Please note that our Travel Fiction Short Story competition is now CLOSED. We are currently considering the entries - the winner and runners-up will be notified by Friday 15th March.
As a writer, it's true that you can set your story anywhere you see fit. And great writers often use location as a device to help develop their narrative and define the personalities of key characters.
So, irrespective of whether you plonk your protagonist in a mile-long traffic jam as part of a humdrum commute or have them cope with the intense humidity of trekking through the Andes, why not aim to do the same?
With our 500 word short story competition to win a Kindle (courtesy of Directline Holidays) well underway, you have the perfect chance to practise too. And bearing this in mind, the team here at Writers & Artists thought we’d put together a few tips about what to take into account when depicting landscape within your work:
1. Choose your setting carefully – it impacts upon both the characters and plot
2. Get to know your setting by asking it questions: Which parts of it are special to your characters? Where do your characters meet? What sounds surround them? Who else goes there?
3. Be selective – cut and paste and twist as you see fit. Your observations about a place can’t all go on the page, so choose aspects of the location that make it special.
4. Remember: your setting will evolve, just like your characters and plot
To be in with a chance of winning our competition, we want you to make the landscape surrounding your protagonist burst into colour – wherever it may be.
Whether your piece focuses on a veteran explorer of faraway lands or evokes the sweat and stress of running to catch a seven o’clock bus, it matters not. All we want to read is how location affects your character; how it feels; what it looks like. We want to step into the world you create and taste the food, choke on city smog or marvel at landscapes of natural beauty.
Details:
The story must be no more than 500 words and entries should be submitted to writersandartists@bloomsbury.com before midnight on 28 February 2013.
To go to our competitions page, please click here.
Prizes
First prize: An Amazon Kindle e-book reader
Second prize: A copy of Writers' & Artists' Yearbook 2013
About Directline Holidays
Directline Holidays are an online travel agent, which has been established since 1993, and specialises in package holidays to destinations all over the world including Egypt, Italy and the Caribbean.
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