We are delighted to announce the results of round one of the 2024-5 BeaconFlash competition to the theme of ‘Dog Days’. The three stories listed below (in alphabetical order) go through to the final judging when the competition closes at the end of May 2025 and announced at next July’s BeaconLit festival.
If your story is not listed below you are welcome to send it elsewhere. If it is, please refrain from doing so until after the final results. NB. The overall top three will be posted in full on this website.
So, the three stories chosen for August 2024 are…
· Did Someone Just Say 'Walkies'?
· Regular as Clockwork
· Summer Holiday Fever
Morgen’s comments:
A really fun batch this month. In some stories the dog was the main feature (a treat as a dog owner) but in others the story was inspired by the sultry summer weather https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_days. Most had a healthy mix of dialogue vs narration; I always recommend at least 50% dialogue as it brings the characters alive rather than rely on the narrator ‘telling’ us everything.
· I recommend writing numbers under 100 in full so they blend with the rest of the text. That said, I think all numbers unless titles (BMW Series 5) etc. are best written in full.
· When speaking to someone and using a name, nickname or term of endearment (dear, love, pet*), generalisation (guys, ladies etc.), you’d need a comma before the name, i.e. ‘Do you know John?’ is asking if the person knows someone called John. ‘Do you know, John?’ means that the character is speaking to someone called John but asking them if they know something. A subtle difference but you want to avoid confusing the reader so they jump out of the story. If what’s said is very short, e.g. ‘Hi John’, then the comma’s not so important. * When it’s not a name it would usually be a small first letter.
· Where you have a character doing something and speaking, I think it’s useful to have the narration first so it’s clearer who’s doing the speaking – even if it’s obvious by what’s said – as early as possible. As well as often negating the need for ‘said’ (or equivalent), it also breaks up a pattern of speech/narration.
· It’s good to have as many of the five senses as possible. By default we have sound (dialogue) and sight (narration) but what about taste, touch and smell. It makes a story all the more vivid if we can have one or more of those.
· As well as the five senses, try to choose onomatopoeic words such as bang, crash, flash, wallop etc. We had a ‘pop’ in one story.
· I recommend chopping ‘ing’s where you can, especially where they are verbs and at the start of sentences. Having ‘ing’ verbs at the start of sentences avoids having too many pronouns, e.g. He did this, She did that, which can become a list and therefore a little monotonous but ‘ing’s can jar equally.
· I often come across ‘ing’s following ‘said’. A way to avoid that is to split the sentence but where there’s narration, especially the character doing something, the ‘said’ could go, e.g. ‘“That’s not fair.” Taylor pushed the note across the table.’ Or better still: Taylor pushed the note across the table. “That’s not fair.” rather than: “That’s not fair,” Taylor said, pushing forward the note.
· First paragraphs of chapters/sections should be flush to the left with subsequent paragraphs indented, usually two or three spaces (via the top ruler rather than tabbed across or physical spaces).
· Did Someone Just Say 'Walkies'?
· Regular as Clockwork
· Summer Holiday Fever
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