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 few days. Lady has been having fabulous times with various chums all week. I’ve been very busy with writing and meetings on Zoom. Looking forward to a quieter weekend, to be honest. Will be having a super interview coming up on Chandler’s Ford Today in March (so you can guess from that some of the writing I’m busy with!).
Facebook – General and Chandler’s Ford Today
Am pleased to share my latest post on Chandler’s Ford Today on Writing To Themes.
I share thoughts and tips on the topic given I write to set themes almost always. Even when not doing so for competitions and Writers’ Narrative, I set my own theme, as I have done here. Themes give structure to any piece of writing and are fabulous for sparking ideas for characters and situations.
Hope you find the post useful.
Writing To Themes
Hope today has gone well. Lady saw her Hungarian Vizler friend today so has done brilliantly in seeing at least one of her closest pals all week this week. (Doesn’t always happen).
Writing wise, I’m sharing Writing To Themes for Chandler’s Ford Today tomorrow. See above. I share tips and thoughts, all of which I hope will prove useful. I’m hard pushed to think of any writer who hasn’t written to a theme at some point, even if they invent the theme first!
Marketing Tip: I put aside some of my writing time to think about ways of marketing. I include my YouTube videos which I share on Mondays as part of this because they show something of my writing style. I like the marketing I do to be as much fun as possible because I then don’t mind doing it and hopefully it will be fun for readers too.
Hope you’ve had a good day. Puppy party over the park today with Lady, the Hungarian Vizler, the Rhodesian Ridgeback, Coco, and a lovely Toller called Charlie. Good time had by all. All went home tired and happy.
Writing wise, have a flash story to submit for a competition later today, plus I’m preparing a super interview to appear on Chandler’s Ford Today in March. Love conducting as well as reading/hearing author interviews – always learn something useful from them. All writing journeys are different and this, I think, helps contribute to my finding author interviews fascinating.
Looking forward to the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group later this month. We’ll be looking at On This Day…. Loads of topics for flash (and other) stories to come from that.
Writing Tip: Have put my own advice into play this week as I’ve had a couple of hectic days where I haven’t been able to write much. Lovely but so, so busy, so have focused on writing little bits and pieces, knowing I will find these useful later on. At the end of the day, the important thing is to write, whether you have five minutes or five hours.
Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again
Have had a lovely day out in deepest Dorset (super county) with other half and Lady. Even had some sunshine. Does you good to have mini breaks every so often.
Talking of which, why not send a character off for a mini break for a flash tale? Where do they go and what happens there? This would work well for longer fiction, of course, but I like the thought of a short, sharp story on this. One break. One character. One event.
Happy writing!
I mentioned yesterday about flash being strong on impact. It’s also strong on getting right inside a character’s mind for the duration of the tale. There is no word count room to dilute what your character thinks, does, or says.
If I’m showing you a story about a grumpy fairy godmother (as I love to do sometimes), I will need to show you something about what made her grumpy, what she does because of her mood, the consequences and so on.
Everything has to follow through but I cannot go on for too long. I have to show you just what you need to know to make sense of the tale. If you need to work on focus in stories, do try flash fiction. It encourages the development of focus. It has also led me to lose all fear of editing.
Plan to submit a flash piece for a 500 words maximum competition a little later today. Will be good to get that done.
Am thoroughly enjoying the co-judging I’m involved with on another flash competition at the moment.
Flash Fiction Tip: Give thought as to why your story idea would work best for a flash fiction format. What you are looking for here is maximum impact in the fewest words possible to convey that. So it is helpful to focus on one character, one incident, one impact here, I find.
Fairytales With Bite – Days Out
Every so often the other half and I take the dog out for the day. A lovely time is had by all. Does us all the world of good.
So, when your magical characters need a break, where would they go and what would they do? Does your setting have places designed for the day tripper?
How would magical characters ensure they could have a proper mini break from magical work? Also, do your characters happily go on these breaks or are they forced into them due to tiredness making them less effective? Would their bosses insist on the break?
Story ideas there for sure.
This World and Others – Down Time
We all need down time. The same goes for our characters. So how would they spend that down time?
If in things like reading or enjoying music, what would they have which would be comparable with what we have here? What would be different?
Would they have more or less down time than us? Would your characters be prepared to give up all or some of their down time should the need arise? How could they tell this was genuine rather than their bosses sneakily trying to make them work longer?
Where you have different magical species, what down time activities do they have in common? Which would be specific to species?
What stories could there be with a character having down time and something disrupts it? Or where the down time gets in the way of something important?
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https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsWriting To Themes https://t.co/xX4IkPAxg9
— Allison Symes (@AllisonSymes1) February 13, 2026
I share tips here as I write to set themes almost always. Even when not doing so for competitions/Writers' Narrative, I set my theme, as I have here. Themes spark ideas for characters and situations.
Hope you find the post useful.
Allison Symes: Collected Works 