This post deals with two writing competitions with the same deadline – 1st July. One is a short story competition, and the other is a novel competition where the first round requires submitting the opening 5000 words.
Historical Writers’ Association: Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition
The annual HWA Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Competition is open to submissions. The entries must be historical fiction. Word limit: 3500. Entry fee: £5. Deadline: July 1st. More information here:
From the website: We close to entries at midnight GMT on 1st July 2026. If you are entering from overseas, please note the competition opening and closing times are based on GMT (UK) time.
You can enter as many novels as you like. But each novel fee is £29. You can enter novels previously submitted in previous years.
From the website: The ONLY worldwide prize offering feedback to EVERY single entry for no extra cost.
Also from the website:
Please submit the first 5,000 words of your novel followed by a 500 word synopsis on the SAME document so that the synopsis is pasted directly underneath your 5,000 words and headed ‘Synopsis.’ Please include plot spoilers in your synopsis. Your synopsis will not be published or discussed at any time.
Please note: if you get through to the longlist, you will be asked for another 15,000 words.
If you get through to the short list, you will be asked to submit the entire novel. Please check the timeline in the entry rules.
While I’ve mentioned some of the rules here, please check the competition guidelines and rules and don’t rely on this post.
I sent this out originally from my Substack newsletter. If you’re interested in receiving emails on editing and writing topics, you can sign up here:
I’ve written posts in the past relating to how to research your novel locations online, and also how to avoid certain location problems in your fiction. In this post I wanted to address the specific topic of researching historical locations for your novel. I’ve touched on some tools for this before, but only in passing. The larger topic was left to a future post – which I’ve finally sat down to write!
Travel writing
If your novel is set in the 20th century or very late 19th century, you have the advantage of accessing travel guides from the period. In fact, the German publisher Baedeker started publishing travel guides in 1832. They also published in English and French. If you’ve watched or read A Room With a View, you might recall references to Baedeker from the English tourists in the story/film.
Some of these old books can be bought secondhand. I have travel guides from the late 1920s for Berlin, London, Paris, and Northern Italy.
How to Be Happy in Berlin by John Chancellor
How to Be Happy in Paris by John Chancellor
London 1929 – Illustrated guidebooks published by Wardlock & CoS
Muirhead’s Northern Italy – The Blue Guides
These books contain a treasure trove of information and advice on places and events like markets which no longer exist. Some districts in London and Berlin were badly damaged in the war.
Indeed, in the case of Berlin, you have a city bombed, and then subject to partition, with a wall running through the city and a no man’s land in between the inner and outer wall. This left tenements and even an old major railway station in limbo, abandoned.
The map that folds out from the inside back cover of How to Be Happy in Berlin represents a city that no longer exists in the same form. Rebuilding after the war, empty lots left derelict for many years, the wall, and finally the post-reunification building programme has changed the city to the point where areas around the old Potsdamer Platz, for example, would be unrecognisable to a Weimar-era Berliner.
That’s why a map of late Weimar Berlin is so valuable for anyone writing a novel set in that period. It’s fascinating to look at, and you can also cross-reference the map information with photo searches online. I have a book of photos of Berlin in this period. But there are images online and videos on the likes of YouTube.
Travel guide information
While you don’t want to overload your narrative with too much unnecessary information, travel guides provide useful snippets like the price of a taxi, the various railway stations for different destinations (which station do you take in Berlin for the boat train back to Britain), restaurant and food information, etc. Want to know the restaurants near Potsdamer Platz, just so you can throw in a real place? How to Be Happy in Berlin provides a list and the average price. It also goes into the different cabarets and nightlife. Just in case your characters are having a night on the town.
You can also deduce social customs of the period – some cabarets didn’t allow girls (women) to enter the main establishment unless they were accompanied by a male. According to John Chancellor, the girls therefore hung around the bar, waiting for a male to take them through the ‘magic door that leads to the lights and the champagne‘. He also assures us that the German girl is not ‘a fat, stolid and stupid wench‘. No, Berlin girls are fine girls!
They also include warnings about places to avoid or what not to do (because the locals don’t like it).
My Italian guidebook, once owned by someone called Dorothy in 1924 (because she pencilled it inside the book), has passages she’s underlined warning of dangers to tourists. Or perhaps someone else underlined them for her, as an example of what to watch out for.
Dorothy left some evidence of her holiday in the guide – a pencilled itinerary, and a small flier for a Venetian shop (whose address I tracked down on Google Street View – only to find the shop is no longer there and something else occupies the building).
Yes, old travel guides, when used with Google Street View, can turn into fascinating rabbit holes, where you can spend all day checking out what those old places look like now. Some addresses and streets will obviously be gone. While some street names will be changed.
