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Writer Self-Challenge Bingo

Usually, writing bingos are either fandom-specific, ship-specific, or linked to certain themes or tropes. A couple months ago, we at Duck Prints Press got to talking - what if there was a "fulfill this challenge!" style bingo aimed at writers? Instead of squares for tropes or ships or kinks, the squares for this bingo are writing challenges, such as "write x words in a sitting," "participate in a sprint," or "draw a map or floorplan for a location in your story." We've been developing it on and off ever since, and now we're ready to share the results!

We now have a list of 100 writing challenges (you can see the full list here), ranging from pretty darn easy to really hard (but we haven't rated their difficulty - what's easy for one writer will be hard for another, so a difficulty rating would be meaningless). We pre-generated a few cards, just for fun...

...or, you can use this link to generate your own!

https://bingobaker.com/#e7f0e229ba002276

We are not running this as a formal event. Sadly, we just don't have time right now to make rules, handle sign ups, track participants, create custom bingo cards, etc. However, we don't think we need to! Everything you need to run your personal writer self-challenge bingo is right in this post - if you're the kind of writer who'd find something like this helpful, we encourage you to use one of our pre-gen cards, make your own, or even just use this idea as a launching-off point from which to make a challenge that fits your brain.

And, if you do choose to use a bingo card, and end up writing and posting any fic, we encourage you to add it to our AO3 collection, and/or tag us so we can reblog/retweet/boost it!

As long as you're writing using strategies that help you, the rules don't matter, so get out there and write that thing!

(and, if you have ideas for more writing challenges we can add to our list, we'd love to hear them, and we'll potentially add them to our bingo card generator list!)

*

Have a writing question? Send us an ask!

Like what we do? Buy us a ko-fi or support us on Patreon!

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Our submissions are currently OPEN to TRANS PEOPLE ONLY until August 15th, 2022 at 11:59 P.M. EDT! 

Delicate Friend is an adult (18+) space for sexual or intimate art or literature you enjoyed creating. Art is work, so enjoyment does not exclude difficulty. Difficulty can be exciting! At the end of the day, we want this journal to be a fun experience for us and our readers.

Our current theme — guest-edited by Ale Canales — is “ANTIMATTER,” extending the intimacy of our T4T issue across the ever-expanding universe. Is your erotic imagination haunted by sentient artificial intelligence? Have you dreamed of traversing the blank spaces between stars with your lovers? Is your gender too alien for mere earthlings to comprehend? We want to hear from you! ¡Por primera vez, también estamos aceptando poesía y prosa en español! Indique si tiene una traducción al inglés preexistente o si desea que Ale se la traduzca.

To submit, send an email with your name and pronouns in the subject line (ex. “Fox Auslander – They/them”). Your submission can be attached as a file or pasted in the body of your email. We recommend providing a third-person bio in the body of the email, but feel free to do so at your own discretion.

Delicate Friend is now a paying market! We pay $10+ to each accepted contributor upon digital release.

Click through for full guidelines. The New Smut Project is not affiliated with this market, but we want to signal boost this for interested readers and writers among our community! 

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call for submissions: “Rotten Zucchinis Zine” Revisited (06/2022)

Some recent interest reminded me that it’s been almost a decade since the original “Rotten Zucchinis zine” about harm in qp / non-normative relationships began taking shape. So it’s time to revisit this in a call for new submissions:

Inviting submissions:

for a zine about experiences with non-normative** personal / intimate relationships that are harmful or destructive, or include harm (e.g., violence, coercion, abuse, etc., broadly defined, including things like destructive codependence) or otherwise traumatic experiences

personal stories, reflections, poetry, art, etc.

** By “non-normative” I’m referring to things like queerplatonic relationships or other non-romantic personal or intimate relationships that are somehow “outside the box” and not adequately or properly described by the term “friendship”– especially relationships for which there are no good specific labels. (The people involved do not have to be arospec and/or ace even though almost everyone who contributed to the first 2 issues was.)

Keep reading

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This anthology is about the human body and what it carries. It’s about the untold stories we carry on our skin and in our bones: how you got those scars on your arms, the emotional density of having adult acne, the texture of your hair and how you’ve tried to change it, or the rigidness and pressure of weight loss culture. At some point in our lives, we look in the mirror and suddenly notice our bodies in a sort of visceral way. This collection is looking for stories of these moments: from epiphanies, to revelations, to acceptances.

