Tag: Autumn by Allison Symes

Using the Senses, Workshops, and Classical Music

Leave a comment
Image Credits:-
All images from Pixabay/Pexels unless otherwise stated with many created in Book Brush. Book cover images from Chapeltown Books and Bridge House Publishing. Screenshots taken by me, Allison Symes.
Hope you have had a good few days. It was a bank holiday for many of us in the UK and I loved listening to a special classical music chart – more details below. I find writing to classical music effective. There is something about classical which relaxes me and when I relax, I write more (and I hope better!). As far as Lady is concerned, bank holidays mean bonus walks so she is happy.

BookBrushImage-2023-8-29-20-351

Facebook – General

Am delighted to be back on More Than Writers, the blog spot for the Association of Christian Writers, with my post on Workshops.

I share thoughts on what I look for from a workshop I go to as a delegate. I especially check out the workshop leader’s background in the topic they’re sharing. This should never be difficult to find out by the way!

I am so grateful for all I have learned from workshops and will continue to do so. They are a good thing and I am glad Zoom has made more workshops possible.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

For those of you who had a bank holiday today, I hope it went well. Bank holidays are a bit odd for me as I get on with the jobs I would usually do on a Monday anyway. Lady got to see her Hungarian Vizler pal today so it was a normal day for them too!

Mind you, I am enjoying the movie music countdown on the Classic FM Hall of Fame today. I’m rooting for The Lord of the Rings soundtrack to get the number one spot. The soundtrack is perfect for the films. There is everything from opera to Enya on there and it all suits the story so brilliantly.

Talking of music, do you listen to any while you write? I find classical to be soothing and when I’m relaxed, I just get on and write. Sometimes I will hear a piece of music and think that might suit Character X whom I’ve just written about. That’s a good sign. If the characters seem real enough to me to have tastes in music, they’ll seem real enough to readers too.

So working out what your characters are likely to love and/or loathe is a good way to find out more about them and as a result you will write their stories up knowing you know your character well enough to do justice to their tales.

I find it helps to think of it as being “their” tales too. I don’t want my authors’ voice intruding. It is the character which holds my interest in any story I read. I want to find out what happens to them so I take the same approach with my own stories.

371766941_721366976669833_2267473609122292777_n

Hope you have had a lovely weekend. Will be talking about Workshops in my More than Writers post for the Association of Christian Writers. That will be up on Tuesday. See above. Can hardly believe the end of next week will see us into September, mind you.

Writing Tip: It has often been said about using all of the senses in your writing. It is a great idea but don’t shoehorn these things for the sake of it as that never works.

If I need a character to eat something, I may well slip in something about how much they loved or loathed the texture of their food etc. Or, even more likely, mention the smell of it. But I won’t get a character to eat something just so I can get the use of another sense into my story.

Everything in your story has to be in there for a good reason. The story should lose something important if you were to take that something out. I’ve found this to be a useful way of gauging whether I do need something in the tale or not.

BookBrushImage-2023-8-27-16-5728

Strange day weather wise – a right old mix. Still I guess it prepares us for autumn with September just around the corner. I’ll be talking about Autumnal Joys for Chandler’s Ford Today next week so it’s timely! I don’t do a lot of seasonal writing – my autumn post for CFT and my festive flash fiction writing is about it.

I’ve talked about knowing your character well before but you could consider, as part of the getting to know them process, what they make of the seasons and why they hold the feelings they do. You do get people who love autumn and those who loathe it.

My late grandmother hated it. Always thought it was the season when everything died. I do love it as I see it as the colour change season (leaves etc) and things getting ready for a rest period (winter) and then coming back (spring). You can’t have the spring without the autumn and the winter before it.

This in turn could lead you to thinking about whether your character is generally optimistic or not and what kind of problems their overall attitude to life could cause them. There would be story ideas there.
I thought I’d share one of my autumn stories from a while back. Hope you enjoy it.

Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

Don’t forget my author newsletter is due out again on Friday. I share links to my online flash stories here as well as useful writing advice and the latest news from me. To sign up do head over to my landing page at https://allisonsymescollectedworks.com and many thanks to all who have subscribed. Much appreciated.

I’ll be talking about Autumnal Joys for my Chandler’s Ford Today post on Friday. Autumn is a busy season writing wise and I have various things to look forward to, culminating in the Bridge House Publishing celebration event in December. I hope to have further publication news soon too.

One good thing about the darker evenings is they do encourage you to stay at your desk and write! Have resumed working on a long term project and it has been great to get back to that so I hope to make good progress on this over the next few months.


It’s a Bank Holiday Monday where I am but it still remains at heart a Monday, that day of the week which can fill people with dread. Time for a story then. Hope you enjoy my latest tale on YouTube – Bobbing for Apples. A bit early for an autumnal story, I hear you cry? Hmm.. Given the weather has taken a distinctly autumnal turn where I am, I thought I’d get ahead of the game here!


