Stretch Your Writing Muscles With These Contests

March 4, 2018March 4, 2018 / Sheila McIntrye Good, Author / 7 Comments

Want to stretch your writing muscles? Increase your publication portfolio? Submit to these upcoming contests (list compliments of Hope Clark’s Fund for Writers, Narrative, WOW).

Institute For Writers Sci-Fi First Pages Contest – $19 Entry Fee. Deadline March 31, 2018. First prize $650. Second prize $350. Third prize $100. Fourth prize $100. Fifth prize $100. 750 Word Limit.
First Pages Prize –$25 Entry Fee. Deadline – March 13, 2018. Submit your first five pages of a fiction, creative nonfiction, or poetry manuscript.
Narrative – The Winter Story Contest. Deadline: Saturday, March 31, at midnight, PDT. $2,500 First Prize; $1,000 Second Prize; $500 Third Prize; Ten finalists receive $100 each.
Wow – Spring 2018 Quarterly Flash Fiction Contest –Open prompt. Maximum Word count 750. Deadline – May 31st, 11:59 PM. ENTRY FEE: $10.00.First Place: $400.00 cash prize; $25 Amazon Gift Certificate; Interview on the WOW! Women On Writing Blog. Second Place –$300.00 cash prize; $25 Amazon Gift Certificate; Interview on the WOW! Women On Writing Blog. Third Place – $200.00 cash prize; $25 Amazon Gift Certificate; Interview on the WOW! Women On Writing Blog. 7 Runners Up: $25 Amazon Gift Certificate; Interview on the WOW! Women On Writing Blog.
WOW – Quarterly Creative Nonfiction Essay Contest. Open topic. Maximum word count-1000; Deadline– April 30th, 11:59 PM; First Place: $500.00 cash prize; Interview on the WOW! Women On Writing Blog. Second Place: $300.00 cash prize; Interview on the WOW! Women On Writing Blog.Third Place: $200.00 cash prize; Interview on the WOW! Women On Writing Blog. 7 Runners Up: $25 Amazon Gift Certificate.

A Checklist Before You Submit:

Know your Judge and the journal – A little extra time in research will pay big dividends. Find out the genre, style, and preferred content before making a submission. Reading previous winners is an excellent way to get a feel for what the editors are looking for.
Be sure to follow the guidelines! Sounds obvious, but editors say submissions which fail to follow the guidelines are their number one beef!
Proofread! – Careless grammar and punctuation errors can sink your submission.

I’d love to hear your comments. Talk to me. Tell me your story. I’m all ears and look for me on Facebook at SheilaMGood, Pinterest, Bloglovin, Twitter@sheilamgood, Contently, and Instagram. You can follow my reviews on Amazon and Goodreads.

For Every Action

February 12, 2018February 19, 2018 / Sheila McIntrye Good, Author / 6 Comments

If you remember much from your school days (which is getting harder by the year for this fence jumper) you’re familiar with Newton’s Third Law of Motion – For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction (a force when an object interacts with another interaction).

For example, if I throw a rubber ball against the wall in anger, the wall is gonna push back and one of several things will happen: 1) I’ll catch it; 2) I will miss it and it will crash into my antique lamp; or 3) it will fly back and sock me in the nose (the most likely scenario). That’s a silly example, but you get the drift. Now, think about writing and how this law relates to your characters and their dialogue.

Dwight V. Swain, author of Techniques of the Selling Writer discusses how to identify “the code of efficient prose, Motion-Reaction Units (MRU); and, in her post, Motivation-Reaction Units: Cracking the Code of Good Writing, K.M. Weiland breaks it down even further by providing excellent examples.

Simply put, something motivates your character to react. An action, deed, event, conversation, impulsiveness, or fear, to name a few. The possibilities of what that motivation is depends on your character, and your story. The list of motivations can be long, winding, and provide depth to your story. Whatever it is that motivates a character to action, the reactions will help propel the story forward, introduce complications, the ante, and used to reveal.

A Few Things to Keep in Mind When Using MSU’s:

Motivations, the actions and reactions must run in a logical manner. They have to make sense to your reader. Introducing a reaction before the cause or motivation sows confusion.
According to K.M. Weiland, MRU’s typically are divided into three parts: feelings/thoughts, action, and speech.
Not all three of these elements are always necessary; well-written dialogue can reveal a lot about the characters reaction.
Reaction doesn’t always mean a physical reaction; sometimes, it’s mental or emotional. It should, however, be clear to the reader.

Using MRU’s is a tool which we can use to bring our scenes, characters, and dialogue to life, making them feel real and authentic to the reader. Check out K.M. Weiland’s post, Motivation-Reaction Units: Cracking the Code of Good Writing and tell me what you think. Do you use this technique or something different? Share it with the Fence Jumpers, we’d love to hear all about it.

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Ask the Experts: Tips for Self-Editing

November 20, 2017November 20, 2017 / Sheila McIntrye Good, Author / 16 Comments

As many of you know, I have been hard at work on my first novel. Currently, my focus has been on getting the story down and for once, have not disappeared down the rabbit hole of editing while I write, although the temptation has been great. After more than two years, I finally can see the end in sight and couldn’t be more excited!

I do plan to hire an editor for this novel, but in the meantime, I will clean up some of the apparent errors. As a practice, I use three-four editing tools for all my work, and I must say, I find them an essential tool in my writing.

The Writer’s Diet is one of the first tools I use. A free resource, this tool provides an overview of your writing. Insert 100-1000 words to find out if your is writing is lean or flabby.
The Hemingway Editor – available for both MAC and Windows, provides an incredible array of convenient tools:

Use it anywhere; even without internet connection.
Format your prose
Publish directly to WordPress & Medium
Export to Microsoft Word or other editors – a New feature
Send Hemingway highlights to colleagues – a New feature

3. Grammarly – an excellent grammar, punctuation, and vocabulary tool.

4. Autocrit – A manuscript editing software, specifically for fiction writers.

These are my tips, but, since I’m still learning, I checked with the experts.

Jacqui Murray offers specific and detailed tips in her article, 19 Self-editing for Your Writing. Tips include:

eliminating weak/waste words – very, was, it, but, just;
eliminate redundancies and word repetition, and as many dialogue tags when possible.
Limiting adverbs, gerunds, qualifiers, prepositional phrases,
Secure place and time in each chapter; verify timeline.
Change passive to active words and phrases.

To read more from Jacqui and get the details, as well as other resources she can recommend, check out her article.

Other resources you might want to check out, include:

What about you? Do you have some advice for this writer on self-editing? I’d love to hear all about it. I’m all ears and look for me on Facebook at SheilaMGood, Pinterest, Bloglovin, Twitter@sheilamgood, Contently, and Instagram. You can follow my reviews on Amazon and Goodreads.

Where Writers Get Stuck: Marketing

October 11, 2017November 4, 2017 / Sheila McIntrye Good, Author / Leave a comment

And, you thought the work was done when you typed “The End.” Nope, it’s just beginning. Check out this post by Allison Maruska to help you get started in marketing your book.

Allison Maruska

Before I get started on today’s topic, I want to express a huge thank you to everyone who supported my fundraiser for Houston disaster relief or gave directly to an organization that will help people in need. We are seeing the best of America coming through every day, and if there’s a silver lining to everything that’s happened there, I think that’s it.

Now, it’s time for the super secret post you’ve all been waiting for. Remember this Twitter poll?

It launched this whole mini-series on where writers get stuck. Be sure to check out planning, drafting, editing and revising, and querying or publishing if those are your personal struggles. While the poll was live, this comment happened: