatever you write, every word must do its job. its a good mantra to live by.


 
The end of the story
There are all sorts of ways of ending a short story but the most popular is some kind of twist, something that startles the reader, or perhaps makes sense of the rest of the story. On the other hand, you may go for a poignant ending.

There is also a growing trend for stories that simply stop.

Any of these is fine: the really important thing is that you do it well.
John Dean

The narrative flow

These are some more of the handy hints from our free writers’ toolkit . We’ll be running a few more over the weeks to come but the full guide can be downloaded from the home page of our website at www.inscribemedia.co.uk

 





Where do ideas come from?
For some writers, stories always start with a place, somewhere that strikes them so forcibly that the story unfolds around them.

Other writers start with a character, someone so interesting, so intriguing that they can almost tell the story on their own.

Other writers begin with the story itself, an idea inspired by a newspaper snippet, something someone says, a sudden sense of what if?
Some write for additional reasons, to get a point over, to add to our knowledge of the world or to make us think about an issue in a different way.

Whatever your motivation - and there will be many others - one thing is certain: if it drives you to sit down in front of that computer or lift up that pen, its got to be worth writing about.


 


Creating the triangle
Good story writing depends on many things but can be boiled down to three factors, the triangle.

At the top is the narrative, a strong story, plenty of pace, a tale that enthrals the readers.

At one bottom corner is a sense of place, a strong sense of where the action is taking place.

At the other corner is a sense of being, the creation of characters strong and interesting enough to carry the story.

Get the triangle right and the rest flows from it.


THE NARRATIVE

Structuring the short story
Some writers opt for the beginning, middle, end approach, a traditional and proven format which has served short story writers well down the decades.
Others go for deliberately confusing the reader, creating stories which are
not clear at the start but which slowly reveal themselves. They may do it by
concealing where the action takes place, or perhaps who the central
characters are. Or keeping back the salient piece of information the reader
needs to make sense of everything.

Some writers go for the flashback approach, beginning the story with an
incident then working backwards to explain how we arrived at this moment. Knowing what happens at the end can make the events that unfold that little
but more poignant.
John Dean

Handy hints

These are some of the handy hints from our free writers’ toolkit . We’ll be running a few more over the weeks to come but the full guide can be downloaded from the home page of our website at www.inscribemedia.co.uk





The rules of writing
Some general rules as you develop your story

* Consider the reader - do not write for yourself, always write for the reader.

* Be disciplined - you may wish to pack lots of information in but does the reader need it?

* You may not have put enough information in - you can imagine where a scene is set but have you given the reader the information they need? You may have drawn a character but can your readers see them?

* Be brutal - if you have overwritten, chop out the fat.


Rules of the short story
1 . The best stories are the ones that follow a fairly narrow subject line: too many plotlines and you end up with a novel!

2. An effective short story often covers a very short time span. It may be one single episode that proves pivotal in the life of the character.

3. Don't have too many characters. Each new character will bring a new dimension to the story, and too many diverse dimensions dilute the theme. Have only enough characters to effectively tell the story.

4. Make every word count. There is no room for unnecessary expansion in a short story. If each word is not working towards putting across the story, delete it.
John Dean

Wednesday 8 October 2014

Cracking first lines

First lines are so important in setting the scene for readers.  How about these an excellent examples from our e-anthologies Global Shorts and VegemiteWhiskers?



I met Silas in a bar called The Trickster. He was the Joker. I was the Queen of Hearts. Thats the beginning of Heart String by S J Finn, the first story in our e-anthology Global Shorts.

Or On the day of my grandmothers funeral, I stopped eating. Thats the start of Eat, Mister by John Michaelson.

“I always get away with it, I’m invulnerable, I’m the man,,” he thought, and he said it loud, right into the ear of the wimp who was lying pinned beneath his foot in a remote corner of the playground , which is the start to I Always Get Away With It by Stuart McCarthy.


Its not like anyone around here actually properly celebrates Christmas. Thats the start to Andrew Frosts Chrissie Lights, one of the stories in our Australian e-anthology Vegemite Whiskers. 
 

Or how about this at the start of Bella Andersons The Last of My Line? I am the last of my line; my eyes will never shine from another face, no one will laugh or talk like me and my memory will not survive a careless generation.

You can check both books out on Amazon.

John Dean

Winner's stories are published

Bert Velthuis, who won the Global Short Story Competition’s annual prize for 2011 with his story Napolo, has had a collection of short stories published, called In a Four Wheeled Bed of Flowers.

The twenty-six stories read like tales told to friends at sundown on the terrace, a glass of wine in hand, small bowls of olives and roasted almonds on the table.

They embrace almost eighty years, the earliest stories about Bert’s youth in a provincial town in the East of Holland in the thirties and forties of last century. Following these are the years at college in the fifties, studying tropical agriculture and, at the end of that decade, departure to Africa where the flags of colonial powers Great Britain, France, Belgium, Spain and Portugal still flew in most countries south of the Sahara.

The small Central African British Protectorate of Nyasaland – to become the Republic of Malawi in 1964 - is the setting for anecdotes of thirty-eight years of a tea planter’s life.

