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COMPETITION RESULTS ANNOUNCED

Thanks to everyone who entered our ‘Real’ writing competition.

We had a lot of entries and the standard was very high so don’t feel disappointed if your story didn’t win.

The teen and kid’s categories were particularly difficult to judge this time around – there were so many fabulous entries. It’s great to see so many talented and enthusiastic young writers out there.

The entries that stood out were the ones that had conflict and great characters who hooked the reader into the story. They also had settings that had been woven into the story well and were part of the action.

Overall, there was some really fabulous writing.

FORMATTING

Unfortunately, there were a lot of problem with formatting this time and this delayed the judging.

Please follow submission guidelines. If you don’t submit in the correct format, it might not be possible to read your entry. Consequently, we will not be able to judge it.

TIPS FOR FUTURE COMPETITIONS

Some of the entries didn’t follow the competition guidelines. Please make sure that your submissions are 500 words or less and that they are submitted as a Word attachment or pasted into the body of your email.
Competition results were delayed because some people had sent stories in formats that couldn’t be read.

  • Before you send your entry, read it out loud. This will help you pick up accidental mistakes where you have left a word out or typed it twice.
  • Try to show the action as it happens instead of telling the reader about it afterwards.
  • Think about how you can make the personality of your main character come through in your writing. What is it about this person that makes them stand out?
  • Make the start of your story interesting. Introduce your main character straight away and give the reader reasons to care about them.
  • Try and have some action in your story. Give your main character a problem so that the reader will wonder how they are going to solve it.

Adult Writers

If you are adults writing for children, here are some things you might want to consider.

1.  Don’t write from an adult’s point of view.  For example, don’t try and get a message across that chocolate is bad for you and have a character who decides they would rather eat broccoli instead. If you write a story where the consequences of a child eating too much chocolate cause a problem for them, this will be more believable.

2.  If you want to write about an issue, write about it from the way a child would see it, not from how an adult would view the situation.

3. If you are writing from the point of view of a ten or twelve year-old, their language, actions, needs, beliefs and motives must be consistent with a character that age.  You need to really immerse yourself in a ten or twelve-year old mindset in order to write a believable story.

OUR NEXT COMPETITION

Our next competition opens on the 1st August and the theme will be ‘unreal’. This time we are going to have four categories:

1. Writers aged 8 to 10

2. Writers aged 11 to 12

3. Teen Writers

4. Adult Writers

Good luck and keep writing:)

Dee

COMPETITION RESULTS

Congratulations to all the worthy winners and to every one who wrote a story and had the courage to enter it.

Prizes and certificates will be emailed over the next few days.

 

  

 

 

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Writing Story Endings is Hard

I was recently asked by Lisa from Kuala Lumpur about the best way to end stories. She wanted to know how to write story endings that are clear but not predictable.

Writing story endings is hard, but in this post, I’m sharing some of the things that I do and giving a few extra tips that I hope will help you.

I usually start writing a book knowing exactly how it’s going to end, but often through the course of the writing something changes. The character takes me in unexpected directions or when I get to the end I realize it wasn’t so great after all.

And it’s perfectly okay to allow your character and your story to change direction.

We spend so much time rewriting the beginning of a story because that’s the part we’re told is going to impress the teacher or attract the publisher’s/reader’s attention.

But readers still need to be happy with how we end out story.

And often it’s not till I’m seriously into many drafts of a novel that I realize that that the ending is not really working.

SOME REASONS WHY ENDINGS DON’T WORK

  • The story finishes too quickly
  • It’s not a logical ending
  • We don’t know what’s happened to some of the characters
  • The ending isn’t believable
  • The ending is too boring – it doesn’t have action or tension
  • The ending is all telling and no showing – this is where the main character tells us what happens and we don’t actually see it happening to them
  • The ending is too vague so the reader can’t really work out what’s going on.
  • The writer has put in a twist that doesn’t fit with the rest of the story. The twist might be too sudden and unexpected.
  • The ending is too complicated so the reader can’t work out what’s going on or how the story got to this point.

The problem with me is that I’m one of those people who puts the foot on the accelerator when I can see the finish line/the end of the road in sight. And this truly doesn’t work with a novel or a long story.

You have to tie up all the sub plots and story questions, take your time to show the outcomes for the main character.

Your ending shouldn’t be just a summary by the main character to tell the reader everything will be okay. It still has to have action and tension.

Try going to the end of your story and treating it like it’s the beginning. Work on it until you are sure it will keep the reader happy with the ending, but wanting more.

TIPS FOR STRONG STORY ENDINGS

  • Keep it simple.
  • Make the outcome for the main character clear. If you have plotted and planned your story and know exactly what’s going to happen in the end, then it will be clear for the reader too.
  • Make the ending believable but interesting. It still has to have action.
  • To make your ending unpredictable, add a twist, something that the reader won’t see coming at first, but when they think about it they will realise that there were clues throughout the story. A twist has to fit with the rest of the story and if you give hints in the rest of the story, the reader will find the twist believable but surprising.
  • Don’t make the ending too sudden. Build up to it. Allow it to unfold for the reader.
  • Look at how one of your favourite writers has ended their book/s or story/s. What do you like about the ending? Has the writer used techniques that you could use in your own story? Looking at how other authors work is a great way to learn what you like, and what will work for you.
  • Tie up all the loose ends. Don’t leave the reader wondering what happened to the main character. You don’t have to state exactly what happened, but you have to give the reader enough information to work it out for themselves.

Other things to think about:

  • Have you kept the story going long after it should have ended? Try cutting the last line or paragraph. Does this improve your story?
  • If you change the order of the paragraphs on the last page, will this make your story stronger?
  • Have you thought about what your story is really about? (The theme). Have you linked your story ending to the theme?
  • Are your main character’s actions believable and interesting – even at the end?
  • Have you surprised the reader? Have you done this in a believable way? (Don’t add an inappropriate twist at the end, just for shock value.)
  • Have you left your reader wanting to read more about this character or more of your work?

Extra tips

Plot or plan your ending out, just as you would the whole story. Here’s a post on how I work out what’s going to happen in my story. http://wp.me/ppiTq-rI

Your story is finished when you and other readers feel satisfaction after reading the last word (and not just because you’ve finished writing it). There has to be satisfaction with the outcome for the main character, and a feeling that the story has reached a strong but believable conclusion.

In many ways, the ending is just like the beginning of your story. You still want readers to keep reading. You want them to read your next story/book.

Lisa, I hope this has answered your questions. If you have any other questions feel free to write them in the comments section of this post. Other writers are also welcome to post your questions about story endings here.

Happy writing:-)

Dee

 

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