Thursday 15 November 2018

Workshop – Women’s Short Stories - Betty McKay


Betty specialises in short stories and has had many accepted; especially for women’s magazines.

She explained that compared with when she started submitting short stories, the number of magazine titles has considerably reduced, but there is still a market.  There are different attitudes between the various publishers and there remains the need to adhere to their guidelines.

There are many different sources for ideas for instance new slants on Fairy Tales, Top 10 lists from search engines and from Photos.

Betty usually has a plot in mind before she begins a story even though the plot may change half way. She looks for believability both for the plot and the characters.

The dialogue can be used as a method of describing a character; people’s names and the style of speech can leave the reader with an impression of a person.

Ending are important and it is useful to have more than one to choose from. Do not necessary pick the first one that springs to mind. Magazines are not necessarily looking for happy endings, but like to feel that justice has prevailed.

Much of the workshop was taken up with a series of exercises to practice using the idea-generating techniques.

With the help of this workshop, we are all looking to create a 1000-2000 Woman’s short story. Deadline 27th November.

Many thanks to Betty for a busy and interesting workshop; packed with plenty of detail.

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There are two amendments to the Syllabus.
         Raymond Burke - Stand and Deliver 12 March 2019
         Ajay Close - Writing for Magazines  12 Feb 2019

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Next week.
       Adjudication and Readings from Poetry Competition
       Workshop – Sci Fi and Fantasy  - Billy Thompson.

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