Hello Rebels, welcome to The Rebel Author Podcast episode 39. I’m talking to an extra special guest this week, my very first writing tutor, Esther Chilton. We’re talking all about how to earn money with short stories, fillers, reader letters and competitions.

Episode Show Notes

This week’s questions is:

Do you write short stories or flash fiction?

Find out more about our guest Esther Newton on her:

Blog

Twitter

Her book A Walk in the Woods

Don’t forget The Anatomy of Prose is now live, you can get it in ebook, paperback or hardback now.

Click the link here.

Order the Workbook here. 

Book recommendation: Publication Guaranteed by Esther Newton

Amazon UK: https://amzn.to/3gtIVdj 

Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/2AyEkr3

Listener Rebel of the Week is Katrina Hood

If you’d like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com or tweet me @rebelauthorpod

Thank you to all patrons for the support. If you’d like to support the show, and get access to all the bonus essays, posts and content, you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack

The post 039 How to Make Money with Short Fiction with Esther Chilton appeared first on Sacha Black.

So this week instead of my wordy bullshit, I bring you more writing competitions than you can shake a shakespearian cat at.

With any competition, it’s advisable to ensure you rake the rules of each one with your finest, slickest rule finding comb. I have not displayed the rules of any of these competitions, so if you don’t check, don’t expect to win.

October

1. Adult Fairytale Competition Entry fee £5, 2500-1700 words. Prizes £200 and magazine publication; £50 and magazine publication. Closes 14th October.

2. Bath Flash Fiction Award Entry fee £9, £4 for members, 300 word. Prizes: £1000, £300, £100. Closes 16th October

3. Stroud Book Festival Contemporary Writing Competition Entry fee FREE, 1500 words. Prizes: £100. Closes 21st October

4. Spine-Chilling Fiction Comp Entry fee £3.50, no more than 1000 words including the title. Prizes: £500; £300; £200; £100. Closes 31st October.

5. Esther Newton’s Writing Comp Extraordinaire  Entry fee FREE, up to 500 words. Prizes: £20 plus Esther’s book of short stories and publication on blog. For two runners up: Esther’s book plus publication on blog. Closes 31st October.

6. The London Magazine Short Story Competition. Entry free £5, up to 4000 words. Prizes: £500; £300; £200. Closes 31st October

7. NAWG mentioned in the continuous comp section, has two other competition categories closing on 31st October: Novella, 5000 words plus one page synopsis, and short story competition 500-2000 words.

 8. Novel Opening Chapter & Synopsis Competition – Entry fee £10, optional critique £25, first chapter and synopsis. Prizes: £500; £200. Closes 31st October.

November

9. Caledonia Novel Award Entry fee £20, first 20 pages, plus 200-word synopsis of a novel by an unpublished author. Prizes: £1000, writing course at Moniack Mhor, online publication of the winning extract. Closes 1st November.

10. 500 Word Flash Fiction Competition Entry fee £5, 500 words. Prizes:  Prizes £200 and magazine publication; £50 and magazine publication. Closes 14th November.

11. Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Competition Entry fee $20, 1500 words. Prizes $3000. Closes 15th November.

12. Tell a Tale Entry fee FREE, 500 words. Prizes: £300. Closes 19th November.

13. Frightening First Line Contest Entry fee FREE, 31 words. Prizes: writing class of your choice. Closes 21st November.

14. WritersBureau Flash Fiction Entry fee £5, up to 500 words. Prizes: £300; £200; £100. Closes 30th November.

15. The Final Word! Entry fee £3.50, £1 goes to charity, last 100 words of a story. Prizes: £100 plus a bottle of personalised champagne, plus a FREE critique of up to 1,000 words. Closes 30th November.

16. 1000 Word Challenge Entry fee £5, 1000 words. Prizes: £100. Closes 30th

17. Fish Short Story Competition Entry fee €20 post, €22 online. Prizes: €3000 plus a week at Anam Cara Writer’s Retreat in West Cork plus €300 expenses for second, €300 for third. Closes 30th November.

