Setting about High Quality Self Editing for Short Story Competitions

You have drafted your story and transcribed it onto your computer. What next?

What follows is accumulated wisdom emerging from judging many short story competitions related to what I didn't find in the less good  entries and what characterised good entries.

You have drafted your story
 and transcribed it onto your computer.

Give your story the best chance by presenting it well

Layout – How it looks is the first thing the reader  sees when they handle a manuscript.

Don’t forget that your computer may be automatically formatted for business reports, brochures, and letters. (Like this page) You need adapt your layout  to make it  suitable for fiction. There’s nothing worse than trying to read a short story laid out like a business report.

Some guidelines for tackling layout.

1.            Line spacing  I.5  

2.            Indent every paragraph except the one at the beginning, when you place the first line at the margin.

3.            If you change place, time or action within a story, leave a double space and place the first line of the new paragraph on the margin and then continue indentation as before..

Laid out in this fashion your original drafted, transcribed manuscript begins to look professional. Now you’re looking at it more like the reader - or judge -will see it..

This will help you for the next stage of editing which is –

Passionate Substantive Editing –

Some tips:

1.Read the text out loud  right through. Just mark anything that sounds lumpy or doesn’t flow. Scribble in self suggestions. Have - and enjoy – a reader’s dialogue with the text. Insert amendments that enhance your meaning or improve the flow of your text.  

2. Sort out the paragraphs.

Paragraphs can be a puzzle. I meet good writers in workshops who haven’t yet got paragraphs nailed. It’s a bit of an ambiguous area. To a degree, paragraphing can be a matter of taste and style. Paragraphs in modern literature are distinctly shorter that those written in novels – say – before 1946.

If we aim for High Quality Self Editing we have to make our own choices regarding paragraphing.

Me? I’m of the opinion that white space on the page makes text more accessible and helps it flow forward.

So here are my useful rules of thumb.

·         New speaker, new paragraph

·         New idea, new paragraph

·         (As stated in Layout, above). If you change place, time or action within a story, leave a double space and place the first line of the new paragraph on the margin and then continue indentation.

·          

3 That sorted, you can now move onto other things

·         Carry out a computer spell and grammar check to iron out residual mis-spellings, expressions and extra spaces that have escaped your eagle eye.

·         Read the whole text again (I know! I know! But after all this is still High Quality Self Editing Skills.

·         Now get your notebook and make list of the names you use in your story. Check back through your story and make sure they are consistent.

·         Turn a page in your notebook.  Now go through your story  and check the physical characteristics of your characters (hair eyes etc). Are they consistent?  Make tiny amendments to remind the reader of these characteristics as the story unfolds.

·         Spell/grammar-check any changed sections. Or the whole story again if necessary.

Hooray! Now you have your complete well written, well edited story, well laid out and easy to access.

So now give your story to a trusted writing buddy to check it out.  

Then one final and rigorous spelling/grammar check on your computer and you have what I call a story in Good Heart.

So it is near perfect. This is your final chance to look at your novel as a near-perfect whole and you can ask yourself some useful questions,

·         Look at the beginning and end of your story.. Are there valid connections here in terms of words, phrases or ideas? If not, think about inserting some. It could be a single word or phrase.

·         Look at your paragraphs in sequence. Is there forward movement? Is there flow? Is there some energy on the forward movement?

·         Consider again the first and last paragraphs Do they convey a kind of symmetry, however ambiguous?  I don’t mean here cute resolutions. Endings are not about explanation or expiation. However there should be a valid connection that momentarily gives the reader (however subliminally) a sense of the story as a whole.

·          Think whether  you have made your characters live and breathe and whether the end of a story is just the end of a beginning,

·          

Now …er… one last mechanical spelling and grammar check. Ouch! Don’t hit me!

But now your story has really benefitted from your High Quality Self Editing Skills. You have become an editor as well as a writer. Your story is now endowed a professional identity to launch it into any competition,   including the

Room to Write Short Story Competition

Check it out under 'Compeition' at    http://roomtowritepublishing.wordpress.com//

C. Wendy Robertson

Now in Paperback and on Kindleon Amazon and in County Durham Libraries.

Happy Writing!

Writer Interview: An American in London: - Julia Platt Leonard

Today my guest is Julia Platt Leonard, a talented and upcoming writer  in the field of children's fiction: a name to look for. 

Julia  lives in North London but has meaningful roots  in Tennessee and Virginia in the USA. And Santa Fe in New Mexico. Like her namesake, the legendary Julia Child, our Julia is a dedicated  and talented cook. When we met for tea and cakes there was an  air of celebration in Julia's very urban kitchen, because it had just been fitted with a much

desired Aga...

