Tag: Favourite kinds of story

Favourite Kinds of Story

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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. Images of me with books taken by Adrian Symes. Handy having that facility!
Hope you have had a good weekend. Weather continues to be lovely here. Good writing weekend. Will have news soon of a change. More to come later.

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Hope you have had a nice day. Gorgeous weather again and Lady got to play with her Rhodesian Ridgeback pal. Lovely time had by both dogs (and their owners, as we appreciate the lovely walking weather as opposed to getting soaked during the winter months!).

Will be looking at Writers and Stationery – A Match Made in Heaven for Chandler’s Ford Today on Friday. Looking forward to sharing that. (I could’ve titled this one Stationery Addicts Anonymous!).

Looking forward to going to a storytelling webinar tomorrow night. Plus I have an editing forum meeting during the day. Another busy week on Zoom!

7th April – Guest Blog Appearance

Hope you’ve had a good day. Lovely weather here and Lady got to see her Hungarian Vizler pal today so had a lovely time at the park with her chum.

Delighted to say my Tripping the Flash Fantastic is part of a feature over on Sandra’s Book Club today. Check out the details on the link. Nice start to the week (and don’t forget you can buy copies of both of my flash fiction collections from me via my website and also via The Bridgetown Cafe Bookshop, which is Bridge House Publishing’s online book shop. Naturally you can get them from Amazon too).

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Hope your Sunday has been a lovely, restful one. Not bad here. Lovely church service and lunch, now an afternoon of writing – all very much what this doctor orders! Will be getting on with flash fiction Sunday shortly. Incidentally even when I have some down time words still come into it – have a lovely couple of word games on my phone!

Character Creation Tip: I like to know main traits when thinking up characters because behaviours and attitudes come from those things but I do use both the negative and positive aspects of these traits. There is always a flip side to a trait regardless of which way around you start!

For example, if you have a character who is honest, are they honest to the point of being brusque? Who could they upset that way? Definitely story ideas there.

So take a trait and “flip it”. See what you can get from these things by taking both the positive and negative views of it. It mixes things up, is a better balance (given nobody is perfect) and you can get your other characters to react to whichever aspect of that trait you show.

Hope your weekend has got off to a good start. Lovely weather again here. So nice being out in the garden today.

Writing wise, I am looking forward to sharing next week’s Chandler’s Ford Today post especially as it is on a topic I really should have written about before! And what could that possibly be?

Simple! I’ll be talking about Writers and Stationery – A Match Made In Heaven – and it so is! I can’t think of any writer I know who could tell me exactly how many books they have or how many notebooks and pens etc they have. I know I can’t do that either! Fun piece to write. Link up next Friday.

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Plan to explore how we can use genres in flash fiction for the next meeting of the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group later this month.

Especially if you lead with characters, as I do, you can set those characters anywhere. I’ve written crime flash, historical flash, fantasy flash and much more.

It is one of the joys of the shorter fiction forms that it is easier to do this, plus you have different places to submit to, including competitions so you can have a great deal of fun playing with genres like this. Yes, you do have to “obey the rules” for each genre bit it is do-able.

It’s Monday but it is a lovely sunny one so that’s good. Still Monday though and time for another YouTube story from me. Hope you like my latest on here – Wake Up Call.

When you know you’ve messed up, you know why you messed up, and it doesn’t help at all you’re a fairy godmother.

 

I’ve mentioned before because I write a lot of flash fiction, I need to have various ways by which I can create characters and trigger story ideas. It’s not a bad idea to mix up the way you do things here because I find it keeps my fiction writing life interesting for me and, I hope, readers.

There are a huge variety of random generators to choose from, plus well known proverbs and phrases, but how about this for another way into creating stories?

There seems to be a National day for almost anything. Today, 6th April, is the day for, amongst other things, National Carbonara Day, (which sounds wonderful), National Teflon day (will that stick, I ask myself), and, in the UK, today is the start of the new taxation year. It isn’t widely celebrated that one!

But how about using these things in stories? Could your character be creating a carbonara for someone special or doing to to cheer themselves up after a horrendous day? Could romance bloom in amongst the tax ledgers! You could also set stories using the national day event as a backdrop. Could it complicate things for your characters in some way or make life easier? Your call but story ideas for sure here.

Congratulations to all who won or were listed in the Andrew Siderius competitions recently run by Friday Flash Fiction. Enjoyed reading these.

Looking forward to my usual flash fiction Sunday afternoon tomorrow. I find it a lovely way to create after church, walking the dog, and lunch. Should be getting back to the 100-worders tomorrow too. I sent in a longer flash for the above competition which was fun to do but anything over 100 words wise now story wise seems ever so long to me! Flash fiction does do this to a writer.