18. UK Internation Novel Writing Competition Entry fee £12, first 5000 words. Prizes: £5000; £2000; £1000. Closes 30th November.

December

19. Celtic Mythology
Short Story Competition Entry fee $7, 4,000 words. Prizes: $500; $250; $100. Closes 10th December.

20. RW First Chapter Competition Entry fee £15. Prizes: review by literary agent Sam Copeland. Closes 11th December. They also have monthly themed comps, short story and flash comps.

21. Opening Up Digital Fiction Writing Competition Entry fee FREE, check the rules for entry types. Prizes: £300. Closes 15th December.

January 2017

22. Exeter Novel Prize Entry fee £18, first 10,000 words of an uncontracted novel plus synopsis. Prizes: £500; £75 x5. Closes 1st January.

23. Novella-in-Flash Award Entry fee £16, 18,000 words. Prizes: £300 and publication. Closes 17th January.

24. National Memory Day Creative Writing Competition  Entry fee £3, 1500 words. Prizes: £4000. Closes 20th January.

25. Bath Flash Fiction Novella in Flash Entry fee £16, 7000 – 18000 words. Prizes: £300′ 2x £100. Closes 31st January.

26. Fish Short Memoir Contest Entry fee €16, €18 postal, up to 4000 words. Prizes: €1000, publication in annual Fish Anthology and a week at Cash Ana Writers retreat in Andalusia and €300 expenses. Closes 31st January.

27. Plymouth Writer’s Group Open Comp Entry fee £5, up to 1500 words. Prizes: £250; £50; anthology publication. Closes 31st January.

28. Win £1000 Book Publishing Deal Entry fee £500, 60-100,000 words amongst other requirements. Prizes: £1000 plus book published in 2017. Closes 31st January.

February

29. Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook 2017 Short Story Competition Entry fee FREE, up to 2000 words. Prizes: A place on an Arvon course of the winners’ choice and online publication. Closes 13th February.

30. Fish Flash Fiction Competition Entry fee €14, €8 subsequent entries, 300 words. Prizes: Top ten stories published in the FISH ANTHOLOGY 2017. €1,000; online writing course with Fish. Closes 28th February.

AND A Few Bonus Continuous Comps

31. The NAWG ‘100’ Competition. Entry fee £3, £5.50 for two, £8 for three. Prizes: £75; £25 for every 100 entries – email entries to: comp-100@nawg.co.uk.

32. 101 Word Story Comp Entry fee FREE. (various competitions, with various closing dates and various prizes.)

33. #StoriesEverywhere Entry fee FREE, 140 characters. Prizes: free writing class of your choice. Closes monthly.

34. Less of a competition more of a one day writers retreat for those based in the UK, check out the writershq page of events, I really wana go to one, mostly because they’re all sweary and boozy, what’s not to love? So if anyone fancies it, drop me a line.

Find this useful? Why not sign up for a monthly newsletter that’s just as useful as this post :p. Subscribe now, here.

The post 30 Writing Competitions With Cash Prizes appeared first on Sacha Black.

Every author knows they should be able to write a short, but not everyone can.

I can’t.

I’m so inept at writing short stories, I wrote a piece of flash fiction last year and the fucking things turned into 30,000 words of what will be a novel. Apparently I didn’t get the ‘SHORT’ memo.

*shrug*

All I can do is write full length novels, or blink-of-the-eye flash fiction. Something about that smug middle man puts me in a catatonic state of ‘fuck-you-upitus-writersblock.’

However, Esther Newton, is a master of the short. I’ve just finished reading her collection of award-winning short stories: The Siege and like always, I figured I’d share some lessons.

I learnt many, but something I think Esther is spectacular at is a killer ending. Here’s how to master a killer ending for your short stories.

ONE – Diametric  stories

By diametric story, I mean that the start of the story is the exact opposite to the ending.

