9:15pm, 23rd August 2016
It took me an embarassingly long time to work this out: conflict is everything.
Do you know what happened to the first story I wrote once I worked it out? When I first focused on deliberately working it into every paragraph? It won WotF.
If you only ever take one piece of advice from me, take this: you need more conflict.
TAGS: Anatomy of a Golden Pen, wotf32
5:00pm, 23rd May 2016
Being a writer, I'm full of self-importance and arrogantly believe everyone wants to read pages and pages of nonsense from me. As such, I'm going to start a series about my Golden Pen story from Writers of the Future volume 32, Squalor & Sympathy, dissecting it from various angles.
First up: all the historical accuracies and references in the story.
TAGS: Anatomy of a Golden Pen, wotf32
Matt Dovey is a writer of short speculative fiction. He is very tall, very British, and probably drinking a cup of tea right now. His surname rhymes with “Dopey”, but any other similarities to the dwarf are purely coincidental. More →
You're not a person, they say, circling. You're one of Them. From the other side.
”And lo, the Princess said: "Motherfucker, I am content."
"But Princess!" said the Knight, from the base of the Princess' tower. His armor-clad ass was parked atop a huge black stallion, which the Princess found not only pompous, but entirely predictable. "You misunderstand; I'm here to save you from--"
"Hold up," said the Princess. "Exactly what part of girl-lives-in-her-own-goddamned-tower implies a need for rescue?"
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The temple altar in the central lava pit cracks open, and a column rises through it from underground: there's a Kyberdevil perched on top, an ugly-ass nine-foot goat-legged little bitch with most of its torso carved away to attach a rocket launcher.
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