Blog – Page 4 – Little Fears

Wattpads free writing courses

March 26, 2019 LittleFears31 Comments

I’m one of those people who believes in educating themselves. I don’t go as far as reading a book a day, but I try to take in one complete course a week on Skillshare, Udemy or CodeAcademy. Today, browsing the writing classes, I realised the Wattpad team now have four 100% free writing courses there.

Well, stone me. That’s awesome! I’ve mentioned two of these before, and they are really good quality courses.

Writing for Online Engagement: Fiction in a Digital World

Join writer and Wattpad Star Rebecca Sky for a new Skillshare class on writing fiction today! You’ll peel back the curtain on online writing and learn frameworks, techniques, and strategies for establishing, engaging, and growing a community around your work.

Linky: https://skl.sh/2gV5IWB

The Creative Writer’s Toolkit: Writing a Character Study

Starting with a blank slate is daunting, and in this class, Lindsey shares her favorite tool for overcoming writer’s block and starting your writing process: the character study.

This class will inspire you to look at your everyday encounters and simple interactions as helpful starting points for developing a unique character. It’s perfect for everyone new to writing as well as writers looking to broaden their creative writing toolkit.

Linky: https://skl.sh/2YqnqSI

Writing For Consistency: Finding Your Creative Voice

While writing is a creative art form, using a structure is essential for execution. In this 20-minute class, Ninya takes one of her top stories on Wattpad and walks through how she turned one creative idea into a full serialized story using a creative brief to organize her ideas. You’ll also learn how to identify your voice in writing that makes your work unique.

Whether you’re a writer looking for a fun exercise, or just starting out with a fun idea in your head, this class will help you turn that idea into the beginnings of a story based upon your creative inspiration.

Linky: https://skl.sh/2Yk7gKq

Writing and Editing: Polishing a Manuscript

While writing a draft is a feat in itself, revising and editing your work is when your story takes shape and the real writing begins! In this 25-minute class, Ali walks through the process of polishing a manuscript for publication. She works on strengthening each part of her story, examining plot holes, pacing, and character structure — all to help you learn a set of techniques to level up your writing and make your work clean, concise, and clear.

Whether you’re a writer looking to get your work published, or you just enjoy writing and want to improve your critical eye, this class will help turn your ideas and drafts into well-developed, polished stories.

Linky: https://skl.sh/2Oufhbo

These courses are all completely free. Sign up through any of the links above, skip anything that asks you to subscribe, and you’re away. Though, hey, if you do want to subscribe, it’ll cost $0.99 for 2 months and will give you access to thousands of courses.

Shout out to Tre of A Cornered Girl for buying me a cuppa Ko-Fiyesterday. Thanks to Warren for the continued $10 Patronage.

Swarm

March 23, 2019 LittleFears34 Comments

A bit of a swarm for this weeks #Colour_Collective.

A couple of Fearful things today. First, I believe I’ve responded to everyone who emailed me about a collaboration. If I haven’t replied to you yet, or if you want to collaborate with me, drop me an email to fears@gmx.co.uk and poke me.

I know some of you are waiting on images and audio. I got most of it done yesterday and I’ll be spamming out emails to everyone later today.

Second thingy. I mentioned about a month ago Brexit had finally taken its toll on the companies I’d been getting regular work from. I’ve helped two of them close this last week. Distributing the websites, social media accounts, hosting and all promotional media too other companies buying up the broken-up brands. I’ll be helping to dismantle the company I worked at for 17 years later in the year too. Boy howdy, do I hate Brexit and both major political parties in the UK, right now.

The upshot is I’ll have a lot of time on my hands and work to replace. If anyone needs to hire an artist/designer/writer/vocal bloke for anything, from blog logo design too growling the audio for a YouTube video, poke me. Happy to work for individuals, brands, companies and packs of mutton-chop wearing rockabilly lobsters.

Thanks to Warren for the $10 Patronage.

Serialized Fears

March 21, 2019 LittleFears26 Comments

It was a fear I had myself back at the start of the year. I’d done serials before. 30 posts for each of the Lost Leads crime stories. I was concerned about doing anything longer than 30 stories as it felt like an attention span limit. My current story is about 53 tales into an 88 tale long story. So yeah, the ongoing, serialized fear story that is Brass, just ain’t working for me.

There are a few reasons for it. I thought I’d run through them in a post. Do something, learn from the experience and then explain.

The internet has a short attention span.

