Tag: Authors Electric

Making The Most of a Writing Event and a Great Blogging Week!

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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. Photos of me were taken by Adrian Symes. It is tricky to do the author holding the book picture without camera shake etc.
Hope you have had a good week. Weather up and down though back to sunny and hot at the moment. Looking forward to sharing a fabulous interview with Val Penny on Chandler’s Ford Today later this week – do look out for it. There will be tips on book blog tours too as part of this. Meantime, do check out the THREE blogs I share with you this week!

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Facebook – General and Chandler’s Ford Today

How come it is Friday again so soon? Anyway, it’s time to share my latest Chandlers’ Ford Today post and this week I’m looking at the topic of Making the Most of a Writing Event. This is timely given in less than a month I will be at The Writers’ Summer School, Swanwick once again.

I look why going to writing events is a good idea and share top tips on how to make the best of them. Most of the tips apply to online events as well as the in-person kind. I also share thoughts on what is useful after the event too.

Hope you enjoy the post and, whatever writing events you are going to in the next few months, I hope they prove to be hugely enjoyable and useful.

Making the Most of a Writing Event

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It’s that time again – time for me to share my Authors Electric post. This time I look at Opening Lines. Whatever form of writing you do, opening lines have to lure the reader in and, for the short fiction forms such as flash fiction, I feel they do a lot of “heavy lifting”. You do have to hit the ground running here I think.

I’m also one of those writers who need something to start them off even though that start may well change later. I see opening lines as my way in to a story or article. Hope you enjoy the post.

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Hope you have had a good day. Lady had a lovely time with her Hungarian Vizler and Rhodesian Ridgeback pals today and we all enjoyed the sunshine. Coming back home without getting soaked always counts as a win!

Glad to say I am on Gill James’ blog today talking about my involvement with The Best of CafeLit 13. When you send in a story to CafeLit, they ask you to assign a drink to your story. I try to match my drinks to my story moods. You can see what I chose for my three stories in this anthology and much else in the interview.

Good fun to take part in – hope you enjoy reading it. A quick shout out to my other half too for the photos in this. These kinds of shots are difficult to do yourself, what with book in one hand, camera in the other, trying to avoid the dreaded camera shake etc.

 

Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

I’m delighted to be back on Friday Flash Fiction with my latest tale, Time Problems. Some fairy godmother clients aren’t perhaps as grateful as they could and should be. Find out who and why here. Hope you enjoy the story.

Screenshot 2024-07-19 at 09-59-12 Time Problems by Allison Symes - Friday Flash Fiction

Has been a gloriously sunny and warm day today, much better than earlier in the week when Lady and I had a soaking!

Writing Exercise: Pick a random opening line from a random generator or, if like me you brainstorm ideas for these every so often, go back through your notebooks and find one you like the look of and which you haven’t already used.

Then write a 50 word story to it.

Then have a go at writing 100 words to that line.

Maybe even then write yet another story to this line but this time go up to 250 words.

Once you’ve got at least two stories down, read them out loud (maybe record them and play them back) and see which has the most impact on you. A reader is likely to react in a similar way.

Sometimes I’ve found with this exercise the 50 word one is the best story. Sometimes I do need more words and it is the 100 or 250 worders which I will then submit somewhere. But this is a fun and interesting exercise to have a go at, if only because you find out just how strong (or otherwise) that opening line is.

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A task I am gladly looking forward to fairly soon is working out which new stories of mine I will use as potential reading material for the Open Prose Mic Night at The Writers’ Summer School, Swanwick. I couldn’t take part in it last year as it clashed with something else I really wanted to go to but this year’s timetable shows no clashes for me here. Really pleased about that.

I make a point of mixing the moods of whatever I read at whatever venue but also the word counts. So I expect I will end up reading a 100-worder, a 250 type, and maybe a couple of the 50s. It’s a good way of showing the range flash has.

Don’t forget my author newsletter comes out again on 1st August. I share flash fiction tips and stories here, amongst other things. You can sign up at https://allisonsymescollectedworks.com

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Fairytales with Bite – The Influence of Fairytales

Fairytales are some of the oldest stories we take in and I recall, with huge fondness, my late mother often reading to me from the Reader’s Digest Fairytale Collections long before I could read these wonderful books for myself. The reason I remember this is so well is my mother read to me consistently and often for many years, even when I was beginning to read for myself.

I owe my love of books and stories to her – very much drummed into me from an early age but something I am grateful for and which feeds into my writing now. Naturally I also watched several of the Disney classic fairytale animated films. All of that has encouraged my love for the form and I write some fairytales myself in my flash fiction and short stories.

But the influence of fairytales goes much deeper than this. Thanks to them, I’ve picked up on the Rule of Three subconsciously. I know in fairytales something happens twice but on the third occasion, something changes and that then usually leads on to the traditional happy ever after ending (Three Little Pigs, anyone?).

I’ve also learned the decrepit looking old man or woman is usually a powerful magical being in disguise and they will be teaching some arrogant so-and-so a hard lesson (The Beauty and the Beast). I’ve also learned to expect justice to be done in some way, and some wrong to be righted in some way (Cinderella).

You then have to learn that doesn’t always happen in life (deep down I knew that even as a kid) but I think one of the comforts of fairytales is it does happen in them.

The other influence from fairytales is they got me reading more of them and then moving on to other kinds of story. All very welcome!

Also fairytales don’t shy away from showing something/someone as being evil. Sometimes the tales act as warnings. Fairytales are honest writing and I love them for that too.

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This World and Others – Access to Books

Linking in with Fairytales with Bite, reading is encouraged to develop when access to books is easy! In your setting, are there such things as libraries? What kind of books would they stock? Can anyone access them? Are there bookshops to purchase your own choices? Again, what would be on offer here?

If you have several communities in your setting, which would each read? For example, I would expect dwarves to read their own histories and legends but are they open enough to read those of other communities such as the elves or the humans they share their world with?

Is the skill of reading universal or limited? Who decides what goes in the libraries and bookshops? (Easy to arrange censorship there).

If your characters can travel around your setting, what would they find in other areas, book wise, they don’t have at home? Do they bring these back with them? Would doing that cause an outcry or would people/other beings welcome the chance to discover things they did not know? Not everyone would welcome that.

Are there any banned books? If so, what and why were these banned and has anyone tried to get around or repeal the ban?

Access to books is something we can easily take for granted. Do your characters do so or do they know they are lucky to have it and make the most of it?

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WRITERS NARRATIVE SUBSCRIBER LINK

I’m sharing the link for the November 2023 edition of Writers’ Narrative this time. Its theme was Novels, which was apt for the month of NaNoWriMo (and for flash fiction writers, Flash NANO). I wrote a piece called Writing Novels for this issue, based on my experience of writing novels earlier in my writing life and what I’ve learned from doing that. Do check out all of the excellent articles in here.

AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES

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The Joys of Creative Writing

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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.
Hope you have had a good weekend. Not bad here. Writing wise, I’m talking to Jennifer C Wilson on Chandler’s Ford Today on Friday about her new book, 31 Days of Writing. Looking forward to sharing that.
Pleased to see numbers for my YouTube channel and author newsletter are growing steadily. Enjoying preparing a presentation at the moment for the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction group. Always fun to do and the presentations trigger ideas as I prepare these. I’ve followed up on many of these with work inspired by these ideas appearing on YouTube and Friday Flash Fiction in particular. Would like more of the same!

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Facebook – General

Am pleased to be back on Authors Electric with my new post, The Joys of Creative Writing. I’d been planning to write on this topic anyway but having been burgled last month, well let’s just say it gave me extra motivation to write this one! I share why it did and why I feel the creative arts are more important than many realise. Hope you enjoy the post.

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Hope your Monday hasn’t been too hectic. Lady got to see her best friend, the Rhodesian Ridgeback, today. Lovely time had by both of them.

The writing life is full of ups and downs. You get better over time I think at coming to terms with that and just getting on with the next story, the next project etc.

Just heard today my submission for the Bridge House Publishing anthology has been turned down. Later on in the summer I will have another look at the tale and see if I can (a) improve it and (b) send it somewhere else.

Often when work has been turned down, I have found the answers to those last two points are yes and yes! I’ve then sometimes gone on to have turned down work published elsewhere. So worth another look, always, is my motto here.

For Authors Electric, my post tomorrow will be about The Joys of Creative Writing. Timely I think! Link up tomorrow. See above.

