Short Fiction Archives

🎄The Writers' HQ Christmas hamper is HERE! Order by 15th December for Xmas delivery 🎄

Short Fiction ·

7 Short Stories About Climate Change

Brilliant climate change short stories to sooth (or exacerbate) your existential crisis

Short Fiction ·

7 Pumpkin Spice Vibe Short Stories For Autumn

Yeet your Birkenstocks, pull on your hand-knitted socks, get yourself under a blanket and snuggle up with some melancholy, wistful, beautiful and just plain weird-ass short stories.

Publishing ·

Accessible Submissions for All: An Interview with Chill Subs

Industry insights from the coolest submissions manager in town: Chill Subs

An image of a chalk-drawn rocket ship shooting up into the air on a blackboard

Novel Writing ·

Eight Ways to Rocket-boost Your Prose

Elevate your writing with 8 expert tips from Matt Kendrick

An image of a writer at a desk with a laptop and notebook

Publishing ·

#Submit2023 Challenge – Send Your Writing Out Into The World!

Write. Submit. Repeat. And make a commitment to hurlng your writing out into the world this year.

A wall covered in polaroid pictures depicting landscapes, faces and rooms

Novel Writing ·

Level Up Your Description Writing With Alt Text

How can alt text help you develop your descriptive writing skills? Learn how to write succinct and vivid image descriptions!

a neon sign that says 'what is your story?' in a darkened window

Short Fiction ·

Five Flash Fiction Resources to Get You Writing

Jump into the world of flash fiction with a free flash fiction course, writing exercises, resources, techniques and a live spoken word event!

Image of a grafitti mural depicting the late great Terry Pratchett

Novel Writing ·

10 Terry Pratchett Quotes as Excellent Writing Prompts

In honour of Terry Pratchett's birthday we've cherry-picked 10 great Discworld quotes that also make inspiring story starters.

Editing ·

Editing Short Fiction: Five Ways to Make Your Story Stronger

Editing short fiction (or any writing for that matter) requires an objective eye and some brave decision making - here's how to do it.

Publishing ·

Accessible Submissions For All: An Interview With Northern Gravy

Accessible Submissions For All - an interview with Northern Gravy on submission fees, inclusivity, and fair payment for writers.

image of hands typing on a laptop with printed pages beside it

Short Fiction ·

Writing Strong Flash Fiction

How do you write a strong piece of flash fiction? Well, you're gonna need two important story ingredients...

Short Fiction ·

Writing Flash Fiction – Structuring Beginnings, Endings, and the Soggy Bit in the Middle!

How do you fit a whole dang story into a tiny piece of flash?

a stack of post it notes with question marks on them

Novel Writing ·

But whyyyy?

Hands down the most useful question you can ask of your writing...

Image of a golden statue of justice, holding up a set of scales

Novel Writing ·

The Fundamental Nugget of Human Truth

How do you get to the heart of your story?

image of someone sitting cross legged on the floor surrounded by allen keys and furniture pieces, reading a set of instructions

Short Fiction ·

Follow the instructions

Create your own fictional instructions for writing a story and come up with a weird and wonderful tale

A gigantic ornate museum room with sunlight filtering down through the windows

Short Fiction ·

Behind the Scenes at the Museum

Dive into the wonderful world of museum collections and craft a story from an artefact...

Short Fiction ·

What Is A Novella-In-Flash (And How Do I Write One?)

Sophie van Llewyn on how to craft (and what the heck even is) a novella-in-flash - from character to structure to getting it published.

Short Fiction ·

Imagery in Flash

'Flashy' Kathy Hoyle gives us four brilliant writing exercises on developing imagery in your stories.

Novel Writing ·

Speculative Fiction Genre Labels – What are They (and do they matter?)

From space opera to slipstream, Krishan Coupland runs us through the many speculative sub-genres.

Misty forest at dusk with a person walking through the trees

Novel Writing ·

Writing Horror – What Are You Afraid Of?

What are the elements of a good horror story?

Short Fiction ·

Ten Top Tips For Writing Flash Fiction

Our resident flashionado, Kathy Hoyle, offers up her top ten tips for writing stellar flash fiction!

Short Fiction ·

Go Weird or Go Home

Gaynor Jones on how to stay just the right side of weirdness.

Novel Writing ·

Character Emotions, Defence Mechanisms and Change

Stephanie Carty talks all about character psychology to help you create realistic fictional humans.

image of a car smashing through the side of a building

Novel Writing ·

How to Write Action

How to nail that action scene and build up tension, no matter what genre you write.

Novel Writing ·

Should I Include the Pandemic in My WIP?

Do we pretend the last few years never happened or tackle fictional COVID, too?

Short Fiction ·

Flash Fiction without the Pain

Does flash always need to be angsty?

