If You Want To Contribute

If you'd like to contribute you must read the whole blog before you start to write, otherwise you’re likely to write something that’s redundant, or miss something significant.

I'll consider any thing up to a maximum of 500 words. Please check your work carefully for errors and typos before you submit, as I won't accept anything slapdash or hurried: it’s your job to ensure that your work is as polished as you can possibly make it before you send it in. I’m prepared to tweak the odd comma, but I’m not prepared to rewrite your work for you to make it good enough for inclusion.

Each piece must centre on just one person, location or event. Greyling Bay isn't very big: it will probably have room for more than one school teacher, more than one police officer, but only if they're required. Please don't duplicate professions unnecessarily. Focus on creating characters and locations; on developing relationships between existing ones; and on exploring histories and situations. Don't attempt to cover too broad a subject in one piece: I've deliberately kept the word-count low to encourage the observation of relatively small events. Telling detail. That’s the thing.

Your contribution doesn’t have to follow on from the last: each piece should stand alone as a piece of flash fiction, but contribute something tangible to the overall work. Feel free to develop themes or plots that other writers have introduced: this is a collaborative work. But don't rewrite characters or force them into uncharacteristic behaviour for no good reason.

6 Jan 09
Edited to add: If you're working on developing a particular character or theme, then it would be a good idea if you'd say so in the comments section beneath that character's original piece: that way, we can avoid duplicating work or sending one character off in two different directions at once.

You're welcome to submit more than one piece to me at a time, so long as they both contribute something and are complete alone: I'm anxious to avoid pieces that need to be read in series to make sense.