Tag: Christmas

Happy Christmas – and Festive Writing and Reading

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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.
Spent a lovely weekend singing a lot of carols at various church services. Almost there on my Christmas prep. Also looking forward to a few days off. My next post here will be a week away – on New Year’s Eve. I hope you have a very happy Christmas and New Year.

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24th December 2024 – Christmas Eve
Have a very happy Christmas, everyone. After my website round up which I will share later tonight, the next one will be next Tuesday, New Year’s Eve. I’ll share a Chandler’s Ford Today round up post on Friday but that will be about it for a while as am taking a few days off and looking forward to them! Have a lovely time.

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Glad to say I now have a single Mixcloud link to the Three Minute Santas show on North Manchester FM hosted by Hannah Kate on 14th December. One easy link to check out 23 great stories. My tale, Perspective, is on in the first half of the show but do enjoy a good listen. There was a great range of tales here. Perfect to listen to as you finish your present wrapping, maybe?

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22nd December
Am making up for posting late yesterday by posting early today! Many apologies for forgetting to share my Authors Electric post on 18th December. I blame being caught up in Christmas prep and Southern Water for cutting off my water supply on 18th December for 36 hours, bless them (not!). Anyway, I am only too glad to share the post now and it is on a topic close to my heart – Festive Writing and Reading. Hope you enjoy the post.

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Hope you have had a lovely day. Christmas can now start for me. Have just got back from a candlelit Festival of Carols and Readings which was lovely. I read out a great poem about the wise men which was new to me. (It’s called Star of Wonder by Abigail Blessing – worth checking out, made me think again about a story I know well).

Writing wise, I probably will write a short Chandler’s Ford Today post for next Friday (I love being able to schedule in advance!) and one round up post on my website probably on Christmas Eve but not much more until after Christmas. Will be catching up with friends and family and am looking forward to that.
And, yes, Lady will be spoiled rotten and has got her wish list into Santa Paws in good time.

AE - DECEMBER 2024 - FESTIVE WRITING AND READING - Best version of A Christmas Carol is the one by the Muppets

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24th December 2024 – Christmas Eve
Good to sit down after the usual Christmas Eve prep work. Will be doing a little writing later on but then will be off for a few days. To friends, past, present and future, Happy Christmas!

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It may be Christmas Eve Eve but it is still a Monday and therefore still time for a story. Hope you like my latest on YouTube – Time Off. Everyone needs some down time, especially at Christmas.

 

Hope you have had a good day. Had my church’s carols by candlelight today (yes two lots of singing in two days as I took part in another one yesterday – great fun). Our minister’s Christmas cracker jokes made us laugh and groan in equal measure. But I guess that’s the purpose of a Christmas cracker joke!

I guess you could argue it is a form of flash writing given these jokes are generally under 50 words or so but you’ll be pleased to know, for humanity’s sake, I’m not preparing to write any myself!

Am wrapping up my flash tales for this year. There will be one, maybe two, to come on my YouTube channel but that will be about it for now. I shall look forward to the break but also resuming work after Christmas. Flash is a lovely way to get back into writing again after a break given it is short. A gentle way to get back into the writing life, I think.

Advantage to flash is setting characters anywhere

Hope your Christmas prep is going well. Am almost there on mine though the early part of next week will be busy with cooking etc.

As part of my flash fiction Sunday afternoon tomorrow, I hope to write a flash fiction piece for YouTube (to go out on Monday) but won’t be doing much more flash work now until after Christmas. I’ll be looking for competitions to enter from the New Year (but think Writing Magazine should be issuing their competitions guide again before too long . I hope so anyway. It is useful).

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Goodreads Author Blog – Happy Christmas and Lots of Lovely New Year Reading

I do hope you have had a good reading year. I just wanted to take this opportunity to wish you all a Happy Christmas. I hope you end up having lots of lovely New Year reading to get on with thanks to gifts under the tree! Okay you can’t disguise a book shaped present – why would you want to anyway even if you could? – but it is such fun unwrapping such lovely gifts! Naturally I got my wish list in early here!

