Results of Morgen’s 100-word competition: June 2021

Hello everyone and welcome to the seventieth month of this competition. There were 56 entries from 22 authors for the theme of ‘the tourist trap’. NB You can all send in three stories for a better chance of being picked.

Please note: I have decided to cease the competition at the end of the year to free up time for my writing. It’ll have been 76 months in the making and a pleasure but sadly, as December’s prompt is going to be, ‘sometimes good things have to come to an end’. Any prizes won up to/including that point will still be honoured until the end of February 2022 so if you choose the editing option, get those stories written. 🙂 Speaking of which…

One was disqualified for being 101 words with no obvious reason for the extra word. Another had too but original included as one word (catch’em) so increased when separated. Fortunately in both cases the authors had submitted at least one more story of the correct word count so they went through.

One story was submitted twice (with a slightly different title and a few days apart) so the first one was accepted, as per the rules.

An author’s final story (submitted a few days after the other two) was only 95 words but with a five-word title (coincidence?) so was disqualified. The other two were 100 exactly so a sad blip.

A piece was disqualified for having ‘chewing gum’ hyphenated. Making them two words took it to 101. Had they preceded a noun, e.g. ‘a chewing-gum smile’ it would have been fine. The same went for ‘already deceased Philip’. I’d placed this joint second then noticed and disqualified it, a real shame.

The easiest way to know whether something should be hyphenated is to check whether each word would work before the noun, e.g. ‘a chewing smile’ or ‘a gum smile’ in this case. They don’t (in theory) so it would need the hyphen. The complication is when one of the words is an _ly adverb.

Another was disqualified for having ‘slow moving vehicles’ instead of ‘slow-moving’. There were still two stories to choose from. ‘to’ is a very simple word but also simple to get wrong. A story lost a brownie point for having ‘I don’t want too’ instead of ‘…to’ and had a full stop at the end of dialogue preceding a dialogue ‘tag’ (whispered) but that’s easily done.

Other observations:

• When we have someone’s/something’s age, we don’t usually need the ‘years old’ or ‘years of age’ because the number – within the right context – is sufficient. There would also only be a hyphen if preceding a noun (or implied), e.g. a fourteen-year-old girl / a fourteen-year-old. Had there been a non-exact name using ‘something’ (or similar), the ‘something’ represents an unknown number so it would all still be hyphenated as the likes of ‘twenty-two-year-old nurse’ would have been. One story was disqualified for having ‘Seventy-eight year old’ which when conjoined then made 98 words. Sorry but I have to be fair to everyone.
• Decades, when written in digits, don’t need apostrophes because they’re plural rather than something belonging to them, e.g. the man’s wife. Had it been, say, a 1970’s car then it would have an apostrophe because it’s a car belonging to the 1970s or someone being in their 20s (which is better as twenties so the text blends rather than stands out). As full text they’re a standard noun so seventies, eighties, nineties etc.
• https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/hoard is ‘a bulk of items often kept secret’ whereas https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/horde is ‘a large group of people’. A misspelling may lose a brownie point but it’s a cruel judge who disqualifies your story because of it.
• I strongly recommend you don’t invert dialogue tags as it’s not how we would naturally speak if talking aloud, e.g. changing ‘said Tony’ to ‘Tony said’. We wouldn’t say ‘said I’ so the same applies when there’s a name rather than ‘I’. ‘said’s do tend to blur into the background so don’t try too hard to choose something else, e.g. ‘Tony postulated’, even ‘Tony exclaimed’ could be too much if we already have the likes of ‘Get out!’ If you have the character doing something then you don’t need the ‘said’ (or equivalent) tag – have the ‘doing’ (narration), e.g. Tony shook his head. ‘That’s not right.’. Or if we know who’s speaking – because there are only two people in a scene and the other has spoken then just have the dialogue. You can have up to three exchanges (He said/she said/he replied/she replied/he said/she said) without anything – as the reader is clever enough to keep up – before needing some narration or a ‘tag’.
• Where the speech has an unrelated dialogue tag, e.g. someone laughing, moving, smiling, waving, blushing etc. (with it capitalised: He laughed. She picked up the mug. etc.) the punctuation should be a full stop rather than a comma so: He laughed. ‘Say that again.’. Had it been related description, it would be a comma: ‘Say that again,’ he said while fiddling with his tie.
• Where an action has ‘starts to’ / ‘started to’ or ‘begins to’ / ‘began to’ before it, most of the time they’re not needed because unless the action is interrupted, the verb alone works better / is stronger. An example would be ‘the phone began to ring’. If it stops without being answered then that’s fine (although it still rang!) but if not then just have ‘the phone rang’.
• Like ‘dear’, and other endearments, ‘sir’ is only capitalised when used as a name, e.g. ‘Thank you, Sir Lancelot.’ rather than ‘Thank you, sir.’ Ditto madam – see https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/madam.
• If you’re going to have a twist, I recommend leaving it until the last sentence, especially with such a short word count. Plus the shorter the sentence the more impact they make which is especially important at the end of a paragraph. Also the stronger the final word the better as the nearer a word is to the end the more memorable it is / impact it has. Where there’s dialogue and narration, I usually recommend the narration going first so what’s said has more impact.
• Although grammatically correct, I recommend you don’t put commas between adjectives, and certainly not immediately before the noun / object. It slows the pace… really slows it where there are several and anything that slows what should be a fast-paced page-turning read is best avoided. If you wanted a secondary adjective emphasised then use the first comma but add a second (a ear-piercing, continuous, scream) so the secondary adjective is highlighted. I recommend having neither.
• The drink Coke is a trademark name so should be capitalised. The generic equivalent would be cola with a small c. Ditto coke as in cocaine.
• ‘that’ – like ‘that was’, ‘which was’, and ‘who was’ – can often be chopped. If the remaining text makes as much sense with or without it, it can come out.
• Where you have two (or more) characters of the same gender in the scene, it can be confusing with just ‘he, she, him, her’ etc. They should always refer to the last character mentioned. ‘Denny lacked a white horse, but he’d parked his motorbike’, as an example from one of this month’s stories could be read as the horse parking a motorbike. Animals are usually ‘it’ rather than ‘he’ or ‘she’ until we know the gender but anything that could potentially pull a reader out of the story is best avoided. In another story there was ‘I speak Italian to the gondolier, tapping the sides of the vessel. I smile when she looks at me…’ where the ‘she’ meant the narrator’s companion but again the gondolier could have been female, we’re not told.
• It’s always difficult, as a writer, to know how readers are going to interpret your writing. In one of my favourite stories there was ‘There was no hot water and the welcome package, a selection of cheeses and nuts, was missing.’ It made me wonder – as it’s missing, how the narrator knew what it was. It is, however, the perfect opportunity for me to mention that negatives work really well. We often write about what’s there but rarely what’s missing. This was a nice touch.

The winning stories are ones that I reacted most favourably to. They were clever, surprising, eek-making (in a good way), or gave me a warm fuzzy feeling (without being sickly). Sometimes a story beats another because it has a stronger link to the theme so it’s worth writing a story to the theme rather than tweaking a story you already have to loosely fit it. Alternatively there may have been several stories on with same topic so I chose my favourite of those. With any competition, much rests upon the judge’s preference and it’s usually ones than garner a stronger (positive) reaction that do the best.

You may have chosen a different order or indeed not placed one or more of them so if you entered and didn’t find your story / stories here, don’t lose heart. You probably only just missed out so do enter new stories this month*, next month, whenever you like (but not in advance!). It’s an ongoing competition and free, so you could win at any time. There were new and familiar names this month so anyone could win… it’s all dependent upon whether your story grabs me, for whatever reason (whether it be clever, funny, unusual, quirky, or sweet).

Apart from the top three and highly commended, there are some ‘Honourable Mentions’. They don’t win anything but they were so close to being Highly Commended that I wanted them to know how close they came. It’s still something for them to put on their CVs.

*The theme for July is ‘an unusual healing’ and you can submit your entries (and do send three) at any time up to midnight (UK time) on Saturday 31st July. Details and entry forms on https://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/100-word-free-monthly-competition. So without further ado, below are the successful entries this month.

First place (winning free access to three of my online creative writing courses (currently worth £60 / $60) or a free edit and critique of up to 2,000 words (worth £30 / $42). This story can be read downwards as two separate entities (columns) or one horizontal piece. Very clever.

James A. Beaumont with ‘The Tower Plot

I’m sealed in                                                                       This bloody tower! I’m here

and there’s nothing I can do                                         to score points with her

but think about what I’ve done                                    so that maybe tomorrow, if I’m

to deserve this treatment, about how un                 lucky, maybe I’ll get laid.

Prepared we all were. Caught in                                   Hell, I’ve been learning

the act: there were twelve of us, and they’re            history, the gunpowder plot,

celebrating now probably, planning different         dates – all stuff to impress her with.

schemes – never had one to begin with.                  But man, this place, this waiting

This bitter end of Death                                                  is so god damn boring.

*

Second place (winning free access to two of my online creative writing courses (currently worth £40 / $40) or a free edit and critique of up to 1,500 words (worth £22.50 / $31.50):

Joan Reed with ‘Travelling Back’

A weekend in ghostly York. Exciting. I explored everything from Castle Museum to markets.

I noticed an intriguing antique shop with dimpled windows, in a busy street below the shadow of the Minster. As I opened the door, a bell tinkled, and I shivered at the coldness.

A small girl sat on the counter dressed in white. A blue sash matched her eye colour. Her face, pale and unsmiling seemed to search mine.

The doorbell tinkled. I glanced round. Nobody entered.

Looking back, the girl had vanished.

I moved to leave the shop. Locks clicked into place.

The bell tinkled.

*

Third place (winning free access to one of my online creative writing courses (currently worth £20 / $20) or a free edit and critique of up to 1,000 words (worth £15 / $21):

Nicholas Marshall with ‘Caught’

When the animals hear a plane landing on the airstrip they begin to gather behind bushes near the dirt road.

Soon a safari minibus carrying ten tourists bounces towards them and a cheetah lies down in the road with legs in the air.

The vehicle skids to a halt and the tourists cautiously gather round the big cat which appears lifeless.

Suddenly the other animals rush out from behind the bushes and throw a large net over the tourists.

The driver of the minibus winks at the cheetah which stands and stretches.

Eventually the tourists will become used to captivity.

*

Highly commended (winning my Entering Writing Competitions course worth £20 / $20) or a free edit and critique of up to 1,000 words (worth £15 / $21) – in alphabetical order:

• David Filce with ‘Return to Childhood’
• Douglas Goodrich with ‘Interplanetary Knock-Off’
• Gemma Roche with ‘The Entrepreneur’
• Isabel Flynn with ‘Will I, or won’t I?’
• Jeremy Chotzen with ‘Beware of the girls at the gates’
• Sue Massey with ‘We never complain’
• Wendy Howard with ‘The Trapper’

Honourable mentions (not winning anything but only narrowly missing out and still looking good on their CV) – in alphabetical order:

• Denise Bayes with ‘A Family Business’
• Helen Sant with ‘Knight in Shining Leather’
• Kyle Barratt with ‘Exit Through the Gift Shop’
• Lestie Mulholland with ‘Parisian Gewgaws’
• Liz Hardie with ‘The Look Looked Man’

Congratulations, everyone. The entries for this month are already drifting in. Remember, you can send up to three per month so rather than miss out on a chance by sending one story, do submit more.

