Tag: Character led flash fiction

Book Fair News and Writing Challenges

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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.
Still humid and hot here. Lady fine and is a good water drinker. Not all dogs are – my first two weren’t! Writing wise, I’ve the first part of a great interview with YA fantasy author, Francesca Tyer coming up this week. Plus there will be more wonderful interviews to come later in the month too. Meanwhile I’m taking part in a 30 day writing challenge which is great fun – details below.

Dreams of the writing life can become reality - use for Part 2

Facebook – General

Again, very hot. Again, Lady and I keeping cool. Hope you are too. Now a little while ago, I mentioned I would be taking part in a Book Fair. Am glad to now share more details.

The event will be at The Hilt, Chandler’s Ford on Saturday 8th July from 1.00 pm to 5.00 pm. Entry is free but if you book a ticket, you will be entered in to a raffle. The prize is £10 which you can use to buy a book from any of the authors at the event (who no doubt will be pleased to sign it for you too. I know I would be!). I’ll be posting more about this nearer the time (and will do a future Chandler’s Ford Today post on it as well).

So if you are planning to come, do book a ticket and good luck with the raffle. This event is a great opportunity to find out what the local authors do – there are a fair few of us and the range of what we write is incredible. There is bound to be something you like! Do come along and check things out.

Best of all? The event is being held at a good time for you to top up your holiday reading list!

Book Fair image

Another hot and humid day here. Lady all okay. She drinks well and is sensible about heading for the shade. We’re sensible about taking her out at apt times. It all helps. The latter is vital. I’ve got a nice spot here where I can do a pavement test – it gets the sun directly so is a good place to monitor about whether walking Lady is okay or not.

I have already cancelled one walk with her where the air was far too hot (last Saturday) and have seen pictures of dogs with burned pads on Facebook. It is just not worth it. Be careful with your furry friends, folks.

Can’t stress that point enough. And talking of getting the point, do check out my most recent tale on Friday Flash Fiction called, you guessed it, Getting The Point!
Screenshot 2023-06-09 at 11-45-24 Getting The Point by Allison Symes

Cooler day, even had some rain, air much nicer. Was nice to take Lady out earlier. She appreciated it too. (Was she sorry she stayed put yesterday? Not a bit of it. Had a great day in the shade and/or indoors and was much happier for it too, as indeed was I!).

I’ll be talking to YA fantasy author, Francesca Tyer, in the first part of a two part interview on Chandler’s Ford Today later this week. It’s a great interview. Do look out for it. More details mid-week or so.

I’ve mentioned before I’ve interviewed my own characters prior to writing their stories up. I find this a useful technique. It means I get a real “feel” for their likes and dislikes and the kind of character they are. I can then write their story up with confidence. I don’t need to know every single thing about them. I just need to know enough to know I’ve “got” them and know why they would act the way they are in my tale.

The Scrivener short story function has a template for both character and setting but there is no reason why you can’t create you own. It is a question of working out what you need to know. Elements of that will differ from author to author. I don’t need to know physical appearance. I do know other authors find that knowledge crucial.

A very hot day today. Lady had her exercise at appropriate times and spent the rest of the day resting. She wasn’t sorry. Neither were we. On the plus side, my washing was dry in under two hours. It is always the simple pleasures in life which give the most joy!

Many thanks to Val Penny for a fabulous interview on Chandler’s Ford Today yesterday. More author interviews coming soon. And starting this coming week as I begin a two part interview with Francesca Tyer. What I love about author interviews is there is always something useful to learn from them. Hope you find the same.

Am enjoying taking part in a 30 day writing challenge issued by Auscot Publishing and Retreats. Some of the pieces I’ve drafted so far I know I can turn into flash fiction pieces and get out to competitions, markets etc. Others – hmm… the jury’s out there. I may be able to do something with them later but at least I will have the option of having something to try and work with. Equally if I discard these at a later date that’s fine. I gave the exercise a go. Didn’t quite work out for me but at least I know.

