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There are some very cool opportunities in April -- and some I'd never heard of until recently, such as the Lake Forest College Emerging Writer's Residency (April 1) and the New Michigan Press / DIAGRAM Chapbook Contest (April 30). Old standbys include the Thurber Prize for American Fiction (April 1), the Crab Orchard Review Literary Contests (April 30), and the Dylan Thomas Centre Dylan Prize (April 30), and more. Check out the full list for other contests and residencies.

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For some people, plot does come naturally, but more of us benefit from studying the basic elements -- which, sadly, most fiction workshops don't seem to cover. By mastering the basics of plot, you deliver a satisfying experience to your readers and arm yourself with the tools you'll need to tell more complicated stories. Begin thinking about plot with this short article on...

This week I've been corresponding with a writer about settings. She had asked for feedback on her wedding cake story, and my initial response was confusion: I didn't know where the characters were. It got me thinking about the importance of setting, and the difficulties of establishing it in a very short story. How do we successfully establish a sense of place without writing...

For the March challenge, write a poem, prose poem, or short-short story from the point of view of an historical figure. The phrase "historical figure" may be taken broadly -- anyone from Nicholas I to Nellie Bly's mom is fair game. Be as creative as you'd like.

I was thinking of the poems of Norman Dubie when I devised this challenge, but please share other examples of works...

If you like lists -- and the Guardian's book section -- you'll definitely want to see the dos and don'ts for fiction writers they collected from authors such as Margaret Atwood, Colm Tóibín, Jonathan Franzen, and Neil Gaiman. While it can be a bit overwhelming to read so many admonitions at once ("Don't have children." "It's doubtful that anyone with...

It's hard to believe February's almost over, and that there's only one week left for the "Wedding Cake in the Middle of the Road" writing challenge. I had hoped for 23 submissions, the number of stories in the original anthology, and we've long surpassed that number. Some exciting ...

Yesterday the University of Rochester announced the finalists for its 2010 fiction translation award on its site, Three Percent (named for the percentage of books published in the U.S. each year that are translations). The contest, like the site, hopes to inspire greater support for works in translation, with the idea that "reading literature from other...

A wider range of Valentine's Day stories would be hard to come by than those on offer in the February writing portfolio. The writing prompt for this month comes from an exercise created by NPR host Susan Stamberg and novelist George Garrett for a radio series in the early 1990s. For the series, they charged six authors with the task of writing a short story using the...