The Wicked Writing Blog

Welcome to the home of writing award ideas and practical advice for story contest success. Fun and sheer tomfoolery are never far away. Feel free to add your comments. (To comment on a post, or see the comments there, simply click on its title. To see all the comments to date, click on the buttons 'Best' or 'Community' below each post.)

 

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A Secret Way to Win a Story Writing Contest

Posted by John Yeoman on Monday, August 29, 2011, In : The Writing Craft 
What's the secret tip that will help you win a top story writing contest? It can be expressed in just one word...

But wait!

Before the secret can be yours, you must first undergo a Trial by Ordeal. Simply become the judge of a writing competition. You should then appraise with critical rigor, every three months, more than one million words of stories - that's Pride and Prejudice eight times over.

All of a sudden, the secret will so illuminate your mind that henceforth you will be spared the expe...
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Three great tips from an old crime writer

Posted by John Yeoman on Friday, August 12, 2011, In : The Writing Craft 
It’s amazing what you can learn from old crime writers, even when they’re poor authors.

I have just been reading Malcolm Sage, Detective (1921) by Herbert George Jenkins. He wrote around the time of Edgar Wallace but he lacked Wallace’s manic ingenuity. Jenkins, in a word, is stagy.

In his tales, the butler really does do it, the reader is presented with just two possible suspects of which one is blatantly a decoy, and the villain is called - nudge, nudge - ‘Sir Jasper’. That said, J...
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John Yeoman

Dr John Yeoman, MA Oxon, MPhil, PhD Creative Writing, FSRS*  is a UK university tutor in the short story. He has 42 years experience as a successful commercial writer, newspaper editor and one-time chairman of a major PR consultancy.

He has published innumerable works of humour, some intended to be humorous.

* Founder, the Society for the Rehabilitation of the Semi-colon