Writing Micro-Fiction by Madeleine McDonald

Micro-Fiction from Press 53

I always was a succinct writer. Even at school, my essays came back with the comment: ‘Put more meat on the bones.’

Over the past couple of years I have been experimenting with micro-fiction. Compressing a complete story into 50 or 100 words is a fun challenge. Although there is no space for unnecessary digressions or descriptions, readers still need enough clues to join the dots for themselves. They also need to feel they have read a ‘proper story’, with a satisfying, perhaps unexpected, ending.

Although I know when I start that there is room for only one main character, grappling with one event or idea, I begin by writing down everything I want to say. This produces too many variations on a theme, in too many words.

Then I cut back. It’s a slow job. Something has to go each time, and it may take a dozen versions to get the balance right.

For examples of micro-fiction, see What Dwells Between the Lines, an anthology showcasing various winners of Press 53’s fun, free, monthly competition for stories of 53 words, no more, no less.  

https://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Dwells-between-Lines-Fifty-Three/dp/1950413810

A Duet of Book Signings!

Independent Bookshop Week comes to Clutterbooks in Hornsea, and two members of Hornsea Writers have gained a Chat & Sign spot in the fiercely contested eleven book-signings on offer - both on the same day, Tuesday 16th June.

Joy Stonehouse, who writes historicals based on her research among the parish records of coastal towns in East Yorkshire, welcomes readers to the shop at 10.30am.

Her five book series A Story of Reighton follows her farming ancestors from 1703. Her latest title, The Boy With Mussel Shell Eyes, is an epistolary novel set in Filey during the Regency period. 

Joy Stonehouse on Amazon

 

Karen Wolfe will be attending at 2.00pm. Facilitating dog-training classes in the town, she knows a thing or two about what makes a human-canine venture tick, or falter. It's just the research necessary for a series of crime novels with more than a touch of comedy, Comi-Crime, in fact. 

In complete contrast, her latest book is a collection of short fiction centred on The Horror in Everyday Things. Be prepared to shudder. 

Karen Wolfe on Amazon

 Joy and Karen look forward to meeting readers and being quizzed about their writing. 

BOOK LAUNCH: "In Plain Sight: The horror in everyday things" by Karen Wolfe

 AT LAST... SOMETHING NEW!

I’d grown lazy, complacent, out of the writing habit…. what had I been playing at since my last novel was published in 2018? 

Very little, other than a few short stories and a monthly dog column for the local newspaper. And so I might have continued, but for the untimely death of a close friend who had so much left to do…and from wherever, she gave me the necessary kick up the backside.

Trawling through my office drawers (never throw anything out, just in case) I came upon half-finished novels, newspaper articles and…a cache of stories. Flash fiction, short, shortish, rambling, medium and long: early embarrassments, experimental stuff, horror, humour and everything in between, competition entries, successful and otherwise, all just sitting there. And I thought: why not?

‘In Plain Sight’ (subtitle: ‘The horror in everyday things’) represents two sides of the same coin: the monsters in the mundane, the evil in the everyday, the just-when-you-thought-you-were-safe, lurking in full view. Twenty-four tales about small moments that changed everything. And the book is dedicated to my late friend, who fought her own everyday horrors with courage, sarcasm and humour. 

Out now on Amazon, in paperback and ebook formats 
www.amazon.co.uk/karenwolfe 
Also available at Clutterbooks, Hornsea

www.KarenWolfe-author.co.uk