Favourite Kinds of Story

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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. Images of me with books taken by Adrian Symes. Handy having that facility!
Hope you have had a good weekend. Weather continues to be lovely here. Good writing weekend. Will have news soon of a change. More to come later.

Facebook – General

Hope you have had a nice day. Gorgeous weather again and Lady got to play with her Rhodesian Ridgeback pal. Lovely time had by both dogs (and their owners, as we appreciate the lovely walking weather as opposed to getting soaked during the winter months!).

Will be looking at Writers and Stationery – A Match Made in Heaven for Chandler’s Ford Today on Friday. Looking forward to sharing that. (I could’ve titled this one Stationery Addicts Anonymous!).

Looking forward to going to a storytelling webinar tomorrow night. Plus I have an editing forum meeting during the day. Another busy week on Zoom!

7th April – Guest Blog Appearance

Hope you’ve had a good day. Lovely weather here and Lady got to see her Hungarian Vizler pal today so had a lovely time at the park with her chum.

Delighted to say my Tripping the Flash Fantastic is part of a feature over on Sandra’s Book Club today. Check out the details on the link. Nice start to the week (and don’t forget you can buy copies of both of my flash fiction collections from me via my website and also via The Bridgetown Cafe Bookshop, which is Bridge House Publishing’s online book shop. Naturally you can get them from Amazon too).

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Hope your Sunday has been a lovely, restful one. Not bad here. Lovely church service and lunch, now an afternoon of writing – all very much what this doctor orders! Will be getting on with flash fiction Sunday shortly. Incidentally even when I have some down time words still come into it – have a lovely couple of word games on my phone!

Character Creation Tip: I like to know main traits when thinking up characters because behaviours and attitudes come from those things but I do use both the negative and positive aspects of these traits. There is always a flip side to a trait regardless of which way around you start!

For example, if you have a character who is honest, are they honest to the point of being brusque? Who could they upset that way? Definitely story ideas there.

So take a trait and “flip it”. See what you can get from these things by taking both the positive and negative views of it. It mixes things up, is a better balance (given nobody is perfect) and you can get your other characters to react to whichever aspect of that trait you show.

Hope your weekend has got off to a good start. Lovely weather again here. So nice being out in the garden today.

Writing wise, I am looking forward to sharing next week’s Chandler’s Ford Today post especially as it is on a topic I really should have written about before! And what could that possibly be?

Simple! I’ll be talking about Writers and Stationery – A Match Made In Heaven – and it so is! I can’t think of any writer I know who could tell me exactly how many books they have or how many notebooks and pens etc they have. I know I can’t do that either! Fun piece to write. Link up next Friday.

Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

Plan to explore how we can use genres in flash fiction for the next meeting of the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group later this month.

Especially if you lead with characters, as I do, you can set those characters anywhere. I’ve written crime flash, historical flash, fantasy flash and much more.

It is one of the joys of the shorter fiction forms that it is easier to do this, plus you have different places to submit to, including competitions so you can have a great deal of fun playing with genres like this. Yes, you do have to “obey the rules” for each genre bit it is do-able.

It’s Monday but it is a lovely sunny one so that’s good. Still Monday though and time for another YouTube story from me. Hope you like my latest on here – Wake Up Call.

When you know you’ve messed up, you know why you messed up, and it doesn’t help at all you’re a fairy godmother.

 

I’ve mentioned before because I write a lot of flash fiction, I need to have various ways by which I can create characters and trigger story ideas. It’s not a bad idea to mix up the way you do things here because I find it keeps my fiction writing life interesting for me and, I hope, readers.

There are a huge variety of random generators to choose from, plus well known proverbs and phrases, but how about this for another way into creating stories?

There seems to be a National day for almost anything. Today, 6th April, is the day for, amongst other things, National Carbonara Day, (which sounds wonderful), National Teflon day (will that stick, I ask myself), and, in the UK, today is the start of the new taxation year. It isn’t widely celebrated that one!

But how about using these things in stories? Could your character be creating a carbonara for someone special or doing to to cheer themselves up after a horrendous day? Could romance bloom in amongst the tax ledgers! You could also set stories using the national day event as a backdrop. Could it complicate things for your characters in some way or make life easier? Your call but story ideas for sure here.

Congratulations to all who won or were listed in the Andrew Siderius competitions recently run by Friday Flash Fiction. Enjoyed reading these.

Looking forward to my usual flash fiction Sunday afternoon tomorrow. I find it a lovely way to create after church, walking the dog, and lunch. Should be getting back to the 100-worders tomorrow too. I sent in a longer flash for the above competition which was fun to do but anything over 100 words wise now story wise seems ever so long to me! Flash fiction does do this to a writer.

Having said that, I have written at the other end of the spectrum too. The one category I’ve not yet had a go at is the “mid-range”, the novella. Wouldn’t rule it out though. And it is possible to have novellas told via flash fiction with each story (acting as its own chapter) up to 1000 words, each story standing alone, but there also being an overriding arc you can follow through to the end, just as you would for a longer work.

Goodreads Author Blog – Favourite Kinds of Story

I love a whole range of stories and books so it is hard to pick just one overall favourite but we all have those we turn to time and again, especially if life is grim. Right now I know I can’t bring myself to read dystopian fiction. If I want dystopian I’ll watch the news!

I’m a great believer in books being a wonderful source of entertainment. This doesn’t stop them from being thought provoking as well, far from it, but at the end of the day, I want a rattling good yarn I know I can enjoy again and again if I so wish. So where do I turn to for these?

My picks are the classic fairytales, anything from Discworld by the much missed Sir Terry Pratchett, anything by Agatha Christie and P.G. Wodehouse. Always worth re-reading! Then there are the classic works of Jane Austen, crime novels generally, historical fiction geenrally, and The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey.

What I look for and find in all of these and many others are stories which take me away from my troubles for a while. Books shouldn’t be underrated for their capacity for this. I do think right now they can be wonderful escape for so many of us.

WRITERS NARRATIVE SUBSCRIBER LINK

AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES

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