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Hope you have had a good day. Celebrated our church’s 206th anniversary today, which was lovely. A lot happened in 1818 including the publication of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. A timeless book, I think, because it asks a timeless question – just who is the monster? That’s how I see it anyway.

The one positive thing about time seemingly whizzing by at the moment is it means The Writers’ Summer School, Swanwick is also rapidly approaching (August).

I’m running a two part course there, Editing as an Author, Editing as a Competition Judge. So looking forward to doing this but do check out all the other courses on offer too. Bear in mind too there are four part courses, one hour workshops and a lot more at Swanwick including the chance for 1:1s (I’m doing this too this year on the editing theme).

Hopefully see you at Swanwick in August.

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Strange old weather today. Have managed to avoid most of the downpours.

I’m delighted to say I’ll be welcoming Jennifer C Wilson back to Chandler’s Ford Today next week to discuss her forthcoming publication, 31 Days of Writing. This book comes out on the same day as the CFT post. Much to look forward to in the interview including thoughts on publishing via Amazon and much more besides. So looking forward to sharing this.

Writing Tip: For flash fiction and short story writers especially, always double check whether your title is included in the overall word count you are set for competitions. Some places do include it.

What I do with these markets and competitions is to allow five words for my title. I have to have a working title in any case which may or may not change later. But having something in place immediately means you won’t forget this aspect.

If you find later you only need three words for your title, then you will have a couple of “spare” words to put into your story which is especially useful for those places where you have to write to an exact word count. Think of your working title as a kind of place holder. I find this helps a lot.

Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

Hope you’ve had a good day. Lady got to see her Hungarian Vizler pal today. Both dogs so pleased to see each other.

Thought for you: which of your characters would be pleased to see each other and why? What has kept them apart? Which would be horrified to see the other and why? What brought them back together again?

I’m sure there would be some flash fiction stories to be written up based on those thoughts – have fun!

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It’s Monday. It may just be me but it’s been more hectic than normal. It’s still Monday. Time for my latest on YouTube then. Hope you enjoy Forward Thinking. Just what do you do when a silly bet has gone wrong and you now have to pay up… find out here.

 

Wow, halfway through June already. Author newsletter is out again on 1st July. If you’d like flash fiction/short story news, tips, story links etc., do head over to my landing page at https://allisonsymescollectedworks.com

I enjoy reading author newsletters as well as writing my own. I like to find out what the news is from my favourite authors and tips etc are always useful. If you’re thinking of starting a newsletter of your own, you might like to check out a post I wrote about this for Chandler’s Ford Today called, surprisingly not (!), Author Newsletters.

Author Newsletters

Have fun mixing up what you do with the writing prompt generators. If you use a word based one, as I often do, change where you put the word you’ve been given. Put it at the beginning, at the end, somewhere in the middle and ring the changes.

There’s nothing to stop you either writing one story with that word at the beginning, another in the middle and so on. What I would do there is change the characters and situations – the common thread would just be the word you’re placing and where you’re placing it. But you would have two or three stories here based on one prompt – I like that idea.

Could you also change the mood of the stories you write here? Could one with your chosen word be a feel good story? Could another with that same word in it somewhere be a tragedy?

Have fun!

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Goodreads Author Blog – Short Form Collections

I read a number of short form collections because (a) I love them and (b) I’ve contributed to many of them in my time and still do, the most recent being the hot-off-the-presses The Best of CafeLit 13. Also my flash fiction collections, From Light To Dark and Back Again and Tripping The Flash Fantastic, come into this category too.

Short stories are fantastic for dipping into. They’re also great for helping me make up my mind what longer form work I want to read next. I also like to ensure I have a good reading diet by reading novels, short stories, flash, magazines, ebooks etc. I’ve never seen the point of limiting yourself to just reading in one category!

But the advantage of the short form, flash or standard length short story, is in giving a reader an impact that much more quickly. For twist in the tail stories, you get to the twist more quickly too. I like that.

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WRITERS NARRATIVE SUBSCRIBER LINK

AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES

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A Strange Few Days…

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Many apologies this is a day late due to very unexpected circumstances.

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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 and photos from Scotland were taken by me, Allison Symes.
Had a lovely time in Scotland last week. Good to be back home again and Lady was thrilled to catch up with her two best friends early on in the week so she’s not sorry to be back home either. Looking forward to running an editing workshop on Zoom on Saturday and the ACW Flash Fiction Group next week. Did take PC with me while away. Enjoyed doing some writing but also enjoyed not doing as much as I normally would have done. It was good to slow down for a while.
Separately, it has not been a great start to my week back though. Burgled on Tuesday. Everyone, take care. It has been a very strange few days.

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Facebook – General

A huge thank you for all the kind comments, caring emojis etc following my brief post yesterday. Glad to say after the Scene of Crime Officers finished here today, I was able to get on and start clearing up properly. Still got plenty to do but have made a good start and just that is making me feel much better, along with your lovely thoughts and comments.

It is also great to be back to the writing desk again. Especially in stressful times, writing is a creative release. I’ll be sharing my latest website round up a little later on and then I should be “caught up”, writing wise.

I’ll also be looking at Decisions for Chandler’s Ford Today on Friday and that in turn will be followed by a superb two part interview with Jenny Sanders, whose new book, Polished Arrows, is now out.

Just occasionally I write “two handers” flash tales where two characters interact back and forth. Sometimes these are all dialogue stories but not always. One example of a non-dialogue one is The Pink Rose from Tripping the Flash Fantastic. Here I don’t even name the two characters but you do find out they are mother and daughter, the latter battling for the former for as long as she can.

This kind of tale can be moving and I like to write these kinds of tales in between my lighter humorous stories and my darker ones. I think it makes for a good balance.

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21st May 2024

Apologies, folks, for the lack of a “proper” post tonight. Also for the lack of my usual website round up. Will be back to normal tomorrow, I hope. Have had to deal with family emergency (burglary). It has NOT been a good day. Take care, everyone, and will hopefully be back online properly tomorrow.

Lady was thrilled to see her two closest friends today, the Hungarian Vizler and Rhodesian Ridgeback. Lovely time had by all. Just every now and then Lady will show affection by licking her friends on the top of their heads. (Neither of my other collies would have done this but then they both preferred just to focus on their humans – us). Lady did so today so I knew she was so glad to see her pals.

Nothing will ever beat the view I had last week when I was writing my Facebook posts but the view out of my office isn’t bad. Am surrounded by trees. Have had some noisy rooks arguing over the water in the bird bath. Goodness knows why. There is plenty in there.

Writing wise, this week will mainly be spent, I suspect, in catching up with blog posts, my newsletter etc. It was great to be away for a bit. It is good to be back too.

Writing Tip: When you’ve had a break from your normal writing routine, take the chance to look at what you missed doing, what you’re keen to get back to etc. Is there anything you didn’t miss? (Am glad to say not in my case).

If the latter gave you pause for thought, maybe it is time to re-evaluate whether that project is worth continuing with. You need enthusiasm to keep going with writing and while there will always be peaks and troughs, taking the time out to think again will help you establish whether you just need a longer break from the project or whether your heart really isn’t in it any more. (Nothing to stop you coming back to it at a later date either but be kind to yourself here).

Writing Advice

Lovely to be back at home, church etc. Lady was glad to get back to “her” park too.

I’ll be looking at Decisions for Chandler’s Ford Today this week. I’ll be looking at the topic from the viewpoints of character decisions, writing decisions, career decisions etc. Plenty to be thinking about then! Link up on Friday.

Was thrilled to discover I was an Editor’s Choice on Friday Flash Fiction with my most recent story, A Break Does You Good. If you missed it, do check out the link. Many thanks to all for the wonderful comments on this one so far too.

Screenshot 2024-05-19 at 17-16-04 A Break Does You Good by Allison Symes

Am on my way home from a fabulous Scottish holiday. Glorious weather all week. Magnificent scenery.

Delighted to be back on Authors Electric with PowerPoint and Zoom Workshops. I discuss how I rediscovered the former thanks to running and going to the latter!

I also look at the benefits of both of these for where I attend webinars on topics of interest which I could never get to in person. I often register for these things even if I’m not sure if I can get to them at the time allocated as many of those running these will send you a link so you can play a recording back at a more convenient time to you. I’ve found that so useful.

Hope you find the post useful. There are many benefits to these things.

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Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

Many thanks for all the kind responses to my post yesterday after my burglary experience. Very much appreciated and it is such a relief to get back to writing again.

Am looking forward also to the next Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group meeting next week. Plus I’m running an editing workshop for another ACW group this coming Saturday. Good to be busy on something which is fun, writing related, and productive!