If you’ve enjoyed these stories and / or just want to leave a comment, please do so below and / or you can email me at morgen@morgenbailey.com., although I won’t (can’t) discuss forthcoming entries unless it’s a general query.

Results of Morgen’s 100-word competition: May 2021

Hello everyone and welcome to the sixty-ninth month of this competition. There were 48 entries from 22 authors for the theme of ‘going round in circles’, a particularly strong month this time. NB You can all send in three stories for a better chance of being picked.

Please note: I have decided to cease the competition at the end of the year to free up time for my writing. It’ll have been 76 months in the making and a pleasure but sadly, as December’s prompt is going to be, ‘sometimes good things have to come to an end’. Any prizes won up to/including that point will still be honoured until the end of February 2022 so if you choose the editing option, get those stories written. 🙂

One was disqualified for having ‘over grown’ instead of overgrown, taking the story down to 99. It actually started as 101 but had ‘carry on’ as a noun (a carry-on) – it’s a verb as two words, so connected it took the story down to 100 but then I go to ‘over grown’ and it was game…er, over. 🙂 Another (from the same author) had a comma separated so when conjoined it brought the story down to 99. Fortunately the third story was 100 so that went through. It’s always worth sending three, just in case. One entry was submitted twice so the first was accepted, the second deleted.

Another story was disqualified for only being 99 words. There was a section separation asterisk which is punctuation so not counted as a word so this must have been the reason. The author had sent two other stories but one was 98 words because of an asterisk and …ellipses. The third story had two words hyphenated (double-doors in addition to ‘double-door louvre’ which was correct) where they shouldn’t have been, making it 101 words so all three stories were disqualified. I have to be fair to everyone to stick with the correct grammar. 😦

Almost the same thing happened to another author; two 99-word stories, one with a dash, the other ellipses. The third story went through.

One author submitted one story which was sadly disqualified for ‘high top trainers’ where ‘high top’ should have been hyphenated, bringing the story down to 99 words. The easiest way to tell is whether ‘high trainers’ or ‘top trainers’ would have made sense on their own. This is why I always recommend submitting three stories. Another solo entry was disqualified for have Facebook as two words.

I always recommend reading and rereading your stories several times. One story started as 100 words but had a ‘a’ or ‘the’ missing (I have played xxx record). The entrant had submitted two other stories so they went through.

One (of three) story lost a brownie point for having ‘bother’ instead of ‘brother’ but it was disqualified anyway for being 99 words (incidentally had two sets of ellipses). Ditto another story with ellipses which originally sat separate to a word which regardless doesn’t count as a word so made the story 99 words. The author had submitted two other stories so they went through.

Other observations:

• When speaking to someone and using a name, nickname or term of endearment (which counts as a name), 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.
• When referring to family, mum/mom, dad, gran, uncle, aunt etc. should be capitalised when used as a name, e.g. “I know, Mum/Mom.” When used as a ‘job’, e.g. my mum/mom, my dad, my doctor etc. then it should be a small m, d etc.
• Although grammatically correct, I recommend that you don’t put commas between adjectives, and certainly not immediately before the noun / object. It slows the pace… really slows it where there are several and anything that slows what should be a fast-paced page-turning read is best avoided.
• Technically, ‘now’ (‘by now’, ‘just now’, ‘right now’, ‘at the moment’, ‘at this moment’) is present tense, which is fine in dialogue but not in past tense narration. Had the narration been present tense, we still don’t need the ‘now’ because it’s technically happening now. All, now, very and just are often overused so I recommend, especially in a longer piece, seeing how many you have and chopping where possible.
• Where there are only two people in a scene chatting, you don’t need too many ‘said’s (or equivalent). Once it’s been established who’s first to speak, the reader can follow for a while. You can then use description, e.g. have a character do something before needing to add a said ‘tag’.
• Be careful of having too many paragraphs (or indeed sentences) starting with pronouns (e.g. I, he, she, the character’s name). Even if they’re quite long paragraphs so they don’t leap out, it’s something to be mindful of. So if a section feels a bit flat, it could be that you have too many sentences / paragraphs starting with a pronoun, e.g. ‘Barry did this…’ or ‘He did that…’, or that you have too much narration (Andy was angry) vs. dialogue or the character ‘doing’, e.g. “Get out!” Andy slammed his fist onto the desk.
• One story had the main character’s name nine times. Where you have two (or more) characters of the same gender in the scene, it can be confusing with just ‘he, she, him, her’ etc. (they should always refer to the last character mentioned) but the only other characters mentioned were ‘parents’ so have the relevant name instead of he/she next but ‘she’ from then on. A story might be marked down but certainly not disqualified for this. The story in this case though had less of a connection to the theme than many of the others so unfortunately missed out for that reason.
• teatowel / tea-towel is another error I come across occasionally. As https://www.lexico.com/definition/tea_towel shows, it’s two words so a story missed out for therefore being 101 words.
• Stopping something or someone ‘in his / her tracks’ is a big cliché (as would be ‘stopping dead’).
• A comma is generally not needed where ‘too’, ‘al/though’, ‘n/either’, ‘then’ and other conjunctions / conjunctives ends the sentence. It would if the remainder of the sentence made sense on its own, e.g. ‘Tom wasn’t finished in Glasgow, though he only wanted to go home.’ Commas slow the pace but I generally include them where a reader would take a breath.
• I love stories with a twist but do recommend not have the title of the piece giving away that twist, as a couple of the stories did this month. Also leave the twist until as late in the story as possible for the ‘oomph!’.
• I try to chop commas where I can, i.e. where there wouldn’t be a natural pause (adjectives before a noun) but there are times when they’re needed to avoid confusion. In one story there was ‘pulls a lever, they notice he has no face’. Without the comma it could be read that they’d noticed a lever.

The winning stories are ones that I reacted most favourably to. They were clever, surprising, eek-making (in a good way), or gave me a warm fuzzy feeling (without being sickly). Sometimes a story beats another because it has a stronger link to the theme so it’s worth writing a story to the theme rather than tweaking a story you already have to loosely fit it. Alternatively there may have been several stories on with same topic so I chose my favourite of those. With any competition, much rests upon the judge’s preference and it’s usually ones than garner a stronger (positive) reaction that do the best.

You may have chosen a different order or indeed not placed one or more of them so if you entered and didn’t find your story / stories here, don’t lose heart. You probably only just missed out so do enter new stories this month*, next month, whenever you like (but not in advance!). It’s an ongoing competition and free, so you could win at any time. There were new and familiar names this month so anyone could win… it’s all dependent upon whether your story grabs me, for whatever reason (whether it be clever, funny, unusual, quirky, or sweet).

Apart from the top three and highly commended, there are some ‘Honourable Mentions’. They don’t win anything but they were so close to being Highly Commended that I wanted them to know how close they came. It’s still something for them to put on their CVs.

*The theme for June is ‘the tourist trap’ and you can submit your entries (and do send three) at any time up to midnight (UK time) on Wednesday 30th June. Details and entry forms on https://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/100-word-free-monthly-competition. So without further ado, below are the successful entries this month.

Joint first place (each winning free access to three of my online creative writing courses (currently worth £60 / $60) or a free edit and critique of up to 2,000 words (worth £30 / $42) in alphabetical order:

Colleen E. Kennedy with ‘The Cave’

All of a sudden, you knew that this wasn’t the correct way. The twisted woods became darker and more menacing with each step. The path ended abruptly at the mouth of a yawning cave.
Yet, you knew this place: you’d been here before. And you recalled you had died in this cave before, and you had died many times before. But you knew that you would always find yourself at the forked path again, able to choose left or right.
To explore the cave, please turn to page 39.
To turn back the way you came, turn to page 87.

*

Darren York with ‘Mind the Plot Holes’

Sheila kills John in chapter one but he reappears in chapter two talking to their neighbour.
So I turn him into a ghost, but he appears in chapter three, in a divorce court sat opposite Sheila.
Sheila shoots the neighbour to cover up the murder; but drinks coffee with her in chapter seven.
Alternatively, John kills Sheila in chapter one which leaves Derek in chapter five still waiting for Sheila at the bar for the entire novel and their unborn daughter jailed for John’s murder.
Derek kills John in chapter one, then meets Sheila, who kills Derek for killing John…

*

Joint second place (each winning free access to two of my online creative writing courses (currently worth £40 / $40) or a free edit and critique of up to 1,500 words (worth £22.50 / $31.50) in alphabetical order:

Julian Cadman with ‘Going Round In Circles’

It was the first time Harry had been on a plane. And being allowed to sit in the cockpit was awesome. The racing car was cool too. Ella’s highlight so far was sitting on a unicorn. Riding on a horse for the first time was also brilliant. Why do days like these have to end?
Jenny waved at her children as they passed by, and then looked across at her husband, back turned, playing with his mobile phone. Had their relationship gone from carousal to carousel?
Were they going round in circles as the attraction was coming to an end?

*

Nicholas Marshall with ‘Railway to hell’

Two passengers sit in the small railway cart as it trundles by itself down a gentle slope.
At a bend there is a sign with an arrow and the word “Hades”.
The cart then gathers speed for a while before coming to rest where the track divides.
“Which way?” the passengers ask a uniformed man who merely shrugs.

As he approaches them and pulls a lever they notice he has no face.
The cart speeds off along the track leading to a loop on which they will circle forever, endlessly stopping at the same stations and confronting the expected abominations.

*

Joint third place (each winning free access to one of my online creative writing courses (currently worth £20 / $20) or a free edit and critique of up to 1,000 words (worth £15 / $21) in alphabetical order:

David Filce with ‘Wake, Work, Eat, Sleep’

Wake, work, eat, sleep.
Wake, work, eat, sleep.
Repeat, repeat, repeat.
Life is like sitting on a roundabout. Spinning, turning, round and round. The days are no more than a blur, merging into one seamless mess.
It wasn’t always like this for him.
Before she became ill life was fantastic. There were surprise trips, candlelit dinners, long walks and snuggles on the sofa.
But that was then. Then he lost her. That part of his life ended as she slipped so sadly away.
Now he fills his world with that mundane cyclical sickness.
Wake, work, eat, sleep.
Repeat, repeat, repeat.

*

Gemma Roche with ‘Loneliness’

Tumbledown stone archway, check. Large jutting rock, check. Dilapidated faux castle, check. Finn was retracing his regular circular route. As he got older, it seemed to take longer each day and remembering the order of the comforting features increasingly tricky. The wider landscape also seemed to be diminishing, everything beyond tarnished a dull decaying green. It had been a long time since he’d had visitors. These days he was lucky if they dropped the measly stale golden flakes, which apparently provided him with sustenance, more than once a week. But still he continued to swim, round and round and round.

*

Joyce Bingham with ‘Where did it say I could speak to a human?’

‘Please press one to hear the menu again.’
I look at my phone, bring up numbers.
‘Please press one for your balance, two for your fitness level, three for your vital signs.’
What were they again?
‘You have sixty calories remaining in your daily allowance. Choose carefully.’
I swear at the phone.
‘You have not reached your activity goal today, go for a run.’
Jabbing at the screen I hiss through my teeth.
‘You have raised vital signs, please install Calmness app.’
Press four, why not.
‘Please press one to hear the menu again.’
Not worth the calories I decide.

