If you haven’t seen it, check out the new post about guidelines on Suite101. You can find the new Suite101 guidelines by clicking here.

The one that stands out the most to me and will likely get more writing overall for Suite101 is lifting the minimum article requirement. Previously, Suite101 required writers to submit at least 10 articles per 90 days, which was an average of about three (3) articles per month, give or take, in order to stay active. Suite101 has now lifted that requirement, so writers, as long as they meet all other guidelines, will stay active even if they have to take a break. Read the rest of this entry »

The other day, I wrote on my author’s blog about editing down a novel to get word count within the proper guidelines. You can read that post here.

One of the things I talked about was how my novel, in the first draft form, was a little over 120,000 words, which meant I needed to cut between 22-24,000 words from it for the genre and style of the novel. I knew when I wrote it I would have to cut it. It was, after all, a 2006 NaNoWriMo novel. For those unfamiliar with NaNoWriMo, it’s a self-challenge ‘contest’ to write a novel in 30 days. To do that, we have to focus more on just writing for the sake of writing than for the sake of the story. This meant there were a lot of filler scenes in that weren’t necessary for the story at all. Those were decently easy to cut out. Read the rest of this entry »

Lots of good entries for the regret theme this time, so judging took a long time. We narrowed it down to finalists and I wanted to let everyone who entered know who the finalists were before we post the winners. The reason I’m doing this is, there were soooo many entries this time that, because it was a contest format, means there were some good stories that were not able to win but that might have been considered had it been straight submissions.

Digital Download Winners:

Unfortunately, I don’t have the digital download announcement ready at the time of this post. I will be announcing the digital download winners next week, so if your story is not selected here for the book, you might still be included for a digital download contract, and I will email you next week and post the winners here on the blog then. Sorry for the delay!

The judging on this group was hard. A lot of painful, gut and heart-wrenching stories in this batch for regret. I’m running really late tonight, so we’ll just jump right into the winners for the book!

Poem Winners:

Only One Regret, by W. Ned Livingston

My Regrets, by Camden Eastman

My Son, by Camden Eastman

After the Fact, by Lisa Lee Smith

Home Videos, by Carol Ayer

Shadow Keepers, by Laurie Darroch-Meekis

Eternal Heartache, by Pamela Caves

My Regretful Life, by Camden Eastman

Congratulations to all the poets. We are getting more poetry than ever before, and with limited slots, it’s so hard to pick the best ones. Thank you to everyone for your submissions. I’ve enjoyed reading each of them, even if they didn’t win, and don’t forget — some of the ones who didn’t win are still being considered for our poetry compilation later in the year!

REGRET THEME WINNERS ARE:

A Friend of the Family, by Helen Haught Fanick – Classic love story theme here for regret. Sometimes, the fear of rejection keeps us from the things we truly want and love, only to find those objects of affection shared those same regrets. A good lesson here to trust your heart, lest you regret that which you have not said more than you’d regret having said it. This will make a fine addition to your regret theme in the anthology! Congratulations.

Secret Love, by Terri Elders – This story is sweet and sad at the same time, and while it definitely shows regrets, it’s also not shoved in the reader’s face. We see the lead character regret, and then we see her secret love with his regret too. The last line of this story made me snort out laughter, and that doesn’t happen too much. I loved the way we were expecting, “Ah! Finally!” but then only to find out, nope, can’t happen. LOL Great job!

Victorious Tragedy, by Derek Odom – The only thing that would have made this story better would have been more ‘story’. It’s short, not so sweet, with a tragically sad ending, but it feels more like a man sitting in a rocking chair telling a short snapshot of an event in his life. I would have liked more story, like action, characters interacting, more characterization. However, even without that, the basic story was still worthy of placing, and I plan to work with Derek to flesh this out a bit more. Sadly tragic ending, but the story touches the reader.

Snow Globe, by Robert Arend – As far as just the storyline goes, this one really got to me. I could almost see it like a Twilight Zone movie type thing. But it does have a meta message to it that stands out without being in your face. Every decision we make, no matter how small it might seem, makes a difference–both in our lives and those around us too. This story shows that very clearly, while still giving our main character a ‘second chance’. A very worthy entry to our contest.

Congratulations to each of you for an excellent story written, and for submitting it. I personally know how hard it is to let one go and let it fly, and each of you did this successfully.