I’ve occasionally used a time as an opening line. I used 3 am in my creepy tale, Pressing the Flesh from From Light to Dark and Back Again. The time itself indicates this story is likely to be dark. If I’d set the time at midday, say, the mood of the story would have been entirely different. The darkness of night was needed for this one.

Now this is something you could use to great effect in your own tales. Time can almost be used as a setting in itself here.

Allison Symes - Flash Fiction CollectionsIt’s Monday. My first day back at home after a lovely holiday. Am feeling tired! Definitely time for a story then. Hope you like my latest on YouTube – Going Out. (Not that I was today!).

 

One of the reasons I love opening lines as a writing exercise is they give me two ways in which to operate.

If a character is mentioned, I can then flesh them out more and work out what kind of situation they’re going to deal with.

If the situation is mentioned (but no character as such, often just a name and not always that), I can work out what kind of character would best suit the situation. Win-win either way here as far as I’m concerned. I regularly use both methods to create stories. What I do know is character and situation have to marry up well though.

Will be running an editing workshop for an Association of Christian Writers group on Saturday. Looking forward to that. Until I have the story down, no matter how I create it, the editing waits. I’ve got to know what I’m working with first.

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Going home after a fabulous week away in the beautiful north-east of Scotland. What does going home mean to your characters? Is it something they look forward to doing or something they fear will never happen or something they dread?

There are so many connotations here. What could you use? What does the reaction show about your characters? Could their reaction get better if it is not a good one to start with and what/whom would make that better?

Will miss the marvellous view across to a huge hill (often with red deer on it, we’ve seen a fair few this week) from my temporary home but will take back happy memories and photos. What would your characters bring back with them when they go home?

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Goodreads Author Blog – When A Story Fails

I’m glad to say a story doesn’t fail for me often. When it does, it is always due to me being unconvinced by the characterisation. Something about the characters doesn’t ring true for me or they manage to aggravate me (Miss Price of Mansfield Park is a prime example of this for me yet I love all of Jane Austen’s other heroines, including the supposedly unlikeable Emma).

There is a positive to this though. Knowing what I dislike in character portrayal means I make sure I don’t write this kind of thing for my own creations. I like to know my characters well enough to know what drives them and how they would act/react in any circumstance.

If I understand motivation, I am far more likely to read on to find out what the characters go on and do. It doesn’t mean I have to agree or like what they do but I do have to see where they are coming from.
For me, a story works when the character convinces me. The story is nothing without a convincing character as far as I am concerned.
Screenshot 2024-05-22 at 20-59-18 When A Story Fails

WRITERS NARRATIVE SUBSCRIBER LINK

AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES

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History – Fact and Fiction/The Joy of Author Interviews

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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. Glad to be talking about history, something I adore, for Chandler’s Ford Today this week. Lady has been out and about with her closest girlfriends and we’ve had more sunshine. (You make the most of that while you have it. Lady shares that view!).

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Facebook – General and Chandler’s Ford Today

Delighted to share History – Fact and Fiction for Chandler’s Ford Today this week. I’ve loved history from an early age in fiction and non-fiction forms.

I recently gave a PowerPoint talk on two women united by one king (Richard III – the women in question are Josephine Tey and Philippa Langley) and fiction as well as non-fiction can do so much to bring the past to life. My post looks at the advantages of both forms of writing when it comes to history and I also share how music can help enhance historical portrayals too.

I’m currently reading Double Cross by Ben Macintyre and loving that. If you have any suggestions for good historical reads, fictional or otherwise, do pop across to the CFT page (link below) and share in the comments box. Would be good to get a reading list going!

Hope you enjoy the post.

History – Fact and Fiction

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Pleased to be back on Authors Electric. This time I’m talking about The Joys of Author Interviews. I look at conducting them (I do this often for Chandler’s Ford Today) but also what I find fascinating about interviews I listen to/read which are conducted by others. Hope you enjoy the post.

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Sunshine again today! Lady and I made the most of that.

Looking forward to sharing History – Fact and Fiction on Chandler’s Ford Today on Friday. See above. I love history. Historical fiction can bring out truths which cannot be proved in the traditional sense but which could be said to be reasonable supposition based on what is known.

I use reasonable supposition for my historical flash pieces such as in My Girl (Tripping the Flash Fantastic) where the viewpoint is from Queen Anne Boleyn on the eve of her execution.

For fictional characters, having worked out their main trait, their attitudes and behaviours will be based on that. I like to think of that as “following through”. If a character’s main trait is slyness, then they will act in that way and their attitude reflect it.

Characters have to seem true to a reader to convince them to follow the character’s story.

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Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

End of the working week means it’s time for another story. Hope you enjoy my latest on Friday Flash Fiction. This one is called Sharing Is A Mug’s Game. Find out why my character George comes to this thought – is he right?

Screenshot 2024-04-19 at 10-13-07 Sharing is a Mug's Game by Allison Symes

Flash fiction is ideal for Open Prose Mic Nights. Doesn’t take too long to read. You can mix up the mood of the stories you pick for this too. But I do practice what I read beforehand. Find it helps with the nerves (and there should be some good nerves here – some adrenaline is useful for a performance. I find it gives me a kick start!).

I like to mix up the mood for the stories I put in collections but you can pick a big enough topic to write about only. Dawn Kentish Knox did this with her excellent The Great War, which contains 100 tales of 100 words each. It also has to be a topic that is of huge interest to you. You need the commitment to that topic to be able to produce that number of stories.

For assortments of stories, which so far has been my route, it is a question of getting the balance of stories right – literally from light to dark and back again.

From Light to Dark and Back Again - by night

I’m a huge fan of outlining but I focus on ensuring I know my character(s) well enough. I work from their major traits and what attitudes/actions these would be likely to lead them to and that in turn helps ensure their motivation is understandable.

If a reader understands why a character is acting the way they are, the character will come across as more believable, regardless of how fantastic the setting might be. I see doing all of this as my bedrock for a story.

Once I know my character I can then see what kind of situations they are likely to end up in. A forthright character, for example, is likely to cause upset simply by being tactless. What is then fun is working out what that leads to – one of my stories with a character like that ending up cutting up someone in a car park who later on was revealed to be the judge for a story competition they’d entered. Oops!

Following through to ensure everything about your character makes sense pays dividends. You’re less likely to have plot holes for one thing because you have already figured out what Character A would be likely to do/feel in the situation you’ve set up.

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Fairytales with Bite – Breaking the Magical Rules

For your magical setting, it pays to let readers have some sense of the rules early on. For example, can all of your characters use magic? If there are limits, why have these been imposed and are they imposed fairly?

What are your characters allowed to do with their powers? What are they expressly forbidden to do and how are these rules enforced? What would happen to anyone who broke the rules accidentally? What would happen to someone who did this deliberately? I would hope there would be a difference here!

Give some thought as to who in your creation set the rules for magic. If these were imposed on your setting by a superior power, why was this done and by whom? Why are they not involved with your setting now? Are they likely to come back?

Most of us understand and accept most laws but there will always be some which niggle, which seem petty or bureaucratic. What would the equivalent of these be in your setting? Does someone breaking rules like that get away with it? Could it lead to petty laws being repealed? What would your character be seeking to change here and are they doing it for the greater good of their society?

Sometimes there could be a point to breaking the magical rules, especially if these were being misused. So who would challenge the status quo here and what has led them to do so?

Story ideas there!

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This World and Others – What is Normal Anyway? (Settings)

I think this is a good question to answer regardless of what your setting is! For your world, what would be considered normal behaviour? Would it equate with what we consider normal behaviour? What would your world make of humanity and the ways we organise our countries etc?

In an alien setting, where there are special powers/magic/greater scientific discoveries etc, what would be considered normal there? Would someone we consider to be a genius be seen in a different light in your setting because intellectual capacity is so much greater?

What would be the normal use of magic, special powers etc? What would be considered excessive?

Within your communities in your world, what is the range of expectations? If you have a magical community, what would be considered normal for elves to be able to do, dwarves to be able to do and so on? Do the different groups co-operate to make things better for all? (And yes we could do with more that here!).

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Publication/Broadcast News and Author Newsletters

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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.
Hope you had a good weekend. Great start to the week with publication and ALCS payment news. Lady got her week off to a cracking start by having a good run round with her Hungarian Vizler and Rhodesian Ridgeback pals. Hope the rest of the week continues to go well. Spotting more spring flowers out too. They cheer me up so much. I love the colours.

