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- Video - Locus Magazine Senior Editor and literary agent Arley Sorg on illuminating your characters via sidekicks and collaborators
- Markets and contests with submissions open or opening soon.
- December 5 - Playful Character Creation: Invent Compelling People For Your stories led by New York Times-best-selling author William Alexander. Discount code!
- Care to drabble with us? Each week our drabble community writes 100 words (or they don't—their call) to a single-word prompt.
- NEW newsletter segment: This Week's Prompt. An interesting item from the news to provide you with fodder for your creativity. This week, paralysed man can feel objects through another person's hand.
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Watch this workshop excerpt featuring Locus Magazine Senior Editor Arley Sorg. Taken from "Getting Into Character," Arley shares how sidekicks, collaborators, and other personalities can illuminate your main character in a powerful and elegant way.
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Markets and Contests
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Many thanks to Scribophile for sponsoring this week's open submissions. Scribophile is a free welcoming community of writers where you're guaranteed to get solid critiques on your work. You can also get 20% off your first purchase using coupon code APEX20.
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- 🐣 Small Robin Press is open to submissions of personal essays on the theme of “Walls” for an upcoming anthology. Send them work of up to 3,000 words before November 30th. No submissions fee! 💰Paying market!💰
- 📰 Baltimore Review is open to submissions of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry until November 30th. Send them up to 5,000 words of prose writing or up to three poems. No submissions fee! 💰Paying market!💰
- 🎶 The Songs That Save Us is a forthcoming anthology of poetry inspired by music. Send them up to(?) two poems, along with the song that inspired them, before November 30th. No submissions fee! 💰Paying market!💰
- 🏰 PodCastle is a podcast of fantasy fiction, and they’re looking for stories for audio narration. Send them your short stories of up to 6,000 words. No submissions fee! 💰Paying market!💰
- 🗞️ The Hudson Review Short Fiction Contest is open to entries of short stories of up to 10,000 words. The winner receives $1,000 and publication. The contest closes on November 30th. No submissions fee! 💰Paying market!💰
- 📚 Amble Press is open to submissions of full-length prose novels and graphic novels from LGBTQ+ writers. Send them a completed query form and full manuscript. No submissions fee! 💰Paying market!💰
- 📖 Fractured Mirror Publishing is open to submissions of full-length fantasy and sci-fi novels for adult, YA, and MG audiences. Send them a query letter and sample chapter. No submissions fee! 💰Paying market!💰
- 💘 Inkspell Publishing is open to submissions of full-length romance novels in a range of subgenres. Send them a query letter and full manuscript. No submissions fee! 💰Paying market!💰
- 🌚 Black Moon Magazine is open to submissions of short fiction and poetry, as well as book reviews, interviews, and art. Send them stories of up to 8,000 words or up to five poems. No submissions fee!
- 🌊 Good River Review is open to submissions of short stories, essays, poems, and short plays or screenplays. Send them up to 5,000 words of prose writing, up to five poems, or up to 10 minutes of dramatic writing (roughly 10 pages). No submissions fee!
- 🪞 Feral Poetry is open to submissions of poetry on the theme of “Mirror”. Send them up to four poems before November 30th. No submissions fee!
- 🕯️ Ghostlight: The Magazine of Terror is open to submissions of short horror fiction between 500 and 5,000 words until December 1st. No submissions fee!
- 🏚️ Madwomen in the Attic is looking for authors and aspiring authors for their featured writer series. Their submissions guidelines are pretty sparse, but they ask for writers of marginalised genders to submit work that resonates with their mission of uplifting minority communities and communities that have struggled with mental health. This call closes on December 1st. No submissions fee!
- 📝 PINYON is open to submissions of short fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. Send them up to 10,000 words of prose writing or up to five poems before December 1st. No submissions fee!
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Have you ever tried to write a complete backstory for each of your characters? Konstantin Stanislavski, the most famous acting teacher to ever live, is said to have insisted that every performer write down the full contents of their character’s medicine cabinet. Is that kind of exhaustive detail really necessary? Do your characters need medicine cabinets?
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National Book Award winner and best-selling author William Alexander is here to tell you that there’s a better way. This workshop will borrow better lessons from the theater to learn more playful techniques for creating new characters.
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A sense of play unlocks the subconscious and its limitless creativity. It also fosters an intuitive understanding of your characters, which is far more valuable than any list of isolated facts about them. Join us to learn wildly theatrical techniques for inventing imaginary people by playing a Surrealist parlor game.
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In this workshop you will:
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- learn character development techniques from the theater, made accessible and applicable to fiction writing;
- participate in game-based exercises that prompt unpredictable invention and creativity;
- discover playfully intuitive ways to connect with your characters, which in turn brings them to life on the page.
You’ll leave this workshop with a faster, more creative, more effective, and more fun way to craft the people who inhabit your stories!
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DATE: December 5, 2025 – Friday
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TIME: 2PM ET | 1PM CT | 12PM MT | 11AM PT | 18:00 UTC
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RUNTIME: Approximately 90 minutes
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Each week our drabble community writes 100 words (or they don't—their call) to a single-word prompt. No fame. No fortune. Just fun. Well, maybe a teensy bit of fame if you count the animated adaptations we create and share on social media. Check 'em out on our YouTube channel and Bluesky.
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This Week's Prompt
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"Keith Thomas, a man in his 40's with no sensation or movement in his hands, is able to feel and move objects by controlling another person's hand via a brain implant. The technique might one day even allow us to experience another person's body over long distances."
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Thank you so much for being a newsletter subscriber. We love our supportive, weird, and wonderful community. Don't hesitate to reply to this email if you have something to tell us. I read every email and will respond.
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