006: What makes a winning story?

With Issue 8 fresh off the press, we are excited to be publishing the winners of our visual prompt competition, run in partnership with Bloomsbury and Writers & Artists. Maggie Chiang, illustrator and past-contributor of Firewords, created a wonderful visual which we asked people to base a short story on. The response and results were amazing!

To celebrate this, we’ve recorded a podcast that explains the reasons for our choice of winners and also delves into some other pieces which were submitted. We hope to explain here why our decision was not easy, and why we were blown away by both the number of submissions and quality of writing. In fact, the main thing we were surprised about here was the different kinds of submissions received, each one paying full attention to the prompt but interpreting it in different ways. Creativity was in full flow and we enjoyed every minute of the judging process.

So take a listen to this week’s podcast and let us know what you think of our winning stories.

005: Why feedback is the secret to improving your writing

In this week’s episode, we discuss different ways that you can use feedback – both from Firewords and other sources – to improve your writing on a continual basis. We also have three suggestions on where you can find this elusive feedback.

A lot of people treat writing as a solitary activity, but putting your work out there and listening to what people think of it is so important. We want to encourage feedback from groups and individuals who touch your lives every day. There is a wealth of knowledge all around you and sometimes your best resources are friends and relations so you don’t have to look very far for inspiration. Don’t leave these resources untapped!

It’s sometimes difficult to avoid feeling like feedback is actually criticism, but that is why practising a reciprocal, and carefully structured, process of feedback is helpful. This will help get rid of any feelings of judgement or negativity.

 

004: Building a writing habit

Why is writing consistently so damn hard? Sometimes it feels like life is constantly trying to interfere with getting words on the page. In this episode, we outline of our own creative writing routine and show we are normal human beings; we struggle with building writing habits too. We do have some tips and techniques that work for us and they may help you write more consistently as well.

003: Writing effectively for a set theme or prompt

In episode 003 of the Firewords podcast we discuss the different ways of writing for a theme, either figuratively or literally and how it is possible to write to a theme effectively AND keep your unique writing voice.

We start out by reiterating that the theme we set for each issue is optional but discuss the benefit to having themes at all. To illustrate this, we read excerpts from the following pieces we’ve published and discuss how they match the theme of Issue 7, Dark/Light:

  • Reading: ‘Chagrin’, a poem by Dominic Younger. Why is the poetic structure of this piece important and how does the careful use of language help it fit the Dark theme?
  • Reading: ‘Like Art’, a story by Shaun Bossio. How does the story manage to feel uplifting and optimistic even with its dark topic?
  • Reading: ‘Chiaroscuro’, a story by Liam Hogan. This story matches the theme more than any other submission we received. However, it doesn’t feel forced and manages to be an effective and powerful story. So, how does it do it?
  • Reading: ‘To Be With Them Both Tonight’, a story by Nick Wright. This is another story that manages to straddle both sides of the theme. On the surface, the plot of this story should leave the reader feeling sad, yet it is inherently positive.

A question from a listener starts a discussion about the pitfalls of trying to force your writing to fit a theme that doesn’t inspire you. Jen finishes up the episode by reading a flash fiction piece called ‘The Dragon and the Stallion’ by Jenna Crozier, which shows we also publish pieces that don’t fit in with the issue’s theme.

002: Submitting your writing

In this episode, we take a look at the process of submitting your work to literary magazines. We received almost 900 pieces in our last call for submissions and have noticed some points that keep cropping up. Some of our tips may help you streamline your process and succeed in getting published. We also answer some questions from listeners all about overused themes in writing – find out what they are!

Update: Some people have reported issues with playing episode 002. If you have any problems, click here to listen to the episode on SoundCloud.