It is the last day of fiction week before we move on to matters of fact. Nonfiction week kicks off tomorrow with Words and Pictures – a Google Hangout hosted by Paul Dalla Rosa, who’ll be chatting with Katie Parrish and Chris Gooch about how to illustrate politics and the everyday.

This week began with submission opening for the The 2015 John Marsden & Hachette Australia Prize for Young Writers. Get your entries ready and get submitting, because there’s a share of $5,500 to be won!

Tuesday saw Short Story Salon with James Butler and Rafael S.W, who delivered the goods on what makes a great story. Zoe Norton-Lodge shared her experience of Working With Words, finding the funny in her writing career. Last night in Wollongong, Texan spoken word poet, Bill Moran, hosted a workshop about what makes poetry powerful.

This week we were getting into fiction, poetry and alternative storytelling. As a hybrid of all three, flip to a random page in your book and tweet us the third line. Use the hashtag #NYWM15.

Events and Opportunities

What’s shorter than a novel but longer than a short story? This is not a riddle – it’s a novella. Hosted at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne last year was a symposium with Cate Kennedy, Megan McGrath, Jane Jervis-Read and Julianne Schultz. They discussed the strengths of the novella and its place between the novel and other forms of writing. Listen to the broadcast to hear what they had to say.

If you’re from Victoria, head down the East Melbourne Library to hear Alicia Sometimes talk about how to write an evocative poem that prompts heartfelt emotion. The workshop was designed to help polish and shine those entries for the Lord Mayor’s Creative Writing Awards, which are due on the 31^st of August. (Sorry guys, Victorians only.) Scheduled for the 27^th of June, book in for the poetry workshop now at Eventbrite.

Australian Poetry, our national organisation for poetry, has a handy resource for getting published as a poet. Review their Beginner’s Guide to Getting Published to see if you can pick up any helpful hints. While designed for poets, some of the advice is transferable: i.e. read widely, write often, be seen, and pitch yourself.

Join a writing group for poetry – Dashes and Dots in Reservoir, Victoria or Friendly Street Poets, in Adelaide, South Australia.

Writing Challenge!

When a book is published, it’s as though it couldn’t exist any other way. Even though a book goes through a rigorous editing process prior to publication – moments are rewritten or deleted altogether – once the book is published it’s as though it’s always been that way; a tidy finished product.

We want you to take the book you are reading and rewrite a chapter. What happens when you change the narrative structure of the story? Do the characters change? Does the reason for the book’s existence become altogether different?

Make sure you’re writing is in keeping with the style of the author. This challenge is all about embodying the characters and staying true to the book, while giving it a good twist, of course.