Not sure whether I’ll be posting again here before the New Year as am looking forward to catching up with friend and family over the Christmas break but I did want to finish by saying a book isn’t just for Christmas, it’s forever.

I also wanted to say books make the perfect Christmas presents and authors and readers are the easiest people in the world to buy for!

Happy Christmas!

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WRITERS NARRATIVE SUBSCRIBER LINK

AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES

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Bridge House Publishing Celebration and Broadcasting 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 few days. I’m one of the tens of thousands affected by a water outage – has not been great. Am hoping it will be restored very soon and hopefully by the time this post goes out. Water was finally restored at 11 pm on Thursday 19th December – I so enjoyed my shower on the morning of the 20th!
Writing wise, am now winding down for the Christmas break and will resume normal posts from towards the end of next week onwards. Meantime do have a very happy Christmas and may I wish you all the best for the New Year. (Lady loves Christmas – gets spoiled rotten and she has high hopes from Santa Paws, of course).

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Hope you have had a good day. Joy reigns supreme here as we got our water back at 11 pm last night! I so enjoyed my shower this morning! Would like the Southern Water bosses to lose their unearned bonuses though. Can’t think how they could possibly justify those – and that’s as political as I get, folks.

Nobody around here has a good word to say for SW. We feel sorry for the engineers and the ones handing out the water bottles at the various centres (only three of them for 58,000 people – madness) but the management? Bah humbug as someone once said!

On a much happier note, I’m delighted to share this week’s Chandler’s Ford Today post on Bridge House Publishing Celebration and Broadcasting News. I share a round up of the recent BHP event and links to last weekend’s Three Minute Santas show on North Manchester FM where 23 authors, including me, had their festive flash tales put out on air. Do have a listen. The tales were lovely to listen to and cheered me up no end. My tale, Perspective, is on in the first half of the show (the first link shared in the CFT post).

Bridge House Publishing Celebration and Broadcasting News

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Still no water here. Hoping it will be restored tonight/tomorrow. There are tens of thousands unhappy customers of Southern Water right now including yours truly.

Looking forward to sharing a round up post on Chandler’s Ford Today about the recent Bridge House Publishing Celebration event and the Hannah Kate Three Minute Santas Show, where my story Perspective, was broadcast recently – link up tomorrow.

It was good to be in splendid company on the radio show too – I know five of the authors who were part of it and have heard of many of the others. I call this a result!

Loved the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group meeting last night. It was good to see everyone and I look forward to catching up with everyone again in January.

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Not a great day. I’m one of the tens of thousands currently without water thanks to Southern Water. Have not been able to get through to them, even online, and the earliest re-connect time will, hopefully, be tomorrow! Grrr… Turned out we didn’t get water back until Thursday – water was off for 36 hours.

On a happier note, Lady did get to see her Hungarian Vizler and Rhodesian Ridgeback pals today. I’m looking forward to the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group later this evening – it’s our wrap up and chat session for the year. Hopefully some festive flash pieces will be shared too.

Will be sharing Bridge House Publishing Celebration and Broadcasting News on Chandler’s Ford Today on Friday. See above.

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No story on Friday Flash Fiction from me now until after the Christmas break but I did want to say a huge congratulations to the winner of their Christmas competition plus the runners-up and all who were Highly Commended or Commended. Do check out the link to the 100 word stories section of the website and enjoy a great read, folks. (Am feeling much more cheerful than I did yesterday as our water supply was restored at 11pm last night).

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Hope you have had a good day. Still waiting for Southern Water to restore “services”. (So if you are seeing posts saying it has been fixed, well not yet is the true position).

Something I mentioned at the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group meeting last night is, when you’ve got a topic you know will always come up, do jot down ideas for it early. Do get that first draft and polishing done early.