I also have this Regency A-Z of London, which I found in a used bookshop many years ago:
You can also check out diaries. If you want to know about an eighteenth century masquerade ball in London, you could check out Fanny Burney’s diaries. If you want to check out the opera in Italy, read Casanova’s diaries.
Diaries and letters can tell you a lot, including descriptions of old eighteenth century pleasure gardens, the entertainments there, and the kinds of people who visited.
One of my historical novel clients had her characters visit these places, as well as real period shops, etc. While you can just make things up, it’s fun to throw in actual places.
If you’re researching via history books on specific locations, you’ll often find they reference primary sources like diaries, letters, and other accounts. Don’t ignore these – they can be tracked down online and downloaded if they’re in the public domain.
I have a book called Glasgow in 1901 by James Hamilton Muir which likely has its foreign equivalents – it’s a tour of the city, with plenty of details and descriptions.
Period journalism can also be a great source of information on location and social custom. I have a book on Glasgow called Midnight Scenes and Social Photographs: Being Sketches of Life in the Streets, Wynds and Dens of the City. It’s from 1858. It contains interactions with some of the poorest people, and one account describes someone lying in a basement under blankets because they shared clothing with someone else who had gone out.
These are details many modern authors wouldn’t even think to include.
The book also includes sensory information from the author about smells, etc.
Paintings and sketches
Pre-photography, our main visual reference point for locations is art. I collect books on Glasgow history, and the earlier periods are represented by artists’ renderings of the city. This shows the development of the city over time, the disappearance of rural areas as the city expanded and gobbled up more territory. It also shows old bridges, old building styles, and women standing in the Clyde washing laundry before the river was later deepened in the nineteenth century for shipping.
All of this will also apply to other cities and towns in the UK and other countries.
Sometimes artists were commissioned to record a location. Later photographers would be commissioned by some cities and towns.
Photography and film
The photographic record starts in the 1840s. For a city like Paris, this allows the modern viewer to see Paris before it was redeveloped by Haussmann. The old rickety buildings had not yet been replaced by the Parisian terraces we think of today. One of my historical novel clients wrote about this city around the time some of the new builds were up while other slum areas still existed. You can read my interview with her in which we discuss her research.
The city of Glasgow commissioned photographer Thomas Annan to record the old slum district next to the High Street and the old Jacobean university college, before they were demolished. The old tenements would have been more sanitary before the industrial age, when the tenants had a free run down to the river, but boxed in during the industrial age, and crowded out by Irish and Highland immigrants, they had fallen into ruin.
The celluloid record in terms of moving film starts in the 1890s, and is another useful source of information. Fiction films shot on location can show a lot of background detail. You can even cross-reference a street sign on a city building with your period map, allowing you to build a picture of that district if it’s a significant location in your novel.
Fiction films often have fascinating backdrops, but you can also look to documentary film. If you’re interested in late Weimar Berlin, I recommend People on Sunday, which is an invaluable insight into the lives of young people in the city.
Genealogical and other records
Don’t forget to check out the following:
census records (which have fascinating references to professions that no longer exist and which can show the social makeup of a tenement or district
Parish records (pre-census in the UK)
valuation rolls are another record in Scotland – I can’t comment on anywhere else
Post Office directories
Cemeteries and gravestones
Old newspapers and magazines (another rabbit hole!)
ordinance survey maps
Novels, poetry and songs
Period novels are always a useful source of information. I also have a book of bawdy English songs which likely includes little social details about the various periods. Likewise, the poetry of Jonathan Swift has thrown up some juicy details, even when he’s being downright cutting. Check out the link to his poem below!
Researching for historical fiction can lead to going down endless rabbit holes. So while research can help bring your historical world to life, it’s important to remember that much of the information you find is not something to include in your novel.
However, understanding the location, the social customs there, the prices of things, the venues, and the social demographics, can help you and your characters navigate your period world more realistically. Sometimes all you need is a tiny detail, mentioned in passing.
It’s best not to info dump, but you can impart information in a less obvious way that helps your reader immerse themself in the story. Remember to include sensory information. The past, for example, didn’t always smell very nice, but you also have visual textures, noises (carriage wheels on cobblestones), and more.
Some writers research as they go along, and others research up front, before they even start. In the case of the latter, the danger is in delaying the writing of the story for too long. Research can be very seductive. It pays to exercise restraint and remember the purpose of the research – it’s not a form of procrastination! It is meant to serve the novel, not provide a useful avoidance technique for never starting your book.
There is more to be said about historical research. I might keep some for another post. In the meantime…
Are you a historical novelist looking for feedback?
I have worked on novels set in the following periods:
Paleo period – with mammoths and cave lions, etc!
