#d.d. johnston

[onlinewritingtips]

Announcing the 2019 OWT Short Fiction Prize long list

Announcing the 2019 OWT Short Fiction Prize long list

With almost 600 entries to consider, selecting our favourite 10% was never going to be easy. But the decisions this year have been especially difficult, as the standard of entries is the best we’ve ever seen. We’re thrilled to have attracted such a range of excellent fiction, sent to us from six continents. As always, we’re delighted that our long list features a mix of multi-published,…

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Congratulations to the winners of the 2018 OWT Short Fiction Competition

Congratulations to the winners of the 2018 OWT Short Fiction Competition

Today, we’re pleased to announce that three people will receive prizes, but sorry that more than 600 others have been disappointed along the way. We’ve tried to make our decisions as fairly and diligently as possible, but disappointing news isn’t nice to receive or deliver. We take comfort in knowing that with so many brilliant entries, the authors who didn’t get the breaks in our competition…

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OWT Short Fiction Competition - update

OWT Short Fiction Competition – update

The 2018 OWT short fiction competition is now closed for entries – thanks so much to everyone who has submitted their work. We’re still counting the entries and it looks like we have nearly 600! Once again, that’s almost double the number of entries we received last year (in 2016 we had 148 entries, in 2017 we had 300 (exactly), and now we have almost 600; if the competition continues to grow at…

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Story structure example: The Very Hungry Caterpillar (tip 81)

US President George W Bush once named The Very Hungry Caterpillar as his favourite childhood book. Alas, it wasn’t published until he was 23 & fresh out of Yale. It's not advanced post-grad reading but it does have a perfect structure

Some years ago, former-US President George W. Bush named The Very Hungry Caterpillar as his favourite childhood book. Unfortunately, it wasn’t published until he was 23 and fresh out of Yale. Still, while it’s not advanced post-graduate reading, it does have a perfect structure, from which we can learn a lot.

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Ian McEwan’s ‘Psychopolis': Imagery, subject, theme (tip 80)

Ian McEwan’s ‘Psychopolis’: Imagery, subject, theme (tip 80)

In this video, D.D. Johnston discusses how imagery is often the connecting point between subject and theme (for a reminder about subject and theme, see writing tip 71). He looks at Ian McEwan’s short story ‘Psychopolis’ and presents a weird theory about Magpies. Psychopolis is available here, starting on page 52.

read video…

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Flannery O’Connor and the magic gesture: how literary short stories work (tip 79)

Flannery O’Connor and the magic gesture: how literary short stories work (tip 79)

In our last video, we considered the similarities between short stories and jokes. We said that, just like the punchline of a joke, whatever happens at the climax of a story is unexpected, but in retrospect seems obvious and inevitable. In this video, DD Johnston develops that idea and think about what it is that happens at the climax of most successful literary short stories. (We say ‘literary’…

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[onlinewritingtips]

Short stories are a joke! (tip 78)

Short stories are a joke! (tip 78)

In the run up to this year’s Online Writing Tips Short Fiction Competition, we’re doing a series of posts on short fiction. Previous videos have looked at beginning a short story. Today, D.D. Johnston begins to reflect on the importance of endings, and why short stories are like jokes.

Mickey Spillane said:

A fiction story is like…

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[onlinewritingtips]

"A Temporary Matter": Beginning a Short Story (tip 76)

“A Temporary Matter”: Beginning a Short Story (tip 76)

Following on from our last video, D.D. Johnston looks at the opening to a modern classic short story: “A Temporary Matter” by Jhumpa Lahiri. You can read the full story here: http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/l/lahiri-maladies.html

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