If you get the chance to take part in a challenge like this, do so. It encourages you to be more productive. And it is just good fun to give these things a go and see what you can do. That, after all, is how I discovered the joys of flash fiction – I gave it a go!
Screenshot 2023-06-13 at 20-47-54 (1) Facebook

Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

Am looking forward to waving the flag for flash fiction at The Hilt, Chandler’s Ford for a Book Fair being held on Saturday 8th July between 1.00 pm and 5.00 pm. The organisers hope this will become an annual event. I hope so too. We have lost a lot of bookshops over the last few years though I am glad there are still some in the area (which covers Southampton and Winchester too). Will be posting more about the fair nearer the time.

I often demonstrate what flash is by reading some and I hope to get to do that again. It is good fun and always results in sales!

 

It’s Monday. It’s a very hot Monday. Time for a story though I can’t promise it will cool you down. Hope you enjoy Recall, my latest on YouTube. Is loosely based on a true story which happened to my late father and I.

 

As flash fiction is so short, it has to be character led. Readers need to care about the characters to read on and there isn’t the room for much description anyway. What you want for that is the odd telling detail which will set enough of the scene to help readers visualise it.

But clues can be given to character status through the use of names. People will have different expectations from a Charlotte than they would from a Karen (and I am not saying whether that is a good or bad thing, I just know people will!). Of course whether your story lives up to those expectations will, I hope, be the hook that makes people read on to find out if they were right or not.

But another thing you can use to show something of a character is their nickname. I just went on to a random question generator I often use and the first question which came up was What is your nickname? You could apply that to a character and the story could be about how they got it. It could also reveal something more about them. If Charlotte prefers to be known as Lotte or Charlie for example, there will be a story about why that is the case.

May be a doodle of glasses and text that says "You want your books and stories to get your readers right into your characters heads. They need the characters to show them the stories, how they feel etc. Telling readers will switch them off Welike to work things out."

One of my longer flash fiction pieces is Rewards which is in From Light to Dark and Back Again. It takes up pretty much the whole 1000 words maximum for flash.

My lead character, Becky, reveals a lot about herself through her thoughts , including how she is haunted by another woman. The story reveals how she deals with said woman.

What I like about this piece is I reveal more and more about Becky as the story goes on but I am drip feeding this in to the plot. I also like Becky’s attitude. Doesn’t mean I agree with what she does though! But it is always a lovely moment when you know you have just “got” your character. The story spark is in that moment.

May be an image of text that says "From Lightto Dark and Back Again Allison Symes MHt e Hayn"

Goodreads Author Blog – Books To Dip Into

I love books you can dip into but what do I mean by that? Well, short story anthologies and flash fiction collections are ideal for this, of course. I will admit to being biased here given I have work in anthologies and two flash collections of my own out there. But I also love the reference books to dip into as and when.

A great one for this is Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable which goes into the origins of well known fables and phrases. Fascinating book to dip into. It’s a massive one as well – another one to avoid dropping on your foot.

I also love books like the Agatha Christie short story collections. Her novels I will read from cover to cover, naturally, but for the collections I can pick a story at random and then come back to another at random later if I wish. I find this to be a refreshing way to read from time to time.

I have a number of writing advice books on my shelves and I can dip into those to refer to specific topics now I know what it is I need to know. When you start out as a writer, you generally don’t know. You find out what you do need to know about the writing world as you go along. But I am at that point now where I can just refer back to selected chapters as and when I need it. (This frees up more time to read other things so win-win there and proves there is value to dipping into books at times).

Books - ideas exchange here

Screenshot 2023-06-10 at 20-48-19 Books To Dip Into

 

AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES

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What is a Good Fairytale?

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Facebook – General – and Chandler’s Ford Today

A quick reminder about the Chandler’s Ford Book Fair is my topic for Chandler’s Ford Today this week. Hope to see some of you there. Everyone taking part is hoping this will become a regular event especially since there are no bookshops in Chandler’s Ford now.