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Facebook – General

Hope you have had a good day. Glad to share a Mixcloud link to Hannah Kate’s Spring Equinox show on North Manchester FM on Saturday. Always easier to share one link rather than two! (I had shared two links to both halves of the show over the weekend but will only share this one link here). It was great fun taking part in the flash fiction slot here and do check out the other stories. They were a good mix. Hannah’s Bookshelf is on every Saturday between 2 and 4 pm. If you like books, stories, and radio, well here is the show for you!

Separately, I will be talking about the joys of PowerPoint for Chandler’s Ford Today on Friday. Will be sharing tips and what I’ve found useful here.

Screenshot 2024-03-19 at 10-01-58 Hannah’s Bookshelf Spring Equinox Special - 16_03_2024

Busy night tonight. (18th March 2024 – you know how you sometimes get several things on one day, mine this week was Monday!). First post. Delighted to say I am back on CafeLit with a story called Zoom. Hope you enjoy it. Oh and I will leave you to decide if the character in this one could be in any way related to yours truly!

Screenshot 2024-03-18 at 16-52-14 CafeLitMagazineSecond post. (Told you Monday, 18th March 2024 was busy for me!). Glad to share my latest Authors Electric post where I discuss Author Newsletters. I discuss how I approach writing mine and share some tips. Hope you find it useful.

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Hope you are having a lovely weekend. Pleased to see some sun this afternoon.

Will be back on Authors Electric tomorrow, talking about Author Newsletters. Will also have a story on CafeLit tomorrow. Gets the week off to a good start! See above. I like Mondays like Monday 18th March – lots happening!

Listening to Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saens on Classic FM as I write this. (Well, I had been!). One of my favourite pieces, I always vote for it in their hall of fame chart. Also used a free to use version of it for the book trailer for From Light to Dark and Back Again. It is apt!

Am busy preparing some wonderful author interviews to go on Chandler’s Ford Today in due course.
It was lovely listening to Budding Betrayal on North Manchester FM live yesterday. I often have to use catch up but it was great listening to the variety of tales, all of which were spring related in some way, and it made a nice change to get to do so at the time of broadcast.

Writing Tip: I regularly have brainstorming sessions where I jot down potential ideas for titles, opening and closing lines, and so on. This is great and I find it so useful. But what do you do when the brain decides now would be a good time to give you a fabulous idea to write up but you are not in a position to write anything? I sometimes find this when I go swimming. It’s not a great time for inspiration to strike.

All I do here is repeat the idea to myself (silently!) until I can get to my phone and type myself up a quick note. I can then flesh that note out further when I have more time. What matters is getting the nugget of the idea down. Do that and you should find it will remind you of what else you thought about and then you can jot it down.

431477653_10161784215797053_7292184455729948731_nHope you have had a good day. Delighted to hear my story Budding Betrayal on North Manchester FM in Hannah Kate’s Spring Equinox show this afternoon. Many congratulations to the other four writers who had stories on. It was a great mixture of tales! All of the stories are on the second half of the show. See single Mixcloud link further up.

What I do when I’m thinking of submitting something for broadcast is edit my story and then I record it on Zoom. I can then play it back and hear how it sounds but I can also check my timings. For Hannah Kate’s show, you send in your stories via Voicemail and you have three minutes maximum on this so your timing does have to be spot on.

As with Open Prose Mic Nights, getting your timing right is crucial but Zoom helps you here. It is also fine to come in at under the maximum time. It is never okay to go over. Word count, I find, for a three minutes slot like today’s one is usually around the 250 mark but it always pays to check as you need to allow for your own reading time here.

The playback is helpful again because I can hear whether I come across clearly or not. No garbling, rushing, or big gaps here. I also find reading out loud and playing a recording back is also great practice for future Mic Nights. Nothing to dislike here basically.

And do enjoy the stories!

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Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

I don’t always name a character in my flash tales. (I always do for my longer short stories). I sometimes do this as leaving a character as an “it” can be more scary if I’m writing a darker flash piece. But at other times the name is not the most important thing about the character. Their attitude and back story is more important to know.

An example of this is my The Past – Ready or Not? from Tripping the Flash Fantastic. The story slowly reveals what you do need to know about my character but the name didn’t matter at all!

Most of the time I do name characters of course and use those names to help readers picture them but it isn’t always needed. It is a case of knowing why you are doing (or in this case NOT doing) something which matters most. There has to be a good reason for anything to be in a story.

433567827_10161787404767053_8155201244053768680_nIt’s Monday. Finally the evenings are getting lighter for longer. Having said that, it is still Monday. Time for a story then. Hope you enjoy my latest YouTube flash tale – Next Time. Dog owners especially will relate to this one.


When I have a theme set for a competition, I take some time working out what could come from that theme. It pays. I find the first few ideas are the “obvious” ones but as I write down more possible thoughts, I find I come up with something which isn’t so obvious. I will then explore those ideas further and see if there is anything I can do with them. Often there is and I will go down this route, knowing I’m producing a story which fits the theme but, hopefully, will stand out a bit as being “different”.

If you’re going for the more obvious takes on a theme, think about what would make your characters stand out in that story. What is it unique to you which you can bring to the mix here? A striking character can transform an “obvious” storyline.

But the time taken to work out ideas, I’ve found, has saved me considerable time and grief later. When I pick the idea to write up, I already know I have thought it through, worked out any potential issues with it, and then I get on with the first draft.

431465653_10161784218007053_4015866457362570123_nGood to hear flash fiction on the radio. I enjoyed tuning in to Hannah Kate’s Spring Equinox show on North Manchester FM this afternoon (16th March 2024) and hearing five flash pieces, including my Budding Betrayal, broadcast.

Flash works well on radio. Flash has to keep to the point and to word counts. That in turn helps with timings (crucial for radio shows). When I do need a scene break in my flash tale, and I did with Budding Betrayal, I use a slight pause to indicate a change of scene is coming. Only way you can do it but it does have to be a brief pause, otherwise folk will think there’s something wrong.

All dialogue stories would work well on radio but you do need to find a way of distinguishing between your characters. Yes, you can use names but it is also handy to have one character speak in a specific way and another character to speak in another. You can use turns of phrase to good effect here.

If one character in a two character tale uses a certain word or two, we will know who they are just by the use of those words. We will also know who the other character has to be by default because they won’t use them.

For flash with its tight word count, it would pay to ensure any turn of phrase is kept short and it should be repeated (ideally once or twice maximum depending on your word count here) but, as with any good writing, it pays not to overdo it. I think flash helps here. It forces you to keep things tight. Repetition is used as a deliberately chosen effect (which to my mind is the best way to use it at all).

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Goodreads Author Blog – Dialogue in Fiction

One thing writers need to be aware of is dialogue in fiction can’t match exactly what we come up with in life. Well, nobody wants to read lots of hesitations, repetitions which are not done for effect (and look like mistakes by the author), info dumps and so on. So dialogue in fiction has to “tidy up” what we would come up for real. Dialogue in fiction has to serve the needs of the characters (and, even more importantly, the readers).

The truly great stories get this spot on. You can imagine the characters speaking. What are they saying moves the story on and you are gripped by their conversation. That is the purpose of fictional dialogue.
Dialogue in fiction serves many purposes. It shares information. It reveals information from one character to another which furthers the plot. But whatever the intention of the author here, the dialogue must make us want to read on.

As readers, we need to be convinced by the dialogue the writer is sharing with us. (We have to be convinced this is what characters, as portrayed, would say if they were real).

I love writing dialogue. What I have to watch is to ensure I am putting dialogue into a story for a good reason. I could easily get my characters into conversational ping-pong. So what I do to ensure I don’t do this is ask what does this dialogue do for the story? If it helps in any way, which it should do, it stays in. Else it gets cut.

Great fictional dialogue shows you so much about the characters. In the Wodehouse stories, I can’t imagine Jeeves and Wooster speaking in any other way. The way the two speak (generally and to each other) confirms their portrayal and is so wonderfully done. That’s just to name one example.

Agatha Christie is consistent with how she gets Poirot and Miss Marple to speak. That matters too.

Consistency confirms characterisation. It is what we expect from the characters we like and loathe.

Character dialogue adds so much to the stories and books I enjoy, when done correctly. It acts as a good challenge for me to get it right with my characters too!

Screenshot 2024-03-16 at 17-34-46 Dialogue in FictionWRITERS NARRATIVE SUBSCRIBER LINK

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Handling Rejections and Book Recommendations – Yay or Nay?

