Authors Electric

Image Credit:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. I love using a wide variety of writing prompts. They’re great for triggering further ideas. Sometimes they’re enough for me to picture a potential character. Sometimes the prompt gives me a theme. Sometimes, especially with opening line prompts, I have a way into a story and I then create the best character to meet the needs of that prompt. I’m unlikely to have a character with their head in a book taking part in an action story, for example. (It’s not impossible but it’s unlikely I’d do it).  Writing to prompts regularly has helped me get used to writing to prompts set by anyone else. This is useful for competitions with set themes. It’s also handy for responding to writing exercises set by workshop leaders at events such as The Writers’ Summer School, Swanwick. I set prompts for the monthly Zoom meeting of the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group . I join in with the prompts on the night and, ...

Image Credit:  Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. I love writing prompts. I use a wide variety ranging from the various random generators to story cubes to picking a proverb or phrase from books and then writing a tale around this saying. They are excellent as themes. I also use books of prompts and have contributed to some too. As I write a lot of flash fiction and short stories, I always need ways of coming up with ideas. I focus on getting the characters outlined because for me characters make or break a story. But I’ve found the prompts have been brilliant in giving me my themes (and these often trigger the ideas for the characters to service said themes well). I enter competitions regularly too. Some have open themes but the majority I go in for have a set theme. I’ve found writing to prompts is useful practice for writing to competition themes set by someone else.  I also like mixing up the prompts I use as this (a) keeps me on my creative toes and (b) me...

Image Credit: Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos.  Writing exercises make me think outside of my usual creative box and help me mix up how I create a story.  Using Random Generators I use random generators a lot. These include generators for random words, pictures, objects, verbs, themes, questions - the list is almost endless. All make me respond to the challenge of getting a story from what was generated. Often I can generate something and get two different stories. I like that a lot. Double bubble and all that. I send one of those stories off to an online magazine I write for and the other I use for my YouTube channel so I get to tick the submit a fresh story and do some marketing boxes all at the same time here. I like that a lot too.  First Drafts and Warming Up When I run workshops, I set exercises. For a recent one at the Swanwick Writers’ Summer School, I prepared my material but deliberately didn’t draft my “answers” to the exercises I set. I wr...

I don't want to be a one dimensional author and I think it is very important to be a life long learner of any craft. It is with this in mind that I started exploring ways to exercise my writing. The need to become a better author and ensure that I remain relevant has driven me to do writing gymnastics. Some days I am walking, running other days and weightlifting some days. I know I need to exercise my body, one look in the mirror or a trip up the stairs reminds me how much I need to. I have not always been successful with the gym and I have wasted many months of gym membership, but when it comes to exercising my writing, I have enjoyed it more and find myself committed. It has been a lot of fun exercising my mind.  However, as with physical exercise, I find that writing exercise requires the same discipline and intentionality. It doesn't just happen, you don't just get slim or strong and like physical exercise if you stop, bad habits creep back in and the weight creeps back...