#249: Action Stations with Tom Bromley

For this week's contest, we're bringing you a special edition from Tom Bromley — author, ghostwriter, and instructor for Reedsy's online novel writing course. The winner of this week's contest will win a bonus prize: a full scholarship for Tom’s course, plus personal feedback on their winning story. For your chance to receive free tuition (worth $1250) and get feedback from an industry pro, read on! Here's Tom:



"In the second week of our How to Write a Novel course, we have what I call our 'secret sauce' week, where we look at five key ingredients that add magic to your writing. The first of these is movement: a part of writing that is often overlooked, yet is something that readers will instinctively respond to. From characters changing internally to journeys as plot lines, full-frontal action scenes to the subtlest changes in body language, adding movement into your writing helps bring your stories to life and stops them feeling static or still.

In this competition, there are five possible starting points for stories, all involving movement in some sort of way. Think about the different ways that you can describe and add action into the mix. The winning story will be the one that is the most, well, moving." — Tom



Special update: The results 🏆

After reviewing the judges' top picks and choosing his winner, here was Tom's feedback on the shortlist and winner he chose, which he has kindly given us permission to share with you all! Here's Tom again:

Firstly, many thanks for your all entries: it has been fascinating to read the different ways that everyone has interpreted the theme of movement. There were lots of great pieces but the standout ones for me were:

The World’s on Fire by Dena Linn

Unraveling by J Appos

Her by Jamilah Christian

Both Her and The World’s On Fire used the dancing in a bar as their starting point, but took it in different directions, the interaction in Her presaging the end of a relationship, The World’s on Fire, the tale of a cancer diagnosis. I loved the double sense of movement in these pieces, both in the description of the dancing itself and then the movement in the story, taking the protagonists somewhere new. Unraveling cleverly used a tennis match to structure the story around. This worked very effectively in giving the narrative a shape and a back and forth feel with the dialogue. It was a great example of how you can use movement effectively to structure a scene. 

All the shortlisted pieces had their strengths, but going back to the original brief, I felt that The World’s On Fire made the best use of the movement theme. That, combined with strong writing and an emotional punch makes Dena Linn my winner. Congratulations Dena! — Tom

If you're interested in hearing more from Tom, and the new How to Write a Novel course, you can learn more here.