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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. Image of me at the Book Fair was taken by Richard Hardie. Makes an excellent publicity shot!
Hope you have had a good weekend. Not bad here. Writing going well and looking forward to the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group meeting next week. Love preparing material for that. Love meeting up with everyone on line. There is a great creative buzz. Hope your own creative buzz is going well!

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Facebook – General

Many thanks for the wonderful comments on my post yesterday when I talked about having a story turned down and then what I plan to do as a result. See below.

One good thing – the rejection has led to a positive and, I hope, helpful post on Facebook so I count that as a win! I have often had stories turned down – it does indeed happen to all writers – but again have often reworked a piece and had it accepted later on.

I’ve also got on and written more stories, many of which are published now, some still not. It is very much a case of onwards and upwards and can I make this story better and get it out somewhere else? The important thing is not giving up.

As I write in the short form, I always have to invent characters. I’ll be looking at some ways of doing this in my Chandler’s Ford Today post this week called Ways into Creating Characters. I do love self explanatory titles! I’ll be discussing why stories are character led and why a writer needs to know their characters well. Link up on Friday.

 

Had a story turned down today. Will look at it again (probably over the weekend), see if I can improve it, and try and find another home for it. Sometimes I’ve gone on to have work published that way.

This is all part and parcel of the writing life and it doesn’t bother me now the way it would’ve done when I started writing seriously. This is because I know now, in a way I didn’t way back when, this happens to all writers, you have to be submitting material to have any chance of acceptances, and there is nothing to stop me trying again with the turned down piece. Waste not, want not.

Do bear in mind there are all sorts of reasons for a piece to be turned down. Sometimes it is because a market (including things like the online story websites) have just had stories in and accepted on a similar theme to yours. You can’t know this. But you can get your story out again to somewhere suitable that hasn’t been inundated with stories on said similar theme.

Sometimes your story doesn’t suit the mood an editor/publisher is looking for at the time you submit the piece. That happens too.

Best thing is to carry on writing, review your turned down piece and see if you can find another home for it. It is very satisfying when you can.

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It’s my turn once again on Authors Electric. This time my topic is Book Recommendations – Yay or Nay?

I discuss my policies on reviewing books and what I do with books on writing I’ve found especially useful. I also look at getting into a book after hearing it read on radio, adapted for TV etc., as these can be great means to introduce the original books to people.

Hope you enjoy the post.

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Hope you are having a good weekend. Don’t forget the next issue of Writers’ Narrative will be out before long. Meantime, you can catch up with the current issue below.

Reading quality writing magazines is a huge help to your own writing. I’ve learned so many tips over the years doing this and every single one has helped my writing in some way. I also love finding things out about other areas of writing I’m not involved in at all.

This is partly because I love everything to do with creative writing but also because you never know when those areas of writing might become relevant to you after all.

I hadn’t heard of flash fiction when I started writing seriously for publication. I found out about it, gave it a go, two books later (and with a third in the pipeline), I am glad I discovered it!

But this is where a good quality writing magazine comes into its own. It can show you these aspects of writing. It’s then up to you whether you explore them further or not. Even if you don’t do so immediately, you may come back to these later but you have to know about them first.

And from a reader’s viewpoint, you get to discover authors new to you too.

Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

One of the most overlooked jobs when putting a flash fiction/short story collection together is sorting out the index. It is a vital job though and worth taking your time over.

I was changing my running order for both of my flash collections (From Light to Dark and Back Again and Tripping the Flash Fantastic) so this was the last thing I did before sending my manuscript off. There were further changes after that but thankfully mainly on the text. But having the index worked out meant it was easier to change things around when I still needed to work on that. The art of indexing is much underrated I think!

With the books published, those indexes are still handy to me to remind me of what I’ve had published where. The indexes were also useful for helping me ensure my story titles weren’t sounding all the same. I didn’t want them all starting with the magic word “the”! It is easy to do that. I like variety in my titles in how they sound, word count length, and the kind of hook I hope they deliver.

Allison Symes - Flash Fiction CollectionsIt has been a long tiring Monday. The forecast isn’t great. It’s still Monday. Time for a story then. Hope you like my latest on YouTube – A Good Margin. Never cross old ladies is the motto of this one – find out why here.

 

After a very wet start to the day, Sunday has brightened up nicely. Many thanks for the comments coming in on Wrong Turn, my latest story on Friday Flash Fiction. Much appreciated.

Looking forward to the Association of Christian Writers’ Flash Fiction group meeting on Zoom later in the month. Always good fun. Coming up with topics is a great brain stretcher for me and, yes, I do have a go at the prompts I set. Sometimes I will do the odd one or two in advance and use as examples. I’ve found, when I’ve been on the receiving end, I’ve appreciated examples being set. It encourages my imagination to get going.

Many of the prompts I prepare for these meetings, though, I write on the night with the others. I love live writing exercises and want to join in myself. I find it gets the adrenalin and the imagination flowing. Nothing to dislike here! Tidying the draft up etc can happen much later (and does).

Raw writing if you like but there is a joy and energy to just creating something like that and knowing the other work can be returned to later on. Right now I am just letting my imagination play and I love that.

Screenshot 2024-02-16 at 09-51-34 Wrong Turn by Allison Symes

Flash fiction takes away one reason people can give for not reading – they don’t have the time! Hmm…

I would hope the development of flash fiction encourages more reading in fact. Why? Simply because the authors, including yours truly, are not asking people to commit to too much in one go. I would hope that would encourage people to read more flash fiction across the word count ranges, go on to read short stories, novellas, novels etc.

From a writing viewpoint, flash has taught me the meaning of show, don’t tell. I can’t waffle on either because I’d use up my word count too fast. So it is an excellent discipline to practice writing flash even if it is never your main form of writing.

Flash Fiction focuses on THE important aspect of a character's life

Goodreads Author Blog – Series Books or Stand Alones?

Do you prefer series books or stand alones? Naturally, I am sure most of us would say we love both of these forms of novel. I certainly do. But both have their own advantages.

In series books, you have the advantage of following characters over the course of several novels and see them develop. My favourite example is the Discworld series by the much missed Terry Pratchett. The Vimes books within this show him going from a drunk to a phenomenally brave man with a wife (the brilliant Lady Sybil, who is a great role model) and child and how he transforms the City Watch into a decent police unit.

But there are some books where a writer says all they have to say about a character in one gripping story and they’re right not to carry that on.

I don’t know if this series/stand alone debate particularly refers to crime fiction (as the Vimes books are crime novels set in a fantasy world so cross crime/fantasy/humour and to fabulous effect). Certainly if an author is new to me, I will only read one book of theirs, see how I get on, and then go on to read the others in their series or not as the case may be.

If you have series or stand alone recommendations, do share!

Meantime I carry on very happily reading both kinds.

Screenshot 2024-02-17 at 17-15-16 Series Books or Stand Alones

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AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES

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Newsletter Tips, New Hats, and a New Reading/Writing Year

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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. Many thanks to Richard Hardie for taking the publicity shot of me at the Book Fair last year. Many thanks to Gill James for taking the publicity shot of me at the Bridge House Publishing Celebration event which I’ve used in my Authors Electric post for this month. Screenshots taken by me, Allison Symes.
Hope you have had a good week. Continues cold here. Perfect weather for staying in and getting on with the writing then!

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Facebook – General and Chandler’s Ford Today

Pleased to share Newsletter Tips, my latest post on Chandler’s Ford Today. I hope this post proves especially useful to those considering setting up an author newsletter. I share why I decided to have one and what I have found helpful in keeping it going.

I also discuss the advantages of having one at all and, some great news here, is that to begin with at least, it is perfectly okay to use a free plan from one of the service providers such as Mailchimp or MailerLite. I share thoughts and tips on scheduling your newsletters and coming up with interesting content too.

Hope you enjoy the post.

Newsletter Tips

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Am pleased to be back on Authors Electric with my latest blog post – A New Reading and Writing Year. I ask what you would like in this new year on both counts and share some of the things I would like.

I share a few thoughts on AI and Twitter too (because I would like to see authors appreciated more. Robots can do many things but the world would be a far poorer place without human imagination).

Hope you enjoy more fabulous books (reading and writing them) in 2024.

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Another chilly one today. Glad to say Lady got to play with her best buddies, the Hungarian Vizler and Rhodesian Ridgeback. Good time had by all. Life came back to my feet on getting home!

Don’t forget I’ll be sharing Newsletter Tips on Chandler’s Ford Today on Friday. Will be especially useful if you are thinking of setting one up. See above.

