Wrtiing a story with a twist at Woman's Weekly

On Friday 8 July I went to London Bridge to a Woman's Weekly workshop on how to write a story with a twist ending. I went because I had no idea how to write one or where to get ideas for one.

The two presenters were Fiction Editor, Gaynor Davies, and author, Della Galton.

Della said that twist endings mustn't be predictable or contrived eg character winning the lottery, or having an aunt giving them an inheritance.

She gave us a list of dos and don'ts for these stories. One do is that the story has to build up to the twist.

We had an exercise in the morning, to write an outline for a story. I thought of a story I had in mind to write for another magazine. So I wrote a twist outline for that. I also got an idea for another twist story which I wrote down and will probably write another time. Once time was up, we were asked to read them out loud. My heart went fast at this and for one moment I thought I was going to faint, but I was OK in the end and read out my outline, which was said was good.

Della then read a story in the WW Summer Special (which I later bought and read), which gave me the idea for the twist ending of my story.

You can write an outline for a story which has lots of possible endings. The character and conflict of the story has to be at the start.

We were given a list of types of 'Twists'.

We were given another exercise to write the ending of our story then read it out. I offered to read mine first, to get it out of the way. Was told it was good. During the day, Gaynor told me I am learning. Praise indeed.

I really enjoyed this workshop. It gave me another idea for a twist story for a story that I have already written. I did ask if I could resubmit a story with another ending, and Gaynor said yes, as long as it's not too regonisable. So that is what I plan to do.

I am working on a story for WW now, not a twist one, a normal one, but I plan to rewrite this and send it to another magazine as a twist, which I have worked out.

Woman's Weekly Workshop

Yesterday I went to London Bridge, to the Woman's Weekly Workshop on writing a short story. I've been to a couple of them before, but now I am v serious about writing for womags, I wanted to go again and listen properly. As I had been before, I didn't know if Gaynor Davies the Fiction Editor of WW would recognise me. She did and said hello to me. I was chuffed. She co-presented the workshop with Della Galton. We had a theme to go on for the writing exercises, which as Freedom. I remembered something a friend told me in December about being free at last so used that as the main point for a story. We wrote the beginning,  then had to read our first sentence out. We filled in Della's character development sheet, which gave me an idea about the main character and how to end the story. We also wrote the last sentence of the story, which we were all congratulated on, esp me personally by Gaynor when I said goodbye. Before that, we were given handouts about the common ways that stories are rejected eg predictability and solutions to them. We also got the guidelines.
I really enjoyed the day despite being tired and my head doing a spin during the day from thinking.
I shall write the whole story when I have completed the ghost story for a competition. I already have an idea how it will pan out, I jotted notes down during the day.

I can't wait to go to the next one in April which will be on serial writing.

Another major writing decision

Following attending both the short story and serial writing workshops by Woman's Weekly the last week or so, I have made another major writing decision - I want to become a writer for Woman's Weekly and concentrate on those when I write in the afternoons. This is my time for writing projects I want to get published and not being an indie author.

Here is why I have decided this:

I had gone to a workshop last year by Woman's Weekly and got great ideas for stories but didn't think much about it afterwards. I went to a fiction short story workshop on Monday 27 October this year, and had a breakthrough, thanks to Della Galton telling us her formula for writing a story. One of the things she said was that the character had to have a big enough problem to be solved. I realised that this was why I had got stuck with the story I'd been rewriting for the magazine. I also came up with the beginning of another story and the plot for it, also to send to them. I came away so charged up with what I'd learnt that I wanted to write stories for them. I have since changed the story again and just rewritten the beginning of the story I have been working on because yesterday I realised that it had nothing to do with the rest of the story.

Then yesterday I went to Serial Writing and had such good lessons by Suzanne Ahern who writes serials for them regularly. I already had in my head an idea for a serial. I wrote the start of it, developed the characters and plot for it, all things that had been going around in my brain. I was so pleased to get them on to paper. I enjoyed it so much that I now want to write serials. I think one of the reasons is the money you get for each instalment. You can get £500 per episode. So if you wrote a 3-parter serial you would get £1500. So I am going to think of it as a business side from now on and write in the means to be paid, which I hadn't until now. 

Another reason why I want to write for Woman's Weekly is that I've now met the Fiction Editor, Gaynor Davies, a few times and she is such a warm, friendly and encouraging editor to us writers. She said that she would come up with the titles, so don't worry about that. And she works with the writers on their stories and serials. That is the type of editor I want to work with. So watch this space to see what happens. I plan to email Gaynor later this week with a brief outline to my serial I have planned.