Helen Garner, Diana Reid, Nam Le and others: Australian books to look forward to in 2024

Writing Skills - Creative And Narrative Writing

A short story needs to be compelling to read and to be this it needs to be given an effective structure. Like all texts, stories also have their own basic 'recipe' called 'genre conventions'. Here is a typical story structure that will help you to keep your own story moving through different stages in a compelling way – and help make sure you don't accidentally ramble on!

Opening

This part of your story must work to engage your reader, beginning to absorb them into your 'story-world'. You should aim to hook the reader into the story with the 'plot hook'. Whether you choose to start the story by giving the end away just like Shakespeare did in his play Romeo and Juliet; or you start in the middle of lots of action; or even with very little action at all, you will definitely need to start in a way that hooks your reader – and do so pretty quickly.

Example

Can you find the 'plot hook'?

It was a brilliant summer's day smack in the middle of the school holidays. It was my birthday, too. I was ten. You can imagine I was feeling that life couldn't get much better than this: warm weather, holidays, a bar of chocolate all to myself, a bunch of texts from my mates to answer, and being driven with mum and dad to Twycross Zoo. They knew just how much I loved animals and the chimps there were always my favourites. What could possibly go wrong? That day any thoughts of problems weren't even a distant cloud on the horizon of my sunny mind.

The 'plot hook' in this example is 'What could possibly go wrong?'.

Setting

Establish the time and place, as well as the general situation. This can also be used to help develop a suitable mood or atmosphere. It can sometimes help to use a familiar place that your reader can relate to in some way. At this stage, you need to 'set up' the story and begin to introduce the main character(s).

Fiction trigger (or inciting incident)

Use your narrator to tell of an incident or event that the reader feels will spark a chain of events. This helps make the reader feel that the story has really started. From this point, life cannot be quite the same for your main character (that is your protagonist). There is a problem that has to be faced and overcome.

The fiction trigger can be an event that really starts the story. It will develop from the 'plot hook'. If the story is about a day out at the zoo, then maybe an animal has escaped. If it is about a robbery, it might be the event that makes a character consider carrying out a robbery; and if it is about an accident, it will be the event that causes it to happen.

Keeping up the momentum (plot development or rising action)This section builds the tension – keeps the reader absorbed and guessing where it will all lead.

This is where you will move the story forward and will use lots of techniques to keep the reader guessing, 'What will happen next?!'

Climax

The problem reaches a head, with suspense creating lots of tension for the reader– showing the reader the possible result of what has come before.

This is not the end of your story – not quite. It will be the key event but your protagonist will, somehow, overcome it and all will be well.

Conclusion (the resolution)

This must leave your reader with a sense of satisfaction, or it could be a twist in the tale leaving questions that linger in the mind.

This is the ending of your story – where all loose ends are tied up to the satisfaction of the reader. A good story will cause the reader to go, 'Hmm – I liked that' or even 'Wow'

By following this story structure, and planning under each of the above headings, you should be able to come up with a tense plot for your own story, one that will engage and absorb your reader.

Is Fashion Entering A Vibe Shift?

One of the crucial truths about fashion is that it's constantly moving forward. Its present is never the actual present but rather an idea of what the present might look like six months into the future. What anchors the constant cycle of newness is that its main characters, among them many of the creative directors at Europe's heritage labels, are often in place for long periods. Since 2023, however, the industry has experienced massive turnover, with new creative directors being named—or about to be named—at more than 10 labels, including Alessandro Michele at Valentino, Seán McGirr at Alexander McQueen, Chemena Kamali at Chloé, Sabato de Sarno at Gucci, Pharrell Williams at Louis Vuitton men's, Peter Hawkings at Tom Ford, and Adrian Appiolaza at Moschino. A successor has yet to be named for Bruno Sialelli at Lanvin, and Matthew M. Williams at Givenchy, whose departures from their respective labels were confirmed last year. Perhaps the most surprising news of the year so far was Dries Van Noten's announcement that he would be exiting the label he founded in 1986, with a replacement to be named later this year. The industry reacted with heartfelt tributes to a man who, for almost 40 years, helped build the wardrobes of proudly independent women who held secretly romantic notions about dressing. The writing is on the wall—we're entering a fashion vibe shift.

