- both good and bad, and exercise and develop that mental writing muscle.
On my school visits I have heard from so many teachers that have budding writers in their midst, just looking for an outlet. We need to nurture these authors of tomorrow and their fabulous imaginations. So I decided to put together my own little offering: the DOTTY Flash Fiction Challenge (the word ‘Dotty’ alludes to the title of my current children’s book series).
And what exactly is the Flash Fiction Challenge?
In essence, it is a monthly short story-writing exercise, designed to encourage children to embrace their imaginations and develop their writing skills. At the beginning of each month, a short excerpt from one of my books or the book of another author is posted on my website, here on the Portal and at www.thedottyseries.com/flashfiction. The challenge is to use the excerpt as inspiration for a short story of no more than 300 words, including the excerpt itself somewhere within it (whether at the beginning, at the end, or somewhere in between).
The competition is open to children aged 13 and under. How can my school get involved? It is open to schools as to how they choose to participate. It may be the case that students are encouraged to enter in their own time. Alternatively, the monthly challenge can be used as a one-off class exercise, or on a regular basis in an extra-curricular flash fiction club set up for the purpose. However you choose to embrace the challenge, I would be delighted to speak with schools about their preferred method of implementation and give support and advice on how this would best work for your school, or indeed to pay the school a visit to introduce the concept personally. So please do get in touch. And a final word? You can find this month’s challenge at www.thedottyseries.com/flashfiction. Happy writing! Emma Warner-Reed is an award-winning children’s author, qualified lawyer and legal academic, and journalist. Her current children’s series of middle grade fantasy fiction adventure books, The DOTTY Series, has won multiple awards to date, including a Literary Classics book award and honourable mentions in the New York, Los Angeles, Paris and Amsterdam book festivals. Both the first series books have also been given a coveted 5 star rating from Reader’s Favorites. You can find out more about the series at www.thedottyseries.com.
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