*

Highly commended (winning my Entering Writing Competitions course worth £20 / $20) or a free edit and critique of up to 1,000 words (worth £15 / $21) – in alphabetical order:

• Isabel Flynn with ‘Our Inner Circle’
• Kyle Barratt with ‘The Funeral’
• Sue Massey with ‘Amazing Maize’
• Teresa Heeks with ‘Pigeon Pie’
• Tracey-anne Plater with ‘Forever Train’

Honourable mentions (not winning anything but only narrowly missing out and still looking good on their CV) – in alphabetical order:

• Helen Sant with ‘Dressed To Kill’
• Jane Broughton with ‘Lock-down List’
• Julie Gavin with ‘Exasperation’
• Philip Kingsley with ‘Never A Cross Word’
• Wendy Howard with ‘First Ride’

Congratulations, everyone. The entries for this month are already drifting in. Remember, you can send up to three per month so rather than miss out on a chance by sending one story, do submit more.

If you’ve enjoyed these stories and / or just want to leave a comment, please do so below and / or you can email me at morgen@morgenbailey.com., although I won’t (can’t) discuss forthcoming entries unless it’s a general query.

My review of ‘100ne Hundred’ by Laura Besley

I stopped doing reviews a while back but when I was asked by Saira at Arachne Press to review Laura’s collection, I didn’t hesitate. Flash fiction is my favourite form of creative writing and Laura is a regular, often successful, entrant to my monthly 100-word competition so two reasons to say ‘yes’.

Split into four seasons, each section contains 25 stories, some of which are familiar territory but most new to me.

I love titles, especially quirky ones, and ones like ‘How to be Normal’, ‘Raining Colours’, ‘The Pupa Stage in the Lifecycle of Audrey Brown’, and ‘Housewife 500’ were ones I was especially looking forward to… and they didn’t disappoint.

Speaking of quirky, although I know Laura’s writing well, I challenge anyone (not for money!) not to be hooked on the opening of the first story: Dave carries his girlfriend in the left-hand breast pocket of his shirt. 

It’s a very emotional collection. As a competition judge (for others, not just my own) the best stories tend to be ones where you have a reaction at the end. A ‘huh?’ is not good and it goes from there all the way to ‘wow’. With this collection I soon lost track of how many ‘wow’s I was uttering to the point where my dog had that ‘here she goes again’ look.

The stories take us to various points around the globe but one thing that links them all is humanity. I love characters, and while most stories are understandably plot-led, there is a wealth of characters we can relate to, even if they’re nothing like us, or we’ve not been through what they’ve been through – for that we should be thankful!

Some films started life as short stories (The Shawshank Redemption and Brokeback Mountain to name two) and while Laura’s are incredibly short, many lent themselves to being the start or plot of a larger work. There are unions, reunions, meetings and greetings, thought-provoking pieces, and those simply there to entertain.

Although I read this collection in one sitting, it’s the kind you could dip in an out of and let these stories linger, returning for a second, third and umpteenth read.

I’d love to share with you my favourites but there were simply too many, although one in particular made me chuckle as a character loves his Alexa (Amazon Echo device) even more than I do.

As well as being a competition judge, I’m an editor. While I would have made very minor tweaks had this been something sent to me for editing (e.g. sighing isn’t a dialogue verb so should be a separate sentence to what’s said, some words hyphenated or unhyphenated, a ‘his’ changed to the character’s name where another of the same gender has just been mentioned, I’d have chopped some ‘said’s where the character’s doing something, and some of the ‘just’s 🙂 ), the stories are written to such a tight (100 words exactly) format that losing a word or two would have meant ‘padding’ to return to the correct figure.

I had high expectations and was not disappointed, as I’m sure you won’t be when you read this wonderful collection. It was published on 27th May 2021, so hot off the (Arachne) press! Available from https://arachnepress.com/books/short-stories/100nehundred-laura-besleyand where good books are sold, as the saying goes (ISBN: 978-1913665272). Laura can be found on Twitter and Facebook.

My thanks go to Saira and of course Laura, not only for creating this endearing collection but for being one of the many stalwarts of my competition.

*

Laura

About Laura Besley: Laura Besley writes short fiction in the precious moments when her children are asleep. She has been listed by TSS Publishing as one of the top 50 British and Irish Flash Fiction writers. Her work has been nominated for Best Micro Fiction and her story, To Cut a Long Story Short, will appear in the Best Small Fiction anthology in 2021. 100neHundred is Laura’s second short fiction collection.

 

About 100neHundred: 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, Laura Besley explores a kaleidoscope of emotions through 100 stories of exactly 100 words each.

Results of Morgen’s 100-word competition: April 2021

Hello everyone and welcome to the sixty-eighth* month of this competition, a huge one this time. There were a staggering 94 entries from 40 authors for the theme of ‘learning something new’’. So with only a small amount of places there were sure to be some that were really good but missed out.

NB You can all send in three stories for a better chance of being picked. *bit of trivia: eighth is the only word in the English language that ends ‘hth’. 🙂

As happens occasionally, some stories were great but had little or nothing to do with the theme or there were a few similar (learning to ride a bike and paint – not at the same time 🙂 – were popular). There were a few this month and they’re likely ones that missed out.

One story was disqualified for only being 95 words (some of the ‘some thing’s corrected to ‘something’. It arrived at 96 but had ‘about’ twice together so remove one… Another from the same author was disqualified for the same reason. Fortunately the third story was 100 words exactly so went through to the judging. Or so I thought… I read it and realised it had a word missing, ending with ‘What to with him?’ What a shame.

Ditto another story that was missing an ‘a’ (he was qualified guide dog) which would have taken it to 101. It’s a shame as it was my favourite story from that author. Another regular submitted three with one at 101 so that was disqualified.

Another went to 99 as ‘silver bodied’ should have been hyphenated and another story to 101 for ‘upside-down’ without a noun following (, i.e. it was upside down rather than an upside-down cake https://www.lexico.com/definition/upside_down). The easiest way to tell if something should be is whether each word makes sense on its own. A ‘silver fish’ would but ‘bodied fish’ wouldn’t have.

Another 99-word story was so because ‘mocking bird’ should be one word (as it’s the name rather than any type of bird that mocks). https://www.lexico.com/definition/mockingbird It’s a shame as it was my favourite of the three stories sent by that author but another was a strong piece so that went through.

Finally, a new entrant to the competition missed out with their only submission as it was a word short. Such a shame.

Other observations:

• numbers under 100 are best written in full so they blend with the rest of the text (especially where they are 1^st, and the likes, as eReaders tend not to like ^superscript) so I’ve amended the ones that are. That said, I think all numbers unless titles (BMW Series 5) etc. are best written in full. For info., decades are plural so no apostrophe required.
• when referring to family, mum/mom and dad should be capitalised when used as a name, e.g. “I know, Mum/Mom.” When used as a ‘job’, e.g. my mum/mom, my dad, my doctor etc. then it should be a small m, d etc. NB. There’s a comma before ‘Mum/Mom’ here because when you’re writing someone’s name – and a nickname or term of endearment counts as a name – when another character is speaking to them, you’d need a comma before the name, i.e. ‘Do you know Sam?’ is asking if the person knows someone called Sam. ‘Do you know, Sam?’ means that the character is speaking to someone called Sam 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.
• when a character asks a question (using a question mark) or shouting (exclamation mark), then the he/she said would still be small ‘h’ or ‘s’. If we have the character doing something or it’s obvious who’s speaking then you could remove the s/he said.
• I strongly recommend you don’t invert dialogue tags as it’s not how we would naturally speak if talking aloud, e.g. changing ‘said Tony’ to ‘Tony said’. ‘said’s do tend to blur into the background so don’t try too hard to choose something else, e.g. ‘Tony postulated’, even ‘Tony exclaimed’ could be too much if we already have the likes of ‘Get out!’ It’s not so bad when you don’t have a name but having the ‘said’ or equivalent is more natural where you have a character’s name.
• I come across a lot of dialogue narration where it implies a character is speaking and smiling, grinning etc. at the same time. This is particularly difficult. Although ‘said’ blends better than more unusual verbs, there can still be too many. Where you have something like: “I like it,” Laura said, smiling. “I like it.” Laura smiled. Or better still: Laura smiled. “I like it.” So we know it’s Laura speaking before she speaks. As https://www.geist.com/writers/writers-toolbox/gerunds-and-participles-avoid-ing-words says less (‘ing’s) is definitely more.
• I’m a stickler for unintended repetition, some of which may feel rather pedantic – should you ever have anything critiqued by me – but I listen to the document on my Kindle (Fire’s text to speech), alongside reading it on the screen, and certain words or phrases leap out. In one of the stories, there were two ‘empty’s which may have been intentional but it jarred with me (sorry!). A touching story though so it went through.
• me vs I / I vs me / me vs. I / I vs. me etc.: the easy way to work out whether something should be I or me is to remove the ‘xxx and’ or ‘xxx and’. If it still makes sense, then you’re fine. An example would be ‘Adam and I are going shopping.’ Changing the plural verb to singular, it would be ‘I am going shopping.’ You wouldn’t say ‘Me and Adam are going shopping’ because you wouldn’t say ‘Me is going shopping.’
• things are usually ‘that’ whereas people are usually ‘who’ (or ‘whom’ where it can be replaced by ‘him’ e.g. to whom / to him), i.e. he was the man who had lied (who = he had lied not him had lied) / it was the door that had been slammed.
• words often overused include ‘all’, ‘now’, ‘very’ and ‘just’. There were four ‘just’s in one of the stories. I recommend searching for them with a space either side so – for ‘ just ’ as an example, it doesn’t pick up ‘adjust’, ‘justice’ etc. I’d recommend only keeping the ones for emphasis or detract from the sentence if chopped, or changing to ‘only’ where appropriate. And the likes of ‘just’ can be swapped for ‘only’ where appropriate but better to chop so whatever you swap it for doesn’t get used too often either.
• like erm, we do say ‘well’ as a dialogue pause but it’s best not to include it in our writing, or at the most have it as a characteristic for one of the characters. Ditto ‘look’.
• when we have someone’s/something’s age, we don’t usually need the ‘years old’ or ‘years of age’ because the number – within the right context – is sufficient. There would also only be a hyphen if preceding a noun (or implied), e.g. a fourteen-year-old girl / a fourteen-year-old. Had there been a non-exact name using ‘something’ (or similar), the ‘something’ represents an unknown number so it would all still be hyphenated as the likes of ‘twenty-two-year-old nurse’ would have been.
• when speaking to someone and using a name, nickname or term of endearment (which counts as a name), 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.
• where an action has ‘starts to’ / ‘started to’ or ‘begins to’ / ‘began to’ before it, most of the time they’re not needed because unless the action is interrupted, the verb alone works better / is stronger. An example would be ‘the phone began to ring’. If it stops without being answered then that’s fine (although it still rang!) but if not then just have ‘the phone rang’.
• some stories were really well written with intriguing plots but their endings let them down. ‘oh’ or ‘huh?’ are not good reactions. While you may not always get ‘wow’, you certainly want ‘ooh’.

The winning stories are ones that I reacted most favourably to. They were clever, surprising, eek-making (in a good way), or gave me a warm fuzzy feeling (without being sickly). Sometimes a story beats another because it has a stronger link to the theme so it’s worth writing a story to the theme rather than tweaking a story you already have to loosely fit it. Alternatively there may have been several stories on with same topic so I chose my favourite of those. With any competition, much rests upon the judge’s preference and it’s usually ones than garner a stronger (positive) reaction that do the best.

