Short story analysis
I’ve talked about the short story competitions in Writing Magazine several times but have yet to give it a try. The trouble is, I’ve other things to write up and there’s no point in submitting an entry that isn’t in the style of what wins. By style I don’t mean just the length of the paragraphs or sentences but the real ethos of the thing. I have a check list for analysing short stories but what it can’t do is give the feeling of a typical story. Again, the stories may have different scenes and outcomes but they will have a feel about them that is quite distinctive when you get a handle on it. Like any magazine, to find that ethos, I find it is necessary to read a number of their stories and to read them one after another, and maybe even several times. To send them the best story I’ve ever written without doing that is just a waste of time. I suppose what I want to find is the magazine’s voice. Anyway, the latest competitions are for Historical Fiction and another with an open subject so maybe I’ll do my homework and give it a try. After all this novel about the uprising in 1820 is historial and so are A land fit for heroes and the two South African books set in 1914. Surely I’ll be able to get a spinoff from those.
If not there is the tale of how the Romans tried to find the route to Cornwall by following the Phoenicians or the Ruthven story where James V1, before he was James 1 was thought he was being assassinated – but maybe he wasn’t.