An example in a paragraph:

Let’s say your story starts with you, skirt ripped, hauling yourself out a ditch to do the walk of shame home. You’re still single, still heartbroken and just got used… again. So you promise to be a good girl, starting again…. tomorrow. You spend the majority of the short story not being a good girl and doing, well, everyonething. But, in the process you fall in love. Pinch of conflict, dash of romance and the end of the story has you climbing out of a ditch all over again, only this time a hand reaches out to grab you and pull you out. The hand of your new lover.

The start is the exact opposite to the end.

Opposing the beginning and end of a story is an essential tool for novels but it’s like Oxygen for shorts. The lack of words and depth keep the beginning more salient in a readers mind. Meaning a nice big bang for your ending.

Newton’s third story in the collection is the perfect example of this. Now, I don’t want to ruin all her stories so I will try not to spoil it, but this one is so poetic and emotional it’s the perfect example of this so I HAD no choice.

The story opens: ‘There would be no reading of the last will and testament of Joshua Needham.’

Now, without giving too much away, the story ends with a will of another kind, but the fact there is one makes the ending the exact opposite to the beginning and wonderfully satisfying for the reader.

I asked Esther what the most important factors are in setting up a killer short story ending, she said:

“When I open a story, I like to hook the reader’s interest straight away. The reader starts to think a certain way because of that opening, so I then like to take them elsewhere – often in a completely different direction to the one they first thought the story was going in. It makes the opening all the more effective and by the end the reader feels as if they have been on a real journey. So to answer the question, for me, a killer ending often works because of the opening.

Other important factors –

• Leaving your reader satisfied. Ultimately you want them to read that last line and think, ‘What a fantastic ending to a great story’.
• Not going beyond the story’s natural ending e.g. in a horror story, it’s more effective to finish with the girl thinking she’s got away only for the monster to appear right at the end, its jaws drooling, than it is to go into graphic detail about how the monster finished her off, the hours all her friends spent looking for her, how her beloved dog pined for her and so on.
• Twist endings are good, but many are obvious; think outside the box. What won’t the reader expect?”
  

  ---

TWO – The Set Up

Newton creates every circus performers wet dream; a tightrope so seamless it perfectly joins the beginning of the story to the end. That’s what makes her stories so satisfying: consistency of that thread/theme/phrasing/plot line, throughout the story.

But, if you want to give your readers that goggle eyed ‘I just opened an entire box of chocolates’ feeling, you need to make sure the build up to it is just as watertight.

I will continue to use Joshua’s Will, save spoilers for any of the other stories. In order to make the reading of his ‘alternate will’ so satisfying. Newton does several things:

1. Make a will or one more moment with Joshua the one thing the characters  want
2. Make it seem impossible for them to have one more moment, or for Joshua to have a will
3. Torture the characters 
4. Torture the characters some more

These factors: making it clear what the characters want, making it impossible for them to get and then torturing them before giving it to them are fundamental to the perfect set up.

I asked Esther what factors she considers when setting up her stories:

“I tend to plot my stories. I find the beginning and ending come to me pretty easily; I then have to work out how the story gets from the beginning to the end. This is when the set-up comes into play. If my ending is a twist, I need to think about how not to give it away, and how to lead the reader away from it. But then neither must I leave the reader feeling cheated and as if the ending has come from nowhere.  

When I write a short story, I always picture myself in the characters’ shoes; I imagine what it’s like to be them, to experience what they’re going through. I think this helps the storyline to work, as well as for the characters to come to life.”

---

THREE – Last line

I’ve written about the last lines of YA dystopian fiction before. I looked at the differences in last lines between first and last books in trilogies. There are obvious differences like, the last line of a first book leaves a little something open, final books don’t.  There are other things novel endings do, like foreshadow when there’s another book coming, but they also resolve conflict.

Shorts don’t allow a continuation of the story. They’re one offs, so everything needs to be resolved with a shit-the-dog-up firework of a last line.

In Newton’s story ‘Joshua’s Will’ the ending is symbolic with another will being read but the actual last line is the emotional reaction to it depicting the bittersweet satisfaction of being given the will and giving the reader the same feeling. I cried harder than the terror tot does when I tell him he can’t have a third cookie.

