Spellnotes
The official Spellbinder Blog, a platform for casual conversation between editors, contributors and readers, hosted on Medium as well under the account name Spellnotes.
Collaborative Notes
This column is dedicated to Spellbinder’s exchange with other individuals, groups and journals in the literary and artistic worlds.
Editor’s Picks
The Editor’s Picks section will showcase and review some of the best extracts from the works published in our back issues of the magazine.
Tips
The Tips section is an advice platform to help writers and artists to improve the quality of their work.
Resources
The Resources section will provide a series of writing and art group activities to help people learn about, as well as experiment within their preferred creative medium.
Recent Posts
- Language-themed Prompts for Autumn
Spellbinder submissions for the Autumn 2025 Issue are open until August 14th! We’ll be sharing some prompts over the coming weeks to inspire your creativity during this submission period. For this autumn, we are proposing that you consider language as a subject for your writing. Whether you already speak multiple languages or hope to one… Continue reading Language-themed Prompts for Autumn - Food-themed Prompts for Spring
First prompt: think about your favourite food, or a unique food you like, and incorporate it in a piece of fiction or creative non fiction. If writing fiction, you could play with POV and try to write the story from the point of view of the food itself, or even from each of the ingredients.… Continue reading Food-themed Prompts for Spring - Tackling Surrealism
A fantastic way to be more adventurous in your writing is to try your hand at radical literary and artistic movements by following their principles and engaging in decades of creative conversation. Surrealism is a movement which has remained fresh and ever-evolving, and has always been politically and culturally subversive. A great example of its… Continue reading Tackling Surrealism - Winter Prompts for Re-writing Classics
Spellbinder submissions for the Spring 2023 Issue (publ. April 2023) are open until February 14th. We have shared some prompts on our social media channels during the past week to boost your creativity and imagination while submissions are open. The prompts we posted during this submission window are under the theme of “Re-writing Classics”, which… Continue reading Winter Prompts for Re-writing Classics - A Guide to Photography Galleries
In April 2021, I provided a useful list of world-famous galleries for visual artists searching for some inspiration, but it occurs to me that many of these fantastic museums are painting and sculpture focused and therefore, the photographers amongst you may be wishing for something a little bit more photography specific. For this reason, I… Continue reading A Guide to Photography Galleries - Autumn Prompts for Re-writing Fairy/Folk Tales
Spellbinder submissions for the Winter 2023 Issue (publ. Jan 2023) are open until November 14th. We have shared some prompts on our social media channels during the past week to boost your creativity and imagination while submissions are open. The prompts we posted during this submission window are under the theme of “Re-writing fairy/folk tales”,… Continue reading Autumn Prompts for Re-writing Fairy/Folk Tales - Summer Prompts – Holiday Scripts
This blog post will help you respond to the following Spellbinder Instagram post: Write a script about a family summer holiday/road trip. You can go down the comedy route and have lots of absurdly annoying things happening. You could also have a thriller/horror twist at some point in your script, after of course tricking your… Continue reading Summer Prompts – Holiday Scripts - Summer Prompts – Water
This blog post will help you respond to the following Spellbinder Instagram post: “Experiment with artworks or photographs depicting water. How can you capture water’s colourlessness, movement and fluidity in a still image? Can materials such as fabric and glass help you create that illusion?” Water, along with clouds and the sky, are some of… Continue reading Summer Prompts – Water - Summer Prompts – Point of View
This post will help you respond to the following Spellbinder Instagram post: “Choose a scene or a chapter from your favourite summer read and rewrite it from a different point of view. You could also maintain the main character as is, but switch points of view (eg from the first to the third person). Think… Continue reading Summer Prompts – Point of View - Spring Cleaning Prompts
This post will help you respond to the following Spellbinder Instagram post: “Write a script about spring cleaning. Whether it’s a literal wardrobe clear-out or a metaphorical soul-cleansing endeavour, what are the benefits (or negatives) of tidying, downsizing, and letting go? How can you convey with your dialogue the liberating (or empty) feeling the characters… Continue reading Spring Cleaning Prompts - Painting Spring Flowers
This post will help you respond to the following Spellbinder Instagram post. “Experiment with a watercolour painting of gorgeous springtime flowers. You can paint a field of flowers and/or flowers in a vase. What colours, shadows and vibrance can best convey the unique specialness of flowers?” One of the most distinctive features of spring is… Continue reading Painting Spring Flowers - Spring Writing Exercises
This post will help you respond to the following Spellbinder Instagram post. “Challenge yourself with a constrained writing exercise this spring. Here are some examples: write a haiku about new beginnings and or/rebirth; write a 500-characters memoir about springtimes past; write a fiction piece without ever using the letter ‘S’.” Here in the UK, we… Continue reading Spring Writing Exercises - Openings
Sometimes, starting a piece of fiction can be one of the most daunting and difficult elements of the whole process. This post will suggest some ways in which you might wish to begin a story or piece of flash fiction, and hopefully serve as an aid if you are struggling to do so. These are… Continue reading Openings - Winter Prompts
This blog post will help build upon the latest series of Winter themed prompts on the Spellbinder Instagram. Winter can be a hard, and harsh, period of time. It can feel desolate and bare. Here in England, it is currently damp with winter rain. The nights come quickly, and are long. As a writer or… Continue reading Winter Prompts - Witches and WizardsThis post will offer some guidance to help you respond to the following Spellbinder Instagram prompt, and will be especially useful for script writers. Write a scene or a script about a modern witch or wizard. Explore this unusual character, their dreams and fears, and how they navigate the world. Delve into the stark contrast… Continue reading Witches and Wizards
- Magical MatterThis post will offer some guidance to help you respond to the following Spellbinder Instagram prompt, and will be especially useful for fiction writers. Write a fiction piece about a magical but otherwise ordinary looking object. How is it magical? How did it become that way? Who will find out about its secret powers? Will they… Continue reading Magical Matter
- Crazy Collage CreaturesThis post will offer some guidance to help you respond to the following Spellbinder Instagram prompt, and will be especially useful for artists. Draw or paint a creature which is a mix of unrelated things. Here are some examples: sand + frog, plant + octopus, fluff + dinosaur, peach + llama. Have fun and come… Continue reading Crazy Collage Creatures
- Writing Routes
The literary arts is a very broad field which this post will attempt to navigate. This is designed to encourage you to experiment with different forms and submit work to our magazine that does not fall into the more common categories of the short story and the poem, although we love receiving these too! Poetry… Continue reading Writing Routes - Visual Art Communities
This post will share a few of my ideas for getting the most out of visual art communities and suggest some activities which may be useful in this sort of setting. If you are part of an art club, it is always enjoyable to produce something collaboratively. This works most effectively when you utilize the… Continue reading Visual Art Communities - Finding the UnidentifiableThis post should inspire you to think creatively in relation to the following prompt and is especially targeted at script writers. Create a scene where characters feel a spiritual or unidentifiable energy and interact with it. Play with how the different characters react and express their opinions and beliefs surrounding the existence and authenticity of… Continue reading Finding the Unidentifiable