100% including myself there. I cannot tell you how many blog/fiction serials have hooked me in the first few chapters. Then I forget to visit. I delay catching up and fall further behind. Then I skip a few chapters and miss something important. It doesn’t apply so much with the Brass series. But psychologically, it matters. For both readers and myself.

Some folks hate serials.

Like, straight up. There’s some real hate for web-serials. I’ve had a few comments from older Fears followers that said they stopped reading on the Brass serial. They check in to see whether it’s over. Although I always say, don’t write for other people, serialized fiction is rather polarizing.

People who join halfway, walk away.

A combination of both of the above. Folk that have been following Brass since the start, are not put off by the episode numbers in each post. Readers that first see the Little Fears, on chapter 40, will often read, laugh, then leave and not come back. They feel they’ve already missed out on a huge chunk of the story and can’t catch up.

The Fears are far less nimble.

I’m always miles ahead of where I need to be for content. I’ve pre-written years worth of stories. But, I mentioned all the big plans I have several times before, and I can’t seem to get them going. When I post too frequently outside of the ongoing Brass story, it seems to mentally disrupt my flow. It’s another psychological thing. The background story of Brass is vague. But it still feels disruptive when my feed bounces between the ongoing story and random “fear of ink,” stories. I think that’s the killer for me. Not being able to enact all my great plans. A story is now holding me back.

Going forward

As there are only 35’ish tales left in this serial, I’ll continue it to the end. I think in future I’ll avoid writing singular serials such as Brass. Instead, writing more one off’s that might have a theme and character progression. Seeking Hydra and Grey Moon style. As for different projects, one thing that is apparent to me from people coming to the Fears mid serial is that I need to have a home page, footer or header that can take you to a complete story/category of the website. Even a single post with links to all single tales within a particular storyline would help. I think I’ll get to work on that this weekend.

I’ll end by saying I’m happy with Copper and Iron, and that I started publishing Brass online. I’m a firm believer, that no matter how many “ten great ways you can write a story,” articles that exist out there, a lot of the time you’ve got to try things and see how they turn out. Sometimes you’ll hit, sometimes you’ll miss. But you’ll often never know until you take a swing.

Cheers, Fears!

Shout out to my new Patron Sue of Connects.live and to Devina of Hot Chocolate & Books for a cuppa Ko-Fi yesterday. As always, thanks to Warren for the continued $10 Patronage.

Buglies

March 20, 2019 LittleFears39 Comments

No matter what you write, draw or create, people who view, read or watch what you’ve made will often come away with a different view than yourself.

My triffids have been seen as Demagogues (I still haven’t seen Stranger Things). They were also recently compared to a wind farm (hah, yes!).

At markets, when you see people face to face, you often find out where your art is headed. Red’s a popular one for children’s bedrooms. The insect queen gets compared to the Spotify logo (crab nabbit, she originally had an orange head and nobody said a thing!) Leo goes to cat lovers and Fuen and the chicks just get everywhere.

But the one that always baffles me, is the Buglies are regularly bought for kitchens.

I don’t… Get it… I mean, I kinda do. They’re cute, fun and playful. But why the kitchen? Do people see them and say, “oh hey, big insects! Maybe they’ll scare the mice off!” Why buy them to hang in the kitchen?

Well, if you want to hang a pack of bugs in your kitchen, or if you just enjoy my ham-fisted marketing posts, you can find them at the Little Fears Etsy store: etsy.com/uk/shop/LittleFears

Shout out to Beverley of Kasu Tours for buying me a cuppa on Ko-Fi yesterday. Also, thanks to Warren for the continued $10 Patronage.

Fear Cats & Threadless free shipping!

March 19, 2019 LittleFears10 Comments

Srsly, screw them hairy, angry, hissing little fuzzbags!

Fear Cats is available now on the Little Fears Threadless store: littlefears.threadless.com

OK, as usual, we have a new Threadless design available on hoodies, pullovers, tanks and a gazillion types of tees in a gazillion colours. Prices start at $15 a tee.

Not, as usual, Threadless is running a free shipping deal on orders over $45 across all designs. Get in!

According to my new header banner thing, Get Free Shipping! Use Code “FREESHIP3197cca8e” Order minimum $45. Ends Mar 31 ’19 11:59PM CDT.

That link again, in case ya missed it the first time: littlefears.threadless.com

Thanks to Warren for the $10 Patronage.

