StoryGodmother Newsletter #19
Hello!
I know people talk about January dragging, but it’s been a whirlwind of a month here! I hope you have had a good month. So, here we are on the cusp of February – what’s new?
WINTER WRITING CHEER 2024
Thank you for everyone who has been joining in with this and helping to fundraise for Alzheimer’s Research UK. It's week 4 tomorrow – so the last chance to join in. Keep your eyes open across social media:
The aim of the writing cheer is twofold:
- to help writers with affordable (sometimes free) opportunities and spread a little cheer in the writing community.
- raise £1000 a year for Alzheimer's Research UK and help to beat the cruel disease.
In case you missed it, last week’s offer is an incredible evening with four top and highly experienced agents: Julia Churchill (AM Heath), Sam Copeland (RCW Literay Agency), Jodie Hodges (United Agents) and Gemma Cooper (The Bent Agency). These wonderful agents were kind enough to volunteer their services for a Q&A panel last year for Winter Writing Cheer – it was a sellout and a complete success, with many people reporting it was the best agent panel they had ever heard!
Tickets are only £10, and you have the chance to either ask questions in advance, or on the night, as well as listen to these top agents in conversation.
To get your ticket please see Eventbrite.
More info here
You can find or follow me here and take part in Winter Writing Cheer:
Facebook: AmySparkesAuthor
Instagram: sparkes_amy
BlueSky: amysparkes.bsky.social
Mastodon: @storygodmother@wandering.shop
Linkedin: Amy Sparkes
WRITING MAGAZINE CHILDREN'S BOOK PRIZE UPDATE
Congratulations to all of our longlisted and shortlisted writers. We are currently choosing our top three for both categories!
The prize will be running again this year, so if you’re interested in writing picture books and chapter books, start getting your manuscripts written or whipped into shape now.
EVENTS & COURSES
Story Godmother Courses
Leaps and Bounds – 4 weeks
A reminder this course is running in February, taking a deeper dive into important elements of writing craft which are often missing or not utilised to full potential. Come and develop your writing craft and create stories which stand out. I’m pleased to say this 4-week course is running from Tuesday 27th February until Tuesday 19th March, 7.30pm and costing only £60 (plus Eventbrite admin fee). The topics covered are:
Week 1 – Hooked – how to hook your reader in multiple ways.
Week 2 – Creating Tension – in both comedy and drama.
Week 3 – Character Baggage – understanding character experience and how to include the notoriously tricky backstory.
Week 4 – Mastering midpoint – what midpoint is and how to use it effectively.
There are 25 tickets available here: Eventbrite
I’ve also been asked to run the Writing Middle-Grade weekend as a longer evening course, so keep your eyes open for that one in the spring.
There will be more exciting courses coming over the year, but if there is anything special you would like to receive teaching on, please let me know at sparkles@storygodmother.co.uk
FREE SUBSCRIBER WEBINAR
If you’ve been subscribing for a while, you’ll know that I like to offer free webinars as a thank you for receiving the newsletter and a giveback to the writing community. Really pleased to offer the first one of the year. The webinar is called STRINGING YOUR BOW.
I work across a multitude of disciplines (writing fiction for children & adults, non-fiction, screenwriting, filmmaking, coaching, etc.), and will be sharing ideas on how to boost and diversify a creative career, looking at the pros and cons, and answer any questions. With the creative industries – including publishing – seriously suffering with finances, stringing your bow has never been more important for breaking in and surviving.
The webinar will run on Monday 5th February, 7pm-8pm. Please note that this one will NOT be recorded. You can book a place via any of these links - if one is sold out, please try another. They're all for the same event time, but if they're not split Eventbrite charges me for running a free event!
FREE COACHING COMPETITION
As another thank you for subscribing to the newsletter and to help coaching become accessible to all, I’m offering a FREE 30-minute coaching session (worth £30) via a lucky draw every newsletter, for anyone who would like to take part. Sessions can include anything you like (except for feedback on a text), such as discussing ideas, dealing with problems in your writing or writing life, discussing industry, etc over a Zoom call. For more on the coaching sessions, please see my Coaching page.