Reading corner in
Julia's kitchen 

Wendy: What is the primary joy of writing in your life?

Julia.I love the eureka moments when I suddenly get it – when I understand a character or figure out how to solve a niggling plot point. And there are times when I become so absorbed that I lose track of time and find myself lost in the story. That is bliss.

Wendy: Does being American writing in England have an effect on your approach to writing?

Julia: I think it does. When I wrote my first novel Cold Case, I thought long and hard about where I would set it and chose Santa Fe, New Mexico because it’s a place near and dear to my heart. I didn’t feel ‘ready’ to base a story in London but when I started my second book, Stealing Time, I felt I was ready to have London as my setting.

Wendy: Do you have a specific feeling for the nature of your audience.

Julia: That’s an interesting question. I’ve been told that Cold Case appeals to boys and reluctant readers because it’s very fast paced with short chapters and lots of action. But it’s got a strong girl’s audience too – possibly thanks to Oz’s female sidekick Rusty –  so hopefully there’s a bit to appeal to lots of different readers.

Wendy: Have any books inspired you in the process of becoming a writer?

Julia: I was a voracious reader as a kid and still am today. I love lots of different types of books – mysteries and thrillers especially. The books I remember from my childhood with incredible fondness include To Kill a Mockingbird, A Wrinkle in Time, the novels of Daphne Du Maurier and Rumer Godden.

Wendy: When did you first know you were a writer?

Julia: I don’t remember a moment when it hit me – I suppose it was a gradual process. It started with a love of reading and that magical feeling when a book transports you. I can’t count the number of times I’ve missed my stop on the train or tube because I’ve had my nose in a book. At University I was an English literature major in the U.S. so I did a lot of reading and writing. And my first job after graduation was as a television reporter.

Wendy: What other aspects of your life find a place in your writing?

Julia: When I decided I was going to write a kids’ book I decided I wanted it to include things I love. I came up with a short list of three: 1) it had to be a mystery because I love reading mysteries, 2) I wanted it to include food since I’ve worked as a chef and, 3) it should be set in Santa Fe since that’s a place I love. The book I’m working on now has a lot of references to Charles Dickens who is probably my favourite author.  

Wendy: Do you have a writing routine?

Julia: I find I work/think best in the morning so I try to start writing as soon as I get back from the school run. If I can write for two straight hours that’s a success. I’ll tend to read through what I wrote the day before and make revisions and changes and then write another chapter. My chapters tend to be quite short

Julia in her study

so it’s doable if I keep myself off email and Amazon!

Wendy: What role does editing play in your writing process?

Julia: It’s funny because when I finished my first draft of Stealing Time, I thought ‘I’m done.’ But that’s a short-lived sense of satisfaction because to be honest, the hard work is ahead of me. The first draft basically gets the bones down on the page but then both the plot and characters need to be fleshed out.

Wendy: What is the best advice that you have received about your writing and who advised you?

Julia: I was lucky enough to take Children’s Writing classes at City Lit here in London. It was the best investment I ever made. I was taught by both Elizabeth Hawkins and Sophie McKenzie. The message from both of them was that writing is a job and you’ve got to put in the time to see the results. The difference between what gets published and what doesn’t is often sheer tenacity. And I find that the more time you spend with your story and characters, the better and richer they are.

Wendy:What advice would you give to writers in the first stage of writing their novels?

Julia: Get a rough idea of your plot before you dive in. Can you write a book without knowing where it’s going? Probably but you’re making your life as a novice writer even harder. Second, dedicate time during your day for writing. If you’ve got another job – like I do – or family – again, that’s me – then this can be difficult but it’s really essential.

Wendy: How long does it normally take you to write a novel? Has this changed?

Julia: It feels like forever! I’ve been working on Stealing Time now for a couple of years. Part of that is because I’m balancing writing with other work and a young daughter. But at some point, I think a book has a life of its own and you have to climb on board and stay with it until it’s done.

Wendy: What are you working on now?

Julia: I’m working on Stealing Time, an 11+ novel about a girl named Flint Dreadnaught who inherits a mysterious watch from her aunt. When a nefarious man named Witherwick steals the watch she risks her life to get it back. There’s a bit of time travel, a Victorian boy named Wilkie and a cameo by the novelist Charles Dickens.

Wendy: Tell us about your latest published novel.  

