With details of workshops and competitions coming up for May:
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Last month's community webinar event, 'So What's Your Book
About?' with Amanda Saint and CM Taylor, looked
at how you tie
your plot, character and themes together to deliver a compelling
novel with unforgettable narrators. Everyone said
it was inspiring and excellent and gave them lots of ideas.
This month we have: Flash
Fiction and the Art of Instant Immersion with KM Elkes.
One of the
fundamental skills of writing, from micro-fiction to novels, is how
to seduce your reader from the start by immersing them in your
story world. This is at its most acute in flash fiction, where
concision is key. This event explores some of the key elements of
instant immersion through great texts, take home writing exercises
and discussion.
K.M. Elkes is the award-winning author of the flash
fiction collection All That Is Between Us (Ad
Hoc Fiction, 2019) which was shortlisted for a 2020 Saboteur Award.
His flash has won or been placed at the Bath Flash Fiction Award,
Reflex Fiction Prize, Fish Publishing Prize and the Bridport Prize.
He has been published in 50 anthologies and literary magazines,
including the Best Microfiction Anthology 2019. His short
stories have been successful in major competitions, including the
BBC National Short Story Award, Royal Society of Literature Award
and Manchester Fiction Prize.
If you can't make the live date, all of our community events are
recorded and posted up for our members to watch again. So far we've
had:
- How to make it onto shortlists with Peter
Jordan
- Writing your way into fabulous flash
fiction with Kathy Fish
Plus our members get loads of other great benefits included such
as access to Friday Flashing writing sessions, monthly Zoom
feedback sessions, exclusive content to help them develop all prose
fiction writing, and early access to all new course bookings.
Some of the articles published on the site recently include:
- Points of view: How many is too many?
- Stories in Micro: Going beyond the vignette
- What novel writing taught me about writing
a novella-in-flash
- Top tips for starting your novel
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Tick
tock - time is running out to send your monthly micro fiction
story!
You have until 23.59 (UK time) tomorrow tonight (9th May) to send
us your stories inspired by the theme. 100 words exactly,
excluding the title. Last month's cash prize winners received £221
and £156 for the first and second prize, along with a free entry to
the annual Flash Fiction Prize; and the People's Prize  winner now has free ticket to the Online Flash Fest in September!
All three stories are now featured in our flash fiction section of the
website. Plus, everyone who was shortlisted but didn't get one
of the top 3 prizes now has a free entry to this month's micro
competition.
The prompt this month comes from Donna L Greenwood and she's
chosen the fantastic theme of METAMORPHOSIS and we can't wait to
see what you all come up with for this!
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Want to
get all experimental with your flash fiction writing?
We do! So Amanda Saint has designed a new fun, mind-bending,
genre-bending flash course.
 Experiments in
Flash
How the universe works and what we're here for
is a question that humans have asked themselves forever. Spiritual
traditions and science all have ideas about the answers to these
questions and we'll be using some of them as inspiration for
experimenting with flash fiction.
It's a 6-week course with new, intensive workshops released each
week - a mix of text and video (with transcriptions of the videos
if you prefer not to watch) - and a weekly Zoom meeting (recorded
if you can't make it live) to talk through ideas inspired by the
workshop content. The focus is on finding new, innovative ways to
structure and tell our standalone flash stories and series of
linked ones.
There are 2 courses running this year:
- Starting 1st July 2021
- Starting 3rd October 2021
They're running on our new community platform so if
you're a member already login to the site and book through there.
If you're not yet a member, come join us! We're having lots of fun,
it's supportive and motivational and we're all developing our
writing skills! Annual membership starts at just £25. See all the membership packages here.
Or just book the course on the links below...
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Book
now for the Online Flash Festival!
We are really excited to be holding our first Retreat West Online
Flash Fest this year on the weekend of 18th and
19th September. We've got workshops to get you writing
featuring:
- KB Carle - Associate Editor at
Fractured Lit. and Editor at FlashBack Fiction.
- Catherine McNamara - Litro’s Flash
Fiction editor and flash/short fiction author.
- Gaynor Jones - Retreat West's book manager
and award-winning author.
- Amanda Saint - Retreat West founder,
author, publisher and tutor.
