Writers' Guidelines

What not to write about...

  1. 1. Your story should be science fiction, fantasy, or horror - basically, if the story is actually possible in the real world, don't bother.
  2. If you can replace the SF, fantasy or horror elements with something more mundane and the story still works, then it might be time to think again.
  3. Avoid stories about Adam and Eve, Elvis Presley or Adolf Hitler, unless they're really exceptional. You wouldn't believe the number of stories we get along these lines. For that matter, any famous historical figures should be avoided - the chances good are that the story has been done before.
  4. Other clichés to avoid: robots (or computers or monsters) that turn on their creators, time-travelling assassins, virtual reality, dinosaurs, abductions by UFOs, vampires, alien invasions, quests for magical items, Star Trek clones, God as an alien, ultimate weapons... These subjects can work if your story is particularly good, but we've seen all this a million times.

How to write it...

  1. Don't just start at page one and make it up as you go along. It's important to plot out your story. You don't have to go into incredible detail, just enough to ensure that you'll never write yourself into a corner. Remember: it's much easier to rewrite an outline than it is to rewrite a whole story.
  2. Always know how your story is going to end before you begin (yes, this does sound like the same thing, but it's such an important point that it's worth mentioning twice).
  3. Your characters are as important as the plot. Some writers design their characters first and then build the plot around them, others do it the other way around, but whichever way you do it, don't neglect either.
  4. Include a good balance of dialogue and prose: stories that are all dialogue never seem to go anywhere, and stories that are all prose can seem lifeless (no matter how action-packed they are).
  5. It helps to have a built-in fully-functional BS filter: at every stage in the course of your writing, you have to be able to ask yourself, "Is this actually good, or is it a pile of crap?" And of course you have to be able to answer yourself honestly.
  6. Keep the story moving: your readers really don't want to know intricate details about lampshades and how they were manufactured, unless it's actually important to the story (this is where your BS filter comes in handy).
  7. Don't let your characters get too complacent: there should be something driving them at all times.
  8. Experiment... Try different types of characters with different attributes. A good trick is to pick characters who are exactly the opposite of what the story seems to require.
  9. Because you have a limited amount of space in which to tell your story, it's important to be sure that you don't leave anything out. Hence, you might find that you have to strip down your plot. This is not a bad thing. It's a bad thing when your plot is too thin and you have to pad it out.

When you're finished...

  1. Once you've completed your story, set it aside for a few days. Then come back to it and try to read it as though it was written by your worst enemy: make a list of all the things wrong with it, and work out what you need to do to correct them.
  2. Ask an impartial observer to read your story, and encourage them to criticise it. For this, you really will need someone who won't be afraid to tell you if the story is utter rubbish. That said, your critic must also be able to tell you exactly what IS wrong with it. Don't take such criticism personally.
  3. Don't be afraid to rewrite... If you're not happy with a scene, write it again. Still not happy? Write it from the point of view of another character. STILL not happy? Then you need to decide whether you need that scene at all.
  4. If, when you get to the end of your story, you find that it's far too long, there are a few tricks you can use to reduce the size... First, remove everything that doesn't directly relate to the plot (detailed character descriptions, exposition, conversations about the weather, that kind of thing). Still too long? Then delete the first third of the story and see if it still works... You might find that it works even better than before.

A few important things about presentation...

  1. Read the competition's rules and heed them carefully. The judges will have a lot of stories to read, so the cleaner your manuscript is, the better. So: your story must be typed, double-spaced, on one side of the page only, with proper margins, a non-proportional font such as courier (in fact, don't bother with any other font), left-aligned (which means that the right margin should be ragged), page numbers and the title of story at the top of each page. The rule here is that you don't want the judges referring to your story as "the unreadable one".
  2. Check the spelling and punctuation at regular intervals. Poor spelling reflects badly on the story and the author. Your word-processor's spell-checker usually won't be good enough - you need a proper dictionary.
  3. Some punctuation tips... Ellipses have three dots, no more, no fewer. There is no space before a comma. If you don't know how to use semi-colons either look it up or don't use them. If you're not sure how to use apostrophes it's long past time you learned. In the old days some writers put two spaces after a comma, three after a full-stop (or period) - those days are gone.
  4. If you're not sure about paragraph breaks or punctuation, pick up the nearest novel and see how that author does it: the novel will have gone through several drafts, and been worked on by any number of editors and typesetters.