Am looking forward to resuming my “arts correspondent” role for CFT soon as I am off to see The Chameleon Theatre Group’s latest production of Sleeping Beauty next week. It is panto time. Oh yes it is! Review to follow in a couple of weeks though I am planning to write a piece about fairytales and pantomime the week ahead of that review.

I do hope The Chameleons do get to stage Terry Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters at some point as I know they’d do this well. It was a shame they couldn’t go ahead with this last autumn after all but I hope they get to have another crack at this. Great story and I know they’d do it justice.

I’ll be looking at A New Reading and Writing Year for Authors Electric ahead of all of this though – link up for that tomorrow. Again see above. Busy week on the old blogging front!

Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

Thrilled to be back on Friday Flash Fiction with my latest tale, New Hat Time. This story came about as a result of my using a well known saying as a theme. Clue: it involves hats! Hope you enjoy the tale. Many thanks also to those who have sent in comments already on this one.
Screenshot 2024-01-19 at 10-00-38 New Hat Time by Allison Symes

Hope you have had a good day (and kept warm enough. Lady was running around with her best buddy again so she was fine).

A major focus for me when I write flash fiction is thinking about the impact of my story on potential readers. Do I want to make them laugh, cry, occasionally scream etc? I then look at the characters who can “deliver” these things.

Competitions with set themes, I find, kind of give me a head start here because I can work out immediately the kind of impact their theme is likely to deliver, though you do sometimes get themes which can be taken in more than one direction. I enjoy those. I get to pick which way to take it!

Though when that doesn’t happen and a theme has an “obvious” impact, I have great fun in working out how I can deliver on that and what would make my characters stand out. It is a good challenge. Entering competitions is useful for this and for getting you into the habit of writing to deadlines.

420271522_812239524249244_449972747403738715_nBrrr…. Am so glad writing can be done in the warm! (Ironically I have enjoyed my swims so far this week. When the weather is this cold, the water feels like you’re getting into a tepid bath. Trust me it isn’t like that!).

When drafting a flash piece, I focus on getting the story down. Then and only then do I think about the word count. The story is the most important thing.

Once down, I can then look at whether I have expressed things as well as I can. Usually a turn of phrase can be improved. Sometimes I will add in a detail to improve my characterisation. The odd detail here and there can create a stronger image and make my character more relatable to a reader.

That all done, then I can figure out what word count suits the story. Sometimes I leave it at a longer count. Okay, that will change where I send the piece, but the story has to be complete in and of itself and sometimes these things do work better at 300 words rather than 100.

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Fairytales with Bite – Fairytales and Theatre

This topic came to mind as I will shortly be looking at this for a longer article for Chandler’s Ford Today. I’m off to see Sleeping Beauty performed by the excellent local amateur theatre group I often review performances for and, of course, there is a close link between fairytales and pantomime.

But it led me to wonder if your stories are set in a magical world, what would they do for entertainment? What would they consider to be fairytales? Do they have such a thing as theatre? I must admit I would hope so. There is something almost magical about theatre, I think.

In your magical setting, when it comes to performing any kind of story, would magic be allowed to be used, especially for what we would think of as special effects? Or is it a case, in a magical world, that the one time this power is not used is in putting on entertainment as that has to be done “manually”? By that I mean using the arts of acting, stage set design and so on directly rather than having a wave of the magic wand solve all of that.

There is much satisfaction to be had in creating a piece of work yourself. I find this every time I complete a flash fiction piece or short story (even though I know there will be more work to be done on these things). So could your characters want to produce things like theatrical entertainment without resorting to magic to help them? This is where they get their creative spark. Just a thought. There could be some interesting stories here.

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This World and Others – Alien Forms of Entertainment

Linking in with Fairytales with Bite, what would alien forms of entertainment be? After a hard day’s work collecting specimens from other planets for your bosses (and you don’t want to know what happens next, not your job to worry about that etc), where would your average alien go to be entertained? Or is the thought of entertainment, as we know it, alien to them?

On the assumption it isn’t alien, what would your characters like do to do relax? Would there be music, cinema, theatre, sports, the arts etc? Would there be things in common with Earth here or is what they do different? How would they play sport if they don’t play it as we do? How would they enjoy music if they don’t do so the way we do?

Here is where you would need to give some thought as to what your characters look like and what their physical biology is? If they don’t have ears, how would they appreciate music? Could they absorb it through their skin instead, for example?

If there is an entertainment industry, who controls it? Can all access it? Do your characters have to pay for their entertainment and, if so, what form does the payment take? Are certain entertainments more valued than others?

Now I can see story ideas forming here but also you could use these kind of questions to work out what you need to know about how things work in your setting and then share with a reader only what they need to know. So you set out early on a character absorbs music through their skin, say, by showing this to a reader early on. Readers will pick up that is what happens in your setting but naturally you need to know how things work first.

You can also drop entertainment into your story as a backdrop. Perhaps your character has to meet someone/thing important at a certain entertainment venue before going on to do whatever is expected of them. There have to be places where your characters meet and there is no reason why it couldn’t be your world’s equivalent of our pub etc.

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WRITERS NARRATIVE SUBSCRIBER LINK

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AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES
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Book Reviews and Publication/Broadcast News

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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. Hope you have had a good weekend.
Had a lovely carols event at our church over the weekend. Good support too and all were in fine voice. Gets Christmas off to a cracking start for me. Writing wise, will be winding down now over the next few days. Am not planning to post on 25th and 26th December. I will post up until Christmas Eve and then from 27th December onwards. Well, that’s the plan at the moment anyhow. Is Lady looking forward to Christmas? Oh yes. She’s a great believer in Santa Paws and an even bigger believer in Christmas dinner!

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Lady and I did great impressions of drowned rats this morning. She dries off far quicker than I do.
I’ll be sharing a festive round up of recent writing events I’ve been involved with and flash stories for Chandler’s Ford Today this week. Looking forward to sharing that. It’s a good way to cover a few things in one post.

Am preparing a post for 29th December taking a look at the year to come writing wise. I do get as much writing done as I can in the few days leading up to Christmas. Afterwards, times of appearance will vary but I am looking forward to the Christmas break and getting more reading time in as well.

Author newsletter will go out on 1st January – to sign up do head over to my landing page at https://allisonsymescollectedworks.com

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Wow, where has the year gone? My final post for the year for Authors Electric is on the theme of Book Reviews. I look at this from the point of view of whether you review how many books you’ve read over the last twelve months, as well as the difficulty of getting reviews for your own books. I discuss my own policy for reviewing anything too. Hope you enjoy the post.

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Hope you have had a good day and Christmas preparations are going well. It was odd not going to church this morning. We went this afternoon instead for a lovely Carols by Candlelight service instead. A good time had by all. We were in good voice. Tea and coffee and festive refreshments went down very well afterwards too.

Am delighted to be back on CafeLit once more with I Do, I Don’t. This story started life as one of my Flash NANO 2023 prompts and I am glad it has found a home. Hope you enjoy the story.

Screenshot 2023-12-17 at 19-24-17 CafeLitMagazine

Many thanks to Hannah Kate for her Three Minute Santas show on North Manchester FM as it is a great chance to celebrate festive flash fiction. Enjoyed listening in. Lovely variety of stories.

My broadcast story was This Is The Partnership. Find out how Santa deals with a dodgy salesman and where the contract comes in during all of that. Oh and how the Tooth Fairy fits in too! Good fun to write. I hope you enjoy listening to it. My tale comes in at about the 34 minutes mark in Part 1 of the show (link here) but do check out both parts (link to Part 2 here). You don’t want to miss out on the cracking stories.

You really can’t go wrong with a show full of stories and Christmas music, can you?

Will be talking about my festive related writing activities, including this show, in my Chandler’s Ford Today post next week too.

Screenshot 2023-12-16 at 20-14-24 North Manchester FM 106.6 Listen Again - Listen whilst connected - downloading our shows is not possible

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Hope your Christmas preparations are going well and you have a lovely time with friends and family. I also hope you receive plenty of book related presents too (and they’re easy for Santa to wrap so win-win).

I have written the odd flash fiction story in poetic form. One of these is The Working Man (Tripping the Flash Fantastic) which looks at a current carpenter, an old boy, and his approach to the Nativity. Let’s say he likes the fact that working shepherds were the first to get to the stable. It was a pleasure to write it.

Festive flash can cover aspects of the Nativity as well as things like the stories associated with Santa. I like to write both. I like the thoughtful or cheery mood so often associated with festive flash fiction. We need cheer every now and then in stories I think.

