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 the week has gone well for you. Odd one here. Have not been feeling too good but that is improving. Lady has had a lovely time with her closest pals and we’re all relieved the fireworks have stopped!
Facebook – General and Chandler’s Ford Today
A tad on the chilly side today, I’d say. Lady had a nice time in the park with her Hungarian Vizler pal. Sadly, I had to cancel my swim today as sciatica playing up. It too doesn’t like the cold. Hope to resume swimming next week.
Writing wise, I’m delighted to share Online Launch Tips and Local Author News – Allison Symes for Chandler’s Ford Today.
I share lots of tips for online launches plus the link to my one for Seeing The Other Side on Thursday 19th November. Hope to see you there and if you’re thinking of a launch of your own that the tips here prove useful.
I also share thoughts on question and answer sessions. I’ll be having one of these for my launch next week and certainly from all of the launches I’ve been to these are incredibly popular.
Online Book Launch Tips and Local Author News – Allison Symes
Hope today has gone well. Bitterly cold and due to go below zero tonight but, hey, it is November, and it is what lots of layers are for. Lady didn’t worry about the cold. She was busy running around with her Rhodesian Ridgeback pal. Managed to get back to swimming today though I didn’t do as much as usual. Felt lovely in there though and seems to have helped what I am sure is my sciatica. Latter played up on Friday so I may have overdone it a bit, sadly. Hope to be back in the pool next week.
Writing wise, my Chandler’s Ford Today post on Online Launch Tips and Local Author News – Allison Symes is out tomorrow. See above. My online launch for Seeing The Other Side is next Thursday, 19th November, and I’ll be back at Salisbury URC for their Christmas Fayre on 28th November. The following week I’ll be back in London for the Bridge House Publishing Celebration Event. Looking forward to all of these!
Also looking forward to the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group later this month too so busy, busy, busy but in good ways.
Flash Tip: I sometimes write all dialogue flash pieces which are great fun to do but find it helpful to keep these tales to 100 to 150 words. I also tend to just have two characters for this. It keeps it simple and simple packs such a powerful impact on short fiction.
You also hit the ground running with this kind of tale because you’re dropped right into an interesting conversation and you’ve got to find out how it ends, yes? Well worth a go as an exercise too.
11th November – Armistice Day
I like the fact the radios go silent at 11 am on Armistice Day. There was a period when they didn’t but I am glad that has come back. It’s a poignant reminder just to take two minutes out to remember.
Hope today has gone well. Feeling better than yesterday but still achy. Feels like sciatica. I am the right age for that! Lady had a nice time in the park today. Saw Flash the dashing black lab.
Writing wise, I’m sharing Online Launch Tips and Local Author News – Allison Symes for Chandler’s Ford Today on Friday. See above. My online launch will be on 19th November. I like launches of all sorts and the online ones definitely have their uses. Often more people can get to them.
Character Tip: If you picture your characters rather than hear their voices first, what is it you latch on to help you create them? Is it what they wear or their height or the colour of their eyes?
If it is clothing, which I’d favour, there are ways of using that to indicate likely social status of your character. If your character is in a top from Primark, they are likely to be a different social class than someone who got their top from Harrods! But you can exploit that thought.
If, like me, you tend to hear the character speaking first, again what do you latch on to here? For me, it’s the style of speech – are they using long words or short ones? Do they use slang? Do they swear? Answering those thoughts will tell you a great deal about your potential character.
Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again
Am looking forward to my online launch for Seeing The Other Side next Thursday, 19th November. I’ve picked out a number of pieces to read and am looking forward to sharing something of what inspires me on my writing and much else besides. Hope to see you there. (See my Chandler’s Ford Today post this week for the link though I will share it again here next week).
Had a lovely time with flash fiction last night as I prepared material for the next meeting of the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group who will meet later this month.
Plan to edit my competition stories this weekend too and maybe send them off in a week or so.
Will be interviewing Jacci Gooding for Chandler’s Ford Today soon. She is also a fan of the 100 word story but more on that to come in due course.
Cold but as well as describing the weather that could be an interesting characteristic to apply to our characters. Why are they cold? Have they always been that way? What was the turning point for them? Can they come back?
Am thinking of A Christmas Carol here too. As you find out more about Scrooge thanks to the three Christmas spirits, it becomes abundantly clear why Ebenezer became the hardhearted miser we see at the beginning of the book.
But our cold characters don’t need to be as extreme as Scrooge. One minor incident can turn a warm character into a cold one if they feel they’ve been misunderstood or insulted. Would the character responsible for this realise or, on being told, seek to make it up?
Definite story ideas there.
11th November – Armistice Day
Hope to get back to editing my flash competition pieces in a day or so. By then I will have rested them enough to be able to see them with fresh eyes. This is another advantage to flash. You don’t need nearly as long as a novelist does to be able to see your piece with said fresh eyes! I often find a few days is enough.
Flash Tip: You’ve got a character in mind. You know how they speak, what their driving trait is etc. So get them to hit the ground running. One thing I’ve found with writing flash is it kind of forces you to do this. You haven’t the word count room for preamble but sometimes you do need to “write something out of your system”.
So do so and then get rid of it in the edits if it doesn’t serve the story in some way. This is another reason why I treat writing and editing as two separate creative tasks. It’s only after you’ve got something down, rested it for a bit, and then come back to it you can see what you need in the story and, as importantly, what you don’t. That in turn gets your editing off to a flying start by removing what isn’t needed.
Fairytales With Bite – Busy, Busy, Busy
I love writing funny fantasy where my fairy godmother characters are working and either have to contend with awkward clients, dragons or anything else in between. I like to see my characters being busy, busy, busy. You can tell a lot about folk about how well or otherwise they respond to pressure, especially time and work ones. This is equally true for our characters and we can exploit that to create interesting stories.
So what does keep your characters busy in their working life? What kind of things would they consider as normal for their working day? What would be out of the ordinary? How do they handle these things? Does magic improve things or makes matters worse?
I am always keen on allowing for magic not always being the answer and your magical characters have to find other ways to resolve problems. It challenges them, which increases tension in the story, and I like the thought of power (which magic is) having its downside. There can be times when using it would be like, to use the old phrase, using a sledgehammer to crack a nut – well over the top and causes more damage than it helps.
When your characters have much needed down time, what do they do to recover from being busy, busy, busy? Again story ideas here and how would they react if their down time was interrupted? How well or otherwise would they take that, especially if they are tired?
That should have an impact on how well they “perform” if called out on duty again and then there could be stories to come from that. A fairy godmother fails to help someone simply because she’s shattered etc.
This World and Others – The Working Life
Most of our societies are based around a standard working week and working lives are based around that, but what would be considered to be a normal working week in your magical setting? Would your setting have days and weeks as we know them?
If not, what is their system based on and how could readers related to it? If, for example, their days last 48 hours and they have eight days to the working week, then it is easy to see their working week consists of four days.
Nobody can work all of the time without their health suffering (and their performance at work come to that as well) and this is also true for the magical setting so how would the working week be worked out. Would everyone work for four days, then have three days off? Or is it a case you work for one week of four days and then have a week off consisting of four days?
Also do your characters enjoy their working life? If not, why are they in the work they are in as there will be stories to explore there. How do your characters prepare for work? Do they work hard of just do the minimum? Do they get on well with their colleagues or not?
Plenty of good story ideas to come from the work place, including magical ones, I think.