Send us your best short stories, poems/art songs, creative nonfiction pieces, personal essays, features, and scripts. We are looking for imaginative writing that has unique description and poetic devices. Unconventional pieces that are relatable, and holds resonance within our readers long after they’ve read your piece. Fabulism, magical realism, speculative fiction, allegories, or anything of the sort is strongly encouraged. We want weird fiction that doesn’t follow any rules, and follows the impulse of our bodies.

Anthology edited by Catherine Mwitta

For this call, we are particularly interested in Canadian authors, though some International submissions may be accepted. Priority is given to Canadian work to align with Canadian granting body requirements.

All writers are paid in royalties and receive an advance of $15 Canadian prior to publication. Royalties are shared equally among all contributors and are not based on page or word count.

One submission per writer,  (multiple submissions, even if of a different style, will be ignored). Previously unpublished work only (no reprints).Submissions containing racist, sexist, homophobic, ableist, or transphobic content will be immediately rejected. We have zero tolerance for abuse in the writing community and writers who violate this standard will be rejected.

We strongly encourage submissions from BIPOC and LGBTQ2S+ writers.

SUBMISSIONS CLOSE June 15, 2022

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Hello! I'd like to share with you a character work game! I call it "Six Secrets" and honestly it's a work in progress but I'm sharing it anyway

List six secrets that your character has.

1 is an open secret

2 is a secret the people close to your character know

3 is a secret that your character wouldn't really care about getting out

4 is a secret exactly one person knows anything about

5 is a secret no one knows about but they sort of want to come out/to tell someone

6 is a secret no one knows and they desperately don't want anyone to know about.

You can also decide who knows and how

The secrets don't have to have anything to do with your actual plot! The secrets can have super low or super high stakes! It doesn't matter! But you will absolutely have a better idea of your character's intentions and state of mind, and you may wind up coming up with some new plot points/obstacles to play with

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Taking Submissions: Limeoncello Summer 2022

Taking Submissions: Limeoncello Summer 2022

  Deadline: May 10th, 2022 Payment: Contributor’s Copy Theme: Rebirth Note: Apologies for the short window, I didn’t realize they were open again. Submission Guidelines Send submissions to limeoncello@gmail.com with “Submission” as the subject. Please read before submitting. Thank you. Submissions are currently: OPEN Summer 2022 theme: Rebirth. Submissions will be open from March 15th – May…

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👻 Contributor applications are now OPEN for 13 Days 2022: Ghost and Ghouls! 👻

Paranormal Investigator? Ghost Hunter extraordinaire? Or maybe just your everyday ghost obsessed individual? Whichever it may be, a journal to record your findings is a must! This year’s zine will be formatted journal style to fit all your ghastly needs! 📓

We’re looking for Artists, Merch Artists, and Writers! We also have an “other” app available for those of you outside of those categories that would still like to apply! E.g., music, embroidery, recipes, comics, etc!

🖌️ Artists & Merch Artists: https://forms.gle/gFicp2VCTphthvtv5

🖋️ Writers: https://forms.gle/Btv8tvF3M6zjWSmDA

📓 Other: https://forms.gle/3gPtkMq9y3TGP4Qg8

👻 Info Doc: docs.google.com/document/d/1tzAFije3BsuFJX8vOnORLuh9j7ErLQg6ryhoUPAfKRE

👻 Carrd: 13daysadvent.carrd.co

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Taking Submissions: Little Blue Marble First 2022 Window

Taking Submissions: Little Blue Marble First 2022 Window

Deadline: July 31, 2022 Payment: $0.11 per word for original and $0.01 a word for reprints. (If the CAD/USD exchange rate dips below that which would match SFWA’s 8¢/word pro rate,) Theme: Speculative fiction that examines humanity’s possible futures living with anthropogenic climate change. We prefer fiction with a hopeful outlook. Note: Reprints Welcome Little Blue Marble is OPEN TO SUBMISSIONS…

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In happier sex-writing news, I spotted this call that looks pretty interesting:

Submissions are now open for the sixth volume of the Sex & Sorcery anthology.

Sex & Sorcery 6

Deadline: Initial reading period closes 7 May 2022.

Payment: 0.01$ a word up to a maximum of $100.

Length: 4,000-12,000 words

We want erotic epic fantasy stories. Simple, right? Erotic means sex must be integral to the story. Epic fantasy means set in another world. No paranormal romance or anything set on Earth please. We love elves and orcs but we are particularly interested in unusual and original settings. Full submissions details are on our website and we recommend familiarising yourself with previous volumes before submitting.