Collaboration Briefs

March 18, 2019 LittleFears8 Comments

Boy howdy did a lot of people respond to my call for collabs.

I know there are folk that haven’t heard from me yet, sorry, I will get to you! Please be patient.

I wrote a few posts two years back on how to run a collaboration (best one here: littlefears.co.uk/2017/11/13/blog-collaborations ).

The one thing I’ve refined is the brief. I feel getting everyone on the same page is insanely important at the start. I always worry it sounds super serious, but most people comment on how helpful the first email is. Awesome.

Set out your goals together. Outline what you want from the person/people involved. If you need to set deadlines at the beginning, do so in the brief. Ensure everyone knows of any word counts, genres, post types, social media sharing requirements and required image sizes are laid out from the start.

Someone once asked me to collaborate with them giving almost no guidance. “Draw me an image showing *XYZ*,” he asked. So I did. Took me 30 minutes, scanned it, sent it over. He replied, “not enough colour.”

God damn. Could you not have told me that before I spent 30 minutes drawing something for you? Suffice to say, I walked away from that one.

The flip side of this. If you send someone a specific set of instructions and they ignore them, send you completely unwanted content or repeatedly ask you questions answered in the brief, you know that collaboration will be more trouble than it’s worth.

I’m still taking names for collaborations, but that’s not the aim of this post. If you want to collaborate with me, please email me at fears@gmx.co.uk BEFORE you write anything. I don’t mean that to sound rude or mean, but, well… You know…

The aim of this post is meant to be informative and a sharing of a process. With that, I thought I’d share my current brief for the Sunday collaborations. This goes out in an email to everyone who’s interested in collaborating with me. It changes over time. People ask questions on all sorts of things and I adapt my initial email to include all answers I can.

Feel free to copy/cut/paste/tear apart/rehash for use anywhere for yourself. I figure it’s helpful to see how people run collaborations.

Dear Sir/Madam/Alien/Demon/Puppdawg

(Something personal to each collaborator goes in this space, and then…)

The Goal

I’m trying to break up my constant telling of my own tales by bringing in a Sunday collab in which readers submit their own fearful tales. I love what I do, I just want to mix it up a bit. As for yourself, I’m hoping this will be a fun jaunt into the Fears world for yourself and give you a bit of exposure (urgh, the E word!).

The Collab

I’d love for you to write a story up to 512 characters long. I’ll draw the panel and make a video for the story. I post it to the LittleFears.co.uk and share it across all my social media. I’ll include links to your blog or social media of your choosing in every post.

The Story

There’s no specific genre I would like. Humor, kooky, philosophical and horror all fit. Whether it has a punchline or not, if you could imagine it being an episode of the Twilight Zone, Outer Limits or Black Mirror, then your spot on.

The length should be under 512 characters. It’s not an arbitrary limit. But I’m hoping this can be fast and fun for both of us. No 12 page essays are required.

You’re more than welcome to use my characters or make up your own. The only characters that I do not want a story written for are Copper and Iron because they’re part of an ongoing story.

Once it’s written, get it over to me via email, social media direct message or however else you fancy.

The Image & Video

I’ll then draw up a panel for the story and email it to you. If you’re happy with it, I’ll make a video. I’ll email you the audio along with social media specific panels (such as a Pinterest long image). If everything is good with you, we’ll get onto posting.

The Scheduling & Post

When all the contents made and agreed we can decide what Sunday we want to post it. If you want to post the story, image and video on your blog too, we can schedule a specific time and synchronize the posting with links to each other’s posts.

In the post, I’ll include a link to your blog/social media of choice. When the story is posted, I’ll share it across all of my social media with links to you in everyone. My total audience is about 80k followers and subscribers, so I’ll hope you get a bit of exposure from it (urgh, the E word again!).

If you would like to include a link to my site or share the post across your platforms, that’d be awesome, but certainly not required.

The Next Bit

If you’re up for this, please do let me know and start writing a story. Again, any questions, queries or anything else, please do drop me a line and a query.

Thanks

Peter

Phew, right. I hope ya’ll learned something. Hey, if you did learn something super helpful, you can buy me a cuppa tea on my Ko-Fi page. The Little Fears are fueled by tea, and without it, we can’t survive.

Not being melodramatic… Honest…

LINK! https://ko-fi.com/E1E6DSNP

Cheers. Erm. /endpost?

Thanks to Warren for the $10 Patronage.