I know there will always be calls for festive flash so I can prepare a lot of work in advance of the actual call here. There are so many topics you can do this with too – there will always be calls for love stories for February, spring stories in March/April etc etc.

So it’s worth keeping an eye out on the calendar then and not just as we approach the year end.

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One week to go to Christmas Day. Am I ready? No but am well on the way. It’s where I am usually at around this time. (Would however like my water supply back, pretty please Southern Water – grrr).

Probably won’t be submitting any further pieces to Friday Flash Fiction until the New Year as they are having a well deserved break. I know I’ll only be writing bits and pieces from the weekend onwards. One of my favourite aspects of the break is getting to spend more time on the sofa with my feet up and enjoying a good book. Always look forward to this as don’t get to do this as often as I would like.

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Fairytales with Bite – Where a Wand Simply Will Not Do by Allison Symes, December 2024

Where A Wand Simply Will Not Do
Where a wand simply will not do is where a fairy needs to cheer her client up first.
Cinders needed this before the wand could be put to work.
The professional fairy will ensure all needs are met and not just by a wave of the wand.
Cinders needed reassurance, then the gown, then the coach etc.
Just a pity the girl had no sense of timing but even then magic isn’t the answer to that.
What Cinders really needed was a decent watch and the sense to check it regularly!
And the fairy godmother needed an updated spell book where poor Cinders did get fur slippers and not glass ones.
Those must’ve been hell to dance in.

Ends
Allison Symes – 18th December 2024

Hope you enjoyed that.

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This World and Others – Winter/Story Festivals

Does your setting have anything like Christmas? (Discworld does – it has Hogswatch. Narnia gets Christmas back of course ). What do your characters do to pass away the time during the long winter months? What would they celebrate? What stories would they recount at these times?

Most places would have some sort of winter event – usually connected with showing the light in some way – so what would your setting have here? What special foods and drinks would there be?

Does everyone join in with the festivities or are there those who are deliberately excluded or choose to avoid the events? Why would either of these cases be?

When it comes to storytelling for festivals, are there writers who are banned? If so, who and why? Are there stories everyone expects to hear? What are these and how did they come to be part of your setting’s heritage?

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WRITERS NARRATIVE SUBSCRIBER LINK

AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES

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What I Look For In A Good Story

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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. Many thanks to Lynn Clement and Janet Williams for publicity shots of yours truly above. Screenshots taken by me, Allison Symes.
Hope you’ve had a good few days. Has been bitterly cold, not that Lady appears to have noticed. Looking forward to listening to all of the 23 festive flash pieces, including mine, which are due to be broadcast on Hannah Kate’s Three Minute Santas show on Saturday 14th December from 2 to 4 pm on North Manchester FM. Should be a fabulous afternoon of being read to!

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Delighted to share What I Look For In a Good Story for Chandler‘s Ford Today this week. I share an ingredients list for what I think is crucial for a cracking read, look at character -v- plot, and ask short or long term fiction or both. Hope you enjoy the post and you end up with even more good stories to enjoy over the Christmas period.

What I Look For In A Good Story

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Another cold day today though Lady was too busy running around with Coco, the fabulous Labradoodle, to notice. Both dogs had a fabulous run.

Will be sharing my What I Look For In A Good Story on Chandler’s Ford Today tomorrow. See above. Comments are always welcome in the CFT comments box. And I hope Santa provides plenty of chances for you to discover even more good stories this Christmas time!

The following week’s post will be a festive flash and other news round up and I hope to include the link to the Three Minute Santas show as part of that.

I will take the chance to say a big thank you now to all those I’ve interviewed on CFT this year. Without exception, the resulting articles have been excellent. I hope to conduct more such interviews in 2025 of course.