If you would like to enter, please email comps@storygodmother.co.uk with COACHING 28.1.24 in the subject line and you will be entered into the draw. All entries must be received by the Wednesday after the newsletter is sent out. So, in this case, please get your entries in by Wednesday 31st January 23:59GMT. I will contact the lucky winner directly, so if you haven’t heard anything, please assume you’ve not won this time, but please do try again next time! If you’ve already won a free coaching competition, please can you refrain from entering again this year to give other people a chance to win. Thank you.
Looking forward to working with more of you this year!
RESOURCES
I had an interesting writing experience this week, which highlighted again the importance of listening to your characters. I’m a firm believer that once your characters become fully rounded, gain agency and have clear wants and needs, they will absolutely have an opinion as you write your story.
In this particular example, I was writing a novel set in a world I was extremely familiar with, and characters I have hung out with for years. Unusually for me, the whole story is already carefully and thoughtfully plotted in detail. I’ve been grabbing an hour or so morning and evening to try and work on it, clocking up 1000-2500 a day – loving it, and absolutely whizzing through –
Until I wasn’t.
It was the start of a new chapter, and my new character has to impart some bad news to the other characters which takes the plot onto the next beat. Do you think I could make him do it? No chance. Despite whizzing through the story successfully so far, I spent both the morning and the evening session attempting to get something written down, maybe getting 140 words down, only to delete them all in frustration. This went on repeatedly as I tried every angle I could think of until, by the evening, my 13-year-old daughter helpfully suggested I replaced the defiantly blank chapter with the words ‘violin playing duck ceiling’, which we both agreed was an improvement. I typed the words, then shut down the laptop and decided to have another go tomorrow. Perhaps it was because I was tired.
In the middle of the night, it finally occurred to me: it was pointless. There was absolutely no way I was going to make this character announce the bad news. Why not? Because, quite simply, he didn’t want to. And no sneaky, devious attempt from me trying to write him into doing it was going to work. Not only did announcing the bad news not serve his interests, it actually went against them when I reassessed what he wanted in that particular scene, and in the novel as a whole. So, why on earth would he do this? It made no sense, as my character had clearly been trying to tell me.
Realising this saved me a bucket of time and frustration and from writing ‘violin playing duck ceiling’ at the end of every day for the foreseeable future. So, what did I learn from this incident?
1) My character is strong – he is actively involved in the storytelling and has opinions of his own. This is hugely reassuring.
2) I need to pay more attention to checking what every character wants in every scene, even when I’m tired.
3) When I am writing enthusiastically and speedily, I need to keep checking everything works ok. Or if something isn’t quite 100% right, make a note and return to it later. This character put his foot down and stopped me, but a character with milder manners, a more submissive personality or who is less well-formed might have let me get away with it.
4) Even though everything has been well-plotted, that doesn’t mean it is the only way – or the best way – for the story to be told. Keeping an open mind and listening to characters is absolutely essential. It is their story which is being told, after all. Plotting may come from the author, but the storytelling comes from the characters.
5) When plot doesn’t work, it is for a reason. Work out that reason, then you can move on.
6) We are still learning all the time. This is a mistake I shouldn’t have made, perhaps because it’s unlike me to plot so thoroughly. Perhaps because I was under the weather.
But I have learned from this. I will certainly be listening to my character straightaway next time if there’s a conflict between my opinion and theirs!
END NOTES
Good luck to anyone shortlisted for the Writing Magazine Children’s Book Prize competition, or entering the coaching competition, and to everyone getting their heads down and committing to writing something this week! Speak to you soon.
If there’s anything you’d like covered in the newsletter in the Resources section, please do let me know at sparkles@storygodmother.co.uk and I’ll see what I can do.
Thanks very much!
Story Godmother.