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'These darkly comic tales place the author snugly between Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett. Be sure: Chris Fielden is one funny feller.' Allen Ashley, British Fantasy Award winner.
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Author Talks & Presentations

Quick links on this page:

about chris - about chris's talks - testimonials - book chris

I travel the world** as a guest speaker, running writing workshops and undertaking talks and presentations about writing for literary festivals, schools, colleges, universities, writing groups and any other fine establishment that will have me, as long as they feed me copious quantities of tea and cake.

If you're interested in me doing a talk for you, please get in touch.

Author Talk Presentation

Chris Fielden, doing a presentation on short story writing for Rushmoor Writers

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Chris's Background, Credentials & Experience

Author

I'm an award winning short story author. I've been published in magazines, short story competition anthologies, books, newspapers and online many times. My stories have been performed at reading events and on the radio.

How To Write A Short Story Book

I've written about my experiences in a book called How To Write A Short Story, Get Published & Make Money.

How to Write a Short Story, Get Published and Make Money

The book uses my published short stories as case studies, clearly showing the reader how I used the advice I give to see my work in print. The book includes comments from editors and competition judges and shows the reader exactly how much I've been paid for my writing, setting realistic expectations using real-life examples.

The book has been an Amazon bestseller in the both the Publishing and Writing Reference categories.

How To Write A Short Story Amazon Best Seller

You can learn more about the book here.

Other Books

I've also written books on self-publishing and a thriller called Wicked Game. All of them sell well on Amazon. I always talk very openly about how I market and sell the books when I speak at events.

You can learn more about my books here.

My Website

I run this blog. It currently attracts between 25,000 and 35,000 visitors a month. My email list has 3,000 subscribers. Over 250,000 writers from all over the world regularly use the website each year. I now write and run my website fulltime.

Competitions & Writing Challenges

I regularly publish short stories through my To Hull & Back humorous short story competition and through the writing challenges I run in support of charity. I also regularly publish guest posts by other writers on my website.

To date, I have published hundreds of authors' work. This is likely to become thousands over the next couple of years.

Proof Reading

I offer a popular proofreading/editing service and have lots of experience in critiquing other writers' short stories.

Learn More About Chris

You can learn a lot more about me on my about page.

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Christopher Fielden Speaking at Chipping Norton Literary Festival

Christopher Fielden Speaking at ChipLitFest (Chipping Norton Literary Festival)

About My Talks, Presentations & Workshops

I can tailor my presentations and writing workshops to your requirements.

The kind of things I can cover are:

  • Fiction writing
    • Short story writing
    • Flash fiction writing
    • Writing competitions
    • Market research and submitting for publication
    • Self-publishing
    • Many other aspects of fiction writing
  • Blogging / running a website
    • How to make money from your blog / website
    • Key points you need to consider when setting up a website
    • Identifying your audience
    • Creating content your audience will find useful
    • Marketing and promotion
    • Many other aspects of running a website (this list could contain hundreds of bullet points if I don't stop now)
  • Writing workshops
    • Fun writing exercises/tasks
    • Writing quizzes
    • Guarenteed publication (via my writing challenges)
    • Story performance (the importance of reading events)
    • Many other fun activities

To give you an idea of what to expect, at fiction writing presentations I usually talk through key points writers need to understand, to give their work the best chance of being published.

The talks are usually broken down into sections, like this:

1. Introduction

I talk briefly about my background and experience, so listeners understand why I'm qualified to be a guest speaker.

2. Judging

I run the popular To Hull & Back humorous short story competition. It offers large cash payments to the winners and one of the most sought after and unique prizes in modern literature. Around 300 entries are submitted to the competition each year from writers all over the world.

I talk about the common mistakes I see writers make through judging the competition, and share some surprising statistics regarding how many writers fail to obey the rules or understand the terms and conditions when they enter.

3. Writing

In this part of the presentation I cover many aspects of 'what it is' to be a writer and the things you need to consider when writing a story for publication.

Topics discussed include:

  • market research
  • planning
  • keep it simple (especially relevant for short story writing)
  • common mistakes I see when proof reading
  • 'show don't tell' and other writing tips that are widely regarded as best practice
  • using profanity in stories
  • using humour in stories
  • constructive criticism
  • and much more...

All of the above is based on my real-life experience as a published writer.

4. Publishing

I speak about the importance of allocating time to marketing and publishing an author's stories.

This includes:

  • marketing
  • submitting to competitions
  • approaching publishers
  • biographies and author pictures
  • self-publishing
  • running a website
  • and more...

Again, all the information is based on real-life experience.

5. Questions

I invite questions and input from the audience throughout my talks, but cover most queries at the end.