The final stories of the book are of Ibiza where Bert and Anneke live their vintage years in an old finca, surrounded by vines, and orange, lemon, fig and almond trees.
To order the book, prepared in conjunction with Anneke, you can send an e-mail to bertvelthuis@telefonica.net or write to Bert Velthuis, Buzon 48, Telepost, Paseo Vara de Rey 4, 07800 Ibiza, Spain, for information on payment.

Price per copy: £ 10.00.

Postage: £ 5.50 ( outside Europe: £ 7.60 ).


Saturday 4 October 2014

Good time to enter short story competition

With three weeks to go, the new quarterly Global Short Story Competition has had just eight entries, which means it is a great time to enter.
Begun more than six years ago, the competition has until now run on a monthly basis but has switched to one which runs for three months at a time, with the new one running from August 1 to October 31, 2014.
The prizes continue to be £100 for the first prize and a £25 prize for highly commended writers. The entry fee remains £5.
The competition, which has topped £11,000 in prize money handed out, has had entries from more than 60 countries over the years.
Each competition is judged by Fiona Cooper, an author in North-East England, where the competition’s organisers Inscribe Media are also based.
The competition, which has been supported by best-selling author Bill Bryson since it was established six and a half years ago, can be entered at www.inscribemedia.co.uk

John Dean

The return of the novella

I have been researching the world of short novels and it seems to me that the time for them to make a comeback could be upon us because of the e-book revolution.
Folks are happy to read 30,000 words of story on their hand-helds - particularly on holiday when a book that can be finished in a day or two is welcome.
So what exactly is a novella? Well, it’s an extended short story in many ways, constructed in episodes but written in a tight and clipped way to guarantee pace.
The  Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards defined the novella as having a word count of between 17,500 and 40,000. Other definitions start as low as 10,000 words.
There are plenty of writers who can see the sense in the idea. I know some who would love us to run a short story competition with a word limit around that figure because they feel that 2,000 words simply does not give enough space for the story to breathe.
Why are novellas so effective? Well, an eight page scenes becomes two pages, a, 800 word passage of dialogue becomes 200, if that. It’s the mantra I teach to the many writers with whom I work across the world - does your story need those extra words, can they come out, will the story really suffer if they do?
I look at my early novels and it’s a lesson I have needed to learn on my own behalf as well. Hopefully, my writing has become crisper as a result of that growing sense of discipline.
Until recently the problem has been that there were still relatively few novella publishers but now there are plenty of examples of the shorter form in the world of e-books.
Maybe the time has come…


John Dean

Thursday 2 October 2014

Mentoring and online writing courses

A reminder that, in addition to the various free things we do, one of the paid-for services we offer is one supporting writers.

Why should you hire a professional writing mentor, though? Isn’t it enough to attend a class/workshop or a writing group? Or ask a friend or relative to comment?

Well, it depends what you want and need and bespoke mentoring from Inscribe Media can help some writers, providing the experience and expertise to -

• understand your work

• nurture you and your writing

• let you retain control of your ideas and your writing

* provide expert, specific advice about what is working and what isn’t.

We focus on major issues, such as how your story hangs together, what your characters are doing or could be doing, what is hurting your story’s momentum, what story elements are not pulling their weight.

We identify the differences between good and great and point out your writing strengths, so you become confident about what not to change.

We also give suggestions and help you establish good processes and writing goals and suggest markets for your work.

If long-term mentoring does not appeal, we run short writing courses as well.

You can find out more at http://www.inscribemedia.co.uk/writing-courses---bespoke-mentoring.html
You can also access our free downloadable writing guide at www.inscribemedia.co,uk and find loads of free tips on our blog here.



John Dean

It's all in the editing

When editing your own work, it is often easy to miss or overlook minor problems. This is usually because you are so familiar with your own work that your mind automatically replaces the tiny typo with the correct word.

There are also times where your mind will completely overlook glaring holes in your plot line because you know what your story is supposed to look like.
Let's skip the simple editing problems, like typing errors, or grammatical errors, and take a look at some larger issues.
In order to edit your own work properly, you will need to go back through your story, reading it as a reader would.

Here are some things you should look for:

Plot

1. Is there a clear, believable main plot?
2. Is your plot clearly resolved, so that the reader understands the events which led to this resolution?
3. Do the subplots advance the story?
4 Writing a short story is far different than a novel. Squeezing six subplots into a short story simply does not work.

Pace
1. Does the plot move fast enough to grab the reader's attention?
2. Have you glossed over important details in your hurry to get to more interesting scenes?
3 Are action scenes written in a direct fashion, propelling the reader forward? Are more subtle scenes developed enough for the reader to catch the nuances?

Setting
1. Does the description of the setting transport your reader into your fictional world?
2. Do the descriptions drag on for pages or (much better) are they interspersed throughout the story?

Characters
1. Are the characters 'real’?

2. Do they hold the reader’s interest?
3. Are the characters consistent? Ok, let them surprise us but it has to sound like it could happen.

4. Is the character's background given in one large lump or small manageable pieces? Background needs to be unfolded, showing the reader different layers with each event.



 
John Dean