"I was made for another world"

What annoys judges of writing competitions Ø  Too many adverbs – the right verbs don’t need adverbs (one judge threw out a story after reading the first line ‘she strode quickly across the park’ because strode implies a fast pace) Ø  ‘Helping’ the reader too much o   Hilary Mantel: “I always assume my reader is at least as intelligent as me” o   Trust your reader to understand what you’re saying – show don’t tell (e.g. don’t say ‘Her cheeks flushed red. She was embarrassed’) Ø Overuse of exclamation marks o   Emotion and impact should convey enough Ø  Overuse of “ “ to emphasise a word – if it’s necessary then italicise the word instead Ø  Your characters don’t have to be loveable but the reader has to care about them/what happens to them o   You read fiction to encounter the characters Ø  Read stories that inspire you – not to write like them but to write short stories like you.  Kurt Vonnegut’s advice Ø  Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted. Ø  Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for. Ø  Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water. Ø  Every sentence must do one of two things-reveal character or advance the action. Ø  Start as close to the end as possible. Ø  Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of. Ø  Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia. Ø  Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.