This week’s Writing Prompt Story Starter is quite similar to a recent one…
I published a photo here a few weeks ago of a beech hedge in all its green, springtime glory. Now I want to rewind slightly to a stage earlier in that process: a beech hedge unfurling its first green leaves amidst the winter’s russet.
It caught my eye as a story starter because of its obvious “early bird catches the worm” theme. Does it make you think of anything different?
Maybe something about being attention seeking? Standing out from the crowd? Not blending in.
Or maybe being a leader, showing the way.
What about the people who walk by the hedge, or what the hedge surrounds . . .
I don’t know. It’s over to you to exercise your imaginations!
Update on requirements
I haven’t given you an update for a while on what we’re currently looking for, because I know Tracey, our Twitter queen, has been giving out a lot of that information there.
But for those of you who don’t Twitter, we’re particularly on the look-out for 3000 word stories.
Genre? Well, there aren’t many period stories being submitted at the moment, whether romance or general interest. And remember that the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties are now classed as “period” (I refuse to call the Nineties period; that was just yesterday!)
Some genres that you might have forgotten we’re open to are cosy crime, mystery, twist in the tale, spooky (but not scary) and humorous. It’s not all romance — though that’s always welcome.
We always welcome good, emotional family stories, of course. I still have a resistance to widow stories, inherited cottage stories, and granny stories, unless they’re absolutely essential elements of the plot, of course, and can’t be substituted by any other reason for being single/moving to a new home/coping with young people.
I think that’s it for today.
But look out next week for another blog post about just how many stories we’re receiving at the moment . . .
Shirley Blair Fiction Ed Shirley’s been with the “Friend” since 2007 and calls it her dream job because she gets to read fiction all day every day. Hobbies? Well, that would be reading! She also enjoys writing fiction when she has time, long walks, travel, and watching Scandi thrillers on TV.