Creative-director positions at big labels can sometimes seem to be nothing more than a game of musical chairs, in which a title at one place is exchanged for a title at another—and indeed that was the case for Michele, who enjoyed a two-year break full of speculation before his new job was announced. But this latest round of appointments consists almost completely of designers emerging from behind-the-scenes positions. (Williams, the world-famous multihyphenate celebrity designer, is the exception.)

Seán McGirr was the first outsider designer chosen as creative director of Alexander McQueen after Sarah Burton's departure late last year.

Photo: Courtesy of Alexander McQueen

Fashion designer Chemena Kamali at the Chloé fall 2024 show

Photo: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

Dries Van Noten surprised the fashion world when he announced he would be retiring by the end of this year.

Photo: Thierry Chesnot/Getty Images

Looking back at the last century, we can identify these fashion vibe shifts—a term coined in 2022 by Sean Monahan, a trend forecaster—as special moments where the view of a designer or a group of designers aligns perfectly with the preoccupations of society and culture at large. Think Mary Quant's miniskirts and hot pants in the 1960s as young people rebelled against the status quo or Claude Montana's power suits as women entered the workforce en masse in the 1980s. The industry last experienced such a change almost a decade ago, when Michele showed his first Gucci collection for the fall 2015 menswear season, followed by Demna's debut at Balenciaga the following year. Both designers were relative unknowns at the time. Michele had spent 13 years at the Italian brand, working his way up to become head of accessories, when he was famously asked to put together a menswear collection in five days after Gucci's creative director, Frida Giannini, departed her post earlier than planned. The resulting collection of silk pussy-bow blouses and fur-lined mules, modeled by androgynous-looking men with long hair, kicked off the trend of genderless fashion that became one of the defining characteristics of 2010s style. Demna—who back then went by his full name, Demna Gvasalia—was the leader of a collective of designers responsible for Vetements, whose conceptual rethinking of everyday garments and dramatic silhouettes sent a jolt of electricity throughout the industry. Vetements had three collections to its name when Kering tapped the designer and both legitimized and amplified his anarchic point of view. Demna added new words like pantaboots to our vocabulary, a neverending supply of ironic logos emblazoned across clothes and accessories, and the idea that a jacket can never be too oversized nor its shoulders too wide.

Looking back, we can describe the moment as the beginning of an auteur era, where new ideas introduced by outsiders completely changed the way people—all people, beyond the fashion cognoscenti—dressed, as their clothes made their way not only to mass retail stores but also became embedded in the identity politics of our time. Most importantly, they opened up the discussion about the meaning of clothes themselves, exploding gender and class signifiers as a way to break with society's expectations.

Alessandro Michele famously put together his debut menswear collection for the Gucci fall 2015 season in five days.

Yannis Vlamos / Indigitalimages.Com

A look from Demna's first collection for Balenciaga, fall 2016

Photo: Monica Feudi / Indigital.Tv

Phoebe Philo said of her vibe-shifting vision for Céline's spring 2010 collection: "I just thought I'd clean it up. Make it strong and powerful—a kind of contemporary minimalism."

Monica Feudi / GoRunway.Com

But this shift is not always dependent on an unknown designer ascending to a creative position of power. Recall in 2010 when Phoebe Philo presented her first proper Céline collection. With its cleaned-up contemporary minimalism, it marked a major pivot from the bohemian-inspired femininity she conjured while she was the creative director at Chloé in the early 2000s. It's that same femininity that Kamali returned to with her debut collection at the French label last month, which was gleefully received by young millennials and old Gen Z'ers who have been eagerly awaiting the return of a look that defined their adolescence. It remains to be seen whether Michele's new vision at Valentino will build upon his previous body of work or if he will excavate the meaning of Valentino-ness to find commonalities between his sensibilities and those of the great Valentino Garavani. Philo herself is also one of the main characters in this current shift, as we watch her attempt to disengage with the industry's everlasting desire for more, more, more in real time with her freshly founded namesake label.

