If you still pop in at X (formerly Twitter) and/or Facebook, we have the usually day-long mini contest tomorrow Saturday 5th October, to guess the colour of the Last Minute Club Badge. Which is usually two-tone. Check out previous colours here
Maybe you could choose a colour-combo from this photo of figurines I saw in the Open Exhibition of art at the RWA in Bristol today.
The winner of this guess the colour contest receives a Bath Flash Fiction Anthology or collection published by Ad Hoc Fiction. If two guessers are close (maybe choose one colour each) they each win a book, The Last Minute Club runs all day Sunday for final day entrants.
And another bonus. Matt Kendrick, our judge, has produced a second amazing thread on X (read a previous one this week reproduced reproduced here ) for those writers who do begin from scratch sometimes a couple of days before the end of a contest.
A few of the excellent ideas in this thread for very last minute writers plus links to a couple of his own published stories are below,and a few by others with story structures that can be used to write fast. I would also like congratulate Matt on receiving two Best of the Net Nominations this week. Fantastic news for a fabulous writer and hard-working editor and resources-person.
Matt says:
I wrote this piece in one day, edited it the next day, and submitted it
the day after. It was picked for the Wigleaf Top 50 so hopefully does a
few things okay:
This piece uses repetition. The reason this might be a quicker thing to
write is that it comes from emotion. The repetition creates resonance.
Here, I’m using epistrophe (end-of-sentece repetition), but anaphora
(start-of-sentence) is probably easier
Another technique that leans more into the emotional is the
breathless paragraph like this brilliant example from James Montgomery
HC in Bath last year: bathflashfictionaward.com/2023/06/james-…
James Montgomery June 2023 Highly Commended
bathflashfictionaward.com
If trying this, I’d suggest picking an emotion and just letting yourself
write from small emotion to big emotion, seeing what comes out. Don’t
worry about it being messy on first draft. That’s what editing is for.
Or how about a list? I wrote this FictiveDream piece in a couple
of days & it was picked for Best Microfiction:
https://fictivedream.com/2020/02/25/a-list-of-things-that-are-white/
Start with a title (“a list of things / people /
emotions) then come up with that list. Try mixing in expected &
unexpected items…(7/13)
Try contrasting concrete with abstract. Try going overboard with
language. Jo Gatford won Bath with an astounding list piece, Things Left And Found at The Side of the Road, back in 2018
You can see the rest of Matt’s thread for more suggestions if you visit him on X.
In the meantime, happy writing/editing/polishing. We love to read your stories and thanks to everyone who has submitted already. Results out at the end of October, £1460 in prizes.
Jude October 4th 2024