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ANNOUNCEMENT: Submissions for Issue #2 are now OPEN!

We were totally, utterly floored by both the quantity and quality of submissions for our first issue, which will go live on April 1, 2022 and can be accessed by pledging to our Patreon. It is now time to reopen submissions for our second issue, which will go live on July 1, 2022!

A REMINDER: 

We welcome work that may, in another time, have been referred to as “lemons.” We enjoy everything from smut with emotional resonance to character exploration genfic. We like happy endings, sad ones, bittersweet or ambiguous ones. We do romance; we do heartbreak. We want the dark twisted stuff, the hurt with comfort, the hurt without comfort, the light fluffy “and they were roommates” AUs. We’re not so big on plot. Mostly, we want work that makes us feel things. 

TL;DR: WE ACCEPT PORN AND NOT-PORN OF ALL KINDS

You can read more about us here, check out our FAQ, or read through our answered questions on Tumblr to get more information.

SUBMISSIONS:

Submissions are free and our contributors receive a small honorarium as well as free copy of the issue. 

Submissions for our second issue will be open from March 20, 2022 to April 23, 2022. 

We are currently looking for:

Short fiction (only 1 piece at a time, max 12k words; if flash [under 1k], you may submit up to 5 pieces in one document) 

Nonfiction (personal essays, articles, or meta, max 12k words) 

Cover art for the issue (6x9 for just the front cover or preferably 12x9 to do a wrap-around cover, 300 res/dpi)

You can submit and read our guidelines here.

If you want to support us, you can do so by pledging to our Patreon, following our Twitter, buying our merch, or just by sharing this post! 

Thank you all so much for the tremendous support and enthusiasm we’ve received thus far! We’re so excited to share the work our of amazing contributors with the world. 

site | subscribe | submit

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Understanding The Plot of Your Book

Sounds silly doesn’t it? ‘Of course I understand my book’, I hear you say, I would have said the same before. You might be right, but here is a very simple exercise/test to ensure that you do:

One line summaries. 

Previously, these words invoked a feeling of dread in my soul but they don’t need to! It all changed once I started to follow this easy structure:

While struggling with their everyday life, Character finds the catalyst; BUT when the stakes rise they must learn the theme before the consequences ruin their life. 

Let’s take The Hunger Games for example: 

With her family on the brink of starvation, 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen must leave them and take her sister’s place in the Hunger Games, an annual event where 24 teenagers fight to the death until only one survives; But when she is hunted by a pack of elite, highly trained tributes, she must learn who she can trust and form an alliance before they kill her and her family are left to rot.

Well damn, that sounds dramatic and enticing, but it also lays out our characters life, wants and challenges all in a single (albeit rather long) sentence. 

After writing my one line summary, I began to understand my plot in a much clearer light. I understand my theme, my focus and it allows me to ground my plot as I edit my manuscript. I only wish I’d known to do it before!

Whatever stage your at—drafting, editing, querying—I highly recommend you give this a try. Feel free to drop a one sentence summary of your WIP below as getting feedback is always really helpful! I’m there much could be done to improve the one line summary I’ve given above, so feel free to improve on that too. 

[If reposting to Instagram please credit @isabellestonebooks] 

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"Narrative distance"? Do tell!

Explain it in text? Without emphatic arm gestures or wine? Oh god. Okay. I’ll try.

All right, so narrative distance is all about the proximity between you the reader and the POV character in a story you’re reading. You might sometimes also hear it called “psychic distance.” It puts you right up close to that character or pulls you away, and the narrative distance an author chooses greatly affects how their story turns out, because it can drastically change the focus.

Here’s an illustration of narrative distance from far to close, from John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction (a book I yelled at a lot, because Gardner is a pretentious bastard, but he does say very smart things about craft):

It was winter of the year 1853. A large man stepped out of a doorway.

Henry J. Warburton had never much cared for snowstorms.

Henry hated snowstorms.

God how he hated these damn snowstorms.

Snow. Under your collar, down inside your shoes, freezing and plugging up your miserable soul

It feels a bit like zooming in with a camera, doesn’t it?  

I always hate making decisions about narrative distance, because I usually get it wrong on the first try and have to fix it in revision. When I was writing Lost Causes, the first thing I had to do in revision was go through and zoom in a little on the narrative distance, because it felt like it was sitting right on top of Bruce’s prickly skin and it needed to be underneath where the little biting comments and intrusive thoughts lived. 

