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 →
So now they lounged in the forward pilotchair, looking through the clear orb of the piscine eye at silvery-clouds of water vapour, and pretended a light, airy tone. "Jean, my beloved, are you well and ready to go?"
”If we are to believe John Gladwin, the oncoming car made no attempt to avoid him, but held straight on. It held on at top speed, he says, for the first he saw of it was the sudden blinding gold of the afternoon sun on its screen, almost on top of him.
”Anatomy of a Golden Pen apology appearance award Dublin2019 fermi paradox free Glasgow2024 harm homebrew interview lessons new story news nonsense podcast politics responsibilities retrospective roundup science science fiction waffle wotf32 writing
Where hunger, discomfort and anger had all failed to rouse her before, cruelty, at last, animated her to motion. "Well then," she said, sitting forward from her armchair. "Perhaps the hunger will be an object lesson to you. Perhaps, as your belly rumbles, and your sister cries in pain, you will think on what it means to have duties, and what it means to fail in them. Perhaps then you will not disappoint me again."
”