writing – Page 22 – Little Fears

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.

Mods’n’Codders

March 18, 2019 LittleFears16 Comments

Brass Ep. 50

Metallic fish were strewn across the street outside the chip shop. Iron nudged the handlebars of a motorcycle with her nose. ‘Triumph’ embossed on the petrol tank. The rest of the bike had sunk into the dirt road.

“On Fridays, two shoals of robot fish riding motorcycles or mopeds would come here and have a dust-up,” sighed Copper.

Iron dug around the tank. As she loosened the soil what was let of the bike sunk below ground level. Copper pulled Iron away from the sinking vehicle.

“It was very seventies,” she continued. “Codrophenia.”

Thanks to Warren for the $10 Patronage.

Conference

March 17, 2019 LittleFears26 Comments

Painting by Dee

“Hey there Fears,” said Sprite. “Back from the conference?”

“Yeah,” grumbled Lucy.

“Don’t sound very happy,” pointed out Spectre. “Was everything alright?”

“Fine, fine,” replied Yuffie.

“It’s just…” pondered Fuen, “the hotel took our wake up call a bit seriously…”

“Oh, aye?” chuckled Sprite.

“Yeah,” moaned Clouds. “At 6 am, the manager knocked on our doors and yelled ‘what are you doing with your life?'”

Painting by Dee of deesdailyjournal.wordpress.com Check out Dee’s blog for her (not quite daily) poetry. Thanks for the paintin, Dee!

Thanks to Warren for the $10 Patronage.

Attic Space

March 15, 2019 LittleFears11 Comments

Brass Ep. 49

They passed a building that had no roof. Iron recalled a story from this corner of town. Eight women built a rocket in their attics over the course of six years. They wrote a book about their exploits, sales of which went through the roof.

The ladies managed to get their rocket launched. Unfortunately, they never returned. It was presumed, they were loft in space.

Man, I still feel awkward with the ‘through the roof’ punchline. It doesn’t matter how far detached you get from the original joke, it’s always there at the back of ya mind.

Thanks to Warren for the $10 Patronage.

Spider Bot

March 13, 2019 LittleFears26 Comments

Brass Ep. 47

Iron marvelled at the multicoloured liquids bottles inside the window. Every colour she could imagine. Deep reds; Berry purples; Sunset yellow; Burnt orange; Apple green. She was in awe. Cocktails from around the world preserved inside.

“I think I knew the barmaid, a hulking great spider robot,” pondered Copper.

Iron raised up on her hind legs, front claws against the window to get a better look of the inside.

“She quit bar work,” continued Copper, “and become a web developer.”

Sorry for the squiffy posting times this last week. In-laws went down with lung and heart troubles. Been in and out of the hospital and looking after the fam at their home. The missus has moved back in with her mum for a bit while I double down on work to pay the bills while she’s a full-time carer.

If you fancy helping her out while she’s giving up work to look after the family, check out her Society6 store: society6.com/donnamariestrachan

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.

Single Leg

March 11, 2019 LittleFears14 Comments

They paused outside the Drunk Duck brewery. Copper knelt next to a dismantled robot and stroked its forehead.

Iron noticed the brewery’s robot seemed to have been designed with only one leg. She figured it had been in charge of hops.

Copper stood up and continued walking. It was then Iron noticed Copper’s mismatched backplate with a faded duck logo.

Do you like Copper and Iron so much you want to hang them on your wall? Awesome. Let me help you with that!

Copper and Iron are available on my Etsy store. Linky: etsy.me/2sHiY3a

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.