Meantime, it’s back to finishing various bits and pieces off ahead of 31st December. It’s the nearest I get to finishing the year with my desk clear (and I really mean my electronic desk aka my laptop as my actual desk, while reasonably tidy, cannot be said to be uncluttered! I was cheered up enormously when I saw a picture on Facebook of Albert Einstein’s desk as he left it. I felt so much better on seeing that – there is hope for me yet!).

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Hope you have had a good Wednesday. Another chilly one but Lady was overjoyed to see her Rhodesian Ridgeback pal again this morning. Plenty of running around. Those two didn’t feel the cold.

Don’t forget I’ll be looking at What I Look For In a Good Story for Chandler’s Ford Today on Friday. And on Saturday once I’ve heard the Three Minute Santas show, I would have heard 23 good stories! I hope to be talking about that show and the Bridge House Publishing Celebration event in more detail for CFT on 20th December, my last pre-Christmas post for the year. It’s amazing where the time goes, is it not?

Am not entering any more competitions until the New Year now though I have entered the festive and/or flash related ones I wanted to try.

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Pleased to be back on Friday Flash Fiction with my second story for their Christmas competition. This time the word featured is good will. See what use I make of it in my story, And To You, Pal.

I am sure that is something we have all said or thought at some point but hope you enjoy the story anyway! Find our why my character thinks the way they do and whether or not for once poetic justice is seen to be done. Can my character be full of goodwill after all?

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Hope the day has been a good one for you. Busy working away on various pieces I want to put to bed before the end of the year. Making good progress. (Also making some on the festive preparations – have started wrapping some presents much earlier in the month than I usually do!).

Flash Tip: It is worth having some flash pieces drafted on always topical themes such as hope, light, darkness etc. These topics come up often and it means you’re a little ahead of the game here. Also think along the lines of having some flash pieces connected to genre – there will be competitions for flash crime stories, love theme ones etc.

Something you’ve started as a flash piece could always be expanded out into a short story. I’ve occasionally done this when a character has gripped me and I want to share more of their tale but then I save this as a short story only and submit it to the appropriate market. But without the idea for the flash piece in the first place, I wouldn’t have gone on to have done this.

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Plan to look at my Flash NANO drafts sometime in January. It’ll give me enough time away from them to evaluate them properly. I will be issuing an author newsletter on 1st January though I suspect most reads will take place much further on in the month! I’ve just found the first is the easiest day to remember for a newsletter. I receive a number of author newsletters myself on the same day so am clearly not the only one who thinks this!

Looking forward to a more informal Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group meeting this time next week as it is a wonderful way to wrap up our writing year. Plan is to share any flashes for feedback and to discuss all things writing related. It has been a great year for the group with four of us having festive flashes broadcast this coming weekend. More power to our pens and PCs, folks!

Fairytales With Bite – Fairies and Festivities

What involvement do your magical creations have with any kind of festivities? My thoughts are always drawn to the line by Slade on their fabulous Merry Xmas Everyone to the line about “fairies keeping Santa sober for a day”. Am assuming that takes some work!

But what do your fairies to to help or hinder festivities? (Forget the one about sending a young princess to their doom via spinning wheel needle – it’s been done!). Is magic welcome at celebrations or does it get in the way? How do fairies celebrate their festivities? Is food created magically or is that done the old school way? Is magic saved for fireworks, decorations, music etc? What would your fairies celebrate in the first place? Do they allow other species to join then or it is just for the fairies only?

I would imagine there would be some sort of celebration when a new fairy graduated and “got her wings” (sorry, couldn’t resist that one) so what format would this follow given this would be likely to be a tradition.

I would certainly hope your magical creations had a great deal of fun, as I hope you do too with your Christmas traditions.

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This World and Others – Managing Celebrations

As well as private events, I would expect your setting to have some sort of official public celebration for varying things. There will be commemoration events. There will be something to indicate the end of a certain time period as we do here every 31st December.

Within your setting and if you have specific countries, there will be historical events to commemorate in some way – some of which will be sombre in tone and others anything but.

