It’s rainy season in Jakarta with 78 percent humidity, according to the weather forecasts, but you always wake up dehydrated. Bunda says it’s because you eat too much MSG. Or, more precisely, you keep ordering food from restaurants that clearly use MSG and other artificial flavoring. She tries to teach you how to cook tempe… Continue reading Winter 2024 – Fiction
Tag: fiction
Winter 2023 – Fiction
Like Sardines by Douglas Jern The passenger layer now reached the tops of the seat backs, and newcomers had to climb up it to get inside, and climb it they did. Nothing seemed to faze them. Before long even the luggage racks were full of people, who lay there looking bored as the train rolled… Continue reading Winter 2023 – Fiction
Autumn 2022 – Fiction
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
Summer 2022 – Fiction
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
Writing Tips – Setting and Character
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
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 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
Winter 2022 – Fiction
A Bargaining The red plate on the green table has a loaf of lemon bread on it. There are blueberries on top of the loaf. You know it smells freshly baked even though you can’t actually smell it. Your nose is broken and doesn’t work anymore. You do not know when your nose became broken.… Continue reading Winter 2022 – Fiction
Autumn 2021 – Fiction
Simulacrum Because I love you so much, I will not let the earth have your body. You are too good for it. Instead, I find new jars for your spine, multiple ones, vacuum-tight, and within them, I organize your vertebrae alphabetically and by length and seal them. I love you to pieces. Samantha Liu This… Continue reading Autumn 2021 – Fiction
Magical Matter
This 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