Tag Archive for: Writers Contest

Winners Announced: Writers and Illustrators of the Future Contests

The Winners, Finalists, Honorable Mentions announced for the 1st Quarter Year 38 of the Writers and Illustrators of the Future Contest.

Females Sweep Writers and Illustrators of the Future Contest

For the first time, all quarterly winners of the L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers & Illustrators of the Future Contests are female.

Writers of the Future Volume 35 Named 2019 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards Finalist

L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 35 has been recognized as a finalist in the 22nd annual Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards.

Writers of the Future: Playing the Odds

A friend recently asked me about ways to improve your chances in the Writers of the Future contest. I thought it was a good question, and I thought my answers were a nice summary of lessons learned. So I decided to share them here as a simple set of “rules”

Building Plausible Futures by Jerry Pournelle

This article by Dr. Jerry Pournelle was originally published in Writers of the Future Volume III. Timeless advice then and now.

Your First Five Pages

A writer pointed out today that when you send a novel to an agent or publisher, they normally ask for the first five or ten pages, just so that they can gauge your writing skill. If those pages don’t grab the reader, it won’t sell. So, he wondered, what do I look for in those first five pages?

Meet the Winners – Jeremy TeGrotenhuis – 1st Q 2017

A couple of years ago I decided to stop blogging in order to focus on improving my fiction, and, well, I just won Writers of the Future, so that seems to have worked.

Parts to a Story – From the inciting incident to the denouement

I earlier talked about the first four parts of a story—setting, character, conflict, and theme. These are all parts that you often think about in brainstorming. Often, before starting a short story, I don’t even sketch out my characters, for example. So you might only give them minimal attention. But once you begin putting words […]

Jake Marley, author of “Acquisition”

To meet Jake Marley is to encounter joy in its purest form. First there is the smile that comes to his face, and then the fact that the first thing you’re likely to hear from him is something like “I’m so happy!” So, yeah, Jake fills a room. After a while, you discover that within […]

Why Is It Not an Adventure Worth Telling If There Aren’t Any Dragons?

Why is it not an adventure worth telling if there are no dragons? This is, of course, referring to the famous Sarah Ban Breathnach quote: “It simply isn’t an adventure worth telling if there aren’t any dragons.”