Freebies

Over the last few weeks, my health has decided to explore a new dimension. Which is the most positive way I can find of saying it has tumbled over another cliff. It isn’t worse necessarily just different to how it was before. Those of you who are regular readers of my newsletter will know that I live with a chronic health problem that has been rumbling on for six years now. I’ve learned to accept it as best I can and to pivot when needed, to adapt my life around the illness rather than trying to persuade the illness to adapt around my life (since the illness - he’s called Trevor - is not the most adaptable type).

So, a pivot.

This month, I’ve been in need of something easy to do, something to distract me from the illness but also something that isn’t too onerous. My go-to in this situation is to make writing resources (who knows why) and I’ve popped these on my website for anyone to download free of charge. There’s a body language bible, a character creator resource, a compendium of collective nouns, and a glossary to help with sensory detail. This week I’ve added a story planner with lots of questions to help you plan and edit your stories, a guide to literary terms, and a fancy spreadsheet for recording story submissions (there are pie charts and everything 🤓). I’ve also updated my spreadsheet of “best of” flash fictions to include Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions and the Wigleaf Top 50 for 2023. Finally, I’ve been busy making lists of story examples - a list of stories using anaphora, a list of humorous stories, a list of fairy tale retellings, and the most list-y list of all, a list of lists. You’ll also find links to free resources from other brilliant places. Further details below.

Before I get to the free stuff, a small request (or perhaps another small pivot). These resources are free because I think it’s important as much as possible to open up the creative arts to everyone who wants to take part irrespective of their financial situation. If you’re a low income writer, please make full use of these resources and all the other free resources linked to on my website - hopefully they are something that helps level the playing field. I wish I could do more. Another thing that might be helpful for you is that I maintain a mailing list for low-income writers to flag when there are free (or low cost) opportunities to work with me or other writing facilitators. Do sign up if this is you.

For everyone else, if you’d like to help in levelling the playing field for low-income writers, there are plenty of ways you can do that. If you can afford to buy me a cup of coffee to say thank you for the newsletters and the resources, then I use any money donated to my Ko-fi page to fund free and reduced price places for my Write Beyond The Lightbulb courses, as well as to provide free editing and mentoring opportunities for low-income writers, and to support other opportunities that seek to level the playing field.

I’d also love to keep building my reach through this newsletter. So, perhaps you’d click the button below and share on your social media channels or with your writing friends via email. Thank you so much for anyone who takes the time to do this. I’m currently at just under 1600 subscribers (which is mind-boggling to me) but I’d love for that number to keep going up.

Finally, if you’d like to support me more generally, I’m mostly focusing on my editing work for the moment and am currently in a bit of a lull. So, if you’re working on a piece of writing that could do with some editorial input, please get in touch. I have many years of experience working with writers on projects both big and small, ranging from one-off flash fiction critiques to structural overview reports on novels, short story collections or novellas-in-flash.

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Freebies

Right, let’s get to the good stuff.

I’ve waffled on about them below, but if you’d prefer to simply have a browse, then you can see all my resources here.

Finding Inspiration

Most of my writing (apart from the novel that we shan’t mention!) takes the form of flash fiction and I know that many of you also focus on this most innovative of forms. There is so much brilliant flash being written, and I find so much inspiration in reading other flash to inform my own craft. Sometimes it is hard to decide what to read, but the “best of” lists (Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, and the Wigleaf Top 50) seem like a good starting point. At the top of my resources page, there’s a spreadsheet with links to all the featured pieces from the past four years.

Or maybe you’re looking for something more specific?

How about a list of stories that use anaphora or epistrophe? A list of breathless paragraphs? A list of stories that makes use of humour? A list of stories written using the imperative? A list of stories where the setting takes centre stage? A list of wonderful retellings? A list of stories told from unusual perspectives? Or indeed, a list of lists?

I’m working on a few more of these lists and they’ll be popping up on my website over the coming months.

Building characters

A lot of these resources started life as bonus resources included in my Write Beyond the Lightbulb courses, but now that I’m taking a pause from my teaching work, it seems like the time to share them more widely. Most of us, for example, will have some characters in our stories. So, how about some help bringing those characters to life? One of the resources I made a while ago is called The Character Creator and it includes different ideas for exploring character depths. There is a questionnaire, a personality test and a timeline as well as templates for making social media profiles, journal entries or school reports.

Once we’ve created our characters, we maybe want to ponder the specific ways each character acts and hopefully my Body Language Bible is a useful tool for thinking about that. It is split into 24 different emotion types and suggests ways a person might act in each of those emotions. What are they doing with their arms and legs? What is happening with their eyes? How are they speaking or breathing? What general points might we consider? Using body language helps us show a character’s emotions but sometimes telling is the stronger choice, so I’ve also got a handy resource for pinpointing the exact emotion we want a reader to take away.

Building worlds

For building the world where a character lives, I often find it useful to start with a picture. From my own perspective, my life is limited by illness. I often don’t leave my little village for months at a time. So, I use prompt pictures to help conjure the seaside or a bustling city centre or an abandoned warehouse or a haunted church. If we want to make the description of that place as immersive as possible then the chances are we could do with adding some sensory details, so here’s a glossary which might be helpful with that, breaking down each of the main senses – vision, sound, taste, smell, touch – into subcategories to get you thinking about the complex options you have as a writer when bringing each sense to the page.

Planning

We all work in different ways. Some of us plan meticulously before we write a single word. Some of us explore the story first and then think about how it holds together. Whichever way you work, I think it can be useful to have a framework to help you consider whether your story is working as strongly as it could. I definitely need this for myself and it’s also something I refer to when editing work for others. My Story Planner is a list of questions broken down into categories of Narrative, Place, Time, Tension etc. which can be used as a sounding board to help with the planning, structuring, writing, and deepening of stories.

Other stuff

Other things you’ll find on my resources page include a list of collective nouns, a list of colour names, a guide to formatting dialogue, and a glossary of literary terms.

And for when you’re ready to send your stories out into the world, maybe you’d find it useful to have somewhere to record what you’re sending where. If you’d like a fancy submissions tracker then you can find one to download about halfway down my resources page.

Free stuff from elsewhere

There are lots of wonderful people in the writing community who provide free resources to help the rest of us improve our craft and feel a little bit more like we know what we’re doing, and I’d like to end this month’s newsletter by highlighting some of them.

If you’re a flash fiction writer, you should definitely consider signing up to Kathy Fish’s newsletter. It never fails to inspire me. Similarly, I’m always inspired by what Tommy Dean has to say. His Flash Perspectives is well worth a few minutes of your time every month.

For more general writing inspiration, I always recommend Matt Bell’s No Failure, Only Practice. Fetish Literature are another place that is publishing interesting articles about writing craft. And if you want to zoom in to something much more specific, Nina Schuyler’s Stunning Sentences is a must read.

Finally, if you’re after a real treasure trove of free writing resources, Emma Darwin’s The Itch of Writing tool kit provides just that. Well worth checking out.

There are more suggestions at the bottom of my resources page.

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There you go. Lots of free stuff to get you through October. Next month I’ll hopefully be back with something a little more craft-focused and enlightening.

As always I’d love to hear from you. Please leave a comment by clicking the button below. Have you used these resources? Were they useful? Are there other free writing resources you’d like to highlight?

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