FIRST PLACE

One story did stand out amongst the others as good enough to grab that sought after first place spot though. The one that secured the win had a creative use of the theme in which regret, while running through the story, isn’t ever really specifically referred to, and yet, we see so many regrets in the final scenes of this ‘love never given a chance’ story. I loved the ending line about the husband, because that just cinched it right up. The first place winner whose name will appear on the front cover of the book:

Elliot & June, by Elizabeth Grace

Probably the best line of any of the stories came from this story. The line reads: “These past few years have been wearisome, I will say that, with sadness and hope doing a tango, each taking their turn leading.” I really like that line, a lot. But it wasn’t that line alone that made this one win. One of the things I like about this is that the lead character, our narrator in the story, is insisting she made the right choice, but we, the readers, can see her regret so clearly, even while she misses it completely. It’s seen in how she considers her lack of desire for these things others expected from her is considered a weakness or a flaw in herself, and even in the very end of the story, she’s still trying to convince herself she has no regrets. We clearly see otherwise. Great job on a very poignant story!

Thank you to everyone who entered and special congratulations to those who won.

Love and stuff,
Michy

Some interesting facts about this month’s winners for the SORROW theme in our anthology Expressions of Pain:

We received 47 short story entries for the Sorrow theme. Interestingly enough, the theme coming after this one – REGRET – we’ve only received about 22. Sorrow is stronger than regret, it seems.

Twelve stories were submitted where the lead character dies at the end. Three more stories were submitted where it seems the character might have died, but it was left open for the reader to decide if it really happened our not. There was a time when there was a rule: you can’t kill your lead character. So readers didn’t expect it, so the rare times it happened in a story, it was a surprise. It seems most novice writers now are thinking that killing off the lead character is new, novel, unexpected. But it isn’t, as evidenced by fifteen stories that all killed off the lead character. I’m not saying not to ever do it, but if you do it, don’t expect that it’s going to be unexpected or new and innovative as far as writing is concerned. If the death of the lead character is your only writing trick, you might not have a strong enough story to win a contest. Read the rest of this entry »

I was asked yesterday about developing characters.

I wrote an article about this that you can read here: How To Develop Characters When Writing Fiction Novels.

Personally, I think the biggest mistake made when someone writes about a character is making them too one dimensional – all you see of the character is what is in the writing itself, and the reader just can’t really connect with or ‘feel’ the character as a real person.

Good fiction takes the reader on a journey through their own mind, and you have to realize that all readers are going to read your writing from their place in this world – they will relate what they read to events and people in their lives, their experiences. Read the rest of this entry »

I friend of mine that many of you already know from the writing forum is a ‘previvor’, and she is working with FORCE to try to get votes for the Chase Community Giving. There’s only a few days left, so please read this important post from here and go and do something! It doesn’t cost anything but a few seconds of your time and can make a big difference for a lot of people!

Here’s what she had to say:

I found out soon after the birth of my baby in 2008 that I have the BRCA1 mutation (also known as the breast cancer gene) which greatly increased my risk of breast (by 87%) & ovarian (by 44%) cancer. In February of this year I had a prophylactic (that means the removal of healthy tissue & organs) double mastectomy with reconstruction and in October of this year a hysterectomy & oopherectomy. As drastic as all of that may sound, it’s the best option that people like me have to avoid getting these cancers. Having this mutation means that I am missing my tumor suppressors in those areas, which is why getting breast or ovarian cancer for someone like me is often-times deadly. And why if I were to have gotten breast cancer, and beaten it the first time, with its high recurrence rate, it could just keep coming back and coming back until I eventually died from it. Read the rest of this entry »

Paragraphs Are Our Friends

Since part of what Accentuate does for writers is to review web content sites and put them through their paces and report that back to you writers, I end up reading a lot of web content sites, blog sites, and article sites. One thing I’ve noticed quite frequently is that many people don’t seem to know when to break a line for a paragraph in their content. Paragraphs are important for several reasons, and if you want your writing to be the very best, it is important to know when to add a paragraph break and why.

Web content is a bit different than print items in that the reader will be viewing the content on a screen and not on a page or in a book. Many people use reading guides or their fingers or note cards to follow along while they are reading a print item, but this is nearly impossible to do on the computer without leaving unsightly fingerprints on your monitor. That brings me to the first reason why paragraph breaks are important: to make it easier for your readers to read your content without too much eye strain.

Looks Are Important and So Are Paragraphs Read the rest of this entry »