Julia: Cold Case was my first book. It’s an 11+ murder mystery about a boy named Oz who goes into his family’s restaurant early one morning and finds a dead body in the walk-in refrigerator. When his brother is accused of the crime, Oz must find the real murderer. There’s a great girl sidekick who helps him named Rusty

Wendy: What, for you are the best characteristics of a good editor?

Julia: A good editor finds the points where the reader stops being immersed in the story because of a flaw with the plot or the characters. He or she points those out, offers suggestions but doesn’t try to re-write it for you.

Wendy: Do you see any difference between American and British writers?

Julia: I’m sure there are but writing and reading has become so global that as a reader, I’m most interested in finding a good story – one that I can sink my teeth in.

Wendy: If possible can you give us a few biographical elements about Julia Platt Leonard and her life?

Julia: I came to writing after careers as a television reporter, advertising executive, and professional chef. I'm from the U.S. – a Tennessee native with stops in Ohio and North Carolina before going to college at the University of Virginia. I've lived in New York and Boston but have called London home for the past 16 years where I live with my husband and daughter and our cheeky collie-pointer cross, Olivia. I write (occasionally) about writing at www.coldcasetheblog.com as well as on my food blog www.myagadiary.co.uk.

Thank you Julia. There is so much here with which I - and other writers, I feel - will identify. I too have always rated Rumer Godden and Daphne du Maurier for their great story-telling skills and their insight into the inner child. And I have just published a novel whose heroine is called Olivia. But she's not a dog.

I loved Cold Case and am so looking forward to reading Stealing Time. Flint Dreadnaught sounds like a great heroine... 

So, What is Your Short Story About?

Today is the first of four sessions in the second sequence of the  Back to Basics series that Avril Joy and I are runningat Bishop Auckland Town Hall. The theme for this  sequence is 

The Short Story.

This is very timely as I’ve been buried for a month in the task of collecting together, , anthologising, revising, editing, proofing and printing twenty seven of my own short stories. These will be published in a singe edition. Some of these stories were written fifteen years ago; some were written much more recently.

In completing this rather arduous task I have discovered a lot more about myself as a writer and about the nature of the

Revising, editing,  proofing, printing
the collection.. And revising again,
proofing again ...

short story.

The collection will be published this month under the title of Forms of Flight: Twenty Seven Short Stories. The title story is about a woman, recently widowed who escapes into a second, more vibrant life in a battered old Dormobile, painted with the emblems of an aeroplane and a butterfly.

Writers at every level are often asked the impossible question What Is Your Short Story About?

You might as well ask what the moon is about? Or what is a butterfly about? This is truly mpossible to answer in a sentence.

Yet this is what I have made myself do in putting together  these twenty seven stories.   Every collection of stories must have a contents page. And in writing my contents page I have challenged myself to create a strap-line (such as you might see in a magazine) for each story.

This is because people tend not to read a short story collection as you might read a novel: they don’t read it from page one to page 200. They tend to cherry-pick from the list of stories, going backwards and forwards at will, So I created the contents page with a strap-line for each story to help in the cherry picking. A bit like pinning down butterflies, but here goes...

See the Contents Page for Forms of Flight below. How would you cherry-pick? 

(Today in the workshop we will ask ourselves What is a Short Story?. I will report back here on the inspired answers to this question…)

But first – here is the Contents Page for 

Forms of Flight: Twenty Seven Short Stories. 

