Writing Magazine

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Writing Magazine2 min read
Dear Reader
Why think small when everything is up for grabs in the world of words? One of the greatest and most glorious things about writing is that the only limits to what we can do with it are in our imaginations. With words, you can come close to creating ma
Writing Magazine6 min read
Making talent PAY
So you’re an advanced writer. You’ve learned the basics and started to master the kinds of tricks that professionals typically use to engage readers. Being an advanced writer means not only being able to write, but also knowing how to structure, to e
Writing Magazine7 min read
The Fictional Suitcase
To read fiction set in faraway places is like living out of a suitcase but only better. All you need is a book and you can transport yourself into a magical place without the need for tickets, queues or visas. As a child, growing up in India, I read
Writing Magazine7 min read
What Is Writing?
When I was starting my third book about my work on the Endangered Alphabets Project – work that involves finding, researching, promoting and carving the world’s 300+ minority scripts – I found myself asking a question I had never asked myself, despit
Writing Magazine6 min read
FINDING Poems
The worst of it is that we’re distracted by a busy world. Whether we like it or not we have to face it: every day there are new emails to answer, telehone calls to make, messages of whatever kind to send. We’re all contactable, and while I recognise
Writing Magazine6 min read
Cross-pollination
Poetry can be seen as a bit of a ‘Marmite’ genre for readers and writers alike. Many people have memories of being made to extract meaning from impenetrable verse at school or having to learn and recite whole poems by rote. With the popularity of mor
Writing Magazine7 min read
Go With The Flow
Much as we’d like them to, our creative lives don’t always behave themselves. They can be unruly, obstinate, wilful and mercurial. ‘You want to write your novel,’ they might say. ‘Not happening. Wonder whether clowns have got really long toes to go i
Writing Magazine3 min read
Dress Up And Show Up
You build an entire world in a dress. But most people don’t. This is understandable. The discipline of fashion history is among the most ignored, often considered as a lesser art by academics, the domain of the vain, the frivolous, and the shallow.
Writing Magazine3 min read
REAL LIFE, great stories
Creative non-fiction – using techniques of fiction to write about real life in effective and compelling ways – can take many forms and this month we’re looking at the most creative end of the spectrum, where parts of the story are true, but not all.
Writing Magazine6 min read
Your Writing Critiqued
“Pieces of the puzzle make funny shapes 1 but they fit together in the end.” 2 It was my father who had once spoken these words. 3 Their aspect is so long forgotten 4 and yet, these many years later, his words would bring comfort in the face of doubt
Writing Magazine7 min read
The Building Block Of Character: Part Four
So far in this series we have mentioned the existence of four distinct character types: • Main Character• Antagonist / Nemesis• Secondary Character• Secondary Secondary Character We have also looked at how these character types reveal themselves to t
Writing Magazine5 min read
G.d. Wright
Writing is a bug, and I caught it very early on in life. Until recently I couldn’t put an exact ‘age’ on it but, when my parents cleared their loft out recently, they found a mountain of old school stuff of mine. It was from this that I can tell you
Writing Magazine2 min read
Resting Bitch Face
‘There’s always one,’ Jane Wenham-Jones once told me. We were discussing giving talks. She had discovered that wherever she went to speak there was always one person who would sit, arms folded, lips tightly pressed together, staring at her as if to s
Writing Magazine7 min read
House of SECRETS
I don’t know about you, but I love a book set in a dark and gothic house. The kind of place that is filled with mystery and secrets, so full of atmosphere that it feels like a character in its own right. I’ve read my fair share of stories set in psyc
Writing Magazine6 min read
Sally Page
I am someone who has come to writing later in life. My debut novel, The Keeper of Stories, sold over half a million copies and made me a Sunday Times bestseller as I turned sixty. A late developer! So, for anyone reading this who may think it is too
Writing Magazine6 min read
The World Of Writing
I always enjoy learning new things from your magazine as ever since I was little I’d dreamed of becoming an author. Family suggested I get a ‘proper job’ so I did care work for many years until my disabilities stopped me working four years ago. It ga
Writing Magazine5 min read
In The Spotlight: your Writing
The love shone through in the many submissions we received in this month’s postbox. We’d invited you to send writing rooted in something that really mattered to you, and with submissions on topics including video games, tea, beach-combing, Shakespear
Writing Magazine6 min read
Subscribers’ News