18th century
19th century
20th century
World War Two
I particularly like 18th century onwards, though I do have a substantial collection of 17th century history books. And I’m not averse to the medieval period either!
I am currently open for manuscript critiques and developmental edits. One of my historical novel clients sent me a very long and detailed outline of her book to edit first, before she went on to write it. Outline critiques are also a service I provide – I can also include useful recommendations on books or documentaries/films that might be useful.
I write a weekly post on Substack, usually on a Monday or Tuesday. These posts are sometimes blogs I’ve posted here, which you can receive directly in your inbox. Sometimes they are newsletters or announcements featuring writing competitions I’ve heard about. You can sign up below.
I recently started a fiction Substack. I’d been meaning to do it before and just never got round to it. It was partly because I had a huge backlog of writing going back decades. I couldn’t make up my mind where to start with it. This also held me back in writing anything new. Developmental editing work also got in the way.
The reason I finally decided to open the second Substack was that I hoped that in starting to get stories off my computer, done and dusted as it were, I might free up mental space for where my writing focus really needed to be.
Funnily enough, within posting two stories, my brain started to come up with story titles (without plots attached to them yet). Then after a few more postings, the creative engine in my brain was running and I had completely new ideas. The whole point was to break both the backlog and the deadlock with new writing. It might be too soon to say for sure if this will work, but posting does seem to help.
One of my stories also ended up on the Top in Fiction list for Issue 15.
Otherwise, I think having a little quiet corner of the internet helps. Especially given the constant distractions of social media.
Some of the stories I’ve posted there appeared elsewhere a long time ago. But far more have not. Ultimately, I have big novels I could serialise in due course, but I’m starting out with short stories for the time being.
Influx of fiction writers to Substack
That brings me to the influx of many new writers into Substack from other platforms. I’m seeing a lot of new fiction and non-fiction writers announcing their arrival in the notes section of the Substack app. Some people bemoan the newbies with large followings they’ve brought from elsewhere.
I’m also seeing complaints about “writing gurus” and editors posting articles – basically calling them grifters. Since the writers posting want to advertise their own writing, then I feel there’s an element of hypocrisy here. Especially since some of those so-called gurus and editors have been there longer.
But there are writing advice posts that seem to me unhelpful for those who write more intuitively. Not all writers are completely conscious of the decisions they make when writing, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. You need a certain objectivity later for polishing and editing, but some advice to me looks too much like micromanaging. Too much of this on different writing topics and it becomes overwhelming for newer writers.
Serialisation as a publishing option
Otherwise, I recently completed an outline critique for a client – 11,000 words of a novel outline including character profiles. I wrote a 4,000 word report and left loads of margin comments. The client was delighted.
Since she mentioned self-publishing as her goal, I added an option in the report I hadn’t included before – on serialisation on Substack or other platforms. If more fiction writers flock over here, it will obviously become a more viable option for those looking for readers. The normal self-publication route is the more obvious one, and many will see it as the best route. But it’s worth mentioning the alternatives if there are any.
Non-fiction writers and journalists have done well on Substack. It’s a site that caters to freelance journalism, supported by subscribers. Whether fiction will work so well on the same model remains to be seen. For the time being, mainstream and indie writing will continue to be the two main routes to readers. But with Substack and Ream (another serial fiction site), there is definitely a third option that could work for some people. It all depends on your goals.
I’ve done little to promote my fiction or non-fiction Substacks since my main blog is here on my site. But if you’re interested in checking out my fiction Substack, you will find it at the link below. And if you decide to join the site, feel free to follow or subscribe. My posts are free to read.
The art at the top is by Aleksandra at Fusion Dreams.
Looking for feedback on your novel or memoir?
If you need someone to take a look over your opening chapters, the whole novel, or your outline, feel free to email me at karen@indiecateditorial.com. I offer free 2000 word samples if you want to test drive my services. This does not apply to outlines or short stories since are much shorter to start with.
Brokeback Mountain was originally published in the New Yorker in a slightly shorter form on October 13th 1997. It would go on to win the National Magazine Award in 1998 and 3rd place in the O. Henry Prize. The longer version of the story appeared in the short story collection, Close Range: Wyoming Stories.
As a shorter piece of fiction, it was perfect for screen adaptation. Author and screenwriter Larry McMurtry said in an essay that: “I was the more stunned when I read ‘Brokeback Mountain’ because I realized it was a story that had been sitting there all my life, fifty-five years of which have been lived in the American West.” He described the writing as “Spare, wire-fence prose that is congruent with the landscape itself, and with the struggling, bruised speech still to be heard today across the north plains.“
Of course the story went on to become a famous film, though it took years. A story about ‘gay cowboys’ was not exactly Hollywood fare.
