Jen

Our last article looked at common mistakes with characters, but now we look at what writers are already doing particularly well and celebrate the worlds they have been able to create thanks to great characterisation. We will use our latest issue, Firewords9, to illustrate this and give real examples of great character development.As always, good…

Good characters really pop off the page, even when a story is driven more by plot and action. This can be achieved in a variety of ways (some of which we will look at in the next article) but sometimes writers struggle. Reflecting on the submissions received for Firewords 9, it is clear to see…

For me, short stories and poetry take a lot of time and dedication to polish up to a standard whereby anyone but my nearest and dearest can read them. It was therefore surprising to me that, after writing the majority of this article, I could sit back and understand that my best story ideas do…

This week, I am extremely excited to be writing an article about the illustrations used in Firewords. I deal with the proofreading and editorial side of each issue so I approach the illustrations as an enthusiastic reader. This article will come from the eyes of a novice. It will describe what illustrations can bring to…

In part 1 and 2 of this series, we looked at the beginning and the middle of effective short stories. Now it’s time to jump to the ending.All we hope to do here is give examples of the kind of endings you could use. However, whatever you choose will completely depend on the entire context of the…

In the last episode of the Firewords podcast we talked all about the submission process and everything it involves. The following question was one we received afterwards, asking us to delve deeper on a specific point.“You mentioned past publishing credits briefly in this week’s podcast but I just wanted to ask a few follow-up questions…

While I will go on to say what makes the most effective cover letter, it is important to remember that your short story will speak for itself. The ‘greatness’ of a cover letter may slightly colour the editor’s preconceptions and help to either add or detract from how memorable your writing is, but shouldn’t have…

This article is the second of a three part series where we look at common flaws in the submissions we receive. If you missed it, part 1 was on the misuse of speech marks. Next up we cast a critical eye on sentence fragments.What goes wrong?Let’s keep this simple, for a moment. A fragment is…

This article is the first of a three part series where we shine a light on the most common mistakes we see in submissions. We want to try to help you avoid them, but also find out why these errors are so common. First up is the most frequent mistake we see: incorrect speech marks.What…