As a change in direction, I have recently released a novel with knitting at its heart, and aimed at women aged 50+, writes subscriber Carol Waterkeyns. I wrote Casting Off, a story of 52-year-old Paula, as I felt that women of my age group often get
Writing Magazine3 min read
GET THE Write Idea
Start a new piece of writing inspired by this image. What first impressions do you have of this place? Who lives here? Why, and how did they come to live in this particular place? What’s their existence like on a day-to-day basis? Who might visit it
Writing Magazine6 min read
Time Travel The For The Clueless
Hello, my name is Jodi Taylor and I’ve written twenty-five books and a number of short stories – mostly about a bunch of time-travelling historians and their misadventures as they jump around the timeline, observing major historical events in contemp
Writing Magazine5 min read
As Sayings Go
Poetry sets out to communicate something the writer wants to share with a reader who wants to know. That ‘something’ can be as slight as I saw this and it made me laugh, as informative as a mnemonic to remember how many days there are in each month,
Writing Magazine4 min read
Juliet Greenwood
Juliet Greenwood is a historical novelist whose most recent novels for Storm Publishing are set in WW2 in the UK and in Europe. ‘It’s a period that has always fascinated me,’ she says. ‘I’m old enough to have grown up hearing first-hand accounts of w
Writing Magazine2 min read
5 Five Quick Questions
When and where did your journey as an author begin? After a career-changing row with my boss, I left corporate life, went freelance, and wrote in the gaps. It was what I always wanted to do, but I needed that nudge. The boss featured in my first boo
Writing Magazine4 min read
Expanding Possibilities
It’s only September. Or perhaps it’s even October, that’s if you’re rationing yourself and saving this issue of Writing Magazine to read in October itself? But it’s still not too early to think about writing projects for 2025. Maybe you’re one of th
Writing Magazine6 min read
Moonlighting
This month’s story, ‘The Moonlit Road’ by Ambrose Bierce presents the reader with an array of information from various sources. Throughout the story we are presented with three different perspectives on the same event – the murder of a woman called J
Writing Magazine5 min read
Winning Series
The Writing Magazine Children’s Book Prize is running again this autumn, and we are looking for outstanding chapter books for young readers, aged between around five and eight years old. Ideally, we are looking for stories that could realistically be
Writing Magazine6 min read
Sunshine HORROR
Coincidentally enough, as I type these words it’s a gloriously hot day and the sun is riding high in the sky. On this sort of day horror might be the furthest thing from your mind – perhaps you’re thinking of a trip to the park, a jaunt to the beach
Writing Magazine4 min read
Experimentation
The word experimentation may evoke memories from science lessons at school or images of researchers in white coats. However, experimentation isn’t restricted to laboratories. It can be helpful in finding out about all sorts of things in virtually any
Writing Magazine6 min read
Ghosting Around
As writers, we have the skills to bring our stories to life. Understanding the importance of structure, grammar, and how to entertain readers in an engaging way also means we have skills others don’t. Some people have the most fascinating tales to te
Writing Magazine2 min read
Behind The Tape
Q Would a new, young PC recruit be able to access the closed CID file of someone found drowned three months previously? And would toxicology be able to determine if the deceased was intoxicated at the time of drowning if the body had been in the wate
Writing Magazine3 min read
Adam Gauntlett
Adam Gauntlett is an agent in the Books Division of Peters Fraser and Dunlop (PFD) Fraser and Dunlop (PFD) Literary Agents, one of the longest-established agencies in London. He joined the company in 2010, having completed his Masters in English Lite
Writing Magazine4 min read
Get Published
Just over 200 years ago, the German poet, playwright and critic Heinrich Heine wrote, ‘Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.’ (Almansor: A Tragedy, 1823), writes Gary Dalkin This famous line from an otherwise forgotten ve
Writing Magazine3 min read
Considering Genres
Genres often have a moment where every agent and publisher seems to be seeking that particular category, to feed demand from readers. We’ve lived through a fair few in recent times, with an exploding Young Adult market that caught fire in recent year
Writing Magazine1 min read
Fiction Opportunities
The Fiction Desk has an open submission window for stories for its next anthology. Short stories in any genre may be submitted for its Summer 2024 call. All submissions must be original and unpublished, and between 1,000 and 10,000 words. The Fiction
Writing Magazine2 min read
Novel Competitions
Win a £1,000 first prize in the prize for unpublished novels by unrepresented authors. The Exeter Novel Prize is an annual competition from Creative Writing Matters and supported by Exeter Writers. It is for the first 10,000 words of an unpublished n