So who would be responsible for ensuring public events were conducted “properly”? In the UK we have an Earl Marshal who organises coronations etc. But who would your creation be and what would they have responsibility for exactly? Are celebrations managed well or otherwise?

Has historical precedent meant there has to be someone organising it all now? What would happen to anyone who went against what is expected in terms of public behaviour here?

Above all, do your characters have fun at these things. Do the events serve as a way of the public letting their hair down (including magically) without it all going horribly wrong?

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WRITERS NARRATIVE SUBSCRIBER LINK

AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES

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Author Interview: A Right Cozy Christmas Crime with Wendy H Jones

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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. Many thanks to Janet Williams for the shots of me signing books at The Hilt Book Fair.
Hope you have had a good few days. Had lovely trip out with other half to celebrate our wedding anniversary. Lady had a fabulous time too. Pleased to say I have broadcast news and I know others who will be on the same show so am pleased for them all too. More details below with a link to come later.

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Am delighted to share a wonderful interview with Wendy H Jones about A Right Cozy Christmas Crime (Scott and Lawson), a recently released anthology of cozy crime stories. We discuss the joys of anthologies, the appeal of cozy crime, and the use of Christmas as a setting plus much more besides. Do check the interview out. And maybe you’ll have an extra idea for your Christmas present list.

What I love about short stories and flash fiction is you get to visit so many different “worlds” and characters and anthologies are the prefect place to have such stories collected. I deliberately read novels, then shorter forms of writing, then back to novels again. I want to read across the spectrum and often will check out an author new to me when they’ve got work in an anthology like this one before going for their longer works.

A Right Cozy Christmas Crime with Wendy H Jones – Author Interview

 

 

 

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Had a lovely day out with other half and Lady today. Other half and I were celebrating our 37th wedding anniversary.

Writing wise, don’t forget there is a fabulous interview coming up with Wendy H Jones about A Right Cozy Christmas Crime (Scott and Lawson) on Chandler’s Ford Today – link up tomorrow. See above. I love short stories, crime tales, and anthologies. This latest publication has the lot. Plenty of useful thoughts are shared. Do check it out.

Last but not least, I’m thrilled to say my festive flash fiction story, Perspective, will be broadcast on Hannah Kate’s Three Minute Santas show on North Manchester FM on Saturday 14th December 2024. The show is on from 2pm to 4pm. Congratulations to all who have had their tales chosen. I’m looking forward to hearing them all. It’s a lovely show and supportive of writers and the story world. I hope to share a link later.

 

Hope you have had a good day. Lady got to see her Hungarian Vizler pal this morning and, to our great surprise and delight, her Rhodesian Ridgeback pal this afternoon on our usual walk. An unexpected and welcome play time ensured as the walk has a nice area of green where the dogs can play. They had a lovely time.

Looking forward to the Bridge House Publishing Celebration event on Saturday and to an ACW group meeting on Zoom this evening where I love joining in with talk about science fiction and fantasy. A lovely time is had by all.

Character Tip: Put yourself in your character’s shoes. You don’t have to like your characters (I can think of a few of mine where if we could meet in life we would not get on at all) but you do have to understand where they’re coming from and why. I think it is the only way to write for them with any conviction. I’m convinced when an author does get behind their characters like that, this comes through in the story and makes it more believable.

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Am pleased to be back on Friday Flash Fiction with my latest tale Printing Error. This is an entry for their Christmas competition and in this one the word I had to use was peace. Hope you enjoy the story.
Screenshot 2024-12-06 at 09-48-50 Printing Error by Allison Symes - Friday Flash Fiction

As mentioned over on my author page, I’m delighted to say my festive flash fiction story, Perspective, will be broadcast on Hannah Kate’s Three Minute Santas show on North Manchester FM on Saturday 14th December 2024. The show is on from 2pm to 4pm. Link to come later.

This was one of the several flash pieces I’ve recently got out to different places. Always good to know one got through okay!