As well as panel Q&As with your favourite
literary magazine editors:
- Steve Campbell from Ellipsis Zine
- Janice Leagra from Janus Literary
- Tommy Dean from Fractured Lit
- Laura Danks from Virtual Zine
The Retreat West competitions reading panel and judges will also be
on hand for you to ask all your burning questions and on the Sunday
morning we've got an inspirational session looking at how to write
flashes that really stand out:
Writing
Fantastic Flash with Nuala O’Connor
Tight, brief, tense, and precise, flash fictions throw us
in-and-out of the human condition in deep and surprising ways. In
this session, we will explore what makes a good flash and, as
editor at Splonk, Nuala will outline the kinds of things that
make her want to publish a story. Followed by Q&A.
Plus we'll be launching our anthology of winning stories from
the 2020 short story and flash fiction prizes and there will be
readings of the winning and shortlisted flash stories.
As if all that wasn't enough, there are competitions giving you the
chance to get published with us. When you book you'll be sent the
festival Micro Fiction Competition prompt and you have until 1st
August 2021 to send us your 150-word stories to be in with a chance
of winning great prizes. Plus everyone who comes will be able to
submit a story for the festival anthology.
If you can't make any of the sessions like we'll be recording them
all and sending the videos to everyone who has a ticket after the
weekend.
We can't wait! Hope to see you there!
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Want
help, advice, cheering on and 1-1 support as you write or revise
your novel?
We're now accepting applications for The Novel Creator 2021-22, a fully
mentored course that will teach you all the tools novelists use to
create compelling, emotionally resonant novels with memorable
narrators. So you can use what you learn to write this novel, and
all of the novels you'll write in the future.
This year's course starts on 13th September and ends with an online
event in September 2022 where you get to pitch your novel to agents
and indie publishers and make vital industry connections. See the full curriculum here.
John Lutz, a student who started the course in September 2018 when
we ran it under a different name through a partner organisation,
has recently signed a publishing contract with Pushkin Vertigo for
the novel he wrote on the course with us. His thriller, London Black,
will be published in 2022. Read all about it here.
He said of his experience on the course: "It does such an
excellent job of focussing on the underlying principles of
storytelling — on how plot, theme and structure interrelate, on how
characters can be used to embody theme. All of that’s
super-portable because it’s not genre or style-specific — if you’re
writing a novel of any stripe, the same concepts apply."
But the most important element of the course for him was the
mentoring and live Q&As with the tutors: "If forced to choose a
single most helpful aspect, I’d pick the mentoring. Amanda and
Craig are immensely knowledgeable about the craft of writing — but
even better, they’re engaged. They truly care about their
students."
We're delighted to be joined by an additional mentor this year,
Isabel Costello, novelist and host of the hugely popular Literary Sofa, and the Resilence
for Writers project which she co-designed and runs with Voula
Tsoflias. This means we can take on extra students but spaces are
still limited and there are just 18 available for the September
start date (2 are already gone as we opened applications to our
members first).
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Working on
shorter projects?
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 There's just 1 space left on Peter
Jordan's course that starts tomorrow. Crafting Stories for
Publication will show you how to write short
stories that stand out to editors and get noticed.
It's via Zoom with 6 live sessions once a week at 7pm UK time on Tuesdays.
Peter
Jordan is a short story writer from Belfast. He has won the Bare
Fiction prize, came second in the Fish prize, and was shortlisted
for both the Bridport and the Bath short story prizes. His
work has received various awards, including three Arts Council
grants. Over 50 of his stories have appeared in literary magazines,
journals and anthologies.
His award-winning short story collection, Calls to
Distant Places, was released in August 2019.
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 Fantastic
Flashing 2
Want to spend 2 weeks immersing yourself in creating drafts of new
flash stories?
Amanda Saint is running the Fantastic Flashing 2 course starting on
3rd May. This will be the final one until the Autumn. The
focus is on finding new ways to write flash stories and creating
lots of new drafts that you can then polish up for submission.
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Plus don't forget we meet weekly on Friday mornings
for a flash writing session - join us for flash reading and writing
fun! Pay what you can afford to come along or these sessions are
included with our community membership.
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Micro Fiction Voting Ends Tonight!
It's also your last chance to vote for your favourite tiny story to
win the People's Prize vote.
Voting closes at 23.59 (UK time) tonight and the winners will be
announced tomorrow.
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