Author background
Annie Proulx was born in 1935 and wrote her first story at the age of 10 while sick with chicken pox. She has a B.A. and an M.A. in history.
In her essay, Getting Movied, she wrote: As a student of history and a writer of fiction my interest has focused on social and economic change in rural communities – Vermont, Newfoundland, Texas, Wyoming. I am something of a geographical determinist, believing that regional landscapes, climate and topography dictate local cultural traditions and kinds of work, and thereby the events on which my stories are built. Landscape is central to this rural fiction.
Birth of a story
Great story ideas often have simple beginnings. Brokeback Mountain was born when Proulx noticed a middle-aged man in a Wyoming bar who appeared to be watching the younger men playing pool. She noted something in his expression, a bitter longing, that made her think he might be ‘country gay’. This in turn led to her wondering what it might be like for a man like this in rural Wyoming.
A few weeks later, the author listened to a homophobic bar-cafe owner ranting on about two ‘homos’ who had come in the night before for dinner. If the regulars had been in that night, ‘it would have gone badly for them’.
Brokeback Mountain was built on the back of these experiences, the plot following two young country boys in a homophobic environment who also suffered from internalised homophobia themselves.
She chose the sixties as the time period which would give both characters the right background and experience. The characters were also not cowboys as such, though they longed for the cowboy life. Instead, they herded sheep (an animal looked down on by real cowboys), while neither later went on to be top hands. Even Jack’s rodeo riding never landed him success. Screenwriter McMurtry saw Jack and Ennis in the long American tradition of doomed young men, also seen in the likes of The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises.
Proulx would write the story over a period of roughly six months, going through more than sixty drafts. She did most of the ‘writing’ when she was driving. One curve in the road became the place where Ennis’s parents died in the story. The scene where Jack and Ennis meet up and kiss after four years came to her when she was driving past a cement plant of all places. To perfectly capture the scene where Ennis holds Jack and rocks him back and forth, she played a piece of music over and over. It was a very difficult scene to write and she wanted to nail it.
The story had several working titles before she settled on the final one: “The Pleasures of Whiskey Mountain,” “Bulldust Mountain,” “Swill-Swallow Mountain,” and “Drinkard Mountain”. They don’t seem quite right now. Brokeback Mountain was the right choice.
Location
Time and place are central to Brokeback Mountain. From the characters’ dialect (including Jack’s switch to some Texan pronunciations later), to their impoverished backgrounds, their direct interaction with nature and the mountain, and the social attitudes of their time.
In her essay Movied, Proulx talks about the importance of location. The mountain itself would force the two men together. It would also represent the happiest time of their lives. Their infrequent meetings in the following two decades would mostly take place in the wilderness. Away from the prying eyes of townsfolk, they could be themselves.
Weather is also important – the wind blows through the opening section of the story, where an older Ennis wakes up in his trailer, about to move on to a new location, but warmed by the dream he just had of Jack.
Prose Style
Brokeback Mountain is written in a compact and spare style where a single sentence can travel a long distance.
They were raised on small, poor ranches in opposite corners of the state, Jack Twist in Lightning Flat up on the Montana border, Ennis del Mar from around Sage, near the Utah line, both high school dropout country boys with no prospects, brought up to hard work and privation, both rough-mannered, rough-spoken, inured to the stoic life.
This is just one example of Proulx’s style, squeezing a lot of information into a single long sentence of several lines.
The story’s POV is also omniscient, though mostly seen from Ennis’s perspective. We get comments about the characters that could be the author or another character’s thoughts – such as when Joe Aguirre hires the two and after giving them their instructions, we’re told after his speech: Pair of deuces going nowhere.
Usually omniscient is best avoided, but it doesn’t seem to interfere with the narrative in this case.
Aftermath
The film was immensely popular and Proulx particularly felt Heath Ledger was the perfect Ennis. But the film would also trigger a huge amount of fan fiction, some of it quite explicit. Proulx would later claim she regretted writing the story owing to the manuscripts she received. Fans, usually men, would rewrite the ending, offering a happier outcome or even a new relationship for Ennis. This frustrated the author who felt the fans were missing the point of the story. It was not about Jack and Ennis but about destructive rural homophobia. Given the subject matter and period, a happy ending would be out of place. It would also miss the entire point of the closing lines of the story:
There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can’t fix it you’ve got to stand it.
Conclusion
Simple ideas can lead to powerful stories. Brokeback Mountain is a perfect example. I recommend the book below which includes essays from Annie Proulx herself as well as the two screenwriters. The full story and the screenplay are also included.
I post on my editing Substack once a week, sometimes less. If you sign up you will receive blog posts on writing and editing straight to your email inbox, plus occasional news of writing competitions.