Will not hear back on the others for some time and only then if they get a placing. You do get used to this. Often it is a question of competition organisers simply not having enough time or people to email all who entered rather than anything else.

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Have received the reading order list for the Bridge House Publishing Celebration event on Saturday. Have worked out what I’d like to read. Always a fun task! Am looking forward to hearing the other stories too – it is a treat to be read to and I love reading my work so win-win here It’s fun. Flash works so well for open mic type things.

Am also looking forward to catching up with Debz Hobbs-Wyatt and Hannah Retallick, whom I interviewed for Chandler’s Ford Today recently. It will be great to catch up with friends, old and new.

 

Fairytales with Bite – Timing

What do your magical characters make of timings? Cinderella was useless at it, of course. How good or otherwise are your characters in keeping to time and what are the consequences when they’re not? Also could someone else make use of someone’s punctuality and use it against them?

Do any of your character’s spells have a timing limit on them? Some fairy godmothers do have this feature, of course! Automatically set to midnight, naturally – it’s never three minutes past one, is it?

If your character has to get their timing spot on with something, what obstacles will you put in their way to make it as difficult as possible for them to achieve this? What will they have to do to still make their objective happen?

Can your character use split second timing to achieve something different in the world of magic? What would this be? What other powers could it unleash?

Timing can be everything in a story (as it so often is in film). How can you make best use of this thought for your characters and their situations?

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This World and Others – Decisions

How easy or otherwise do your characters find making decisions? A lot will depend on what the decision is and how it is going to challenge them personally, of course, but as a general rule, do they have problems making up their mind about something or do they always know what they want?

The latter trait could be useful in showing something else about their personality. The go-getters don’t tend to be the shy, retiring type!

How do your characters react when having to make decisions they wouldn’t normally face? Many a quest tale has started with this. The way they respond so often makes the adventure memorable (The Lord of the Rings is the obvious example here).

I outline my characters with enough information so I know how they are likely to respond in most situations. There is still the room for them to surprise me and they do sometimes but the surprise comes out of what I already know about them so isn’t “out of kilter” for the way I’ve portrayed the character to date.

Funnily enough, I don’t usually need to know much about how they look – what I’m after finding out is their personality and then ideas for their appearance come from that. My major decision is in working out just how much I need to know about my characters before writing them up.

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WRITERS NARRATIVE SUBSCRIBER LINK

AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES

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Approaching a New Year/Reviewing Your Writing Year

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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. Many thanks to Richard Hardie and Julia Pattison for images of me in my Chandler’s Ford Today post this week.
I hope you had a lovely Christmas and hope you go on to have a Happy New Year. It was nice having a break and catching up with family. Lady was spoiled rotten. And I have several new books to read so am very happy about that! This post is a round up one covering the Christmas period. Back to my normal twice weekly routine here from next year (but then that’s only a few days away now!).

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29th December – CFT
Second post and it is my usual weekly one for Chandler’s Ford Today. I look at Approaching a New Year. There is a theme emerging from my posts tonight! I ask if you approach a new year with anticipation or apprehension. Well, I recall the hopes for 2020 and we all know how that turned out!

But this is a good opportunity for writers because we’re about to enter a new writing year too. This is a great chance to look at your writing goals and see where you are with them. Do they need adjusting? Sometimes they do and that’s fine but taking the time out to think about this is a good way to help propel your writing forward.

Why? Because you will make necessary tweaks and other changes to help you towards your writing goals or, if they’re not working out for whatever reason, to re-evaluate what you want to do with these. I changed direction to the shorter forms of writing as a result of one of my re-evaluations. It has proved to be a good move! Hope you find the post helpful.

Approaching A New Year

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29th December – More Than Writers
It’s double post time! First one up tonight is my post for More Than Writers, the blog spot for the Association of Christian Writers. This time I look at Reviewing Your Writing Year. I share why I think taking time out to review your writing for the past year and what you would like to do over the next twelve months is a good idea.

