Tag: classical music and writing

Using the Senses, Workshops, and Classical Music

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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. 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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WRITERS NARRATIVE SUBSCRIBER LINK

AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES
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Looking Back and Trailers/Videos

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Image Credit:  As ever, the images are from Pixabay or Pexels unless stated otherwise.

Facebook – General – and Chandler’s Ford Today

I review last Friday’s online event for the Waterloo Art Festival’s Writing Competition for my CFT post this week.

It was great fun (though I admit missing getting together with the other writers involved in this. Still there’s always next year and I think Zoom has a role to play even when things get back to whatever comes to pass as being normal!).

I share the trailer for Transforming Communities, the ebook launched here. I also share a video where I read an extract from my winning tale, Books and the Barbarians. Enjoy!

Transforming Communities Full

It was a joy to review how the Waterloo Arts Festival Writing Event worked as an online only “get together” last Friday for Chandler’s Ford Today this week. I also share the book trailer for Transforming Communities. Also see below.

This ebook is a compilation of the fifteen winning entries and includes my story, Books and the Barbarians. I also share the link to the video I created for the Festival. I read an extract from my story on that. Hope you enjoy.

Zoom and other social media have been a lifeline in keeping some writing events together. Indeed as I write this I’ve just come off a very interesting Zoom session looking at marketing. (There is always something to learn with that topic!).

I take the view if I can’t together with author friends and go to writing talks in person then I will do so online whenever possible. I must admit though I am looking forward to the usual events being back again but I see a use for Zoom and the like long after “normality” returns.

I hope these platforms make events more accessible to those where transport is an issue for one thing. There is great good to be kept there I think.

 

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C = Creating new fictional people is always fun.
H = Heroes or Villains? You need both.
A = Aspirations of the characters are something a reader should identify with; ideally the aspiration of the villain should be in direct contrast to that of the hero.
R = Reasons for behaviours, attitudes etc of the characters should be sensible to them and a reader should be able to see where they come from here.
A = Agreeing with those reasons is not necessary!
C = Conclusion of the story should result in resolution of the conflict between your hero and villain.
T = Tension should ratchet up throughout the story as hero and villain race to try to achieve their objectives, knowing one of them has to fail.
E = Energy should come from your characters so your readers feel these people could be real in some world somewhere.
R = Rationality is in the eye of the beholder; a villain will find reasons to justify their actions and those reasons will be rational enough to them.
S = Super stories as a result of the above? But of course!

Happy writing!

 

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Mine tonight is Sweet Dreams! Hope you enjoy,
Gill, Dawn and I will be talking about the writing life and working with a publisher on 26th September 2020 via Zoom. Pixabay image.
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I’m a fan of the quiz show Pointless and love the word rounds. No surprises there to be honest. I like Scrabble and the quick crosswords, things like that. What word games do you like? Do you find they help your writing?

When I have time, I sometimes use word games to help me relax AFTER a writing session as they can be a good way for me to wind down yet still have fun playing with words.

Many decades ago, I used to write wordsearch puzzles for our church magazine (and to show how long ago that was, the magazine was produced on an old Gestetner duplicating machine. (For younger readers, these are the days before the photocopier became readily available. The last T-Rex had just left the earth.. you know the kind of thing. 😆).

Words are fun. They’re even more fun in a story or blog post!

 

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Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

It was good to see some fellow flash fiction writers as part of the Zoom course I was on this afternoon. I learned a lot. I was also encouraged a lot by it too. I also hope to put some more things into practice over the next few months!

One nice thing about flash fiction in particular is it is an easy form to share online. The reduced word count means it is easy enough to share a story and it is the best way I know of showing people new to the format what flash fiction is all about.

And it is lovely to share some new stories on this page too from time to time. I find it great fun to do and I hope to share some more before too long.

I hope to catch up with some story writing over the weekend. Whatever your writing and/or reading plans are, I hope you enjoy them!

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Although flash fiction is necessarily short, I still mix up the length of sentences in my stories. I like a nice balance of short and longer sentences to give my tales a sense of rhythm. To me, this seems more natural to read. Nothing is at a fast pace all the time. Even in a flash story there can be pauses even if it is a pause of one line before the action starts up again.

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Happily listening to Holst’s The Planet Suite on Classic FM when I drafted this. My favourite from it, Jupiter, is always one piece I turn the volume up for!

What I love about this suite is that each piece within it reminds me of a musical short story/flash fiction. Each piece represents each planet and they are so different. It is, to me, as if each piece is telling its own story.

And so nice to write and/or relax to as well!

Do you listen to music while writing? What kind helps most and why?

 

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Fairytales With Bite – 

Ten Things I Look For in a Good Story

I suspect there won’t be any great surprises here but each one should be a challenge to all of us to ensure we keep doing these!

  1. Characters I love or love to loathe. They’ve got to be memorable.
  2. Situations which are critical for the characters. They’ve got to strive for something important.
  3. A setting I would love to visit! (Anyone fancy a trip to The Shire in The Lord of the Rings? Mordor, I’d be happy to miss!).
  4. Great pace. Absolutely no boring bits!
  5. It’s a story I’d be happy to re-read at any time and enjoy it all over again.
  6. Humour, where apt for the story and the characters. I have a very soft spot for irony.
  7. Tragedy, when necessary as it often is, not to be overdone. (I think tragedy has much more of an impact when it does not become melodrama).
  8. Snappy dialogue.
  9. Catchphrases I can remember – and enjoy doing so.
  10. The story shows me something of the human condition which I’d either not considered before or reaffirms something. Funny stories can do this surprisingly well.

What are the most important elements to a story for you?

Books take you into other worlds.
Lost in a good book.
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I doubt if they’d let you put your feet up with a good book in here. Pixabay
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This World and Others –

Where to Find Ideas for Creating Your Fictional World

The best way by far is to read plenty of books across all genres and I do mean all. You can obviously learn directly from science fiction and fantasy as to how their worlds are set up. You learn a lot from what the writer decided you as the reader needed to know. But bear in mind you can also learn from history (fiction and non-fiction).

There is a lot of truth in the saying “the past is a different country, they do things differently there”. For a writer that’s wonderful stuff. So consider going back in time and having your fictional world set there. But do your research.

For example, readers may not need to know every detail of King Henry VIII’s court but they do need to know how many times he was married and how that affected life in the country (clue: it did and in a massive way!).

As for crime novels, again look at what the authors decided you needed to know. Setting is often used almost as a character in its own right in crime novels. What can you learn from that and apply to what you’re writing?

Work out a list of what you think you need to know. Then do a second one working out what it is a reader needs to know so they get the most from your story. And good luck!

 

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