We’d all be glad to see fellow writers too and can give information about local writing festivals and creative writing classes too – so do come and ask! There will be signings and special offers too.

Why are events like this important? Well, they give local writers both a voice and another outlet, which helps us all.

Events like this show the community there IS a strong creative writing element within it. (At the earlier Hiltingbury Extravaganza, there had been some surprise expressed at the range of writers and genres respresented there. There will be many more at the Book Fair tomorrow!).

We also hope the Fair will promote the love of books and reading in general.

BookFairPoster8

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Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

Reading your work out loud is useful for helping you to pick up where your sentence construction is perhaps not as smooth and free-flowing as you thought it was (especially for dialogue). It is one of those oddities that something which looks fine written down is not necessarily easy to read out loud.

It is also useful for picking up the rhythm within your story and I’ve found it handy for detecting hidden undercurrents of mood in my flash fiction. It is another oddity that the writer doesn’t always pick up on these immediately! (That in turn helps me when I read the finished work out publicly. It helps me “pitch” it correctly).

I hope to read a couple of my stories at the Chandler’s Ford Book Fair tomorrow. If anyone has questions about flash fiction, please do come over and have a chat.

 

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Goodreads – Book Review

I share here my review of friend and fellow writer, Jennifer C Wilson’s excellent novella, The Last Plantagenet?  Novellas aren’t as common as they once were but they work brilliantly for those stories not long enough to make it to full novel status or are far too long for a short story.  I’d like to see more of these.

 

The Last Plantagenet? by Jennifer C. Wilson

The cover of Jennifer’s novella.  Image from my review on Goodreads.

 

Fairytales With Bite

A good fairytale is not necessarily one with a happy ending but, as with other stories, it should show the lead character changed during the course of the tale.  Ideally it will be for the better.  They will have learned something from their experiences and so on.  Sometimes a character does NOT learn from their experiences (the result is usually disastrous – the lesson there is for us readers.  It’s a warning we should learn or risk disaster ourselves).

A good fairytale will also show us something of ourselves/our human nature.  That doesn’t necessarily mean we will like what we see!  The Little Match Girl by Hans Christen Andersen is, to my mind, rightly scathing of those who pitied the girl because she was dead but did nothing to stop her dying, which is the whole message of that story (and the exposure of hypocrisy).

A good fairytale will have memorable characters and there is usually a strong moral message with it (though conveyed in the story.  A good story, of whatever type, will never leave you feeling as if you’ve been preached at).

A good fairytale will keep you gripped to the last world, will conjure up images of its setting and give you characters you can identify with/root for, even if they are strange alien monsters!  A good fairytale will usually see injustices put right too.

 

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Fairytales can be considered as “pie in the sky” but the reality is they often convey great truths.  Image via Pixabay (and one of the images used for my trailer for From Light to Dark and Back Again).

 

THIS WORLD AND OTHERS

One advantage of flash fiction is it has to be character led.  There isn’t the room for lengthy descriptions so your characters “carry” the stories.  So you have to create the world your character comes from via them directly.

This can be done through internal thoughts.  Show what your character thinks about their situation and what has led to it.  That should reveal some insights as to the world he/she comes from.   For example:-

She threw the cup at the wall and watched it smash.  Bloody government.  I’ve already voted once.  Why have I got to do it again?

That reveals at once that the government is dictatorial, voting is clearly compulsory, and any world where you have to vote again (to get it right this time perhaps?) is somewhere you probably don’t want to live if you have the choice.  She is taking her frustration out on a cup so there is no choice element here (and almost certainly severe consequences if she doesn’t vote again).

You can also show something of your created world through what your character observes.  In a flash fiction story, this would have to be a line or two at most (though that does make you stick to the really important things you want your reader to know so is no bad thing).

Description is the obvious way of showing a world but, again, in flash, a line or two at most and focus on what is important to the character (as this also reveals a lot about them).

 

Themes pour out of good books - image via Pixabay

Great Themes pour out of wonderful books but it needs strong, memorable characters to achieve this.  Image via Pixabay.