You may have chosen a different order or indeed not placed one or more of them so if you entered and didn’t find your story / stories here, don’t lose heart. You probably only just missed out so do enter new stories this month*, next month, whenever you like (but not in advance!). It’s an ongoing competition and free, so you could win at any time. There were new and familiar names this month so anyone could win… it’s all dependent upon whether your story grabs me, for whatever reason (whether it be clever, funny, unusual, quirky, or sweet).

Apart from the top three and highly commended, there are some ‘Honourable Mentions’. They don’t win anything but they were so close to being Highly Commended that I wanted them to know how close they came. It’s still something for them to put on their CVs.

*The theme for May is ‘going round in circles’ and you can submit your entries (and do send three) at any time up to midnight (UK time) on Monday 31st May. Details and entry forms on https://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/100-word-free-monthly-competition. So without further ado, below are the successful entries this month.

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First place (winning free access to three of my online creative writing courses (currently worth £60 / $60) or a free edit and critique of up to 2,000 words (worth £30 / $42):

Laura Besley with ‘Sliding Scale’

You can learn to cry so no-one on the ward can hear you, you can learn to find positions in bed so you’re in slightly less pain, you can learn to enjoy the hospital food, you can learn to be less embarrassed about a bed bath, you can learn to abide the physio’s chirpiness, you can learn to be happy you can take a few steps.
You can’t learn a word that means thank you for rescuing me, caring for me, sitting with me, supporting me, saving me. It doesn’t exist.
You say thank you, and hope it is enough.

*

Joint second place (each winning free access to two of my online creative writing courses (currently worth £40 / $40) or a free edit and critique of up to 1,500 words (worth £22.50 / $31.50):

Jane Brown with ‘A Mother’s Applause’

“Every girl in our family could do a backflip by ten years,” Mum said. “If I can’t teach you, I’ll be letting down our ancestors.”
“Chill, Mum,” I said, laughing.
She rolled her wheelchair closer. “I know you can do it, Annabelle! Be confident.” She coughed and smiled. “I’ll find a way – somehow – to show how proud I am when you do it for the first time.”
Two months later, I stood on the grass, bent my knees and did it. A perfect backflip.

Stunned, I turned to her tombstone. It was covered in white butterflies, all flapping their wings.

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Mary Lawton with ‘Non-traditional’

Tom hears the whispers and sniggers as he makes his way to a seat in the lecture theatre.
“Isn’t he too old for this class?”
“Mature students are the pits.”
“Let’s hope there’s a First-Aider here. He looks like he’ll fall over any minute.”
Laughter.
Sighing, Tom sits back.
“If I get him as a partner, I’m quitting this class.”
“Yeah, it’s probably a hobby to him, not like us. That generation makes me sick.”
Tom stands, then walks to the lectern.
“Welcome to Sociology: Tolerance and Intolerance in 21st Century Society, a necessary learning experience for many of you.”

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Third place (winning free access to one of my online creative writing courses (currently worth £20 / $20) or a free edit and critique of up to 1,000 words (worth £15 / $21):

David Klotzkin with ‘A Lesson in Photorealism’

“My *pictures* of flowers attract bees,” said Famous Artist tipsily (while the bees hummed over his drink garnish).
Chuck thought he could draw that well, with practice.
Maybe better.
Later, he showed Famous Artist a pastoral sketch of a deer and a tiger in a flowery meadow.
“So? No bees.” Famous Artist sniffed.
Then paper bees flew from the paper and buzzed away, seeking the sea and alphabetical order. The tiger bounded out, saw Famous Artist, and fled, terrified (he was just a paper tiger). The deer walked daintily from the picture into the field, leaving behind a paper trail.

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Highly commended (winning my Entering Writing Competitions course worth £20 / $20) or a free edit and critique of up to 1,000 words (worth £15 / $21) – in alphabetical order:

• Anne-Marie Smith with ‘Playing the yoyo’
• Julian Cadman with ‘Put Off Course’
• Lorna Stewart with ‘A Self-educated Man’
• Nina Steer with ‘Too old, they said’
• Tony Cleaver with ‘Inflated Expectations’
• Tracey-anne Plater with ‘Hermit Crabs’

Honourable mentions (not winning anything but only narrowly missing out and still looking good on their CV) – in alphabetical order:

• Clare Law with ‘I learned to cook with Mama’
• Darren York with ‘Paint a Vulgar Picture’
• David Filce with ‘Sarah’
• Elyse Russell with ‘Blue and Green’
• Helen Sant with ‘The Thief Whose Heart Was Stolen’
• Kaitlin Woodland with ‘Camping Blunders’

Congratulations, everyone. The entries for this month are already drifting in. Remember, you can send up to three per month so rather than miss out on a chance by sending one story, do submit more.

If you’ve enjoyed these stories and / or just want to leave a comment, please do so below and / or you can email me at morgen@morgenbailey.com., although I won’t (can’t) discuss forthcoming entries unless it’s a general query.

Results of Morgen’s 100-word competition: March 2021

Hello everyone and welcome to the sixty-seventh month of this competition. There were 48 entries from 20 authors for the theme of ‘going to camp’. NB You can all send in three stories for a better chance of being picked.

One was disqualified for being 103 words, another 99 words and a third (unfortunately all from the same author) 97 because there were three ‘camp site’s instead of https://www.lexico.com/definition/campsite. I have to be fair to all authors to correct any errors. Another author’s story ended up being 99 words for ‘camp related quips’ which should have been ‘camp-related…’. Fortunately another story went through. The same happened for a story with ‘egg shells’ instead of https://www.lexico.com/definition/eggshell.

One of another author’s stories had a ‘booked-in’ as a verb (They’d booked-in) where it should have been ‘booked in’ so again disqualified for not being 100 words. Sorry!

One author’s only story was disqualified for having ‘on board’ rather than ‘onboard’. It’s why it’s always worth submitting three stories. Another of the same author’s stories was disqualified for counting two words with ellipses between as one word (see observations below).

Other observations:

• when speaking to someone and using a name, nickname or term of endearment (which counts as a name), 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.
• I strongly recommend you don’t invert dialogue tags as it’s not how we would naturally speak if talking aloud, e.g. changing ‘said Tony’ to ‘Tony said’. ‘said’s do tend to blur into the background so don’t try too hard to choose something else, e.g. ‘Tony postulated’, even ‘Tony exclaimed’ could be too much if we already have the likes of ‘Get out!’ It’s not so bad when you don’t have a name but having the ‘said’ or equivalent is more natural where you have a character’s name.
• this is very much personal preference (I’m not a fan) but ‘cried’ can imply physical tears rather than an exclamation and the exclamation ‘cried’ implies a volume. Anything that could be distracting is best avoided.
• where the speech has an unrelated dialogue tag, e.g. someone laughing, moving, smiling, waving etc. (with it capitalised: He laughed. She picked up the mug.’ etc.) the punctuation should be a full stop rather than a comma. Had it been related description, it would be a comma.
• like erm, we do say ‘well’ as a dialogue pause but it’s best not to include it in our writing, or at the most have it as a characteristic for one of the characters. Ditto ‘look’.
• as mentioned above, https://www.lexico.com/definition/on-board can be hyphenated or not. When used as an adjective in relation to a vehicle, it’s hyphenated, e.g. the on-board catering staff whereas computer related would be ‘onboard memory’. Used as a verb, e.g. to onboard a client, there’s no hyphen.
• I often come across ‘ing’s following ‘said’ and there are three here. 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 forward the note… rather than: “That’s not fair,” Taylor said, pushing forward the note.
• ellipses are one ‘character’ … rather than three individual full stops. Regardless of whether you put a word straight after them or have a space the two words (Tents… yes / No… tense) in this case count as two words. One of the stories therefore ended up being 102 words because of it.
• a comma is generally not needed where ‘too’, ‘al/though’, ‘n/either’, ‘then’ and other conjunctions / conjunctives ends the sentence. It would if the remainder of the sentence made sense on its own, e.g. ‘Tom wasn’t finished in Glasgow, though he only wanted to go home.’ Commas slow the pace but I generally include them where a reader would take a breath.

The winning stories are ones that I reacted most favourably to. They were clever, surprising, eek-making (in a good way), or gave me a warm fuzzy feeling (without being sickly). Sometimes a story beats another because it has a stronger link to the theme so it’s worth writing a story to the theme rather than tweaking a story you already have to loosely fit it. Alternatively there may have been several stories on with same topic so I chose my favourite of those. With any competition, much rests upon the judge’s preference and it’s usually ones than garner a stronger (positive) reaction that do the best.

You may have chosen a different order or indeed not placed one or more of them so if you entered and didn’t find your story / stories here, don’t lose heart. You probably only just missed out so do enter new stories this month*, next month, whenever you like (but not in advance!). It’s an ongoing competition and free, so you could win at any time. There were new and familiar names this month so anyone could win… it’s all dependent upon whether your story grabs me, for whatever reason (whether it be clever, funny, unusual, quirky, or sweet).

Apart from the top three and highly commended, there are some ‘Honourable Mentions’. They don’t win anything but they were so close to being Highly Commended that I wanted them to know how close they came. It’s still something for them to put on their CVs.

*The theme for April is ‘learning something new’ and you can submit your entries (and do send three) at any time up to midnight (UK time) on Friday 30th April. Details and entry forms on https://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/100-word-free-monthly-competition. So without further ado, below are the successful entries this month.

*

Joint first place (each winning free access to three of my online creative writing courses (currently worth £60 / $60) or a free edit and critique of up to 2,000 words (worth £30 / $42):

Kaitlin Woodland with ‘Scissors’

If at the start I knew that when I left everything behind all I would be doing was going to camp, I would not have gone through all the struggles, hardships and pain for next to nothing. I suffered many months struggling blindly through the tightly woven folds in the fabric of war, only to get tangled within the frayed ends of the camp walls. The camp from which I am stuck in. I am labelled as a refugee but I am really just a person seeking scissors. The scissors I need to cut myself free and finally find freedom.

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Sarah Robin with ‘Mother and Son’

Several hours had passed when I awoke from my mother’s lap at the sound of distressed voices. The train was slowing down, passing huge mounds of luggage as tall as buildings, and hundreds of soldiers paced the grounds in their green uniforms. The red, black and white flags flapped rhythmically in the wind.
The train finally stopped and the soldiers barked loudly as they approached the train, their guns swinging on their backs. Women started screaming and children cried hysterically.
My mother gripped my leg tightly as they reached our carriage. That was the last time I felt her touch.

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Joint second place (each winning free access to two of my online creative writing courses (currently worth £40 / $40) or a free edit and critique of up to 1,500 words (worth £22.50 / $31.50):

Douglas Goodrich with ‘Hello from Camp Wann-Tona-Pooa’

Dear Mom and Dad,
Hello from Camp Wann-Tona-Pooa.
I’m writing to inform you of the atrocities that are committed here every day. Last week my roommate, the immature Daniel, decided it would be funny to put ants in my pants, literally.

After three hours in the medical tent, I discovered that my diary was stolen and Monica, my future wife, obtained a copy informing her that I thought she was beautiful. Then, someone hung my dirty underwear (with my name on the tag) up a flagpole for all to salute.
Hope you’re well.
PS. Kiss Bullwinkle for me.
Sincerely,
Charlie

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Nicholas Marshall with ‘We’re Off’

Inside the cupboard excitement is growing.
The tent pegs are singing “We’re off to camp today.”
“Don’t forget the painkillers,” says one. “The mallet is brutal.”
“You’re pathetic!” yells the rope.
“Get knotted,” the tent pegs reply.
The cooking pot wakes and says she’s ashamed of her rust.
“Nothing a good scour won’t remedy,” advises the pan.
Some gleaming plates don’t want to get dirty again.
“Don’t worry,” says the chief plate. “Remember we’re dishwasher safe.”
When the cupboard doors are opened the chatter stops.
Everything goes into large bags.
“Oh no,” says a tent peg, “we’ve forgotten the painkillers.”

