MY NEW AND EXCITING LIFE AS A NEWBIE WRITER by Kimberly Thorn

One of my writing goals for this year is to not only write more but to get my writing out into the world.  Put my words into action.  To be relevant.  To be heard.  To tell my stories.  With this new goal, I started taking some chances by entering contests that interested me.  But I wanted to be careful to avoid any scams. 

So far, the most interesting contest I have entered was the Writers Playground, LLC.  For this contest you have to register by a certain date.  Yes, there is a minimum entry fee of $28.  As long as you pay the entry fee before their deadline, you will receive an email from the organization on a certain date and time.  All entrants will receive the email that is the start of the contest.  In the email there are five different settings and five different characters that you are to choose one from each list to write your short story about.  In addition to these different settings and different characters, there is also a key item that you HAVE to include in your story.  Which you may use as a minor point, or it can be a major plot point, but you have to use it.  Once you chose one setting from the list and one character from the list, you have ten days to write your story.  Yes, ten days only!  You can write about anything, any genre, but you must include those three perimeters.  You also only have a maximum of 3100 words to do it in!  Next, email them your story and wait. 

HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR MYSTERY, BLACK OR WITH CREAM AND SUGAR? by Yvonne Saxon

 

Choosing a mystery to read is like going into a coffee house and starting at the big board of coffee drinks: there are a lot of choices! Which one do you choose? What do those names even mean? Because mysteries are as varied as coffee drinks, why not choose you next mystery like you’d choose a coffee? How? By looking at the “menu” and the “ingredients”!

Let’s start with the basics. To make a good cup of black coffee, you need the right ratio of boiling water to high quality beans. Whether dripped, poured over, or pressed through, the right amount of water to beans will produce a satisfying cup. The right ratio of crime to be solved and interesting characters to solve it will produce a satisfying mystery.

AN INTROVERT AT A BIG MYSTERY CONFERENCE by Maria Hudgins

Malice Domestic! The wonderful mystery conference that claims to be “Not everyone’s cup of tea” is  back and in person again!

I recently came home from the conference in Bethesda, MD. I had a good time. But not, I think, as good as most other attendees. Why do I think that? Because it looked like the others were having more fun, laughing, hugging, obviously delighted to see old friends, scrambling to put tables together for breakfast, for lunch, and again for dinner. But I needed to take a break a couple of times a day to go back to my room and relax. As always, I need to have a room to myself. I look for a chance to take a walk outside the hotel. By myself.

CHARACTERS, CONFLICT, AND THE MYERS-BRIGS TYPE INDICATOR® by Michael Rigg

King Neptune
Virginia Beach Oceanfront

Writers, and readers, know the importance of characters. In Characters & Viewpoint, Orson Scott Card reminds writers of something we should know almost instinctively: “… readers want your characters to seem like real people. Whole and alive, believable and worth caring about. Readers want to get to know your characters as well as they know their own friends, their own family. As well as they know themselves.” 

But having characters worth caring about isn’t enough, is it? There has to be more to keep readers turning pages and saving their pennies to buy the next installment in your series about a serial-killer-turned-nun who runs a detective agency out of a convent. That something else is conflict. As James Scott Bell tells us in Conflict & Suspense, “Conflict has long been recognized as the engine of story. Without conflict there is no drama. Without drama, there is no interest. Without interest there is no reader. And no writing career.”