And I stress why it is vital to focus on the positives. There will be some. Those positives can be built on too. I also take a look at reviewing your reading too given what we read is a great source of inspiration for our own stories. Certainly in my case if I didn’t have a love of reading, would I have wanted to write? Probably not!

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Am enjoying my additions to my reading pile. Good to get back to some writing yesterday. Not doing much today as seeing family. Back to full on writing from tomorrow. Will be looking at Approaching a New Year for Chandler’s Ford Today this week. Link up tomorrow. See above.

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Am off for further family celebrations tomorrow so may post early or not at all but I wanted to pop by now and say (a) hello, (b) hope you had a lovely Christmas and (c) to say my Chandler’s Ford Today post on Friday will be about Approaching a New Year. Will be back to normal writing routine from Friday but must admit I have enjoyed the break and am looking forward to catching up with family tomorrow. I also hope you had lots of lovely books as presents. Have added to my TBR pile!

And last but not least, though nobody really knows what day of the week it is now (there is something odd between Christmas and New Year that does this to people I think), it is time for a story. Hope you enjoy my latest on YouTube – Down Time. It does seem apt!

NO POSTS Christmas Day or Boxing Day (I wonder why! Hope you had a fabulous time).

Have a lovely Christmas. I hope you get plenty of lovely books amongst your presents! Have ticked off The Muppet Christmas Carol from my viewing. Will be watching Hogfather later. And there’ll be other favourites to enjoy over the next couple of days – a favourite here is The Great Escape, which I remember always being on at Christmas.

I do have a soft spot for films based on true stories (though I admit The Lord of the Rings is a notable exception!). I expect I’ll be watching some of my favourite Morecambe and Wise sketches too.

Back in a few days, folks. Have a great time.

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Hope you have had a good day. Lovely to have a brief chat with my great editor at Chandler’s Ford Today earlier this afternoon. Will be catching up with her more when we next go to see The Chameleon Theatre Group perform. That will be in January – for the pantomime which is always a good laugh. Oh yes, it is!

Will be discussing Approaching a New Year for Chandler’s Ford Today next Friday. I won’t be posting for a few days over Christmas and my next round up of what I write where won’t appear until the 29th too (you will still get a bumper read though!). Think I am delivering on this promise!

Hope to get plenty of reading done over the Christmas break too. I definitely put books on my wish list. Now you can’t say you’re surprised by that, eh? Hope you too get plenty of lovely books. When I’m not writing, I want to be reading.

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Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

I do hope you had a lovely Christmas. I loved catching up with favourite films, many festive, some not. All of the films had something in common though – they all had fabulous storylines and fantastic characters. Those are the two most important ingredients to any story, no matter what format it is in.

Hope to get back to submitting work to Friday Flash Fiction from next week.

And I hope having a break has inspired you with your reading and writing. I know mine has. I loved the break. I am happy to be writing again. Win-win. (And I am loving my Christmas reading!).

Naturally I hope to write more flash in the coming year. It would be nice to have a go at more competitions too.

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F = Flash makes you focus.
L = Limitations on word count encourages creative thinking.
A = Always use specific details to create strong images in your readers’ minds.
S = Specific images also help you make the most of your word count.
H = Have fun with your characters as they are the stars of your flash tales.

 

Just to say I hope you had a lovely Christmas. Will be back to normal writing routine on Friday but wanted to say hello now and to flag up Amazon still have a good offer on my From Light to Dark and Back Again flash fiction collection on the paperback. See link below for more. Over 40 stories for under £4.00 – bargain!

In other news, my newsletter will be going out again on New Year’s Day. To sign up for that, please head over to my landing page at https://allisonsymescollectedworks.com

I use my newsletter to share tips, news, story links and so on. Many thanks to all who have subscribed – it is much appreciated.