*

Third place (winning free access to one of my online creative writing courses (currently worth £20 / $20) or a free edit and critique of up to 1,000 words (worth £15 / $21):

Jane Broughton with ‘Better Safe than Sorry’

Derek had been up since sunrise packing camping equipment into the car. Florence watched from the comfort of her armchair. She heard his cheery whistling and shuddered. For the last twenty years she’d endured his idea of a good, cheap, holiday while yearning for hotels with cocktails, and memory foam mattresses.
“Come on, Flo, hurry up!” he shouted.
Florence picked up the large wooden mallet.
“You won’t need that, silly,” he said. “Remember, we’ve got a new pop-up tent.”
She ignored him and swung the heavy object into the boot. She added the cast iron skillet too, just in case.

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Highly commended (winning my Entering Writing Competitions course worth £20 / $20) or a free edit and critique of up to 1,000 words (worth £15 / $21) – in alphabetical order:

• CJ Nicol with ‘Camp Anonymous’
• Darren York with ‘Be Back Soon’
• E. Rhodes with ‘Yukon Territory 1992’
• Mike Rymarz with ‘Third Time’s a Charm’
• Yvonne Mastaglio with ‘Inside Out’

Honourable mentions (not winning anything but only narrowly missing out and still looking good on their CV) – in alphabetical order:

• David Filce with ‘Going to Camp’
• Joyce Bingham with ‘Three Nights of Bliss’
• Paul Mastaglio with ‘A Turn for the Worse’
• Robert Cairns with ‘Summer Holiday’
• Sue Massey with ‘Your Tent or Mine?’

Congratulations, everyone. The entries for this month are already drifting in. Remember, you can send up to three per month so rather than miss out on a chance by sending one story, do submit more.

If you’ve enjoyed these stories and / or just want to leave a comment, please do so below and / or you can email me at morgen@morgenbailey.com, although I won’t (can’t) discuss forthcoming entries unless it’s a general query.

Results of Morgen’s 100-word competition: February 2021 (finally!)

Hello everyone and welcome to the sixty-sixth month of this competition. Sorry it’s so late! There were 43 entries from 22 authors for the theme of ‘a tall tale’. NB You can all send in three stories for a better chance of being picked.

One was disqualified for only being 99 words. It ended in ellipses which the author may have counted as a word although they were attached to the final word. It’s a shame as it was that entrant’s only submission. 😦 Another was disqualified for having a character being ‘seven-foot-tall’ as one word. A ‘seven-foot-tall object would have been fine but sadly it should have been ‘At over seven feet tall…’ so was 102 words not 100, and at the time the author’s only story. Another was only 96 words. There were ellipses (…) so even if each one was (were) counted as a word, despite being attached to the previous word, it still would have only made 99. 😦

A lone story from a new entrant was sadly missing a word (sitting at ‘a’ table) so adding that made it 101 words rather than 100. It was a really good story so such a shame. Another was 101 words simply for having a word too many. And one became 101 when ‘pocket-watch’ was unhyphenated (https://www.lexico.com/definition/pocket_watch).

One story had a semi-strong word in it. I try to keep this blog as family friendly as possible. Fortunately it wasn’t my favourite of the three by the author submitted anyway so it went by the wayside. With a handful of the stories, despite reading more than once, I struggled to see how they fitted the theme. These were either disqualified or placed as ‘honourable mention’, likely to then be ruled out of the competition at the whittling-down stage.

Another was disqualified for having ‘old- fashioned’, correctly hyphenated but as two words, dropping the story to 99 when conjoined. It’s really sad as it was such a fun story.

Other observations:

• It doesn’t matter so much in a competition story – as long as there’s only one – but in the novels I get in I check for nodding of heads and shrugging of shoulders to remove the ‘his / her head’ or ‘his / her shoulders’ because we only move with those parts of our bodies. Nods especially are often overused. We also only clap with our hands and shaking heads are usually ‘side to side’ so the how isn’t needed. Certainly mention the body part (or other) if it’s done a different way.
• Where an action has ‘starts to’ / ‘started to’ or ‘begins to’ / ‘began to’ before it, most of the time they’re not needed because unless the action is interrupted, the verb alone works better / is stronger. An example would be ‘the phone began to ring’. If it stops without being answered then that’s fine (although it still rang!) but if not then just have ‘the phone rang’.
• This won’t get your stories disqualified but useful to know (makes you look more professional): unless more than one sentence, a title doesn’t have a full stop at the end. It would also usually be title case, e.g. The One-time Thing rather than The one-time thing.
• While you want to give as much information as possible, there’s a fine line between not giving enough – the stories I go ‘huh?’ at… and if I read them again and still go ‘huh?’ it’s not a good sign (and usually get an honourable mention / drop off) – and telling too much, i.e. having a great punchline but then explaining it. Trust the reader to know what you mean, providing you feel it’s clear without an explanation. I always recommend having someone – especially an honest someone – else read your story for their reaction. I also recommend having your computer or someone/thing else (I use my Kindle Fire’s text-to-speech) to read the stories aloud. This would have picked up the missing ‘a’ (table) above.
• Try to avoid repetition where you can. It’s easy to miss (one story had ‘clutch’ twice but maybe intentionally) especially where they are regular words such as ‘just’, ‘now’, ‘all’ and ‘very’.
• We speak in contractions (e.g. I’m rather than I am, isn’t rather than is not etc.), and it’s fine (preferred) to use them in dialogue and first-person narration though less so in third-person narration / description.
• Things are usually ‘that’ whereas people are usually ‘who’ (or ‘whom’ where it can be replaced by ‘him’ e.g. to whom / to him), i.e. he was the man who had lied (who = he had lied not him had lied) / it was the door that had been slammed.
• Where an age precedes a noun, it should be hyphenated. When we have someone’s age following, e.g. ‘Tom was ten’, we wouldn’t need the ‘years old’ or ‘years of age’ because the number – within the right context – is sufficient. There would also only be a hyphen if preceding an implied noun, e.g. the fourteen-year-old (shortened from ‘the fourteen-year-old girl’). Had there been a non-exact name using ‘something’ (or similar), The ‘something’ represents an unknown number so it would all still be hyphenated as the likes of ‘twenty-two-year-old nurse’ would have been. One story was disqualified for this reason.
• Again not a dealbreaker but numbers under 100 are best written in full so they blend with the rest of the text (especially where they are 1^st, and the likes, as eReaders tend not to like ^superscript) so I’ve amended the ones that are. That said, I think all numbers unless titles (BMW Series 5) etc. are best written in full. For info., decades are plural so no apostrophe required.
• https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/washing-up is hyphenated regardless of whether it’s used as an adjective, e.g. a washing-up bowl, or noun: the washing-up. The verb, however, would be to wash up. A story was disqualified for having a character ‘washing-up’.
• I strongly recommend you don’t invert dialogue tags as it’s not how we would naturally speak if talking aloud, e.g. changing ‘said Tony’ to ‘Tony said’. ‘said’s do tend to blur into the background so don’t try too hard to choose something else, e.g. ‘Tony postulated’, even ‘Tony exclaimed’ could be too much if we already have the likes of ‘Get out!’ It’s not so bad when you don’t have a name but having the ‘said’ or equivalent is more natural where you have a character’s name.
• Where the speech has an unrelated dialogue tag, e.g. someone laughing, moving, smiling, waving etc. (with it capitalised: He laughed. She picked up the mug.’ etc.) the punctuation should be a full stop rather than a comma. Had it been related description, it would be a comma.
• Words often overused include ‘all’, ‘now’, ‘very’ and ‘just’. I recommend searching for them with a space either side so – for ‘just’ as an example, it doesn’t pick up ‘adjust’, ‘justice’ etc. I’d recommend only keeping the ones for emphasis or detract from the sentence if chopped, or changing to ‘only’ where appropriate. And the likes of ‘just’ can be swapped for ‘only’ where appropriate but better to chop so whatever you swap it for doesn’t get used too often either.
• Instead of adverbs (e.g. dropping quickly) try to use more interesting verbs e.g. plummeted, wherever possible.

The winning stories are ones that I reacted most favourably to. They were clever, surprising, eek-making (in a good way), or gave me a warm fuzzy feeling (without being sickly). Sometimes a story beats another because it has a stronger link to the theme so it’s worth writing a story to the theme rather than tweaking a story you already have to loosely fit it. Alternatively there may have been several stories on with same topic so I chose my favourite of those. With any competition, much rests upon the judge’s preference and it’s usually ones than garner a stronger (positive) reaction that do the best.

You may have chosen a different order or indeed not placed one or more of them so if you entered and didn’t find your story / stories here, don’t lose heart. You probably only just missed out so do enter new stories this month*, next month, whenever you like (but not in advance!). It’s an ongoing competition and free, so you could win at any time. There were new and familiar names this month so anyone could win… it’s all dependent upon whether your story grabs me, for whatever reason (whether it be clever, funny, unusual, quirky, or sweet).

Apart from the top three and highly commended, there are some ‘Honourable Mentions’. They don’t win anything but they were so close to being Highly Commended that I wanted them to know how close they came. It’s still something for them to put on their CVs.

*The theme for March is ‘going to camp’ and you can submit your entries (and do send three) at any time up to midnight (UK time) on Wednesday 31st March. Details and entry forms on https://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/100-word-free-monthly-competition. So without further ado, below are the successful entries this month.

*

First place (winning free access to three of my online creative writing courses (currently worth £60 / $60) or a free edit and critique of up to 2,000 words (worth £30 / $42):

Linda Hibbin with ‘What Every Girl Dreams Of’

Courtship. Petite woman. Tall, dark, handsome man. She feels feminine, a fragile flower in his arms, sheltered from life’s crises.
Wedding. He is attentive to his beautiful bride.
Honeymoon. He complains throughout the flight about the lack of legroom. Same problem for her in the marital bed.
New home. Mirrors, cupboards, shelves too high. He mislays the pedal extensions she needs in the car. He acts as though socially above others, pretends not to hear her in a crowd.
Family. Children, grandchildren inherit his genes. Tower above her. Talk over her head.
She shrinks with age.
They don’t miss her.

*

Second place (winning free access to two of my online creative writing courses (currently worth £40 / $40) or a free edit and critique of up to 1,500 words (worth £22.50 / $31.50):

Darren York with ‘The Magic Pen’

“How did you do it?”
I wanted to say that writing a novel was a lot of hard work and nothing comes easy but I was feeling in a mischievous mood.
“On a trip to the Congo I met a witch doctor who cast a spell on my pen which made writing the book effortless. I didn’t even need to do any editing and published it within a week.”
His face lit up.
Off he went to the Congo with a suitcase full of pens.
He could have borrowed mine.
It still had a bit of magic left inside it.

