Felixstowe Book Festival – How to connect with local writers?

Felixstowe Book Festival wouldn’t be complete if it didn’t support the local writer groups. The festival is run by Felixstowe library so if you are looking for your local writing group I would suggest visiting your local library and asking the librarian if they have details of any. Maybe you will start one up?

Felixstowe Scribblers meet fortnightly at Felixstowe Library, and I was a regular attendee. The meetings set a prompt for writing, they sometimes do flash fiction and hold a quarterly competition to win the Bill Bunder Cup. They published my short story Cherry Blossom in their first anthology. The group is run by Dave.

Orwell League Writers (OWL) are an Ipswich writing group. I’ve not been to any of their meetings so can’t tell you much about the set up but I know a writer who won their annual writing competition. The group is run by Mia.

Both groups had come up with an activity for attendees.

Flash Fiction

Scribblers had prepared a number of words to act as writing prompts and placed them face down. Participants were encouraged to select one and then a timer was set and we had to write a short story.

My prompt word was ’weapon’ and I wrote a story inspired by The Handmaid’s Tale about a suicide bomber that is starting to doubt their cause moments before acting.

Character Development

OWL had created character sheets and got us all to create two characters that could meet at a train station.

Creating my two characters and imagining their reason for being at the station got me creating a story in my head. If I wasn’t so busy with other projects I would write it – like I needed another story idea. ?