Narrative distance is probably the simplest form of distance in POV, and there is where if I had two glasses of wine in me you would hit a vein of pure yelling. There are SO MANY forms of distance in POV. There’s the distance between the intended reader and the POV character, the distance between the POV character and the narrator (even if it’s 1st person!), the distance between the narrator and the author. There’s emotional distance, intellectual distance, psychological distance, experiential distance. If you look closely at a 3rd person POV story, you can tell things about the narrator as a person (and the narrator is an entity independent of the author) - like, for starters, you can tell if they’re sympathetic to the POV character by how they talk about their actions. Word choice and sentence structure can tell you a narrator’s level of education and where they’re from; you can sometimes even tell a narrator’s gender, class, and other less obvious identifying factors if you look closely enough. To find these details, ask: What does the narrator (or POV character, or author) understand?

I can’t put a name on the narrator of the Harry Potter books, but I can tell you he understands British culture intimately, what it’s like to be a teen boy with a crush, to not have money, to be lonely and abused, and to find and connect with people. There’s a lot he doesn’t understand (he doesn’t pick out little flags of queerness like I do, so he’s probably straight, for example), but he sympathizes with Harry and supports him. I like that narrator. I’m supposed to sympathize with him, and I do.

POV is made up of these little distances - countless small questions of proximity that, when stacked together, decide whether we’re going to root for or against a character, or whether we’ll put down a book 20 pages in, or whether a story will punch you in just the right place at just the right amount to make you bawl your eyes out.

There are so many different possible configurations of distance in this arena that there are literally infinite POVs. Fiction is magical and also intimidating as fuck.

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do u queer nerds want some DAPPER THEATER LESBIANS? I know you do!!

SOME BY VIRTUE FALL is the first book in my new series of adult fantasy novellas! It’s got everything you like best in a book: Fantasy-Elizabethan acting troupes, arson, passionate rivalries, a chaos-gremlin main character, some extremely dapper hats…  

It’s basically Shakespeare In Love meets West Side Story, but they’re all lesbians.

Find the full cover (and preorder links!) at the announcement post on my website’s blog. The cover art is by the INCREDIBLY talented @qwertyprophecy and it is unspeakably gorgeous, go check it out!

Also, if you are not yet sufficiently tempted by the phrase “dapper theater lesbians”, here are the AO3 tags for it:

* queer found families  * rivals to arch-enemies to allies * forbidden flirtation with a member of the opposition * dapper fancy hats * main character is a chaos gremlin and THE most useless lesbian * wlw/mlm solidarity * maybe the real enemy was the patriarchy we smashed along the way * everyone is queer (except one man named Leony Token who is straight and is only mentioned once)

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The Communication Issue: Writers & Artists Wanted

Protest’s second issue concentrates on communication, expression, and education. We’re looking for written and visual work created by BIWOC to make the Communication Issue whole. 

The craft of communication shapeshifts and transforms based on the artist. Most of us are well-versed with piecing together words to communicate, but speech is only one way to convey a message. We also ‘speak’ through appearances, physical movements, and sign languages. We converse through prayer, music, and art, too. Our bodies tell stories. Animals talk; nature communicates. 

We are perpetual participants of conversation; we use our abilities to share information, for advocacy, for love, for disruption. Communication exists with the premise that our message will reach something or someone else; it’s a tool meant to strengthen or disrupt connections.

We’ve listed some areas we’ll touch on in issue two, but we encourage you to submit work that reflects your personal interpretation on the topic of Communication:

-African American Vernacular English

-Prayer and otherworldly communication

-Self-advocacy and mental health

-Cultural clothing and other aesthetics

-Modern tribalism and social networks

-Multilingualism and cultural identity

-Grassroots journalism and social media

SUBMIT YOUR WORK HERE

Artists and writers may submit up to five written pieces or art pieces. 1500-word maximum per written piece.

Values

We encourage marginalized women to submit their thoughts in the form of essays, poetry, and articles for a possible collab with Protest.

We’ll accept art, illustration, and photography submissions, too. Basically, tell us your story the best way you know how. This space is carved out for the up and coming and those just getting started alike. We don’t believe in free labor, artists and writers will be paid for their work.

Questions? Email the Protest Team at submitpromag@gmail.com

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How to Balance Pacing

Slowing down the pace:

1) Confuse your protagonist. Is there a puzzle or obstacle that your characters have to solve in order to proceed? Can you make it harder for them? Or does solving one problem lead to an even bigger one?