*

Third place (winning free access to one of my online creative writing courses (currently worth £20 / $20) or a free edit and critique of up to 1,000 words (worth £15 / $21):

Nicholas Marshall with ‘Uncharted waters’

Skip introduces himself to the four friends who have not sailed before.
“We’ll have a great time,” he says.
The yacht slips out of the marina on the afternoon tide and soon the rising swell is uncomfortable.
As darkness descends, a gale tugs violently at the reefed sails and there is a howl that is not the wind.
The second hand of the cabin clock starts to sweep backwards.
Suddenly, in a brightness belonging to midday, the four friends who have not sailed before wait on the quay.
Skip introduces himself to them.
“We’ll have a great time,” he says.

*

Highly commended (winning my Entering Writing Competitions course worth £20 / $20) or a free edit and critique of up to 1,000 words (worth £15 / $21) – in alphabetical order:

• Alan Barker with ‘Painting The Town Red’
• Dorothy Cox with ‘Low Tide’
• Jane Broughton with ‘Saturday Job’
• Nina Steer with ‘Pigs Leave No Trace’
• Stef Smulders with ‘Boarding’

Honourable mentions (not winning anything but only narrowly missing out and still looking good on their CV) – in alphabetical order:

• Joyce Bingham with ‘It Fell Out Of The Sky’
• Paul Mastaglio with ‘A Little Accident’
• Rebecca Coles with ‘The Morning After The Night Before’
• Sue Massey with ‘Cock And Bull’

Congratulations, everyone. The entries for this month are already drifting in. Remember, you can send up to three per month so rather than miss out on a chance by sending one story, do submit more.

If you’ve enjoyed these stories and / or just want to leave a comment, please do so below and / or you can email me at morgen@morgenbailey.com., although I won’t (can’t) discuss forthcoming entries unless it’s a general query.

Results of Morgen’s 100-word competition: January 2021 (finally!)

Hello everyone and welcome to the sixty-fifth month of this competition… a bumper month this one. There were 64 entries from 30 authors with a sentence start of ‘Before the shot was fired’. A number of stories were quite similar so some missed out purely for that reason. NB You can all send in three stories for a better chance of being picked.

One was disqualified for only being 98 words. It also had the prompt at the end of a sentence rather than the beginning. One, two max, word/s before it is fine but not at the end (or in the middle). Several stories were disqualified for this reason, including three each from two authors.

‘sentence start’ was mentioned twice on the https://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/100-word-free-monthly-competition page while the competition was running, on the entry form, plus on the countdown right-hand strip until updated on 1st February (and I posted when I realised, not long after announcing December’s results, a post emphasising this). Because there was clearly some ambiguity to me saying the prompt could be used anywhere in the story, I contacted those three authors and invited them to submit another story each.

Another story was disqualified for being 101 words. It started as 100 but two words (‘gunshot’ and ‘then’) were joined incorrectly so when separated totalled 101. Fortunately the author had submitted another story so that went through. Another had ‘smiley faced tablets’ – a lovely image but unfortunately the ‘smiley faced’ should have been hyphenated so it drops the story down to 99 words.

One story lost brownie points for ‘had to looked’ rather than ‘had to look’ (an easy mistake). It wasn’t my favourite story of the three submitted so it wasn’t a problem.

Other observations:

• where the speech has an unrelated dialogue tag, e.g. someone laughing, moving, smiling, waving etc. (with it capitalised: He laughed. She picked up the mug.’ etc.) the punctuation should be a full stop rather than a comma. Had it been related description, it would be a comma.
• like erm, we do say ‘well’ as a dialogue pause but it’s best not to include it in our writing, or at the most have it as a characteristic for one of the characters. Ditto ‘look’. I’m a stickler for repetition and there were two ‘well’s, albeit only one as dialogue, very close together.
• crowd, like money, company, group etc. is a single entity so the verb would also be singular (like he / she) and is therefore ‘was’. That said, it depends on how natural it sounds.
• ‘sir’ is only capitalised when used as a name, e.g. ‘Thank you, Sir Lancelot.’ rather than ‘Thank you, sir.’ Ditto madam – see https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/madam.
• where the speech has an unrelated dialogue tag, e.g. someone laughing, moving, smiling, waving etc. (with it capitalised: He laughed. She picked up the mug.’ etc.) the punctuation should be a full stop rather than a comma. Had it been related description, it would be a comma.
• where an action has ‘starts to’ / ‘started to’ or ‘begins to’ / ‘began to’ before it, most of the time they’re not needed because unless the action is interrupted, the verb alone works better / is stronger. An example would be ‘the phone began to ring’. If it stops without being answered then that’s fine (although it still rang!) but if not then just have ‘the phone rang’.
• when speaking to someone and using a name, nickname or term of endearment (which counts as a name), 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.
• I strongly recommend you don’t invert dialogue tags as it’s not how we would naturally speak if talking aloud, e.g. changing ‘said Tony’ to ‘Tony said’. ‘said’s do tend to blur into the background so don’t try too hard to choose something else, e.g. ‘Tony postulated’, even ‘Tony exclaimed’ could be too much if we already have the likes of ‘Get out!’ It’s not so bad when you don’t have a name but having the ‘said’ or equivalent is more natural where you have a character’s name.
• although not grammatically incorrect, I strongly recommend not putting commas between adjectives, and certainly not immediately before the noun / object. It slows the pace… really slows it where there are several.
• I’m very much a fan of showing rather than telling / explaining but sometimes there needs to be more detail. One of the stories was about a particular historic event but even having read the story a couple of times I still hadn’t worked out which!

The winning stories are ones that I reacted most favourably to. They were clever, surprising, eek-making (in a good way), or gave me a warm fuzzy feeling (without being sickly). Sometimes a story beats another because it has a stronger link to the theme so it’s worth writing a story to the theme rather than tweaking a story you already have to loosely fit it. Alternatively there may have been several stories on with same topic so I chose my favourite of those. With any competition, much rests upon the judge’s preference and it’s usually ones than garner a stronger (positive) reaction that do the best.

You may have chosen a different order or indeed not placed one or more of them so if you entered and didn’t find your story / stories here, don’t lose heart. You probably only just missed out so do enter new stories this month*, next month, whenever you like (but not in advance!). It’s an ongoing competition and free, so you could win at any time. There were new and familiar names this month so anyone could win… it’s all dependent upon whether your story grabs me, for whatever reason (whether it be clever, funny, unusual, quirky, or sweet).

Apart from the top three and highly commended, there are some ‘Honourable Mentions’. They don’t win anything but they were so close to being Highly Commended that I wanted them to know how close they came. It’s still something for them to put on their CVs.

*The theme for February is ‘a tall tale’ and you can submit your entries (and do send three) at any time up to midnight (UK time) on Sunday 28th February. Details and entry forms on https://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/100-word-free-monthly-competition. So without further ado, below are the successful entries this month.

First place (winning free access to three of my online creative writing courses (currently worth £60 / $60) or a free edit and critique of up to 2,000 words (worth £30 / $42):

Darren York with ‘Pasta la vista’

Boiled alive, Macaroni was the first to succumb to Rigatoni’s takeover. His blanched corpse was found the next day under sheets of lasagne.
Ambushed leaving the colander, Fettuccine was thrown into a steamer and hot sauce poured over him as he begged for his life.
Penne would stop Rigatoni’s abhorrent crimes by shooting him as he exited the cupboard, but Rigatoni had got wind of the plot. Before the shot was fired he was tripped up and chopped into pieces then rested on a plate as a warning to others.
There can only be one pasta dish on the menu!

*

Joint second place (each winning free access to two of my online creative writing courses (currently worth £40 / $40) or a free edit and critique of up to 1,500 words (worth £22.50 / $31.50):

E. E. Rhodes with ‘The Heist’

Before the shot was fired he’d hoped they’d get away clean.
Before that he’d hoped there’d be no trouble from the bank manager about the combination.
Before that he’d hoped everyone would do as they were told and there’d be no reason for Ken to totally lose it.
Before that he’d hoped it was early closing and the bank would be shut.
Before that he’d hoped the car wouldn’t start and Jake would call the whole thing off.
Before that he’d hoped he’d miss his alarm call.
Before that he’d wished he hadn’t needed the money.
Just.
Before. Before. Before.

*

Kyle Barratt with ‘Consequences’

Before the shot was fired, Bob Marley would have not needed an alibi.
JFK could have enjoyed the drive and Oswald may have not been The Patsy.
King would have stayed dreaming, while Lennon would have kept imagining.
Brenda would have ‘still’ disliked Mondays, but maybe ‘The Man’ would have no reason to meet ‘Liberty Valance’.
Gandhi’s protests could have stayed peaceful and Lincoln would have enjoyed the performance.
World War One may not have started, so what would have Franz Ferdinand called their band?
Unfortunately, the ‘before’ is the unknown and the ‘after’ is the history that we know.

*

Joint third place (each winning free access to one of my online creative writing courses (currently worth £20 / $20) or a free edit and critique of up to 1,000 words (worth £15 / $21):

Gary Stark with ‘Mother, We Need To Talk About Father’

Before the shot was fired, Zarcon knew he himself would cease to exist. He had been sent from the future to kill his father who had invented “The Weapon” and that meant his own birth wouldn’t happen. He fired and the man fell. Zarkon waited… and waited, but he still existed. How? Then he realized why people always joked that he looked like Axintel, his father’s best man. It seems his mother had tested that accolade and he was the result. Anyway, back to the future where peace would now reign. But he’d have to have a word with Mum.

*

Linda Hibbin with ‘Lord! Love a Duck!’

Before the shot was fired the ducks prepared themselves.
‘You OK, Cedric?’
‘Bit sore.’ The ducks sniggered. Cedric was in the middle. Not an ideal position but he loved being the centre of attention, not just flipping over, but wildly spinning!
Jefferson sniffed. ‘I’ve a cold coming.’ He was on the end, open to the elements. He fancied Beatrice on the bar below. A sharpshooter would send him swinging down, his head level with the back of hers. He’d blow kisses, flirt, make her giggle.
‘Get a grip, guys. He’s focusing,’ chorused fluffy rabbits dangling above.
BANG!
‘Sweetheart!’ screamed Jefferson.

*

Susi J Smith with ‘Shot Down’

“He’s a big shot.” Gerald pats my arm, my chance of promotion lies bleeding beneath my desk.

Malcolm Bennett. What kind of name is Malcolm Bennett? He blows me a kiss. Scowling, I turn to the desktop.

It’s dark before I find what I’m looking for.

The next morning I wave Malcolm Bennett goodbye as he’s dragged from the building. Printing Mr Hotshot’s mug shot was a cheap shot, but it worked.

Gerald sidles over. “About that job…”

Before the ‘shot’ was fired it was all I wanted, but now…

“Sorry, Gerald.” Patting his arm, I head for my desk.

*

Highly commended (winning my Entering Writing Competitions course worth £20 / $20) or a free edit and critique of up to 1,000 words (worth £15 / $21) – in alphabetical order:

• Douglas Goodrich with ‘One Last Shot’
• Joyce Bingham with ‘The Announcement’
• Kirtan Savith Kumar with ‘Apple’
• Paul Mastaglio with ‘Before the Shot was Fired’
• Penelope Henry with ‘Arsenal’
• Sarah Robin with ‘Caught’

Honourable mentions (not winning anything but only narrowly missing out and still looking good on their CV) – in alphabetical order:

• Bob Cairns with ‘Bugged’
• Dettra Rose with ‘The Love of Generations’
• Kaitlin Woodland with ‘Living the Litter-Tray Life’
• Lesley McLean with ‘Rusty and Rosie Rebel’
• Nicholas Sebastian with ‘Farewell’
• Sue Massey with ‘Why?’

