If you are a young writer who is looking for feedback on your work, showing your parents and friends is all very well but, unless they are writers, they won’t be able to give you the feedback you need to help you develop as a writer.
If you are serious about your writing craft, then join a local writing group. Look for one that specialises in your genre. If you’re writing speculative fiction (fantasy, SF and horror) then Visions Writers is great. They have an on-line group for everyone and meet in person in Brisbane city, so that’s handy if you live in South East Queensland. Grace Dugan joined the Vision group when she was 15 and went on to be published by Penguin.
The Queensland Writers Centre run a Young Adult Master Class series, specifically aimed at high school students who want to develop their writing skills.
It is also great to have goals and submitting to a competition is a good way to get motivated to finish the story. Who knows you might win or get noticed by the judges who are often editors. So there is the Somerset College novella competition. On the Ipswich Literary Festival site there is a list of writing competitions for people under 18. There is also the Voices on the Coast Literary Festival, which has competitions, although theirs is closed for this year.
And there are markets in Australia for spec Fic short stories. ASIM is a regular magazine which has a good turn around time for submissions. Here’s the guidelines. And here is the Specusphere web zine. And here is Inspillers which lists current markets, competitions, magazines
Here’s an Australian Spec Fic site with lots of news and reviews. If you want to know what’s doing well in Australia by Australian authors in this genre, take a look at the Aurealis Awards page.
And if you are interested in the craft of writing the ROR site run a writing craft post every Sunday, just put in requests. The latest one was on agents.
Lastly, if you are keen to write, talk to your school or local library about bringing a published author in to run workshops. The Redlands libraries have had me run three workshops in the last month, How to write a Book Proposal, Writing Dark Urban Fantasy and Pitching your Book.
Writers are a friendly supportive bunch. We are all united by a passion for writing and our love of the genre. Feel free to ask questions.
I can’t really put into words my gratitude for this, so I hope that “Thank you very, very, very much” suffices!
Hi Fletcher, happy to help out.
I work with young people at Qantm, helping them develop story and an understanding of narrative.
Drop by the ROR blog and have a look at the writing craft posts.
Best of luck with your writing.