Spellnotes

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

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

In previous blog posts I have spent quite a lot of time looking at ways in which you can start writing. Today I thought I would do something a little different, and look at the art of what you do once you have finished writing: editing. In my own writing, I am often guilty of… Continue reading Writing Tips – Editing

French Knickers by Patricia M Osborne Patricia M Osborne’s piece featured in our latest issue, French Knickers, proves to be a wonderful and engaging character monologue. The stage description of the character’s entrance sets the entire mood: she walks in carrying a bottle and a glass of red wine. She flops into the armchair, kicks… Continue reading Autumn 2022 – Drama

Walking Backwards by Dino Costi In Walking Backwards, the reader is literally walked back in time by Costi. The story’s retrograde setting is one in which women are valued most as wives and child-bearers. Marriage is constantly on the minds of Sabrina, Abigail, and Caroline, not as a possibility but as a fate. But as… Continue reading Autumn 2022 – Fiction

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

IVF – Eugene O’Hare praying to the God she never thought …vicious with want. … baby.don’t float away. your word…speechless When I first read this poem, it made me slightly uncomfortable. Grading poems or deciding which one should be published is a complex process. As an editor, you have a responsibility to ensure that there… Continue reading Autumn 2022 – Poetry

Sometimes, it feels as though writing short stories or flash fiction can be harder than writing a full-length novel. You may be limited to a relatively short word or page count. You might not have any idea how to come up with a storyline that will fit into the length required for a short story.… Continue reading Writing Resources – Short Stories

The brevity of Jocelyne Lamarche’s Ghost belies its complexity. Coming in at just 210 words, the story manages to pack in vivid imagery, establish a strong sense of character and weave its way through feelings of sadness, longing and hope. It is a story to be read again and again, one of those which yields… Continue reading Summer 2022 – Fiction

This season’s writing tips post is going to focus on the relationship between physical setting and characters. I have come up with what should be a fun and challenging writing exercise which will allow you to consider the importance of these two important elements of fiction writing. Setting – by which I mean the physical… Continue reading Writing Tips – Setting and Character

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

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

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

Cornwall – Lily Rose Winter drinking wine on the beachfront it’s that time between light and dark when the sea begins to look like an untuned television screen noise among silence pixelated, out of focus, flickering, i listen with one ear to what you say while the other is drawn to the sea, as if… Continue reading Spring 2022 – Poetry

This blog post is all about the National Gallery in London and the inspiration it can provide. It will also focus on the Gallery’s website, which is an excellent place from which to draw resources. I was in London this weekend with my partner. It had been my responsibility to plan a day out but… Continue reading Art Resources – The National Gallery

Character is a key element of prose writing, whichever form – short story, play, novel – that might take. Characters are often at the heart of a story. They drive it forward. For readers, they are often the reason we keep reading something. We want to find out more about a character’s motivations or thoughts.… Continue reading Writing Resources – Character

This blog post aims to introduce you to the concept of mind mapping, which is a really helpful tool to use if you are ever stuck on working out details of character or setting in particular. Simply put, mind maps are a way of tracking and organising information. They can also be really useful in… Continue reading Writing Tips: Mind Mapping

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

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

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