Writing Magazine7 min read
General News
The Hugo Awards, the most prestigious awards in the field of speculative fiction, were given at the 82nd World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon) at Glasgow 2024 in August, writes Gary Dalkin. The winners were, Best Novel, Some Desperate Glory, Em
Writing Magazine1 min read
Litmag Opportunities
The McNeese Review is produced by the MFA programme at McNeese State University USA and showcases contemporary fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and essays, writes PDR Lindsay-Salmon. For fiction the editorial team prefer streamlined prose and re
Writing Magazine3 min read
Anthology Markets
UK press Flame Tree Publishing are accepting submissions for three new anthologies, writes Gary Dalkin. The first two will be additions to the series Myths, Gods & Immortals, which have already featured volumes about (and titled) Medus, Odin, Circe a
Writing Magazine1 min read
Non-fiction Competitions
The Bridport Memoir Award is an international competition for unpublished memoir manuscripts. The first prize winner will receive £1,500 and a year’s mentoring from The Literary Consultancy. The winner will also be offered a consultation with A.M. He
Writing Magazine3 min read
Short Fiction Competitions
The Bath Flash Fiction Award, which runs three times a year, is given for original, unpublished short fiction up to 300 words. The winner will receive £1,000, and there are second and third prizes of £300 and £100. Two commendations each get £30. 50
Writing Magazine1 min read
Make Oportunities Knock
Earlier in the year, in June, it was Independent Bookshop Week. Pleasingly, despite trends perhaps suggesting otherwise, independent bookshops seem to be thriving. A week designed to focus some attention on them is an opportunity for their owners to
Writing Magazine4 min read
Poetry Competitions
The Passionfruit Review’s competition is for poems on the theme of ‘love’. The competition, which launched last year, invites original, unpublished poems up to 40 lines that interpret the ‘love’ theme in any way. There is a first prize of £400, a sec
Writing Magazine2 min read
Small Press Opportunities
Lyndsey Smith, editor at Horrorsmith Publishing, wants ‘quality work to take readers to some really dark places,’ writes PDR Lindsay-Salmon. The editorial team have been concentrating on through themed and professionally edited short stories. This ye
Writing Magazine1 min read
Podcast Market
Mirage is a niche travel writing podcast looking for the kind of writing not found in the usual travel guides: something ‘deeper than the frivolity of writing done by tourists,’ writes PDR Lindsay-Salmon. Make it individual, and honest, perhaps not e
Writing Magazine1 min read
Writing For Children Opps
The School Magazine is the umbrella name for several Australian print and digital titles published a self-funded business unit with the New South Wales Department of Education, writes Gary Dalkin. The magazines publish short stories, articles, plays,
Writing Magazine2 min read
Zines And Websites Accepting Submissions
The Dodge is a literary magazine based at the College of Wooster, USA that invites ‘eco-writing, works in translation, and writing about animals.’ Submit fiction up to 8,000 words including flash and micro fiction; nonfiction, creative nonfiction, 7,
Writing Magazine1 min read
Novel Prize
The 2024 Blue Pencil Agency Pitch Prize is open to unrepresented authors for a novel in any adult fiction genre. If offers the opportunity for up to 10 winners to pitch their novel and receive feedback from the agent judge, Katie Greenstreet from Pap
Writing Magazine2 min read
Don’t Wee In The Sea
I noticed a bizarre news item the other day. In Spain you can evidently now be fined more than £600 for urinating in the sea. This immediately poses not only the question why, but also how will anyone know? Will they check? I have visions of police f
Writing Magazine1 min read
Competition Launches
www.writers-online.co.uk/writing-competitions Writing Competitions, Writing Magazine, Warners Group Publications Ltd, West Street, Bourne, Lincs PE109PH WIN! £775 IN CASH PRIZES & PUBLICATION Take your writing to the dark side as this month’s contest
Writing Magazine7 min read
Jax
There is a girl called Jax walking in a whisper towards the back garden. A year in the house and she knows the surfaces well enough: the stair that was cracked by the weight of her sofa bed as they all heaved it up to her room – it creaks now, so she
Writing Magazine6 min read
FIRST Impressions
1874 saw Paris host the first exhibition of Impressionist paintings. To mark its 150th anniversary, Writing Magazine offered poets the challenge of writing a poem celebrating the occasion. There were some fascinating entries, offering different slant
Writing Magazine3 min read
Advance Warning
Back in the days when I worked in corporate publishing the company I worked for had a crisis. Their biggest author, a huge and prolific brand name who published multiple books a year whose sales generated millions of pounds of revenue – an enormous p
Writing Magazine1 min read
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