Chris Fielden, presenting to creative writing students

Christopher Fielden, presenting to creative writing students at St. Brendan's 6th Form College in Bristol

Writing Resources

After the event, I share my PowerPoint presentation with everyone who attended. It contains links to lots of useful writing resources.

Things I've Previously Added To Writing Workshops

Writing Exercises

At previous talks, I've included flash fiction exercises for the attendees to try out. I usually base these on the writing challenges I run.

The nice thing about that is that every story written is published, by me, in support of charity. This means attendees can become published authors by partaking in the exercises at the event. I publish the stories on my website and in professional books in print and eBook format.

Short Story Examples

I've also been asked to go through some examples of successful short stories at events. In the past, I've send out copies of stories that have won the To Hull & Back short story competition for attendees to read prior to the event. I then talk about why they won.

Do You Need More Information?

If there is anything else you would like to know about my author presentations, please contact me.

Chris Fielden Reading at the Flash Fiction Festival

Chris Fielden, presenting at the inaugural Flash Fiction Festival in Bath

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Testimonials

Below is a review by Christopher Berry, the Club Chairman of Rushmoor Writers (I did a presentation for his writing group in October 2016). The comment is taken from a Facebook post the day after the event:

"Massive thank you to author Christopher Fielden for coming to speak to Rushmoor Writers this evening. He gave an insightful, engaging and useful presentation about writing and selling short stories. Bloody nice chap too :-)"

Chris Fielden at an Author Talk

Chris pictured with Rushmoor Writers after his presentation

I received this note by email from Sarah Forbes, English Teacher at St. Brendan's Sixth Form College in Bristol, UK.

"Thank you so much for coming in on Monday and talking to us - the students found your talk really useful and will definitely be having a go at some of the writing challenges."

Student Presentation

Chris, talking through the strengths and weaknesses of his published short story 'Death of a Superhero'

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Book Chris

If you would like to book me for an event, either use the comments form below or visit my contact page for my email address, phone number and physical address.

You can see a calendar of the events I am speaking or performing at on my about page.

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Foot Note

** Well, I'd like to... at the moment it's just the UK or other countries via Skype, but I'd be happy to travel further afield.

UPDATE July 2017: I've recently been booked to present in Thailand in 2018, so 'world traveller' can now be used as an accurate description :-)

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Graham J
Chris. Hello. I hope all is well. I wonder if you can help or point me in the right direction.

One of our aims is to encourage young writers. To this end we offer a free critique for any writer under 13 and for 13 to 16 we charge a nominal fee of £3. We have an expert in children's writing that does these critiques and they are all very well received by the authors, but the take up rate is very low. I would like to increase the take up substanrtially. Any thoughts on how we could do this?

Chris Fielden
Hi Graham. In my experience, the best thing to do is to get in touch with local schools and colleges that offer creative writing courses and start there. It depends on the teacher and budgets they have available, but that’s how I’ve done presentations in schools and colleges in the past. Once you have some local experience, it’s easier to get involved with other schools outside your area. Word of mouth kicks in too.

Lots of schools are part of umbrella groups now, that run many of schools. So they are good to approach too. For example, in my local area, there is the Lighthouse Schools Partnership.

Unfortunately, the government (in their infinite wisdom) are axing creative writing from the curriculum soon. So that might have a negative impact on what you’re doing. On the other hand, it could increase the interest in it, as it’s no longer freely available in schools.

I hope that’s helpful and wish you the best of luck with your project - it sounds like a great idea to me :-)

Mary A
Hi Chris. I am a member of the Society of Medical Writers. It would be great if you could do a workshop for us at our spring symposium, on a Wednesday in April or May (please don't be in Thailand...) on the subject of getting published!

I look forward to hearing from you. all the best.

Chris Fielden
That sounds fabulous, Mary. I have availability then. I will give you a call shortly :-)

Jennifer E
Dear Chris, thank you for the phenomenally good site - the best place to find information on writing competitions I've seen. The formatting and links are accessible and user friendly. You could give lessons in how it should be done.

Chris Fielden
Thanks, Jennifer - glad you like the site.

I guess I could... I do talks quite regularly now, but they tend to be about fiction writing, as that's what I get asked to talk about.

But the website side of it (how to make it work, how to make money from it etc.) is also really interesting. Well, I think it is. Actually, I'll add that into the details of presentations I can undertake - thanks for the suggestion :-)

Pauline H
Hi Chris. Just a rather belated thank you for the excellent workshops that you ran recently at the NAWG Fest.I thoroughly enjoyed them; your delivery style was relaxed, humorous and informative, and  I enjoyed your story, which I think was from Alternate Afterlives.

What a gem this website is...and in the words of Arnie..."I'll be back!" Regards, Pauline

Chris Fielden
Hi Pauline, thank you for your message - very much appreciated. It was lovely to meet you and all the other NAWG members at NAWG fest. All the very best to you :)