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NO POSTS Christmas Day or Boxing Day (had a great time. Hope you did too. Lots of lovely new books to read. One very happy writer here!).

Happy Christmas. Will be back online next week. Hope you get to enjoy plenty of stories and down time. There will be a Chandler’s Ford Today post on Friday where I’ll be looking at Approaching a New Year. It literally will be timely! In the meantime, have a lovely time over the festive season.

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Glad to be able to share the Mixcloud link to the Three Minutes Santa show hosted by Hannah Kate on North Manchester FM last weekend. One easy link to click! Do have a listen. I loved the variety of stories and music. Enjoy!

Goodreads Author Blog – Story Time!

I know it’s not quite pantomime time. For those not in the know, pantomime happens after Christmas and goes on to late January/early February. It is a fabulous way of getting people into the theatre as it is aimed at all the family with a lot of audience participation, adlibs, and much humour. The stories used for pantomime are based on the classic fairytales. Pantomime is an old tradition too). I do know it is story time though.

I love the story of the Nativity, poems such as Twas the Night Before Christmas (also known as A Visit from Saint Nicholas), and the carols. In the Bleak Midwinter is my favourite and Christina Rossetti, like Charles Dickens, have added to Christmas related literature. Not many can claim to have done that. I also love stories in film (The Muppet Christmas Carol, The Polar Express, Hogfather).

I also love to write festive flash fiction and was privileged to have one of mine, This Is The Partnership, broadcast on internet radio recently. My tale looks at how Santa deals with a dodgy salesman. Good fun to do.

But as I mentioned in a recent post here, I am looking forward to that lovely time just after Christmas where I will get to read more, the normal routines are suspended, and I get to enjoy those presents which just happened to be books. I always have a request list here. No surprises there.

I hope you have a lovely Christmas and you get to listen to/watch/read some wonderful stories.

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Fairytales With Bite – A New Beginning

A new beginning is what comes after the happy ever after ending in the classic fairytales when you think about it. Cinders and Prince Charming had to get used to their new beginning of a married life. The woodcutter in Little Red Riding Hood may well have gathered extra business in terms of removing threats after what he did to the Big Bad Wolf. If so, it would have meant an entire new career.

Major events can often trigger new beginnings. Not everyone responds to these well. (Just ask the evil fairy godmother in Sleeping Beauty. She didn’t welcome the christening. Okay it was because she wasn’t invited but there would have been a reason for that).

So think about what a new beginning would mean for your characters. Would they welcome or fear such things? When the new beginning has been forced on them, how do they handle that? Does something good come out of their situation? Can they see the point of the new beginning later on?

If your setting has to start again – new government, new way of ruling etc- how does that come about? Why? What are the consequences of the change? Does anyone resist the new beginning and do they have good cause? Are they successful?

Good story ideas there!

BookBrushImage-2023-12-29-20-298This World and Others – Time Measurement

I write this as we approach a New Year – 2024 – which is the one time everyone is focused on time. We measure our time by seconds, minutes, hours, days etc but how would your world do it? Would time be based on the rising and setting of any sun like star?

If your world has an industry, how would they measure working time? In the UK, time became standardised thanks to the coming of the railways. Time needed to be standardised for the railway system to work at all (no good having one time in one place and another time in the train’s destination, say) so does your setting face anything like that? Does anyone resist the change to timing systems?

What devices are used to measure time in your setting? Who invented these?

If you have Time as a character in a story, how are they recognised? How would “they” prefer to be measured?! (Would be good to ask Time directly, yes?).

No system for measuring anything can ever be infallible so what would be the failings with the system your world has and how would these impact on your characters? Here in the UK we have to adjust our clocks by an hour twice a year to adjust to daylight hours available. So what would your world do when “corrections” were needed?

Also give some thought to the downsides of being able to measure time? Are your characters’ lives dictated by the clock or other measuring device and how would this show in their behaviour and attitudes?

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AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES

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