Flash illuminates one moment in time but has such a powerful impact because of that. I use that aspect of flash fiction writing to work out whether I want to write a funny story, a sad one, or what have you. I then work out how I can best achieve this.

I focus on one character, one moment for any tale which is 500 words or fewer. For the 500 to 1000 bracket, I may have a second character but I always make it clear whose story it is and there has to be a good reason for the second character to be there at all.

Naturally that second character can fall into the helper or villain category where I have made the main character the “good guy”. Where I haven’t, I can flip that around (though I still like to show where my main character is a villain, the second character has severely damaged them and I have to have a good reason for telling the story from the villain’s viewpoint in the first place).

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

Sometimes I use repetition in a flash tale. An example of this is The Wish List from Tripping the Flash Fantastic. Every sentence bar the last one starts with the words I wish. The story builds up until the conclusion. It was fun to do.

Repetition can be useful. It can be used to build up tension, which is what I did in this story. It can be used for emphasis. But it is important you know what you want repetition to achieve for your story. Otherwise you will use up your word count without having good reason to do so.

369984054_720305503442647_1234837126827823390_n

Goodreads Author Blog – Fiction – An Acrostic

F = Fabulous characters in a range of settings, past and present and future, in this world and others.

I = Imagination, inventiveness, images created – all gripping stuff.

C = Characters who live on in your memory long after you have read their tales.

T = Truth is often stranger than fiction but the latter can show truths in a way straight reporting cannot and in a more palatable way too.

I = I can get to imagine what I would do if I was in the characters’ shoes – fiction is great for encouraging empathy.

O = On this world, over it, off this world altogether – fiction can take you anywhere.

N = New books, old books, bought books, borrowed books, audio books, ebooks, collections – treasure them all!

Screenshot 2023-08-26 at 20-38-38 Fiction - An Acrostic

WRITERS NARRATIVE SUBSCRIBER LINK

AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES
Allison Symes - advertising books and services resized 640

Twitter Corner

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

By clicking submit, you agree to share your email address with the site owner and Mailchimp to receive marketing, updates, and other emails from the site owner. Use the unsubscribe link in those emails to opt out at any time.

Processing…
Success! You're on the list.

Bridge House Celebration, ALCS, and the What If question

Leave a comment

Image Credit:-

All images from Pixabay/Pexels unless otherwise stated.

Book cover images from Chapeltown Books and Bridge House Publishing. Image of me with wild hair and Tripping The Flash Fantastic taken by Adrian Symes.

Facebook – General

Great to see Amazon have updated my Author Central page quickly so Mulling It Over and Transformations are now both on there.  (Lovely to see a good collection building up here!). And that has reminded me to add these books to ALCS too. What is ALCS?

As I’m a member of the Society of Authors, I have free membership to ALCS (the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society). ALCS collects money from copyright licences etc and distributes said monies to authors. There is no way any one writer could possibly keep tabs on X making photocopies of their work here, Y doing it there and so on.

If you’re not a member of the Society of Authors, you can still join ALCS. It costs £36.00 and this is lifetime membership, not per year. See https://www.alcs.co.uk/how-to-join for more.

I had my first modest pay-out from ALCS back in March and most welcome it was too. Do check out their website for more information. The main thing to remember is to update your details when you have new works out. And this includes, for me, not just my two flash fiction collections, but all of the paperback anthologies I have been in and continue to have work appear in.

(The reasons for the emphasis on paperback is ALCS need you to tell them the ISBN number and ebooks don’t have that. They have an ASIN which ALCS do not work with but given most anthologies come out in ebook and paperback, you can at least register the latter!).

Very well worth doing. (And another little task ticked off my writing admin list today!).

Even colder than yesterday here in Hampshire though Lady did get to have a fab time with her busy buddy, a lovely Rhodesian Ridgeback today. No chance of them getting cold with all that running around.

I’m going to be having a look at Continuing Professional Development and how it can apply to writers in my Chandler’s Ford Today post this week. Have also put in my book order for copies of Mulling It Over and Transformations and have also asked Amazon to add these two to my Author Central page in due course. Hopefully they’ll appear on there later this week. I’ve usually found Amazon answer such requests quickly.

It is nice to see a good collection of books appearing on my page now. This is not something I anticipated when starting out but it does show the value, I think, of persistence, keeping going, and learning over time to get better at targeting my work to the appropriate market. And yes, it does take time. But this is true for everybody and I found that quite encouraging when I was starting out. It is good to know it is not just you!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Brrr… so cold today. Even Lady wasn’t sorry to get in from her evening walk. Enjoyed watching The Polar Express tonight. One of my favourite Christmas films along with A Muppet Christmas Carol. Better half put the decorations up yesterday so the old homestead is looking festive. Am very thankful Lady leaves the tree alone.

Making good progress on my non-fiction project. Am on track to finish the first draft by the end of the year. Whenever I write anything, I always feel a certain relief on getting that first draft down. I love the creative side but I also enjoy the editing and getting the work into good shape ready for submitting somewhere. I swear I can almost feel the draft getting better as I take out my usual wasted words and sharpen up what remains. I like that feeling.

