One of the entries which has just come in illustrated beautifully one of the most important aspects of starting a story - remember that it’s not the start.

Sounds a daft bit of advice but all stories begin in the middle of someone’s life when much has already gone before, when people‘s lives are already well under way.

The trick for the good writer is to give that sense from the very beginning of the story and this one started with a line that did just that. It gave us the idea that much had gone before, that it was set in a community with its own idiosyncrasies and histories. That is good story writing. It immediately draws us into the world in which the story is about to unfold.

Talking of unfolding, there is still a fortnight to enter the March competition and Fiona is hard at work judging those from February. We’ll make the announcement the moment we know the result of her deliberations.

John Dean March 18

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 10:16 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.