	1.Painting Matters: ‘ …his black hair shot up from his head and was cut oddly short at the side and. He was clutching big square parcel which he hoisted so she could see the label.  ‘Emma Unthank	14
	2.Chaos Theory and Frost on Grass:  Lilah gets drunk and makes a new young friend…	31
	3.My Name is Christine: - Christine tries time and again to rescue herself from self-harming oblivion.	51
	4. 1913. The Making of a Man: Rites of passage on a boy’s first day down the pit.	73
	5.1936.  Vi’s Shifts: Stoical, humorous Vi, with her husband Ralph and a son both in the pit, and a son at school, works three shifts a day	87
	6.Joe, Theo and the Silver Ghost: The unspoken love between Joe and his workmate Theo threatens Joe’s marriage.	101
	7.The Story Of An Unusual Marriage: Imogen and Freddie live their own lives almost unbeknownst to each other	113
	8.Oh Amsterdam: This would make a good start, thought Ernestine.  A short journey. A couple of nights stay. Her first,-her very own, - experiment in travel	110
	9.The Nature Of Art: Using his phenomenal memory he painted pictures of the teaming city that were somehow drenched with the light and the movement of the ocean..	133
	10. A Cloak with Pentacles: ‘takes the cloth from her and strokes it with a forefinger pocked with the prick of needles  as though teased by a nutmeg grater	139
	11.Queenie and the Waterman: Queenie is a bag lady who sees angels and giants and lives an enchanted life	143
	12. Sandy Cornell Saved My Life: A hounded adolescence saved by  the gift of friendship	159
	13.The Paperweight:  A chance meeting with dark edges on a rainy night.	169
	14. Knives: A man who likes playing war with toy soldiers learns a true life-lesson about knives.	177
	15.The Glass Egg: She looked up to see a shadow looming across the glass roof-light.	191
	16. The American. ‘Oh, really?’ The voice was American, a soft West Coast sound. ‘You people really read these things?’ He leaned across, picked up the Sylvia Plath…	213
	17. 1946. My First London Spring:  My journey to London was a kind of pilgrimage, eager as I was to fulfil a promise to Josey Atkinson, one of the friends who had died in the cold. I still had his address, on the back of one of my drawings.	219
	18.Turpentine. Embarrassment uncoiling in her senses, made her notice more intensely the smell of peppers in the gypsies food and the turpentine scent of the painter’s oil paints.	233
	19.International Relations:  She brought the tales home to Patrick and they would giggle helplessly over their evening drink: Perrier water for him, gin and tonic for her.’	249
	20.Corn Rows:  ‘… blew her long hair dry, watching it rise away from the dryer like lifted silk ‘What beautiful hair you have, dear,’ said the old woman, looking up from her puzzle book	239
	21. Still Life. ‘Sometimes, without picking up a brush or pencil, the girl would sit hunched on her stool staring out of the windows.’ 22. The Psych and the Poet: She sat down and faced  hi across the table. ‘‘If you’re going to do word association or show me inkblots like the last fucking shrink you can get lost.’                                                                              280	254
	23. Letter to Emily: ‘Miss Lottie, the children!’ she said grimly. ‘According to your father you have been a little mother to your own sisters, I have seen little evidence of such qualities in my house. ‘See to your charges!’	294
	24. Josephine’s Englishman: ‘When M’selle Josephine visited us Amalie was always on edge, uncharacteristically bad tempered. It took me some years for me to realise  that this was caused by jealousy.	311
	25. Forms of Flight: ‘Air Force trained him as a navigator. When he saw the land from the sky he said it fired his Romany blood	321
	26. Spider:  ‘He has marked a column, headed  Knife Attack on Welder.  There is a photo of a handsome man in his mid thirties	327
	27.  How I Became a Painter:  Edgar realised his friend was telling the world  This is me!  in defiance of his father who’d never been comfortable about his son’s soft habit of drawing every dratted thing he saw:	339

'I'm doing an Olivia Ozanne and re-writing the rules.' Reviews close to my Heart

Those of you out there who read and enjoy books are simply great. And those of you who take trouble to make a comment on Amazon about them  are thrice blessed. You warm a writer's heart in what can be a chilly world.

So I have been greatly and  thrice warmed by two new reviews for my latest book Journey to Moscow: The Adventures of Olivia Ozanne from readers who seem to me to get to the heart of a novel which is very close to my heart. 

They seem to describe the book better than I can. They certainly know it.

As our readers you are precious to us. These days if you enjoy a book - any book - a few lines on Amazon is a real and lasting gift to the writer.

Here are two of these precious reviews  on Amazon which have made my week.

Review from A.A

.

"There's nothing to not love in this book. A double negative but who cares?

I'm doing an Olivia Ozanne and re-writing the rules. For me this thought encapsulates the essence of this fascinating book, which dispenses with the prejudices, the political and stereotypical misconceptions surrounding the teenaged Moscow as it emerged from its long sleep, post - Glasnost. The writer gives such insight into this period which, ironically, is so relevant to what is happening in Putin's Russia today.

Olivia Ozanne is my hero- totally honest about who she is, warts and all, knowing she has failed as a mother and wife but always remaining true to herself and keeping the faith with her writing.

As always, this writer has woven an intricate tale with many memorable characters, the love of her life Volodya, the grey and brown Aunties, her daughter and son, even the odious Kendrick. They will all remain in my head for a long time and when I say you must read this book, I really mean it!"

Review from AMJ 

Olivia Ozanne is the writer abroad, the stranger alone, a woman who can see

the surface of things and beyond. Well rid of her ex Kendrick and his leather sofa fetish, she comes to stay with her daughter Caitlin. This is post-glasnost Moscow with its fallen statues, burgeoning mafia, newly restored churches, its
phones tapped but no longer listened in to, a city that demands hard currency.

