Writers Advice Centre

Championing the Short Story

Independent press Scratch Books, “dedicated to the art of the short story”, is to launch in London in March, kicking off with an event featuring authors including Irenosen Okojie and Sarah Hall. Its first title, Reverse Engineering, features seven short stories by Jon McGregor, Hall, Chris Power, Okojie, Jessie Greengrass, Joseph O’Neill and Mahreen Sohail. The book will also include author comments on how they wrote their stories. To celebrate the launch, Chris Power will host an in-conversation event with McGregor, Hall, Okojie and Greengrass on 17th March. It will be open to the public and broadcast online. Watch this space!

Success Stories

Over the past 20 years we have been instrumental in helping writers find their place with publishers, whether directly or indirectly. The following is just a handful of our success stories…

Bradley’s Dragons
The Mystery of the Never-ending Universe
Little Elephant’s Big Year!
The Scavyngers
A T-wit for a T-woo
Philomena
The Adventures of the Owl and the Pussycat
Mustafa’s Jumper
Double Felix
My Dad Will Do
The Secret Lake
My Mum’s a Bug-eyed Monster
The Spy Who Loved School Dinners
Harvey and the Moon Bus
Lost in a Snowstorm
Mr Scribbley
Baby Aliens Got My Teacher
Barking Mad
Shadow Jumper
Ferdinand Fox’s Big Sleep
The Diary Of A Penguin Napper
The Great Farty Slob Beast
Odd Job Frog
The Brother In Burmeon
Mutiny In Space
My Mum Is There

"Thank you for turning this around so quickly for me. The feedback is invaluable and will allow me to make a number of really worthwhile amends before approaching publishers. As I go through the report in more detail I may have the odd question, so thank you for being open to further assistance."

R Myles (Manuscript Appraisal Service)

"I’d like to thank you for your words of encouragement. My wife said to my children after the phone call, ‘That’ll be it now, you won’t see your dad for months as he’ll be busy writing.’ How true!"

Neil Swinney (Telephone Appraisal Service)

"Sharing our book with Louise Jordan at the Writers’ Advice Centre was one of our most important steps on the road to publication of our book My Mum’s a Bug-Eyed Monster. Without Louise’s advice about story pacing and which publishers to target, our monster mum may still be languishing in the slush swamp!"

Andy Rigden & Jim Landen (Face to Face Meeting)

"I am finding this writing course very enjoyable and feel inspired by the assignments. I find your feedback particularly motivating and believe that signing up to this course has not only developed my writing confidence, but is one of the best things I did for my writing career"

Kim White (Home Study Course)

"Thank you for facilitating such an excellent workshop yesterday. I would strongly recommend it to anyone wishing to write for children. Experienced writers would definitely benefit from it as well. Pure gold!"

A Chisambo (Writing Workshop)