Image Credits:-
All images from Pixabay/Pexels unless otherwise stated with many created in Book Brush. Book cover images from Chapeltown Books and Bridge House Publishing. Screenshots taken by me, Allison Symes.
Hope you have had a good week. Weather back to being all over the place though – sun, strong winds, rain etc. Looking forward to sharing further author interviews soon on Chandler’s Ford Today so do keep an eye out for these. Meantime, I reveal in this week’s CFT post what I would choose if I could have a superpower. Well, what would you choose? Comments are welcome on the CFT page.
Facebook – General and Chandler’s Ford Today
Hope you have had a good day.
Glad to share Having a Superpower for Chandler’s Ford Today this week. I share what I would pick and why. I also discuss why it pays, even in fantasy, not to allow your characters to have unlimited powers. If everything could be solved by the wave of a magic wand, where is the story? I also look at the problems of superpowers. Hope you enjoy the post.
Having a Superpower
You can find out what I would choose as a superpower in my Having a Superpower post for Chandler’s Ford Today tomorrow. See above. The idea for this post came from a prompt I set as an exercise for the recent Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group meeting. Lovely to get a non-fiction post from the idea.
Writing Tip: The random generators (words, numbers, pictures, themes etc) are great fun to use to trigger ideas but do bear in mind (a) these things are a starting point and (b) there’s nothing to stop you taking what has been generated and you then put your own twist on it. I’ve done this a lot.
It’s also a good idea to make yourself write to the prompts that emerge because they will come up with things you would not otherwise have thought of and I’ve found it great fun to find out just what can I do with this idea. They are great ways to encourage you to think outside of your usual creative thinking box.
Hope you’ve had a good day. Lady got to see her two best girlfriends again today – three days in a row. All three dogs very happy about this.
As well as my author newsletter, I do have a YouTube channel where I post flash fiction videos. (I usually post here once a week). New subscribers are always welcome.
Just go to https://www.youtube.com/@allisonsymes
I use BookBrush to help me create the videos and then I upload them to my channel. Easy and fun to do and I am grateful Dawn Kentish Knox flagged up to me how to add audio to these. Nice selection of tracks available, some of which you have to give accreditation to, but you are given the form of words to use for this when you’re putting a description of what your video is about in the relevant box. You just copy and paste this form of words in – easy peasy. I’ve only used the odd one or two of these. I mainly stick to the ones I can just use without that.
But it is lovely being able to have a form of story sharing which is both visual and audio. I like this a lot. Works well for flash tales.
Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again
It’s Friday. It’s the end of the working week (for many if not all). It’s time for a story. Hope you enjoy my latest on Friday Flash Fiction – Regrets. Billy may be a bestselling author but he has regrets too – find out what and why here.
Good to see the first review has come in for The Best of CafeLit 13. If you’ve read the book, please do leave reviews. They help all of the authors in the anthology. Thank you.
I do review books myself. I try to keep my reviews short (writing flash fiction a lot helps with that!). They don’t take long to do and, other than buying the book itself, reviewing is one of the other most important things someone can do to support authors.
When I review I like to give an idea of what I liked without revealing spoilers. I’m always intrigued by characters so if they grip me in a story (as they should do), I will mention that and why they did this.
Looking forward to the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group meeting in a couple of weeks. Am working on a presentation for it. I like to work to a theme (same as with my newsletters funnily enough) as these make useful “pegs” to hang relevant material from. It also means we cover different aspects of flash fiction writing.
A writing exercise in three stages for you to try:-
1. Using a random name generator, pick the fifth name which comes up and write a character outline up for that name.
2. Using a random theme generator, pick the fifth theme which comes up and then get your named character to meet that theme in some way.
3. Using a random sentence generator, pick the fifth sentence which comes up and use it to either start or finish your story with.
Have fun!
Fairytales with Bite – How Characters Handle the Unexpected
How characters handle the unexpected reveals a great deal about them no matter what the story genre might be. In a fantasy setting though you can have even more fun here because just what would count as unexpected in a magical world, for example?
Would that be something like a sudden shortage of magical powers (the equivalent of us having major power cuts basically)? Could a character find they can no longer perform certain magical tasks they always used to be able to do (and could this be related to their aging process perhaps)?
Can the unexpected situation be reversed or dealt with in other ways? Or do your characters have to find new ways of handling matters and how easy or otherwise do they find this? How do they cope with the stress of having to find new ways of handling things, especially if they are under any kind of time pressure? (Good way of raising the drama that one!).
What could the unexpected lead to? Does your world setting have to change its ways? Has the unexpected shown them something of themselves that really should be put right? (You need the equivalent of the kid in The Emperor’s New Clothes here to call out what is wrong here, I think).
This World and Others – How Things Get Done
How do things get done in your setting? Does your world have the equivalent of engineers, inventors, scientists etc? When they come up with useful ideas for your world, how do they get these out into the public domain so all can benefit from them? Are there safety procedures in place, proper testing done first etc before anything new does get unleashed more widely?
When things go wrong, as does happen when anything new is being developed, how is that handled? Does this have an impact on the general population or is it contained because nothing gets unleashed until this kind of testing is done and done thoroughly enough?
Who controls the way things are done? I’ve often mentioned in this blog the powers that be. This matters. Nothing exists in a vacuum. So your characters will be in a world setting. There will be governments, politicians, and so on. Someone has to over see things. For the inventive side of things, there has to be some organisation which will test things, ensure they are safe for general use etc. So how would this work out in your world?
Could you tell stories about the characters who do this kind of thing and show the problems and stresses they face?
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AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsRegrets, by Allison Symes – Friday Flash Fiction https://t.co/YbLAaUhLNT It’s Friday, the end of the working week. It’s time for a story. Hope you enjoy my latest on Friday Flash Fiction – Regrets. Billy may be a bestselling author but he has regrets. Find out what and why here. pic.twitter.com/T3SF2ISAgu
— Allison Symes (@AllisonSymes1) June 14, 2024
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsHaving a Superpower https://t.co/tN9uiZG4Ex
— Allison Symes (@AllisonSymes1) June 14, 2024
Glad to share Having a Superpower for CFT. I share what I choose and why. I also discuss why it pays, even in fantasy, not to let your characters have unlimited powers, and look at the problems of said powers. Hope you enjoy the post.
Allison Symes: Collected Works 