I’ve also got a third flash collection on the go. I plan to resume work on that once I’ve got the first draft of the non-fiction project done as I know I’ll need to rest that for a while so I can look at it with fresh eyes when I get back to it.

Writing is the gift that keeps on giving in many ways.

Firstly, boredom is a thing of the past as I’ve always got something to work on!

Secondly, writing stretches me. I want to keep trying to get better at what I do.

Thirdly, to write well you need to read well so you get two activities in one here. But best of all?

Making friends thanks to a shared love of writing!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

It was great seeing everyone at the Bridge House Publishing celebration event this afternoon. It was lovely to see friends and meet new people and the turnout was wonderful. There was plenty to celebrate too, despite the obvious problems affecting everyone this year.

There were plenty of new books out via Bridge House, including the recently released Mulling It Over and Transformations. Plus there were new single author collections out too, including my own Tripping The Flash Fantastic.

There was a cryptic clue quiz. I was hopeless at it but I always am at cryptic clues. It was something of a relief that I did get my book title in amongst the mix, plus the two I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of editing for Bridge House this year. (And that really was about my lot!).

There was lovely mix of stories read too and I read Progressing. This was my first winning story for the Waterloo Arts Festival Writing Competition (and is in the new Transformations book too).

All great fun and we are all looking forward to next year’s events! Pics for this one are the Cafelit (BB) mock up, the tunnel one, my anthologies one, and the phone one plus the “sky” one for FLTDBA and TTFF.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

Delighted to share my latest story video on Youtube. This is one of my acrostic flash tales called Autumn. Let’s just say the video is apt for the tale and that no spades were harmed in the making of this story! Hope you enjoy.

 

As well as my own flash collections, I often contribute flash pieces to CafeLit. My Humourless in The Best of CafeLit 9 is one of my most recent and is on the darker side for me. The idea for this piece came to me when I asked one of my favourite writing questions – the old classic “what if”? What if someone had lost their sense of humour due to their job? What could that job be?

Finding a starting point for your stories is crucial and asking the “what if” question is an invaluable place to begin because it should trigger other questions and you will find yourself wanting to know what the answers are. If you can be hooked into finding out the answers, then hopefully a reader will be too.

Other useful starting points include using Kipling’s famous serving men – What, Where, How, Why, When, and Who? Anything that makes you ask questions to find out more about the character and what they’re facing is going to help you plot out the story in more depth.

The tricky bit is in working out what the most relevant points are and focusing only on those. This is why I find flash’s restricted word count useful. It makes me focus and that’s no bad thing.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

It was especially nice to talk to a fellow flash fiction writer, Dawn Knox, for Chandler’s Ford Today last week. Always good to advertise the form and to show what can be done with it.

Flash is a great vehicle for character studies. I find those work best when kept short (as is the case with monologues) and flash fiction is ideal – a match made in writing heaven perhaps.

When I’ve drafted a flash story I ask myself certain questions about it.

  • Does the story make the impact I thought it would before I wrote it?
  • How does the character make me react/feel? (No reaction = character not strong enough = no story).
  • Have I marked up my usual suspects of wasted words ready to take out for the second draft?
  • What phrases have I used that could be fine tuned into creating stronger images for the reader?

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

Delighted to see another review come in for Tripping The Flash Fantastic. Many thanks! Reviews really do help authors. Neither do reviews have to be lengthy. I use reviews myself when checking out potential books to read or when I’m wondering whether to try a new grocery product!

Had a fab time at the Bridge House Publishing event this afternoon. It is one of the highlights of my writing year. It was great to see a good turnout too. I did miss the actual getting together (and the splendid authors’ lunch that precedes it!) but I am sure we will make up for that next year!

But the biggest thing about Zoom is making events accessible and it was wonderful to see some of Bridge House’s more far flung authors able to take part in today’s event. When the nightmare of Covid is over, I want to see Zoom continuing. It has been one of the more positive things about this whole year.

Screenshot_2020-12-05 Amazon co uk Customer reviews Tripping the Flash Fantastic

 

Goodreads Author Blog – New For Old?

New for old is a catchphrase from Aladdin of course but is this something that is appropriate for book lovers?

After all I love old books. I love new books. I just love books!

I think it is good to have a balance of old favourites. These are my comfort reads when I need that.

I also like to read new books, especially from contemporary writers. It is good to know what is being put out there now.

One handy side benefit to making writer friends is this does help ensure you do get plenty of contemporary reading in. I take great pleasure from the fact I have shelves which are packed full of fab books written by people I’ve come to know and count as friends. I always look forward to adding to my shelves in that regard. I can’t wait to get back to book events so I can pick up those books signed by said friends in person.

Naturally I’m looking forward to being able to hold some book events of my own in due course.

So have I got books on my Christmas list?

What do you think?!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Twitter Corner

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js