Andrew Ferguson
Children's/YA Author
Writing Category
Learning From Rejection
Posted on December 20, 2015 2 Comments
The reason I have decided to post just one more of my own stories this year is because it’s nearly Christmas and this story does have a bit of a Christmas theme going on in it. However, rather than just giving you the story to read and expecting you to like it, I’m going use this story as an example of how writers can (and should) use their rejected stories to help them develop as writers, by analysing their own work to see how they might improve upon it.
6 Six-Word Stories
Posted on December 13, 2015 2 Comments
So this week I’ve challenged myself to write six six-word stories using Thinkamingo’s Story Dice as stimuli. The Story Dice is an app for Android OS which allows you to roll anything between one to ten dice with various pictures on each face. The idea is that you use these pictures to develop a story. Since I’m only writing six-word stories today, I decided to only use one dice per story.
So this week I’ve challenged myself to write six six-word stories using Thinkamingo’s Story Dice to give myself a stimulus. The Story Dice is an app for Android OS which allows you to roll anything between one to ten dice with various pictures on each face. The idea is that you use these pictures to develop a story. Since I’m only writing six-word stories today, I decided to only use one dice per story. Alea iacta est.
The Martian’s Revenge
Posted on December 6, 2015 Leave a Comment
Not wanting to waste all the effort and frustration I went to, I’ve decided to post it here instead. I wanted to make it stand out from other stories and given that it had to be set in Scotland I thought perhaps a Scottish sci-fi/murder mystery might be the way to go.
5 Simple Brain Unblockers
Posted on November 29, 2015 1 Comment
I won’t lie to you; this post is pretty much the result of an afternoon spent swimming in the ocean of writer’s block, clinging on to the driftwood of terrible ideas. There are millions of different websites and books out there offering various suggestions on how to beat writer’s block and I’ve concluded that there is simply no ‘one size fits all’ method of getting back into the groove but here are a few techniques that I find myself employing on a regular basis.
Auditioning Characters
Posted on November 22, 2015 4 Comments
Characters really matter. No matter what kind of fiction you’re writing, characters really, really matter… so it’s worthwhile spending a bit of time refining your characters. I like to do this by ‘auditioning’ characters…
The Much Maligned Movie Re-Make
Posted on November 15, 2015 Leave a Comment
The age we live in now is such that it is difficult to write a book without it being made into a film; it is difficult to produce a film without it being turned into a computer game; worst of all, computer games have a nasty habit of spawning cinematic abominations with all the substance of reality TV show for amoebas.
So, do re-makes ever have any value?
The Fireplace Coppers
Posted on November 7, 2015 Leave a Comment
I wrote this story earlier this year as an entry for a short story competition. Alas, I did not win and therefore was not published in print or online so I’ve put it here instead. The rules of the competition were that it was to be fewer than one hundred words long and given my frustrating tendency towards long-windedness, I thought it was worth having a go at…
3 Useful Android Apps for Writers
Posted on November 1, 2015 3 Comments
If you’re anything like me, the motivation to write and the floods of inspiration tend to come at the worst possible times. While I’m a firm believer that there is no substitute for sitting at your desk for hours with tea constantly being fed to you intravenously to get stuff done, there surely has got to be some way that we can utilise that spark of inspiration or motivation when it strikes… right?
You bet there is. The following apps are all available for Android OS and have served me well for all my writing needs:
Andrew Ferguson 