Money Days

March 12, 2019 LittleFears23 Comments

Brass Ep. 46

Glass shards and sculpted steel reached up out of the ground. Clawing upwards towards the sign for the financial district.

Broken screens ticked from within what remained of the buildings. Mannequins stood beneath the screens. Papers in hands, and endless cry for more money.

Iron spotted the sign for the stock market. She wondered if they sold chicken, beef or vegetable broths.

Soup is a staple for the frugal, like me. My soup is roughly 1 500 g bag of broth. 2.5 kettles of water. 4 chopped carrots. 4 chopped onions. 4 vegetable stock cubes and 4 tablespoons Bistro veg gravy. I freeze it in bowls and heat them in the microwave. It provides between 16-20 bowls.

I follow a lot of vegetarian food blogs, and sometimes, I do wish posts could be as short as that. I get that your mums, cousins, twice removed niece is coming for the holidays from the Bahamas. I understand she’s bringing her cat, Floofoo who’s hypoallergenic and once had the mumps. And I totally agree that the new DeviantArt eclipse is awesome.

But I don’t need sixteen paragraphs of it before you tell me a recipe for simple soda bread. For love of all that is good and natural, learn some conciseness people!

Thanks to Warren for the $10 Patronage.

Collaborations

March 10, 2019 LittleFears46 Comments

I’m hoping you’ve all noticed I’ve had a guest/collaboration every Sunday for the last month. It’s something I’d like to continue. It’s an enjoyable break from my own work for me and folks seem to like hearing readings and seeing doodles of their own stories.

We love horror, humour and weird stuff. Think of Christopher Lee and Lucille Ball having a child. In a haunted house. In the Twilight Zone. With a laugh track stuck on ‘groan’.

I always give full credit and link backs to anyone who does a story for me. I also send a pile of artwork/audio/social media friendly things back to whoever writes us a post. If you’re interested in writing a story for the Fears, ~~leave me a comment below or~~ drop me an email to fears@gmx.co.uk and I can get the specifics of what’s needed over to you.

Recent collaborations:

Knife Skill by Silk

Iron Nick by Peter

The Swing by Alex

Olivia’s Tree by Layne

Masked Sin by Jay

Next week, we have a story by me with art by Dee.

How do I sign this post off?..

Stay spooky!

That’ll do.

Thanks to Warren for the $10 Patronage.

Basic skills ain’t basic

March 4, 2019 LittleFears6 Comments

That right there is my original drawing of Fuen. Drawn into a little Gusti Leber pad with a black Posca pen and Tippex for the white.

I took the image into GIMP, a free image editing program on PC and Mac. I isolated the doodle. Then put her everywhere.

She’s featured on the front of my first book, January (link! amzn.to/2Evv4Cb ). She’s sold on art-prints (link! etsy.me/2sHiY3a ). She’s been on t-shirts, with an extra hand and mug added (link! littlefears.threadless.com ).

It’s a simple skill. Dead easy! I taught a Skillshare lesson on it while practising my screen recording. How to convert a hand-drawn doodle into a digital graphic. (link! skl.sh/2G40lMs ).

It currently has 237 students with 100% review.

Wait… What? You mean this simple skill isn’t common knowledge? This silly little course is helpful and well rated? Huh… Who’d of thunk it…

But hey, there’s a lesson there right. Sometimes, if you work really hard, you too can be a sunflower.

No, wait, that’s not it…

If you put a character everywhere, you can fill a blog post with stupid amounts of links (link! littlefears.co.uk/?p=8458 ).

No… That’s still not it…

It’s something more like, we all have little skills we take for granted. Try putting them out there.

Also, this course is a premium course. Except for the next 48 hours. For the next 48 hours, it’s free. FREE! Enrol in the course, for free, any time before Wednesday evening and it’s free for life.

Link!… skl.sh/2G40lMs

Good grief that was a lot of links….

Shout out to Bob, the Penguin for buying me another cuppa ko-fi yesterday and thanks to Warren for the $10 Patronage.

Growls

February 26, 2019 LittleFears10 Comments

T-shirt Tuesday is becoming a thing here on the Fears…

OK, one thing I’ve been trying to do with my Threadless store is mix up the designs a bit. Rather than just straight up characters I wanted something more t-shirty. I have three new ones this week along with Spiders, that was released a few weeks back but never got announced.

Want to see what else I have on my Threadless store? Hit the link to the see our tees from $15. https://littlefears.threadless.com/

Thanks to Warren for the $10 Patronage.