2) Steal something away from your protagonist that they need for their next step. The dragon rider can’t find his dragon. The knight that is about to ride into battle broke his sword moments before.

3.) Add subplots. For seamless pacing, jump back and forth between your different plots. Just when something big is about to be revealed in the main plot, steer your readers off course into a subplot so that they’re on the edge of their seat waiting for you to return them to the main plot. Do this with your subplots as well for a back and forth game of suspense.

4) Make your sentences longer with more details. For a scene or moment that you want to highlight, drag it out with heightened details. Think of it as a slow motion scene in a movie. 

5) Introspection. Have your character think, reflect or consider their next steps. Inner monologues and consciousness can help the reader to understand misbeliefs, flaws and motivations of a character as well. (Doing this in the middle of a fast-paced scene will slow it down, so be cautious where you use this).

Quickening the pace: 

1) Set up a real ticking clock. The time is counting down and your protagonist needs to finish something in a limited amount of time. A tomb raider has only five minutes to find the relic and escape before they’re shut in the cave forever. 

2) Increase the pressure on your protagonist. Put obstacles in between them and their goals, have an ex return to town, cause drama between them and their friends, place their biggest fear right in front of them, increase the romantic/sexual tension between them and a love interest.  

3) Shorten your sentences/details. Quick action scenes should have short and to the point descriptions. The more details you add, the slower it will feel. Picture an action scene in a movie… punches flying left and right. There is no time to think or observe tiny details.

4) Add a loose cannon. A character who is unpredictable and that the characters worry most about. The tension of what they might do next can help drive your pacing, make the story feel more unyielding.

5) Balance your elements. Make sure you don’t write in huge chunks of just one element. Scenes need to be balanced with dialogue, narrative, action, setting, character, etc. Your pacing can get thrown out of wack if one whole scene is purely a monologue and then the next is solely dialogue. Weave them together!

Instagram: coffeebeanwriting

Source: Plot Perfect by Paula Munier | Writersedit

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I have an idea, and I really like it, but I can't seem to get it down on paper. I'm always unhappy with the way it sounds written down and I takes me ages to write even a few paragraphs that are often scrapped because I don't like them. I was wondering what I could do to change that? Thank you so much :)

Hello there~

It’s funny you’re sending me this ask at this very moment— because this is something that I always deal with every time I start a new book. So, I’m going to share with you my super-duper secret way to overcome this.

But before that, I need to point something out.

The first draft of a story is not meant to sound good. I’ve said this a million times in the past, and I will keep saying it until the whole world gets it: The first draft of a book is not meant to be pretty, it’s meant to be the block of clay from which you will shape the second draft. Unlike sculptors we can’t just walk into a shop and buy clay, we need to make the clay by putting words on the paper.

Fun fact: I wrote a story called Justine’s Blood, and originally it started out with a long and boring exposition bit that I ended up cutting out altogether during the revision process. Boom. Suddenly the flow and the pacing improved and every one of my betas thought I was very clever.

What I’m getting to is that you need to give yourself the chance to suck. Write even when it doesn’t feel very good. You can always chop things out and replace them later. You can’t sculpt your story without the clay c;

Now, with that out of the way, it’s time to tell you my super-duper secret for improving the start of a story:

Take a deep breath.

Let it out slowly.

Ask yourself this question: Who is narrating the story?

Find that person’s voice.

Yes. I mean this. Even if you’re telling the story in 3rd Person Omniscient, there has still got to be someone who is telling the story. Even if it is some sort of invisible deity, a ghost, or a dark tentacle monster in the depths of space. Someone is telling the story, even if you don’t realize it.

This may seem like a very far-out piece of hippie advice, but I seriously mean it. I don’t think that we as writers come up with stories, I think we find them. We stumble upon them.

This process is a lot more straight forward if you write in 1st person, but the struggle is the same.

As some of you have read recently in my personal updates. Every time I start a new story I have basically the same issues as above. I have scrapped dozens of ‘first chapters’ because they didn’t ‘feel right’ and every time is the same reason. I was getting the voice of the narrator wrong.

Dear anon, take some time to step aside and ask yourself who is narrating the story of your book— and find their voice. Play around with the way you tell the story, tweak the words and the language as though a rogue picking a lock, and soon enough you will find the right voice… and the story will start to flow. I promise c;

I hope this helps! If you (or any of the writerly cuties reading this) have any questions, please send them my way :D

Keep Writing~