Sensory Description: Revision/Contest/Call for Submissions

We learn about our world through the senses and we engage readers when we incorporate vivid, sensory details in our writing. The most effective way to pull readers into a scene is to use one or more of the senses to establish atmosphere with layered, textured details.

Play in the rain, walk down a busy street, and take along a notebook. Experience your senses. When you return home, mosey through your manuscript and add sensory descriptors. Highlight each example of sight, taste, sound, touch, and smell. I recommend using a different color highlighter for each of the five senses. You’ll get an immediate view of which you’ve over- or under-used. Maybe there is one you haven’t use at all. This method is a way to balance the sensory descriptors throughout your manuscript.

This revision technique will add the zing factor that will take your story to a higher level.

Call for submissions for adult writers:

The Flying Elephants Short Story Prize Guidelines-at-a-Glance

· Short Story Length: No length restrictions, but longer manuscripts (8,000—10,000 words) or shorter manuscripts (less than 2,000 words) will have to be truly exceptional to be shortlisted.

· Entry Fee: None.

· Eligibility: Writers must 18-years of age or older, and short stories must be original and previously unpublished.

· Theme: “AndWeWereHungry. . . .”

· *Top Prize Theme: “AndWeWereHungry for Nature.” (*Grand prize reserved for the story that connect the theme with nature.)

· Entry Instructions: A writer may submit only one story. Although simultaneous submissions are accepted, entrants must immediately notify AndWeWereHungry if the piece is accepted elsewhere. An excerpt from a novel in progress must stand alone as a short story.

· Submission guidelines at http://andwewerehungry.org/prize-rules/

Call for submissions for young writers:

Liminal. Original and unpublished fiction, nonfiction, book reviews, music reviews, poetry, artwork, comics, photography and short film from writers and artists aged 13-19.

Submission guidelines at http://liminaljournal.com/submissions/

Check out more contests on my blog: http://nancykellyallen.blogspot.com/