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 more changeable but Lady has been having fabulous times in the park with her closest chums so all well there. Glad to say my story did go out on Hannah Kate’s Spring Equinox show on Tuesday 24th March. Links below
Facebook – General and Chandler’s Ford Today
Am pleased to share Templates on Chandler’s Ford Today. I share thoughts on what you could put in your own template to help you flesh out characters and/or settings. All of the questions I share here will help you come up with story ideas.
I also look at the advantages and disadvantages of templates. I see them as a helpful way in to creating a new character and/or setting. Sometimes it is useful to know the setting first and then you can work out who would populate it. Often settings can almost be like characters in their own right – for example, think of the moors in Wuthering Heights or Dickens’ London as shown in Oliver Twist.
I also mix up the questions I use in templates to avoid them becoming formulaic. Hope you find the post useful.
Templates
Hope today has gone well. Lady saw her Hungarian Vizler chum today – the dogs are always pleased to see each other. It’s lovely to see.
Writing wise, I’ll be sharing Templates on Chandler’s Ford Today this week – link up tomorrow. See above. I’ll be looking at the usefulness of these things (and also discuss some disadvantages, not everyone gets on with them for one thing). I’ll also be suggesting ideas for your own templates. Hope the post will prove useful.
Am glad to say I now have the link for the Hannah Kate Spring Equinox show on North Manchester FM on Mixcloud. I hope to catch up with this myself at the weekend but highly recommend a listen because I love the stories on these shows though I will admit to bias being on the show and knowing someone else who is but it is a good bias to have, I think.
Lady had a fabulous puppy party this morning with her Hungarian Vizler and Rhodesian Ridgeback friends and Coco, the lovely Labradoodle. All four dogs went home tired and happy.
Writing wise, I’m looking forward to the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group meeting later on tonight. Our theme this time is sixty. There are various ways to incorporate that thought into stories and we will be looking at some of those this evening.
I hope to catch up with Hannah Kate’s Spring Equinox show over the weekend but many congratulations to all of the writers who had work featured here. I always enjoy catching up with these shows and listening to all of the stories – fabulous entertainment.
Writing Tip: Character names can be used to reflect something of their age and likely social status but the main thing to watch when having more than one named character in tale is to ensure the names are different enough so it is easy for readers to tell who is speaking at any given point.
Also it helps not to have the same initials. If Jake and John are in the same tale, it could be easy to confuse these unless there are other clear points of difference such as in the manner each of them speaks and the type of vocabulary they use.
A good editing tip here is when you read through your work, can you tell the characters apart easily? You should be able to do so.
Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again
Earlier this week at the meeting of the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group, we looked at the theme of Sixty. I chose that to fit in with my special birthday (couldn’t resist it!) but it does lend itself to stories based on diamonds, special birthdays and anniversaries. You can also just use the number itself as part of a story such as part of an address, a sum of money and more.
I also set the group some exercises, one of which was to write to sixty words exactly including the title. My story for that session, to show as an example, is below. Hope you enjoy it.
My Hero by Allison Symes
I can’t say I like his handiwork but he leaves me gifts. He doesn’t do that for anyone else. He comes and sits on my lap when I feel sad. Then goes out and kills as many mice as he can find and brings them all to me.
I possibly shouldn’t have called my rough diamond Mr Tiddles.
Ends
Allison Symes – 8th March 2026Word Count including title = 60
The next best thing any reader can do after buying an author’s book is to review them, of course. A lovely one for my Tripping The Flash Fantastic includes the following quote.
Fabulous collection of poems and flash fiction. Some made me giggle, some made me gasp, all surprised me! I found it a real page turner, as the stories had such unexpected twists and turns!
Many thanks to my lovely reviewer here. Reviews like that reassure an author they’re on the right lines. I look to entertain with my flash and short stories so it’s good to know that is happening!
The great thing with reviews is they don’t have to be long, which is so apt for when you’re reviewing a flash fiction collection.
Looking forward to joining in with some of the exercises I’m setting for tonight’s meeting of the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group. Always good fun this and I get more drafts down so nothing to dislike there. Hopefully these will end up later on being polished up for competitions. Am hoping to get to write some further drafts over the weekend as there are competitions coming up in May and beyond which I always have a go at and I do like to start early. It means I get enough time to rest my drafts to assess them properly well ahead of deadlines.
I also make a point of mixing up the kind of writing exercise I use because it keeps me on my toes and I get to create more stories this way. I must admit though I do have a soft spot for the opening line kind.
Fairytales With Bite – A New Era
This topic came to mind as I’ve recently celebrated a landmark birthday. You know, the kind of one which marks the end of one decade and the beginning of another.
So how would your magical characters recognize what was a new era for them? Does your setting mark time in a similar way to ours but, if not, how do they do so? How would their eras correlate to what we would recognize as that?
Now I see my next decade as a promising one in that I hope to continue to develop my writing and hopefully have more success with it. But how would your characters see the passing of another decade (or the equivalent)? Do they worry about aging and, if so, why? Would magical powers decrease with age and that is why nobody really wants to think about getting older and what it would mean there? (There are clear parallels with us here).
Is your magical setting a benevolent one or a dictatorship? That would colour the views of your characters as they enter a new era. They may want more of the same or a complete overthrow of the regime. Good story thoughts there.
And a character’s view to aging, whether they’re magical or not, can also highlight other attitudes of theirs. If they worry about aging, could it because they know how older beings are treated? Again, good story ideas there.
This World and Others – Leaving the Past Behind
Landmark birthdays can give cause for reflection as you look ahead to the decade to come and ponder on the one you’ve just left behind. I don’t think it is entirely possible to leave the past behind. You always carry some of this with us and so should our characters. But there are times we want to not be held back by damaging things from our past and that again can often be the case with our characters.
When it comes to magical or alien characters, what kinds of things would they want to confine to the past and why? Would they have the same or similar regrets to us or would theirs be different due to their nature and/or environment?
Leaving the past behind can throw up interesting areas to explore for historians and archaeologists. What would count as archaeological finds on your setting? Would it be anything we’d recognize? Sometimes discoveries from the past can have impact on what is known now. For example, the finding of the remains of King Richard III has done this. Are there things from the past your world and/or characters wish had stayed hidden?
Definite story ideas there.
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— Allison Symes (@AllisonSymes1) March 27, 2026
Am pleased to share Templates on CFT. I share thoughts on what you could put in your templates to help you flesh out characters and/or settings. All I share here will help trigger story ideas. Hope you find the post useful.
Allison Symes: Collected Works 