Author: Sarah Fallon

• May 30, 2022

  Organising my Short Story Files

  

  The time has come to *shudder* organise my short story files. I’ve been writing short stories since I was about sixteen. Before I had ever even read an actual short story! Needless to say I have a lot of files. Countless short stories with countless drafts. Not to mention all the half-baked ideas where I […]
• May 21, 2022

  Writing characters that can be adapted for the screen

  

  In a previous role I was lucky enough to meet with one of the CEOs of a pretty major animation studio. They were looking for children’s fiction with non-human protagonists who, rather than being children, were childlike. Think Shrek and Bad Guys by Aaron Blabey. As an aspiring writer I also know that the prevailing […]
• April 7, 2019

  Writing on the Train

  

  If you use public transport to get to work each day, chances are you have a chunk of free time in which to write. When I was working full time in Sydney my commute was more than 2 hours each way. When people heard how long my commute was they always assumed it was a […]
• January 4, 2019

  2018 in Review

  I write this on the early train to Sydney. It’s my first day back at my new job, at a major publishing company, after Christmas. It’s the second of January 2019 and I already know this year is gonna rock my life like no other… But lets not get ahead of ourselves. This post is […]
• August 3, 2018

  On Reading ‘A Strong Urge To Fly’ by Alan Baxter

  I read ‘A Strong Urge To Fly’ from Alan Baxter’s collection Crow Shine last night on the train home from Sydney. I’d started in late in the commute and finished just before getting to my stop. A good thing too, because I was so engrossed I would have had to sit on the platform in […]
• July 27, 2018

  Writing Practice, Like Actual Practice

  I’m a lazy writer. Sometime in the last year, I don’t when, I decided I didn’t need to work at writing anymore. I had a few publications under my belt, heck, I’d won a competition. My work was good, I was good, everything was good.   And so I got complacent.   I stopped getting […]
• July 10, 2018

  VLOG: Editing Short Stories

  Last week I spent a beautiful sunny Thursday editing one of my short stories. I’d gotten some great feedback from some writer friends and was ready to get stuck into the editing process. If you want to hear about how I write short stories to begin with, I have a video on that too. Happy […]
• June 22, 2018

  4 questions to ask before you give up on a story

  I get it. Rejection is tough. Sometimes you start to wonder, is my story good enough? Is it good at all? Should I just give up and move on to the next thing. I’ve talked about rejection before. I’ve talked about how sometimes a rejection letter can be the most motivating thing you receive, I’ve […]
• June 8, 2018

  Writing Exercise: The Buffy Effect

  I was watching reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer recently and it occurred to me that it would make an excellent writing exercise. Writing exercises are great to have in your back pocket for when you need an extra boost of inspiration. Exercises, whether you follow them exactly or not, get you thinking critically and […]
• May 18, 2018

  Arranging Short Story Collections

  Hello Dreamers, I’ve been knocked out with the flu for the last week so forgive me if this post is a little incoherent. Last month I wrote and submitted my first short story collection and I wanted to tell you how I went about ordering my stories for submission. I’d expected it to be a […]