Facebook – General – and Chandler’s Ford Today
My CFT post this week takes a look Behind the Scenes from the viewpoints of volunteering and writing. Volunteers make such a huge difference in so many ways and what they do often goes unseen. So time for some plaudits and encouragement then.
Writers can feel all the hard work they put in as they submit stories, articles etc goes unseen too. Yes, it does, but it helps you to develop as a writer. You can’t learn from your mistakes unless you make some!
It really is how you develop but the great thing with being involved with writing groups/writing communities online is generally these are very supportive and there are ways of finding out what you need to know so you do NOT make ALL the mistakes ever known to writing kind!
Going to good writing events helps enormously here too.
Does the behind the scenes work pay off? Nobody can guarantee publication or a foolproof way to always earn from your writing but you are much more likely to achieve success (however you define it) by putting the groundwork in. As with so much in life, there are no shortcuts. The encouraging thing here is EVERY writer goes through this.
Image Credit: The images are from the magnificent Pixabay. I particularly like the grouchy looking face in the comments box. Rumours that this resembles me when another rejection has come in are totally true. Captions on the CFT page.
Absolutely delighted to share the cover for Transforming Beings and the link to it on Amazon. My story, The Professional, is one of the sixteen winners of the Waterloo Arts Festival Writing competition.
Every writer all had to write to the same word count and on the same theme. This is proof you can have at least sixteen different writers produce sixteen different takes on the topic!
Am so looking forward to being at the Festival on Saturday and to taking part in the readings. Good luck to everyone who is also taking part. It will be great to catch up with you all.
My CFT post this week will look at what behind the scenes means in terms of volunteering, but also what it means for writers. It gives me a chance to say thanks to all those who give up their time to help others and, I hope, to encourage writers who feel they may be slogging away for years without their being any visible benefits. Link up on Friday.
In other news, as they say, work continues well on the novel and I’m fleshing out other ideas, fiction and non-fiction, for development later in the year. Want to get some more submissions out before long too.
The joy of writing? One of them is never being short of things to do!
Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again
Reading work out loud is a great way to hear how your story flows, whether your dialogue works properly, and so on. Once your work is out there, and you get the chance to read before an audience at events such as the Waterloo Arts Festival, Open Mic nights etc, give it a go.
You are getting to engage directly with people who love stories so your audience will be broadly sympathetic to begin with. But what is really lovely is when a part of your story which made you laugh as you wrote it generates the same response in your audience. It is a fantastic feeling.
Equally if your story generates any other response which is appropriate to that tale, then you are receiving invaluable feedback that this worked!
Writers need things like that for all the times work gets turned down. There should be an “up” side!
Following on from my other post tonight, themes work best when open to interpretation. For example:-
Revenge is a dish best served cold – well you could come up with all sorts of ways to show whether that is true or not.
But something like Dreams, while you can get stories from that, for me this is a bit TOO open-ended.
It helps to narrow your focus on something specific so for me Fallen Dreams would be much better. There are stories to be told about how a dream could be fallen.
The other thing that comes to mind would be at least one story on how a fallen dream is overcome and doesn’t blight your character’s life. Equally, how it isn’t and it DOES blight your character (depends on whether you like sad stories I suppose!).
Have fun and play around with your themes but hone them so you have something useful to focus on and work with.
It’s always a thrill when a story of yours is published and I’m delighted to say Transforming Beings, the ebook of the winning entries in the Waterloo Arts Festival Writing Competition, is now available.
My The Professional is in here and my character is one I would not like to meet in life! Naturally no spoilers here…!
If you like a good mix of stories, do give this a try (and if you can review that would be fab, thanks!).
Each story had to be 1000 words max so this is at the upper end of the flash fiction spectrum but there is a great variety here.
Books like this are also a reminder you can take a topic and come up with so many themes on it. Why not try it for your own flash fiction stories?
Link and cover image further up this post. If you do read the book, please review! Thank you!
For a flash fiction story to work well, you have to be totally convinced by your lead (and usually only) character. If you’re not convinced by them, nobody else will be.
That doesn’t mean you always love said characters. I can think of some of mine I loathe and/or would dread meeting in real life were that to become possible. The important point is I DO understand and get why they are the way they are and the story wouldn’t work at all without that.
Also, I think your characters have got to make you feel something for you to be able to write their stories with conviction. Nobody fell in love or hated a cardboard cutout (well at least I haven’t!).
The advantage of a character you hate is the effect they generate on a reader. It should be that your reader will want to read on to see if said character gets the comeuppance they so richly deserve and, if so, how. All good fun to write!
Fairytales with Bite – Behind the Scenes
For a piece of work, what would behind the scenes mean? Well, even in fiction, research can sometimes be necessary. This is especially true for any fiction which weaves real life events or people into the narrative. Facts have to be facts. (If it’s an alternative reality or history, that should be made clear at the outset). Just watch how much research you do. Research is fun but can also turn into procrastination when you should be writing. We’ve all done it…
Sometimes research can be as simple as drawing on what you know from life about likely human behaviours. You know humans can be like this in these circumstances so your characters should reflect that too. Good fiction does reflect our humanity. Nobody said it had to flatter though!
Behind the scenes obviously includes your drafts and edits but also things like ensuring you meet the submission requirements for wherever you are sending work to, as no two places have quite the same needs here. Yes, there will be a lot in common – double line spacing, font size etc – but I take a week off any deadline for a competition to make absolutely sure I’ve got those details right as I don’t want mistakes there to disqualify my story. (It’s not really fair when you have two equally good pieces come in to allow one that didn’t follow all the rules properly to win over one that DID).
Perseverance and patience are invaluable qualities for a writer though!
This World and Others – When Life Throws You Lemons
… make lemonade, as the old saying goes, but how can a writer do this? Are lemons such a bad thing anyway?
From the viewpoint of developing characters, the more lemons you throw at them the better. Well, you do want to find out what your characters are made out of, yes? You want to find out their hidden depths, yes? Chuck them in the deep end and have fun finding out how they get themselves out of it. If they need to resort to the help of friends to get out of said horrible deep end, what did they try to do first before calling for back up? Is the back up reliable? You want plenty of tension and drama and writing these scenes should easily produce that. You can work out later on what you want to keep for your story and what might prove to be useful background knowledge to you only.
As a writer, when all that seems to come your way are rejections, firstly bear in mind nothing worthwhile was ever easy and, secondly, most writers go through this. Even after publication in one avenue, rejections still come in. I find it useful to look at work that has been turned down and see if I can revamp it and send it out elsewhere. Usually I can and I have had work accepted by another outlet after doing this. The important thing is not to give up but it is perfectly okay to change direction with your writing. If you decide flash fiction isn’t for you but the longer short story form is, then that’s fine. Play to your writing strengths. It is also fine to pause from writing. I generally only do this when on holiday or ill and I use the time to catch up on reading (I always have reading to catch up on!) and that helps feed the imagination beautifully.
Allison Symes: Collected Works 