June 29
At Stories of Life, we are a small team of volunteers who love sharing stories of God’s goodness and we also love the craft of writing. We work together to publish an annual collection of true short stories of faith and testimony. Integral to our purpose is helping others present their stories in an engaging and creative way.
For the first few years of the competition, we did this by running writing workshops at Tabor Adelaide. You can still view some of those workshop videos in our archives, for example, this video on ‘What I love to judge’ by Claire Bell.
However, we realised that the audience we could reach this way was limited to Adelaide folk, who were available and able to travel to the college on weekday night. To over come this, we recorded a series of short videos on writing – these are still great resources for anyone who wants to submit a story.
In time, we saw that many of the writers who had attended writing courses and watched our videos would benefit from personalised feedback on the stories they wanted to tell. So, we started running Feedback Month in June whereby our experienced editors would give feedback on story drafts sent to us in June, one month before our submission period closes.
As our editors volunteer their time, this comes at no cost to the writers. The editors only give suggestions, and writers are free to modify the story as they wish, or not modify it at all. However, we have found that many writers find the process receiving feedback invaluable, as our editors often point out the strengths of the story, along with any suggestion for improvement – for example, a suggestion to clarify something that might confuse the reader, or asking for elaboration on something intriguing.
With only two more days left to Feedback Month this year, we urge all who are considering entering a story this year to take the opportunity to send us your story drafts. You can upload your story drafts here.
Feature image by _Alicja_ on Pixabay.
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