24th September saw the one day Short Story Workshop in action by Tracy Baines and Margaret Graham
Words for the Wounded was really lucky to have one of the UKs most successful genre short story writers, Tracy Baines, joining founder and author Margaret Graham to teach the mechanics of short story writing and marketing.
Fifteen willing participants arrived with Margaret kicking off the day with the nuts and bolts of structure. As she said, she was pretty much Dobbin the carthorse preparing the ground for the thoroughbred, Tracy, to discuss and share the essential specifics of the short story.
Tracy Baines has been writing short stories for women’s magazine for many years, selling to magazines all over the world. So once Margaret had made sure that the components of fiction had been accessed and understood, reinforcing this understanding with various exercises, Tracy took over, galloping over all the fences, and galvanising the willing participants to follow.
Again there were loads of exercises, and invaluable advice and help.
It was a fun day, that everyone enjoyed, and there have been many requests for follow up day workshop on the novel, which will be held in the new year. This time it will be Margaret teaching, though Tracy will be along for the ride. As Michael Rowan explained to someone, it was pretty much a good cop, bad cop routine. (Well, really…) So guess which cop it is for the Novel Workshop.
Those who attended were encouraged to send in a follow up short story, just so the two mentors could make sure that their attendees were on the way. So, fun and progress, what could be better?
Remember, the WforW Independent Author Book Award for self-published books of any genre – fiction/non-fiction opens for entries on 11 November 2016. See the website (www.wordsforthewounded.co.uk) on 11 November for full details. Our inaugural winner, Jane Cable, was taken by a literary agent and is to be published by an independent Publisher, Endeavour, shortly- more on this soon, and last year’s winner, Dr Kathleen Thompson’s From Both Ends of the Stethoscope is now selling internationally and has attracted a great deal of interest.