Newton has another wicked cool trick up her sleeve, she creates poetry through the opposing flow of diametric start and end sentences. Newton also uses repetition and symbolism to give her last line some TNT.

I asked Esther how she makes sure her last line counts:

“When I set it up, I have the beginning and ending in mind. I’ll loosely plan the middle, but often it’ll change once I start and sometimes the ending does as well. But I don’t worry about it; I let my mind work at it and sometimes – when I’m doing something mundane like cleaning the loo – the perfect last line comes to mind. For me, a cracking last line is essential. It’s the last thing that’s read and so you want it to stay with your reader.”

---

FOUR  – No loose ends

Loose plot ends are a no, no, it’s as bad as walking out the work toilets with your dress hooked in your kacks and toilet roll superglued to your stiletto.

I asked Esther how she ties up her loose ends:

“I always think about ensuring the ending is clear to the reader. Does everything make sense? Yes, as the writer, you know exactly what’s going on, but will a reader? So I always look at it from the reader’s viewpoint.

That isn’t to say you have to tie your story up in a nice little bow. Many readers like a story with an open ending so they can finish it for themselves. But it must be clear e.g. it’s no good having a character who’s killed off earlier on in the story suddenly turning up at the end alive and well without any explanation.”

---

FIVE – Make Use of Your Titles

The title is often forgotten. It’s a hover over the submit button, ‘fuck-it’ realisation. But it shouldn’t be. Short stories are compact, you have a limited amount of words, and usually, the title isn’t included. So use it wisely.

How?

Use it to foreshadow, Give a secret away, or, like Newton, in her last story ‘ A New Beginning’ use it as a repeating line – in title and again as the last line of the story.

I asked Esther how you can make best use of your titles:

“Titles work well in intriguing the reader. Your title could be a play on words; the reader won’t know til they read your story. Or a title can set the mood and atmosphere for a story. So by the time the reader has read the first line, they’re already into the story, and feeling part of it.”

Amazon says this about the book

“After launching her short story collection, ‘The Siege and Other Award Winning Stories’, as an ebook, freelance writer and The Writers Bureau tutor, Esther Newton, has received numerous requests to bring out a paperback edition. ‘The Siege and Other Award Winning Stories’ paperback features a further six short stories, as well as the original twelve from the ebook, offering more drama, more tension, more laughs and even more emotion. From the heart-rending story of a young girl who’s never had a friend, to some special letters to Father Christmas, and a woman running away from a violent man, each story will keep you reading on straight into the next. The collection includes prize winning short stories from Writing Magazine, Writers’ News, The Global Short Story and Ouse Valley Writers competitions, amongst others.” 

Esther’s Author Biography

I have been working as a freelance writer for sixteen years, regularly writing articles and short stories for magazines and newspapers such as Freelance Market News, Writers’ Forum, The Guardian, The Cat, and The People’s Friend to name a few.

Winner of Writing Magazine, Writers’ News and several other prestigious writing competitions and awards, I have also had the privilege of judging writing competitions. A collection of some of my prize winning stories has been put together in a book, The Siege and Other Award Winning Stories, which is available in e-book format and paperback from Amazon and all other on-line stores.

My children’s series of fiction books for 5-7 year olds, Sophie’s Secret Quest, has been taken on by a publisher and the first in the series is due for launch later this year, you can find out more here.

I volunteer for my local Cats Protection and was delighted when they asked me if I’d take over as editor for their magazine, The Cat Flap. It’s been a bit of a learning curve, but I’m relishing my new role.

As well as working as a freelance writer, I have branched out into the exciting world of copywriting, providing copy for sales letters, brochures, leaflets, slogans and webpages.

I love writing but I also enjoy helping others, which I achieve in my role as tutor for The Writers Bureau. In addition to tutoring I have a blog, designed to provide writers with support, market information and advice here. I also have my own guidance and advice service, which I set up to offer writers support in any way I can, find out more here.

Like this post? Get even more exclusive content straight to your mailbox, by signing up for my brand spanking, sparkly newsletter right here.

The post 5 Tactics to Master Killer Short Story Endings appeared first on Sacha Black.