Congratulations, everyone. The entries for this month are already drifting in. Remember, you can send up to three per month so rather than miss out on a chance by sending one story, do submit more.

If you’ve enjoyed these stories and / or just want to leave a comment, please do so below and / or you can email me at morgen@morgenbailey.com., although I won’t (can’t) discuss forthcoming entries unless it’s a general query.

The free 100-word comp is open for March (Jan results coming soon!)

Yes, February is closed and March’s theme of ‘going to camp’ is open, to be used however you see fit. For details, please take a look at the 100-word comp page.

January’s results are very late (sorry!) but will be published this week…

It’s a free competition and you can win free …Editing and Critique or my Creative Writing Online Courses.

The page also lists the upcoming themes for the next few months so you can write them whenever you like but don’t submit early as they’ll be disqualified. Good luck.

Results of Morgen’s 100-word competition: December 2020

Hello everyone and welcome to the sixty-fourth month of this competition. There were 51 entries from 25 authors for the theme of ‘the winter summer holiday’. NB You can all send in three stories for a better chance of being picked.

One was disqualified for being way over the 100 words (the author did leave a comment to admit to getting carried away). 🙂 Another was 98 words because four words should have been connected (get / together – as a noun, and ‘grand child’). Ditto another story for ‘grand kids’ and ‘Coke a Cola’ (instead of Coca-Cola, which is one word instead of three). And another because there were two sets of detached ellipses. Punctuation alone doesn’t count as a word. Fortunately the author submitted two other stories so they went through.

One of another author’s stories was disqualified for having ‘a snow’. Like money, snow is a collective noun so it should have been ‘snow’ on its own, making the story 99 words, or ‘a snowfall’ which would have been fine. Sadly it was my favourite story of the three so my second favourite went through to judging. Another story had ‘trees are laden with fruit hang upon branches’ – the same (collective noun) applies here and in the context ‘hanging’ (or hung) would have been the preferred (imho) choice, although my editor’s head would have chopped the ‘hang upon branches’ because we have the context (sorry, author!). There was also an apostrophe missing from ‘keeping ones spirit’ (one’s) alive. A lovely story though.

One story had a non-hyphenated title but this isn’t included in the word count so it was fine. Another had ‘it was really was’ so removing one of the ‘was’s took it down to 99. Fortunately the author had sent two other stories so they went through. Another lost a brownie point for having ‘whist’ instead of ‘whilst’. A spell checker wouldn’t pick it out because ‘whist’ is a word in itself but when I listened to the stories, on my Kindle Fire’s text-to-speech function, I spotted the error.

Other story missed out on a top-three slot by switching, in error, between past then present then back to past tense. Another from present tense to past tense (when it’s all one scene with no reflection). It’s easily done but it’s a shame.

Some stories that missed out on a place were the only entries by their authors. It’s always worth sending the maximum of three. It can’t guarantee a place but one of the stories would likely have a better chance than the other two.

Other observations:

• like compass points (north, south, east, west), seasons (spring, summer, autumn, winter/fall) aren’t capitalised unless part of a name, e.g. The Winter House bar. That said, the story that concentrated on these, used them as names so it’s fine. Although it was a strong story, the author’s second story made me chuckle – always a good sign – so that went through.
• adverbs (and nouns) should be used after the verb, e.g. ‘to go boldly’ rather than ‘to boldly go’ but there are exceptions such as a connected object: Tom put the pen down on the table. If something sounds better with the verb split (a split infinitive) then go with the more natural sounding.
• where the dialogue tag (he said) follows on from what is said there should be a comma before the speech marks / inverted commas then small ‘h’ for ‘he said’ or ‘s’ for ‘she said’ or equivalent. There still wouldn’t be capitals, unless for a name, after a question or exclamation mark. And it’s fine to use exclamation marks when someone’s yelling / shouting (then you’d often not need the ‘he / she yelled / shouted’), but just one ! 🙂
• where the speech has an unrelated dialogue tag, e.g. someone laughing, moving, smiling, waving etc. (with it capitalised: He laughed. She picked up the mug.’ etc.) the punctuation should be a full stop rather than a comma. Had it been related description, it would be a comma.
• when talking to someone, we don’t often say each other’s names (and avoid too many endearments). Although dialogue doesn’t strictly reflect real speech, it should feel realistic and especially where you only have two characters in a scene and it’s been established who’s saying what, you can cut down on (or out) the name calling. Also rather than ‘Tom said’, have Tom pick up a mug or equivalent so the description, in the same paragraph as what he says, tells us it’s him speaking.
• ‘all’, ‘now’, ‘very’ and ‘just’ are often overused so I recommend, especially in a longer piece, seeing how many you have and chopping where possible. One story had two ‘just’s in consecutive sentences. They stand out to me more than most readers but less is more, especially in something this short.
• titles (and headings) don’t have full stops unless there’s more than one sentence.
• although grammatically correct, I recommend you don’t put commas between adjectives, and certainly not immediately before the noun / object. It slows the pace… really slows it where there are several and anything that slows what should be a fast-paced page-turning read is best avoided.
• where an action has ‘starts to’ / ‘started to’ or ‘begins to’ / ‘began to’ before it, most of the time they’re not needed because unless the action is interrupted, the verb alone works better / is stronger. An example would be ‘the phone began to ring’. If it stops without being answered then that’s fine (although it still rang!) but if not then have ‘the phone rang’.
• I’m a stickler for unintended repetition. One story had a ‘rushing’ then ‘rush’. Another had four ‘all’s. I spot some early but other repetition leaps out when I listen to the document, alongside reading it on the screen. I recommend having some way of having something (or someone) else reading your story as you may well spot something you’d not picked up on the first (or second… third) time round.
• numbers under 100 are best written in full so they blend with the rest of the text (especially where they are 1^st and the likes, as eReaders tend not to like superscript) so I’ve amended the ones that are. That said, I think all numbers unless titles (BMW Series 5) etc. are best written in full. For info., decades are plural so no apostrophe required.
• where something is plural (a family name in this case) rather than possessive, e.g. the Smiths rather than something belonging to the Smith family, no apostrophe is required.
• it’s is a shortening for ‘it is’ – often used before a verb or description (e.g. it’s happening whether you like it or not / it’s brown not black) whereas ‘its’ is possessive – something belonging to something or someone, so usually before a noun (e.g. the dog was curled in its basket). Note: I’ve said ‘curled’ rather than ‘curled up’ because we know what curled means. You can often lose the ‘up’ or ‘down’ with a motion, e.g. he stood up, she sat down It’s only trimming a word but they add up(!) over the length of a novel.
• when writing past tense narration, ago is present tense so ‘two years ago’ wouldn’t be two years ago but two years earlier / before. Ditto tomorrow isn’t tomorrow (today isn’t today etc.). Tomorrow is the next day / the day after, today is that day, yesterday is the day before / a day earlier, tonight is that evening / night etc. Dialogue is present tense so they’re fine in speech. This is present-tense narration so it’s fine as it is but worth mentioning.

The winning stories are ones that I reacted most favourably to (especially this month as ‘Richard’ was a long-deceased cat in one and non-deceased husband in another). They were clever, surprising, eek-making (in a good way), or gave me a warm fuzzy feeling (without being sickly). Sometimes a story beats another because it has a stronger link to the theme so it’s worth writing a story to the theme rather than tweaking a story you already have to loosely fit it. Alternatively there may have been several stories on with same topic so I chose my favourite of those. With any competition, much rests upon the judge’s preference and it’s usually ones than garner a stronger (positive) reaction that do the best.

You may have chosen a different order or indeed not placed one or more of them so if you entered and didn’t find your story / stories here, don’t lose heart. You probably only just missed out so do enter new stories this month*, next month, whenever you like (but not in advance!). It’s an ongoing competition and free, so you could win at any time. There were new and familiar names this month so anyone could win… it’s all dependent upon whether your story grabs me, for whatever reason (whether it be clever, funny, unusual, quirky, or sweet).

Apart from the top three and highly commended, there are some ‘Honourable Mentions’. They don’t win anything but they were so close to being Highly Commended that I wanted them to know how close they came. It’s still something for them to put on their CVs.

*The theme for January is ‘Before the shot was fired… (as a sentence start)’ and you can submit your entries (and do send three) at any time up to midnight (UK time) on Sunday 31st January. Details and entry forms on https://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/100-word-free-monthly-competition. So without further ado, below are the successful entries this month.

*

Join first place (each winning free access to three of my online creative writing courses (currently worth £60 / $60) or a free edit and critique of up to 2,000 words (worth £30 / $42):

Christopher Tattersall with ‘Season’s Greetings’

Behind the glass it was cold enough for snow, yet outside the sun shone bright.

He wore his warm coat with white fur lapels as he watched her outside enjoying the summer vacation.

He revelled in her joy, watching her splash in the paddling pool. As she played and her family made the most of summer, he travelled the globe, killing time until he was required again.

As the year progressed, their ambient temperatures slowly converged. Soon snow would fall from their skies again.

She replaced the ornament, watching in awe as the snow settled in his dome of glass.

*

Darren York with ‘Who Stole the Summer?’

I took it as it was poking its head above the horizon, bright orange beginning to fill every living thing. The previous year had been a miserable one, rain taking the place of the sun’s rays. Winter followed, giving us another season without the sun. So, in desperation, I’d bundled it into the back of my car, driven home and locked it in my garden shed. I waited until Christmas day to release its golden rays, making it the hottest Christmas in my house ever recorded. To this very day the sun’s still missing, but I know where it is.

*

Joint second place (each winning free access to two of my online creative writing courses (currently worth £40 / $40) or a free edit and critique of up to 1,500 words (worth £22.50 / $31.50):

E. E. Rhodes with ‘The Dream Trip’

Let’s pretend we went on our summer holiday and you got to wear your brand new dress.

Let’s pretend there was unremitting sunshine and we paddled happily in a welcoming sea.

Let’s pretend we got sand in all our creases when we rolled together on the salt-stretched beach.

Let’s pretend the weather was delightful and we remembered to send all our busy postcards.

Let’s pretend we had the most amazing time and there were no tiers.

Let’s pretend I didn’t cry all through December, aching for the warmth of you.

Let’s pretend we could still go.

Let’s pretend we went.

*

Jane Brown with ‘A Full House’

“Beach!” the Queen of Hearts demanded. “I want to show off my new bikini.”

“Come on, Queenie,” both the black Jacks said. “We all agreed our next holiday would be to the snow.”

The Queen pouted. “I refuse to go. All that cold air does nothing for my pores.”

The King of Diamonds groaned and put his head in his hands.

That night, all the cards (minus one) got together for a secret meeting.

The next day, they frolicked in a winter wonderland after one card took an unexpected trip down a pipe.

It’s hard to beat a straight flush.

*

Third place (winning free access to one of my online creative writing courses (currently worth £20 / $20) or a free edit and critique of up to 1,000 words (worth £15 / $21):

Sue Massey with ‘Winter Sunshine’

The volume of work makes it impossible to take a holiday in summer. Green Team sorts mail. Red Team builds bespoke creations. EffCee is in charge. Parcels and packages loaded sky high, he harnesses Pulling Team. They fly into the cold night sky full of twinkling constellations and bright planets. “Phew, last drop,” EffCee mutters. Thomas pops his sleepy head over the duvet. “Thank you, Father Christmas. See you next year.”

Exhausted, EffCee smiles. He steers Pulling Team back to base to pick up the others. They head off in search of winter sunshine for a well-earned and long-overdue holiday.