Short Fiction ·

Accessible Submissions For All: An Interview With Banshee

As part of our Accessible Submissions For All campaign we’ve been interviewing literary journal editors and writing competition administrators to see the different ways fair,…

Publishing ·

Accessible Submissions For All: An Interview With Lunate

As part of our Accessible Submissions For All campaign we’ve been interviewing literary journal editors and writing competition administrators to see the different ways fair,…

Publishing ·

Accessible Submissions For All: An Interview With Neon

As part of our Accessible Submissions For All campaign we’ve been interviewing literary journal editors and writing competition administrators to see the different ways fair,…

Publishing ·

Accessible Submissions For All: An Interview With The Forge

As part of our Accessible Submissions For All campaign we’ve been interviewing literary journal editors and writing competition administrators to see the different ways fair,…

Publishing ·

Accessible Submissions For All!

Hey there writers, submitters, lit mags, competition organisers, and associated literary folk. We have An Announcement. A mini revolution of sorts. One we hope will…

Publishing ·

Accessible Submissions For All: An Interview With SmokeLong Quarterly

As part of our Accessible Submissions For All campaign we’ve been interviewing literary journal editors and writing competition administrators to see the different ways fair,…

Novel Writing ·

Swipe Right (Write?)

If you only do one bit of writing this week, make it this characterisation exercise from Writers' HQ

Novel Writing ·

Turn A Day Out Into A Story

This one goes out to all our parental homies wrangling ankle-biters and grouchy tweens and hyperactive screen-addicted little womb-fruits over the summer holidays (and, like…

Short Fiction ·

Switch the POV

Howsabout a little light psychology to fuel your writing brain today? Let’s talk POV (point of view). Perspective makes a BIG difference to a story.…

Publishing ·

Why Lit Mags Matter (And Why Writers Need To Read Them)

Literary magazines – whether little grassroots zines, swanky journals or slick flash fiction sites – are where most of us short story writers and poets…

Novel Writing ·

What’s the point?

Another rejection came rolling into my inbox this morning. <le sigh, meh, arg, etc> It’s a short story I’ve sent out a lot, and it’s…

Novel Writing ·

Troubleshoot Your Writing: Why Are You Stuck?

Fear not the stickage. Everyone hits a sticking point in their writing at some point. Hitting a sticking point does not = failure. Going through…

Short Fiction ·

FLASH FICTION CONTEST WINNERS

Read all the winning and shortlisted stories from our flash fiction competitions!

Short Fiction ·

Introduction to Short Fiction Part 2: So this one time, at bandcamp…

Welcome back to our Intro to Short Fiction series. Time to do some short fictioning. Before we start, have a re-read of Rebecca Makkai’s quote…

All articles loaded

No more articles to load

bits n bobs

misc others

We’re all over your gorram internet

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.

Necessary

Always Enabled

Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.

Cookie	Duration	Description
cookielawinfo-checbox-analytics	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checbox-functional	11 months	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checbox-others	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy	11 months	The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.

Functional

Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.

Performance

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

Analytics

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.

Others

Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet.

🎄The Writers' HQ Christmas hamper is HERE! Order by 15th December for Xmas delivery 🎄

7 Short Stories About Climate Change

7 Pumpkin Spice Vibe Short Stories For Autumn

Accessible Submissions for All: An Interview with Chill Subs

Eight Ways to Rocket-boost Your Prose

#Submit2023 Challenge – Send Your Writing Out Into The World!

Level Up Your Description Writing With Alt Text

Five Flash Fiction Resources to Get You Writing

10 Terry Pratchett Quotes as Excellent Writing Prompts

Editing Short Fiction: Five Ways to Make Your Story Stronger

Accessible Submissions For All: An Interview With Northern Gravy

Writing Strong Flash Fiction

Writing Flash Fiction – Structuring Beginnings, Endings, and the Soggy Bit in the Middle!

But whyyyy?

The Fundamental Nugget of Human Truth

Follow the instructions

Behind the Scenes at the Museum

What Is A Novella-In-Flash (And How Do I Write One?)

Imagery in Flash

Speculative Fiction Genre Labels – What are They (and do they matter?)

Writing Horror – What Are You Afraid Of?

Ten Top Tips For Writing Flash Fiction

Go Weird or Go Home

Character Emotions, Defence Mechanisms and Change

How to Write Action

Should I Include the Pandemic in My WIP?

Flash Fiction without the Pain

Accessible Submissions For All: An Interview With Banshee

Accessible Submissions For All: An Interview With Lunate

Accessible Submissions For All: An Interview With Neon

Accessible Submissions For All: An Interview With The Forge

Accessible Submissions For All!

Accessible Submissions For All: An Interview With SmokeLong Quarterly

Swipe Right (Write?)

Turn A Day Out Into A Story

Switch the POV

Why Lit Mags Matter (And Why Writers Need To Read Them)

What’s the point?

Troubleshoot Your Writing: Why Are You Stuck?

FLASH FICTION CONTEST WINNERS

Introduction to Short Fiction Part 2: So this one time, at bandcamp…

bits n bobs

misc others

We’re all over your gorram internet

Gift a free Writers' HQ membership

Gift a free Writers' HQ membership!