Together with the realization that the commercial bedrocks that support the industry (i.E. Department stores and their online counterparts) aren't as stable as we once thought and the increasing urgency to address sustainability issues that once seemed like nice-to-haves, all these personnel changes are giving way to the notion that the future of the industry is suddenly wide open. After all, it wasn't fashion alone that brought conversations about gender and sexuality to the forefront in the last decade, but it certainly gave some people a good place to start. Designers are now in a place to redefine not only how we dress (the fun part) but how we can live better, more honest lives by really making it their focus to engage in environmentally and socially friendly business practices throughout the supply chain. It's not just about working with organic or recycled materials or being careful about carbon footprints; it's also about making sure that the people involved in the process at every step are not being taken advantage of and are paid fair wages (the serious part). It remains to be seen where this new era of fashion will take us, but for now let us ride the vibe-shift wave.

Three Steps To Writing The Perfect LinkedIn Summary

If you read my Forbes article "Move Over, Resume, You've Been Replaced," you understand why  And in the digital world, the most important version of your bio is your LinkedIn summary. This will likely be read by more people than any other form of your bio. This added exposure gives you a great opportunity to capture the attention of decision-makers—but only if you have summary that shines.

An effective LinkedIn summary makes people want to know more about you and ultimately connect with you one-on-one, so congruence is critical. You need make sure the bio you present online matches your real-world self.

How can you create a summary that stands out from the crowd while still being true to the real you?

Over the past few years, I have worked with career-minded professionals and executives at many of the world's global brands to help them build compelling bios for LinkedIn and their corporate intranets. The approach we use is part of a comprehensive day-long workshop, but I have created a simplified, three-step version that you can use to make your profile pop:

Gallery: 7 Ways to Make LinkedIn Help You Find A Job

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Step 1: Set the scene 

Before putting pen to paper or finger to key, it's important to know what you want your summary to communicate and what you want to readers to do. Before writing your bio, answer these questions:

• Who do you want to reach with your summary? Who is your ideal audience?

• What do you want them to learn or do?

• How do you want them to feel?

When you're clear about your intentions and goals, it's time to pull together the content.

Step 2: Gather your raw content

Think of your content in terms of these buckets, and then fill them to the brim:

Your most important accomplishments. Write a sentence for each one in terms of the value you create/created ("I saved my company $500k in returned products by ensuring customer satisfaction on the front-end of the transaction; I built our first world-class customer service team from the ground up.")

Your values and passions. Articulate your operating principles and the things that energize you (for example, optimism, creativity, yoga and meditation).

Your superpowers. Describe the things you do better than anyone else ("I can assemble seemingly disparate facts into a cohesive, tangible story," or "I inspire and engage even the most skeptical client.")

Fact, figures and stats. List interesting points that are quantifiable. ("I ran five marathons in five different countries; I speak three languages and travel to five continents every year; I worked in six different areas of the business before becoming the head of sales.")

Differentiation. Cull the things that make you YOU and help you stand out from your peers ("I do my best work from 6 a.M.-8 a.M. Before anyone gets to the office." "Acknowledging others is important to me, so I like to type personal thank-you messages to team members and colleagues on the typewriter I was given on my 16th birthday.")

External validation. Include testimonials from others  while showcasing all the awards and accolades bestowed upon you (for example, graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Michigan, was named top 30 under 30 by the Chicago Chamber of Commerce).

Step 3: Put it all together

Before writing your summary decide if you would like to write in the first or third person. Either is acceptable – it's a personal choice. Put yourself in a creative place - literally and figuratively so you can produce your best work. Then:

• Start with a bang. You want the reader to want to know more, so you need to start with something enticing. It could be a question, statement or even a few words with punctuation, like: High-Energy. Results-Driven. Focused.

• Next, fill in the details, weaving elements from the various Step 2 buckets  into a compelling narrative about the brand called you. Mix up content from the different categories to enhance the storytelling style.

• Then close with a call to action: tell your audience what you want them to do or where they can go to get more information.

Remember, your summary needs to be 2,000 or fewer characters.

Lastly, after you upload your summary to LinkedIn, bring the text to life  with images. Learn more about this in item #3 in this post.

William Arruda is the cofounder of CareerBlast and creator of the LinkedIn quiz that helps you evaluate your profile and networking strategy.

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