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Highly commended (winning my Entering Writing Competitions course worth £20 / $20) or a free edit and critique of up to 1,000 words (worth £15 / $21) – in alphabetical order:

• Bob Cairns with ‘Santa’s Sudden Summer’
• Kirtan Savith Kumar with ‘A Seaside Picnic’
• Kyle Barratt with ‘What’s in a Name’
• Linda Hibbin with ‘Heart-warming Memories’
• Sarah Robin with ‘The Escape’

Honourable mentions (not winning anything but only narrowly missing out and still looking good on their CV) – in alphabetical order:

• CJ Nicol with ‘Christmas Day, 2120’
• Laura Besley with ‘Dream Holiday’
• Stef Smulders with ‘Sloth’
• Yvonne Mastaglio with ‘Back on the Mountain’

Congratulations, everyone. The entries for this month are already drifting in. Remember, you can send up to three per month so rather than miss out on a chance by sending one story, do submit more.

If you’ve enjoyed these stories and / or just want to leave a comment, please do so below and / or you can email me at morgen@morgenbailey.com., although I won’t (can’t) discuss forthcoming entries unless it’s a general query.

Results of Morgen’s 100-word competition: November 2020

Hello everyone and welcome to the sixty-third month of this competition. There were 47 entries from 24 authors for the theme of ‘silence isn’t quite golden’.

And boy, a really strong month this time. There were several stories of loss so in another month they may well have been placed differently had there not been so many. The ones I chose were, to me, the more powerful ones. For me to read a story and go ‘wow’, that’s a very good sign.

When I receive the stories I copy/paste them into a Word document then read them in batches, placing them roughly where I think they may end up. It’s rare for me to have less than two winners, seconds, thirds, several highly commended and honourable mentions. I’m writing this at the point of my final whittling and I have three firsts, three seconds, four thirds, four highly commended and four honourable mentions. The latter, sadly, will have to go and the others staggered. I email them to my Kindle more than once as I rejig the order until I’m happy with the selection. It invariably means that some great stories are cut that may have been placed in other months and it’s especially true this time.

These are the ones that didn’t make even the first round…

• One was disqualified for only being 98 words. The title was three words so even if included would have been 101.
• A story lost a point for ‘creaked opened’ rather than ‘creaked open’ – a simple error. This sometimes happen with last-minute entries but it wasn’t the case this time. It didn’t affect the word count so it went through but was placed lower than it would have been without the error, and dropped off the list, which is a shame, especially as it was that author’s only entry – why it’s always worth sending three.
• Another lost a brownie point for ‘laying’ (placing something) instead of ‘lying’ (being horizontal). To lie is ‘I lay’ in simple past tense but in present tense, people lie, chickens lay. If you are putting down an object, you lay it down. If you are having a rest, you lie on the sofa. In past perfect, it would be ‘lain’ (people), ‘laid’ (object). http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/lay-versus-lie.
• A great story had an ‘of’ missing (little bit plain fun) so would have been 101 and therefore had to be disqualified, another shame as it was a solo entry and a great story. Another, again a solo entry, was disqualified for having a word too many (before they were commanded them to stop) – the ‘were’ or ‘them’ should have been removed, making it 99 words. 😦
• One was disqualified for incorrect word count for having unhyphenated ‘eight month old dogs’. Where an age precedes a noun, it should be hyphenated. When we have someone’s age following, e.g. ‘Tom was ten’, we wouldn’t need the ‘years old’ or ‘years of age’ because the number – within the right context – is sufficient. There would also only be a hyphen if preceding an implied noun, e.g. the fourteen-year-old (shortened from ‘the fourteen-year-old girl’). Had there been a non-exact name using ‘something’ (or similar), The ‘something’ represents an unknown number so it would all still be hyphenated as the likes of ‘twenty-two-year-old nurse’ would have been.
• Another, unfortunately from the same author, was disqualified for having two ‘to’s together, reducing the story to 99 words by removing one.

Other observations:

• where a word is a generic noun rather than a name (e.g. ‘the doctor’ vs Doctor Smith – ‘a goddess’ in this case) there should be a small first letter.
• when referring to family, mum/mom and dad should be capitalised when used as a name, e.g. “I know, Mum/Mom.” When used as a ‘job’, e.g. my mum/mom, my dad, my doctor etc. then it should be a small m, d etc. NB. There’s a comma before ‘Mum/Mom’ here because when you’re writing someone’s name – and a nickname or term of endearment counts as a name – when another character is speaking to them, 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.
• in my writing I add commas where a reader would breathe if reading the piece aloud, which I always recommend the author do too, especially where a scene feels flat or you think it doesn’t work for whatever reason. Tip: although grammatically correct, I recommend that you don’t put commas between adjectives, and certainly not immediately before the noun / object. It slows the pace… really slows it where there are several and anything that slows what should be a fast-paced page-turning read is best avoided.
• careful of too many adverbs, especially in short pieces like these (one had four). Where dialogue shows us how something’s said then we don’t need an adverb with the verb, or replace the whole thing with a stronger verb (e.g. ‘Get out!’ he snapped… rather than …he said angrily).
• there weren’t too many clichés this time. Even something as simple as sitting ‘bolt upright’ is a bit of a cliché so best avoided. No points lost but definitely worth choosing something original.

The winning stories are ones that I reacted most favourably to (despite the two ‘was’s in the first sentence of one of them). They were clever, surprising, eek-making (in a good way), or gave me a warm fuzzy feeling (without being sickly). Sometimes a story beats another because it has a stronger link to the theme so it’s worth writing a story to the theme rather than tweaking a story you already have to loosely fit it. Alternatively there may have been several stories on with same topic so I chose my favourite of those. With any competition, much rests upon the judge’s preference and it’s usually ones than garner a stronger (positive) reaction that do the best.

You may have chosen a different order or indeed not placed one or more of them so if you entered and didn’t find your story / stories here, don’t lose heart. You probably only just missed out so do enter new stories this month*, next month, whenever you like (but not in advance!). It’s an ongoing competition and free, so you could win at any time. There were new and familiar names this month so anyone could win… it’s all dependent upon whether your story grabs me, for whatever reason (whether it be clever, funny, unusual, quirky, or sweet).

Apart from the top three and highly commended, there are some ‘Honourable Mentions’. They don’t win anything but they were so close to being Highly Commended that I wanted them to know how close they came. It’s still something for them to put on their CVs.

*The theme for December is ‘the winter summer holiday’ and you can submit your entries (and do send three) at any time up to midnight (UK time) on Thursday 31st December. Details and entry forms on https://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/100-word-free-monthly-competition. So without further ado, below are the successful entries this month.

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Joint first place (each winning free access to three of my online creative writing courses (currently worth £60 / $60) or a free edit and critique of up to 2,000 words (worth £30 / $42):

Douglas Goodrich with ‘The Lost Oscar’

She always sits in the same seat every day, looking out at the large oak tree, outside the recreation room’s bay window. Gorgeous in her old age.

Margarette Felton is how she was known in Hollywood. Daisy Hinkler is how she grew up in Paris, Texas. Before the spoken words on screen, she was a goddess. Commanding a thousand dollars a week when others worked in sweatshops for a quarter of the salary.

But the elusive Oscar is what haunts her still today. She never won the gold. If only she’d have transitioned to the talkies, but silently she mourns.

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Stef Smulders with ‘Animal Love’

When I bought the house, I hadn’t noticed next door’s dogs, five ferocious Rottweilers locked up in a tiny back garden.

Now their fights and endless waves of roars keep me awake at night.

“I’m afraid to approach them myself,” my neighbor said with a weird smile. Two sleeve tattoos covered his arms.

Then, one night, all is silent. A miracle! I go outside, curious to know why. Near the fence, I hear smacking noises. The dogs are eating.

The ‘I Love Dogs’ tattoo lighting up in the beam of my lantern tells me more than I want to know.

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Joint second place (each winning free access to two of my online creative writing courses (currently worth £40 / $40) or a free edit and critique of up to 1,500 words (worth £22.50 / $31.50):

Anne Maguire with ‘New Start’

Jean was my new neighbour and was very chatty. “It’s lovely and quiet here, you’ll not be bothered by noisy kids or music.”

I wanted to tell her how I missed the sound of kids, of Sally playing her flute – really badly – and me smiling proudly. How I missed her incessant chatter about life at eight and all its intricacies. How I missed her shouting about how awful a mum I was.

Alex says I’ve not to keep bringing it up. This is a new start, he says. They don’t need to keep hearing about a dead child, he says.

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Paul Mastaglio with ‘A Christmas Break’

Captain Ben Johnson made his way carefully along the trench. Where was everybody? Carelessly discarded mess tins littered the dusty floor while a helmet sat abandoned next to sandbags. There were no hushed conversations as cigarettes were rolled. No scraping sounds as weapons were cleaned. Nothing moved.

His reverie was broken by the sound of loud cheering coming from above. Ben hastily climbed a ladder and looked across no man’s land. British and German soldiers were chasing each other as they competed for possession of an old leather football. A smile creased his lips. Why couldn’t Christmas Day last forever?

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Joint third place (each winning free access to one of my online creative writing courses (currently worth £20 / $20) or a free edit and critique of up to 1,000 words (worth £15 / $21):

Jane Brown with ‘To Boldly Go’

‘Why did you become an astronaut?’ the reporter asked.

‘To explore new places and stick flags on planets,’ I replied grinning.

I lied. I wanted to get away from Mother. The constant phone calls and visits had become unbearable. Even moving to a different country hadn’t helped. Funnily enough, she had been silent recently, ever since I’d told her I was leaving Earth.

I gazed into the blackness as an unexpected rocket approached my ship.

‘Surprise!’ Mother’s voice crackled over the comms. ‘I become an astronaut too! Isn’t it going to be fun up here? Just the two of us.’

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Julian Cadman with ‘Silence Speaks Volumes’

Silence isn’t quite golden, when awaiting her call after giving out your number.

Silence isn’t quite golden, after you’ve told her parents what you do for a living.

Silence isn’t quite golden, when you’ve just proposed.

Silence isn’t quite golden, after your best man’s told what he thought was an acceptable anecdote during his speech.

Silence isn’t quite golden, when you wake up and realise you’ve forgotten to switch on the baby monitor.

Silence isn’t quite golden, after you’ve asked the consultant if it’s curable.

Silence isn’t quite golden, when stepping through the front door alone for the first time.

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Highly commended (winning my Entering Writing Competitions course worth £20 / $20) or a free edit and critique of up to 1,000 words (worth £15 / $21) – in alphabetical order:

• Bob Cairns with‘A Prayer Falls on Deaf Ears’
• Cath Barton with‘The Angelic Glow’
• Joyce Bingham with‘When Will You Leave, When Will You Tell?’
• Katie Jones with‘The Silent Partner’

Honourable mentions (not winning anything but only narrowly missing out and still looking good on their CV) – in alphabetical order:

• Alan Barker with‘Oh Dear, What Can The Matter Be?’
• Carol Allison with‘The Commuters’
• Darren York with‘Noose’
• Michael Harries with‘Cwtch’

Congratulations, everyone. The entries for this month are already drifting in. Remember, you can send up to three per month so rather than miss out on a chance by sending one story, do submit more.

If you’ve enjoyed these stories and / or just want to leave a comment, please do so below and / or you can email me at morgen@morgenbailey.com., although I won’t (can’t) discuss forthcoming entries unless it’s a general query.