412384359_792733716199825_5419709909276471137_nIt’s not quite the night before Christmas. It is the Monday before Christmas though! And Monday means story time (though I am giving myself next Monday off for some reason!). Hope you enjoy my latest YouTube video – Timings. You know how we all moan about late deliveries of parcels, post etc. Just occasionally someone else does too – find out who here.

 

Well, I got to hear Merry Christmas Everybody by Slade for the first time this festive season as I listed to Three Minute Santas presented by Hannah Kate on North Manchester FM yesterday. Countdown to Christmas started then (and this song must be known as the Slade pension fund!). Good to hear it again. I’ve always loved this one.

Will be slowly winding down towards Christmas but am pleased I did get my entry off to what will be my last competition entry for 2023. Glad to have got that off this side of the holidays though.

I enjoyed singing some stories myself in the forms of carols in my church’s Carols by Candlelight service. I’ve always had a soft spot for stories in songs and a classic one here for me is Squeeze’s Up the Junction. Do check it out if you don’t know it. It is classic ballad territory. Proves also you can tell a story in not many words indeed but then that would be music to my ears, wouldn’t it?!

My flash collections are available in Kindle and paperback

Hope you have had a good day. Lovely to have my This is The Partnership broadcast by Hannah Kate on her Three Minute Santas show on North Manchester FM. Good to hear the variety of stories on here. One reason I love writing festive flash fiction is because there is so much you can do with it. You can write takes on the Nativity. You can write takes on the tales connected with Santa and his elves and so on. And there is always room for a ghost story – see Charles Dickens’ catalogue for more on that! Am I surprised A Christmas Carol has never been out of print? No. Suspect it never will be. Rightly too.

Will have a story, I Do, I Don’t, will be on CafeLit tomorrow so hopefully will share the link there. So it is a good weekend for sharing story links! See above for CafeLit link.

Am looking forward to singing some stories (via carols) in my church’s carols event tomorrow. Always fun and it will be interesting to see what Christmas cracker jokes we are treated to this year! (I love a good groan at a cracker joke).

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Goodreads Author Blog – A Christmas Carol – An Acrostic

A = A classic story which will never date or be irrelevant.

C = Charles Dickens’ tale will always have resonance.

H = His character of Ebenezer Scrooge has gone into the language – we talk about someone being a Scrooge.

R = Realising what the true meaning of Christmas is forms the heart of this story.

I = Imagining what it could take to make Scrooge the way he was at the start of the story shows empathy for a lost soul.

S = Scrooge changes – he has to, else there’s no story – what is fascinating here is finding out how it is done.

T = Time rules are suspended thanks to the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future.

M = Muppet Christmas Carol is, to my mind, the best adaptation of the story.

A = And I love the Marley and Marley sketch in this film – think it is brilliant.

S = Stories can show their classic status by seeing how many adaptations of them have been carried out – loads for this one.

C = Caring for others is a huge theme in this story and Scrooge comes to see how others see his miserliness.

A = Anguish in Scrooge’s past is shown to him – he has to face his mistakes, especially with Belle.

R = Reality is part of this story, funnily enough, as there are scary moments in the tale and Scrooge is made to face what he has become, perhaps the scariest thing of all.

O = Original and gripping – wow, what a story!

L = Love triumphs – Scrooge changes – he is no longer a lost soul.

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AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES

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Book Buying, Past Stories, and Imaginative Advertising

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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.
Hope you had a good weekend. Happily drafting plenty of flash stories and some of those written for Flash NANO this time, I’ve already got some ideas as to where I can try placing them. There is also a competition I would like to try before the end of the year too. Am so glad writing is an indoors activity. Weather has been a right mix again. It’s a win at the moment if Lady and I come home without being soaked.

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Brrr… it’s cold today. Often when I swim, if it’s cold outside, the pool feels lovely by comparison. Not today. Cold outside and in the water. Fine when I got swimming though. I swear it’s done on purpose to make you get a move on in the pool. It worked today on me, that’s all I can say.

I’ll be talking about Editing Tips on Friday for Chandler’s Ford Today. I’ll be looking at my approach to editing (which I go into more detail about when I run my workshops on the topic). I see it as part of the creative process. Good editing is what will make the difference to your story being accepted or placed somewhere or not. I also discuss editing on screen and on paper. Looking forward to sharing that later in the week.

One of the joys of writing for CFT is coming up with interesting questions for interviewees. I had a lovely time doing this recently and am looking forward to receiving the replies back from the people concerned! I’ve also learned a lot from author interviews I’ve read or listened to, which is another reason to love them.

Author Interviews coming up on CFT

Hope you had a good weekend. Leaves coming off the trees at an incredibly fast rate right now. Lady is a bit wary of this time of year only because of the chestnut husks down. She picks her way through delicately but every so often she has to stop and I have to take a husk out of her pads, poor thing. It is like walking on needles. These are better after some rain funnily enough as they then soften.

Can’t believe we’re almost at the two-thirds mark of Flash NANO for another year. Am happily drafting other flash pieces too as I have a competition in mind I want to have a go at and other places I’d like send something into so busy, busy. Am also hoping to be interviewing other authors for Chandler’s Ford Today again before too long.

Must admit some imaginative writing caught my eye today on the packet of the coffee I get for my other half. It’s a new brand to him, as his usual wasn’t in stock. Usually coffee is graded for how strong it is, right? Well this one says “it will kick you THIS hard” and then shows you a star rating. I must admit I liked that. There was also a reference to “if you’re a nerd, you could do…” which made me grin. Great advertising too. Someone somewhere gave great thought to this and it is a great lesson in how to make the usually boring bits much more interesting!

Jotting down ideas for future use

Hope the weekend is being kind to you. Blustery weather here. Lady made a new friend today, a long-haired dachshund called Olive. Lovely to see them running around together. Olive is amazingly fast. Too tired dogs went home. Job done.

I was talking about Book Buying in my Authors Electric post yesterday. Today I’ve ordered my first Christmas presents – books, of course. Feel reasonably virtuous!

Writing Tip: Don’t give up on past stories. I’ve often had a look at past work which hadn’t got anywhere at the time I wrote them. With a good distance of time away from these, I’ve been able to fix flaws and get them out again. Some have gone on to be published.

So it is worth every so often going through your unplaced work and seeing if there is something you can do with them now. Also even if you can’t use the whole story, there may be a character you like you could put into another story or a piece of dialogue worth noting for future use.

Top Tips

Am pleased to be back on Authors Electric talking about a subject close to us all – Book Buying! Is book buying for others fraught with difficulties or do you just get them to give you a list? The only problem with the latter is any element of surprise has gone, of course.

I also ask whether books chosen for you, where you have not known in advance what is coming, have proved to be a fabulous surprise or not. I take the chance to put in a good word for the annual.

Confession time: I have got my list of book requirements for Christmas ready – you’re not really surprised by that, are you?

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Hope you have had a good day and kept warm. It’s bitterly cold in my part of the world at the moment, not that Lady noticed when she ran around the park this morning!

Many thanks for the lovely comments coming in on Maisie, my most recent tale (or should that be tail?) on Friday Flash Fiction. See what my dog character makes of the ending of the world in this story.

Screenshot 2023-11-17 at 10-04-57 Maisie by Allison Symes

It’s Monday. It’s dark way too early in my part of the world. It’s cold. It’s Monday. It’s time for a story. Hope you enjoy Drumming Up Business, my latest on YouTube. What would you do if you found jam doughnuts deliberately smashed around your property? Find out what my character makes of it here.

I sometimes write poetic justice tales. I love these. It’s always a joy bringing down a character who deserves that or who finds a way to right a wrong. One of these is The Circle of Life in From Light to Dark and Back Again, where my character makes it clear what they think about animal cruelty and what they intend doing to stop their fellow villagers carrying on with their wrong behaviour. My character’s plan would work too.

This kind of story really does need the ending worked out first because having figured out what my character was going to do to fix things, I could then work back to the beginning to show readers what it was that needed fixing in the first place. It also meant I knew I had my structure in place for this tale immediately. Knowing that always gives my confidence a boost and that helps. It helps me get that first draft down quickly. I then come back to it later to tighten it up.

From Light to Dark and Back Again - by nightHope you are having a good weekend. Perfect day to be indoors writing and editing, to be honest. Talking of the latter, I will be discussing Editing Tips for Chandler’s Ford Today next week. More to come on that during the week though I will say now it helps to think of editing as part of the overall creative process. It really is given good editing will strengthen your work and give it more of a chance “out there”.

