Some homeschool days, the lounge is a sea, stairs a snowcapped mountain, bathroom a jungle, Mum and Dad’s bedroom a sun-seared dessert… The stories in The Stairs Are a Snowcapped Mountain speak of togetherness and separation: how we strive to connect with that one person who could save us, and how we attempt to save the people …
So you want to write a piece of flash fiction. But how do you start? Where do story ideas even come from? And how do you develop them once you’ve found ‘em? One of the great things about flash fiction is that you only really need a spark of an idea to get going. There’s …
Finding the ‘Spark’ in Flash Fiction by Writer’s HQ Read More »
Opinions differ on how long micro fiction is – some say 300 words, others say fewer – but for the sake of this article I’m going to cap the maximum at 100 words, excluding title. The 100-word story is growing in popularity and there are several places to submit as well as various call outs. …
A couple of years ago, I published a thread about rejections on Twitter. I thought it would be useful to dust this thread off, expand it, and publish it here as a mini reference guide. Hopefully, this provides some background to Ellipsis’ selection process, as well as offering reassurance to those who feel crappy whenever …
Homemade Weather by Tom O’Brien What The Fox Brings In Its Jaw by Ian O’Brien The Impossibility Of Wings by Donna L Greenwood “These stories demonstrate the thin line we tread in life: between love and hate, friendship and enmity, escape and return.” Damhnait Monaghan, Prize Judge and author of award-winning novella-in-flash, The Neverlands Homemade …
Homemade Weather: An anthology of novelettes-in-flash Read More »
A man carries his girlfriend in the left-hand breast pocket of his shirt. During World War II, a young soldier searches the houses and barns of the families with whom he grew up. An astronaut wonders whether she can adapt to life back on earth. In her second collection of short fiction, 100neHundred, Laura Besley …
It’s 2006 in the fictional East London borough of Leytonstow. The UK’s pub smoking ban is about to happen, and thirty-eight-and-a-half year old John Torrington, a mopper and trolley collector at his local DIY store, is secretly in love with the stylish, beautiful, and middle-class barmaid Lois. John and his hapless, strange, and down-on-their-luck friends, …
To mark the publication of Gaynor’s debut novella-in-flash, Among These Animals, in March 2021, we’re taking a brief look back over her writing career so far. Born in Wales, raised in Merseyside and currently lives in Oldham, Gaynor has been writing on and off for a number of years, but started taking it seriously in …
The Beginning The starting point is always the same. The page is always blank, the doubt undiminished, the question unchanged: can I fill this space with something worthwhile, something interesting? Three hundred words or ninety thousand. You’d imagine there would be a difference— and there is— but those first moments feel the same, a familiar …
Today, Ellipsis Zine turns three years old. Since 2017, we’ve compiled and published seven print zines, three (soon to be four) single author publications – posting out 3,000+ print publications. We’ve received somewhere in the region of 3,600 web and print submissions – publishing 800 of them online and in print. We’ve given space to …
Will you walk now with me Writers, along the hall of mirrors of your fiction? Consider your catalogue of work. Here’s one mirror that elongates your features: disproportionate and stretched – a you-that-is-not-you – yet still recognisable. Look to your characters’ extremes of behaviour or emotion. The fire-setter, the lover, the vengeful ghost, the martyr. …
Hall of Mirrors: Aspects of the writer-self in fiction by Stephanie Carty Read More »
Kerry, you were selected from all the longlisted entries for mentoring as I felt that there was something special and different about your voice. How do you describe your voice and what do you want the reading experience to be like for your flash pieces?Perhaps it’s the poet in me; perhaps it’s the fact that …