Through Olivia’s eyes we see into the heart of this city and its people. We peer inside their tiny flats into their constricted interior lives, where we meet the mysterious Aunties whose surprising histories, stretching back to the revolution, are slowly uncovered by Olivia.

This is a richly painted canvas of an iconic city, in many ways relevant to our understanding of the Russia of today. It is a story about a woman in search of a new self and it’s hard not to fall in love with Olivia with her enormous appetite for life or for that matter her lover Volodya who she meets at the flower stall. I fell in love with them both. But Wendy Robertson’s greatest gift is in making us fall in love with the place and its people. Gorgeous."

"

Thank you to these two wonderful readers and to other readers out there who find pleasure in my stories. I appreciate you, WXX

An Extraordinary Woman for International Women's Day: The Muse At My Shoulder

I have been putting together twenty six of my short stories for publication, to be called Forms of Flight (See sidebar here...). 

As I re-read the stories and decided how to arrange them in the volume it dawned on me how much of my writing, in short and long form,  is concerned with people who face their fears and take on the world but also some  people who take flight from difficult lives - in reality and also in the interior world of  imagination   fantasy and even madness,

At the same time I have been casting around for someone to write about on International Women's day. 

In my search for such a heroine I ended up very close to home with a post written by me  on my mother's birthday in 2008. Although she lived in a small town and, becoming widowed,  lived a hard life,she was always acutely aware of the world outside her narrow window, of the international scene represented by the globe in our small front room.* 

So for International Women's Day  here is my post about an extraordinary woman who has always been the muse at my shoulder.

In her prime, with G.

'...Although we were (are?) very different personalities, I have inherited many things from my mother Barbara ...

There is this desire to run away, expressed in the delight in travel. For her, with a family of four to bring up on her own and no resources, this was confined to books, maps and the globe of the world. Then things became just a bit easier and in her fifties she went to Denmark on her own. After that, year by year, she travelled further and further.

I was in my thirties when I started. Paris first. Then Moscow, (The location of my new novel  Journey to Moscow: The adventures of Olivia Ozanne. Barbra would have approved of Olivia...)

Then different parts of America. Then Italy. Then the far East. Then New Zealand. Then Poland.

Then back to France. Always France.

Being imbued with the Puritan work ethic Barbara would have approved of the fact that much of my travelling has been about the writing of novels. Evidence for this would be the working titles for some of my novels: for example, The Russian Novel (Journey to Moscow: The Adventures of Olivia Ozanne  ; the Singapore Novel (Long Journey Home); The Polish Novel (The Woman Who Drew Buildings); The London Novel (The Lavender House). Honesty’s Daughter was, for a time ‘The American Novel’. And The French Novel (An Englishwoman in France)

Sadly, Barbara was only here on earth to read my first novel Lizza in printer’s proofs. But in all these travels - in all this writing – she has been at my shoulder.

Although it is fiction, Lizza is based on a fragile sliver of Barbara’s young life.‘I stayed up all night reading it, love,’ she said, when she read the proofs. ‘Couldn’t stop. Do you know that foreman? Well his real name was …’

I had invented him, name and all.  It seemed that much of my pure invention was real. 
Which brings me to another of my bequests from Barbara: some kind of psychic acuity. Her oldest sister was a full blown medium but Barbara herself was highly sensitive. 

This psychic acuity probably explains why - as I write - I hear my characters talking, see them walking.  It could explain the fact that when I’ve written about a place – even a place thousands of miles away - and checked it out later, I find that it’s already there, in my drafting book.

This psychic predisposition is there as a kind of ‘sleeper’ in many of my novels, and with my  ‘French Novel’ An Englishwoman in France I have come out and centred the narrative on the psychic predispositions of my character Stella and the way she relates to space and time. New departure! It’s been great to write.

I’ve benefited from other bequests from Barbara –a love of the realities of history, a cherishing of the resonance of the spoken word, an innate story telling gene – all these would merit further stories here.

But an important bequest worth mentioning has been Barbara’s role model as a working mother with little regard for the domestic side of life. This has allowed me to write rather than dust, to make stories rather than make the bed. It has stood me in good stead all my working life and been instrumental in the production of so many novels.

However for now the greatest bequest to me is her continuing presence around me and her pleasure, through time, at what has happened in my life – my new novels and stories , my good teaching, my extraordinary family...'

Perhaps for International Women's Day we should all celebrate and honour those precious heroines close at hand.'

(*I have also written elsewhere on LTT about that globe ...)