Looking forward to the Association of Christian Writers’ Flash Fiction Group meeting on Zoom later this month. Always good fun and we all get some useful drafts done during the session, yes me too. I make sure of that. I prepare my exercise types in advance but not my answers so to speak. I want to draft these on the night as the others are drafting theirs.

Have started drafting a festive flash fiction story. Always love writing these but it needs honing. Mind you, all stories do, but I’ve never minded this since realising this side of things is just as much a part of the creative process as is getting the first draft down.

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Goodreads Author Blog – What I Get From Reading?

What I get from reading is a leading question if ever there was one. Where to start is the question here for me.

Firstly, there is the entertainment factor. I love to escape into other worlds with books (literally if I’m reading fantasy or science fiction). Escaping your own cares for a while is something that should not be undervalued.

Secondly, books and stories introduce you to a wide range of characters. You follow their stories, their dilemmas, you work out whether you would have done or said what they did or said. Empathy is encouraged. You can also learn from what not to do here (and many comic works are fabulous at this. There is always a character who will give you a good laugh because they get it wrong).

Thirdly, there is education, especially from the non-fiction world, but you take this in via a user-friendly medium. I can put my feet up with a good book, a cup of something lovely and nibbles, and learn. Sometimes what I learn can inspire story ideas of my own. I often get a spark of inspiration for a fiction idea from reading something in non-fiction.

Fourthly, books are relatively inexpensive. You can keep them and read them many times over. I do. You can borrow from the library. You can read via ebooks, which are cheaper than paperbacks etc. There is at least one book format out there to suit you.

Fifthly, it is the perfect entertainment when the weather is lousy. Curling up with a good book is such a great idea!

WRITERS NARRATIVE SUBSCRIBER LINK

AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES


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Author Interview: Jennifer C Wilson – The Joy of Writing Groups and Workshops

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Image Credits:-
Many thanks to Jennifer C Wilson for her great author/writing group/book images for my Chandler’s Ford Today post this week. Other 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, as were images from The Hayes, Swanwick as part of my CFT post.
Hope you have had a good week. Got back to the normal routine relatively easily though I have missed my holiday lie-ins! Hope everyone keeps safe in the stormy weather. Autumn is here with a vengeance.

Prefer my autumns like this

Facebook – General and Chandler’s Ford Today

Am delighted to welcome back Jennifer C Wilson to Chandler’s Ford Today. We discuss The Joy of Writing Groups and Workshops, a subject close to both of us. Jennifer leads the North Tyneside Writers’ Circle. They have recently released their debut anthology, Black Coals, White Sands.

Jennifer shares wonderful advice on writing groups so if you are thinking about joining one, do check this out. She also discusses how to get the balance right when writers in a group are, inevitably, at different stages of their writing journey and write different things.

Jennifer, for example, has to balance the needs of poets and novelists in her group, just to name two. But it can be done and done well and North Tyneside Writers’ Group is a great example of this. Check out the post for useful information on writing exercises too.

The right writing community can do wonders for a writer’s self belief, confidence and, as a result, their writing skills.

Author Interview: Jennifer C Wilson – The Joy of Writing Groups and Workshops

 

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Apologies, folks. Meant to share my Authors Electric post yesterday and forgot. But good news – I shall share it now instead. I talk about Books on the Radio this month and discuss what I think about adaptations as well as what my favourite book on the radio is and remains. Hope you enjoy the post. Books are meant to be read or listened to and I do think radio/audio books are fabulous ways of continuing the oral storytelling tradition.

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Hope you have had a good day (albeit it a soggy one here in Hampshire, though Lady still got to see her Hungarian Vizler pal so both of them were happy at least!).

I love writing with classical music on in the background. I find the music relaxes me and when I’m relaxed, I write more. But I don’t bring music into my stories, funnily enough, at least to date. Haven’t felt the need to do so but it is something you could use as a character question if you want to find out more about your “people”. I put people in inverted commas simply because I have written from the viewpoint of a mother dragon so my characters are not necessarily human!

If your character prefers Beethoven to Mozart, you could look at why that was and if any particular piece by the former “hits the spot”. Likewise if there is a piece which they loathe, you could look at why that was. Could hearing it cause them to do something they might not otherwise have done, especially if they hear it repeatedly? (That could be something done deliberately by another character too).

Music may be the food of love but it could drive your characters round the bend if you have the right characters and plot!

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My latest story on Friday Flash Fiction, On the Beach, was inspired by my recent week’s break in glorious Northumberland. Hope you enjoy it. It’s a lighter tale which I hope puts a smile on your face.

Screenshot 2023-10-20 at 09-56-39 On The Beach by Allison Symes

Many a writing exercise can be turned into a publishable piece of flash fiction. Writing groups/conferences etc always set these things and I find it fun practising writing to different types of exercise. This gives me more ways of producing more stories. Nothing to dislike there!

Talking of writing groups, I will be talking with Jennifer C Wilson (who leads the North Tyneside Writers’ Circle) about The Joy of Writing Groups and Workshops for Chandler’s Ford Today. Link for that up tomorrow. See above. Jennifer shares some great tips about finding the group which is right for you so be sure to not miss the post.

Meantime, back to the writing exercises!

 

Sometimes I use a well known phrase as part of a story. In my The Power of Suggestion (Tripping The Flash Fantastic), I use the phrase there’s a sucker born every minute. I used that to help me picture my character. Who could this saying apply to and why? Then having ideas for that, I got on with my draft. I’ve mentioned before I use phrases and well known sayings as themes and/or title but this is another way of using them.

Every so often I will refer to my old book of proverbs for ideas here. Themes are the most obvious use, I think, but there is plenty of stories to be told based on things like don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched. You can show examples of where characters did count them too early and the results of that – a lesson learned the hard way, perhaps.

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Fairytales With Bite – Tips to the Beginner Fairy

Fairy godmothers are not born. They are made. They are trained. So what tips would an experienced fairy godmother give to someone new to fairy college? My thoughts are:-

  1. Do read your spell books properly. Many a mishap has happened when someone read out the wrong word or got things in the wrong order. You must be sure of what you are saying before you say it.
  2. Don’t use the magic wand just because you can. You should only use these because you need to (and settling a score with a fellow student doesn’t count. Neither does showing off what you’ve learned. It would serve you right if someone else showed off and proved they are better than you).
  3. Do use natural ingredients for spells where appropriate. They’re easier to source and it’s kinder on the environment. Yes, we too have to worry about that. Nobody should waste energy. Better still, grow your own natural ingredients. Time in the garden is good for all. You can also work out which creatures you have around you that might be useful for transformation purposes (briefly only) later on.
  4. Beware of suspiciously shiny red apples. There is history here.
  5. Where magic doesn’t have to be used, save your powers. You may as well and if getting around a table with a decent cup of tea, a slab of cake, and talking sorts out the problem, who wouldn’t prefer that?
  6. Revise. Practice. Accept you will get things wrong.
  7. Don’t upset the birds when you’re flying. Stick to your own flight path.
  8. Remember people aren’t always what they appear to be. In our world, the animals might not be either. Approach with caution and politeness. You do not want to upset some powerful witch/wizard in disguise.
  9. Your profession is a noble one so don’t let the side down. No dodgy magic. No cheating with magic. No use of magic to enable cheating in other ways. Magic is not meant to be used to help you get rich quickly, for example.
  10. The humans have a saying discretion is the better part of valour. Applies to us too. We don’t want to draw attention to the existence of the magical world, do we? Humans are too inquisitive for their own good. We don’t want that here.

Listen to the more experienced fairy godmother

This World and Others – Learning the Trade

What trades exist in your fictional world, magical or otherwise? How did they come into being? What kind of training happens? Certain trades, such as agriculture/farming, will always be around. It will be a question of how it works in your setting. What would your world’s farmers grow, for example? Is water (or an equivalent substance) easily available?

Are there schools/colleges to enable people to learn their craft? Nobody just picks up a trade, even if it is a family tradition. In the case of the latter, do your characters carry on with the family business or do they want to do their own thing? How well or otherwise does that go down with their relatives?

Does your setting develop new technologies and, therefore, new trades? If your setting trades with other worlds, what are they looking to buy in? What would they exchange? How does the actual trading happen?

Lots of ideas for stories here. Don’t forget the creative arts too. There are plenty of trades here too.

Fantasy trades

WRITERS NARRATIVE SUBSCRIBER LINK

Screenshot 2023-10-17 at 19-53-12 Writers' Narrative eMagazine October 2023

AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES
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