Having said that, I have written at the other end of the spectrum too. The one category I’ve not yet had a go at is the “mid-range”, the novella. Wouldn’t rule it out though. And it is possible to have novellas told via flash fiction with each story (acting as its own chapter) up to 1000 words, each story standing alone, but there also being an overriding arc you can follow through to the end, just as you would for a longer work.

Goodreads Author Blog – Favourite Kinds of Story

I love a whole range of stories and books so it is hard to pick just one overall favourite but we all have those we turn to time and again, especially if life is grim. Right now I know I can’t bring myself to read dystopian fiction. If I want dystopian I’ll watch the news!

I’m a great believer in books being a wonderful source of entertainment. This doesn’t stop them from being thought provoking as well, far from it, but at the end of the day, I want a rattling good yarn I know I can enjoy again and again if I so wish. So where do I turn to for these?

My picks are the classic fairytales, anything from Discworld by the much missed Sir Terry Pratchett, anything by Agatha Christie and P.G. Wodehouse. Always worth re-reading! Then there are the classic works of Jane Austen, crime novels generally, historical fiction geenrally, and The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey.

What I look for and find in all of these and many others are stories which take me away from my troubles for a while. Books shouldn’t be underrated for their capacity for this. I do think right now they can be wonderful escape for so many of us.

WRITERS NARRATIVE SUBSCRIBER LINK

AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES

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Competitions, Reading, and Publication News

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

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Every so often, I go through my list of potential competitions and whittle them down. I inevitably don’t get to enter all of them (time!) but I like to have a shortlist of contenders to pick from and I always go for the themes that appeal to me most. I do go in for open theme competitions too but actually prefer the set themes. I like to have a framework to work towards.

I wish I could say tidying the paperwork up immediately triggered inspiration for the Best Writing Idea Ever but I think I’d need the Writing Fairy to make a special appearance for that one to happen! 😆😆 I’ll let you know if she ever shows up….

 

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Have been slowly getting back into reading again via the Kindle.

I talked about how I’ve not read that much since the lockdown began in my CFT post last week so I am pleased the drought is beginning to clear.

I have had patches of not reading much before, mainly at times of great upset/stress etc., but also know that those patches pass so it is a relief to be slowly coming out of this one. (The last time was around the time I lost my dad, just over three years ago and I didn’t start reading properly again until a week after the funeral).

And yes I’m reading humour. It is always what I turn to first to kickstart my reading “diet” again.

And if you find you’re not writing or reading so much (or both), go easy on yourself. See this as a temporary stage only. It is!

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Managed to do a fair bit of editing over the weekend so am pleased with that. My CFT post this week will be looking at books on the radio and will feature YA author, Richard Hardie, as well as yours truly. More on that later in the week.

I must admit one advantage of writing mainly in the evenings is not having the heat browbeat me down! (I never work that well in very hot weather. Mind you, does anyone apart from the ice cream sellers?!😆).

I’ve long found creative writing to be therapeutic. I suppose it is because finding a form of artistic expression that suits me is so relaxing. I see writing as my wind-down time. I like to feel at the end of a session I used the time productively even if I “only” produced two flash fiction stories, say. I want to feel happy with what I’ve written even at first draft stage (because I know the work will only get better after that).

For longer term projects, I want to feel as I’ve made progress and I can see where I’ve got to go next.

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Facebook – General – and Publication News

Bonus post tonight. My story Breaking Out is now on Cafelit. Hope you enjoy.

The opening line comes from a prompt I contributed to the Prompts book produced by Gill James (see picture below). Do check it out in the usual places. You won’t run out of writing prompts!

 

Prompts 2020 by [Gill James]

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As you know, when I’m planning out a character I focus on their major trait(s) and there usually is more than one. After all, someone isn’t just brave, say. They may well be honest, charitable, compassionate and so on as well. It is the combination of traits that sparks a character (and therefore the story).

A character who is generally honest but is forced to lie to protect people they love is going to be a character I want to read about. I will want to find out what happens as a result of that lie but also how the character deals with their internal conflict here. While they’ll be happy to protect loved ones, they won’t be happy to have had to lie so how do they handle that?

 

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From Light to Dark and Back Again – Story Time!

Story time again. Random question generator time again. Hope you enjoy.

The question was what are the two things you would do if you woke up to find you were invisible? My answers? Panic and wonder whether I’d ever “come back”! But I thought it would be fun to write a story on this.

IN TIME

I knew something was up the moment the alarm woke me. Oh it was set for the usual time – 5.40 am – but when I realised I couldn’t see my hand as I went to switch the wretched thing off, I began to panic. I thought at first I’d lost my sight but then realised I was looking at where my hand should be and I could see my wardrobe in one corner of my room. Opposite was my chair.

I got up and went towards the full length mirror which was something I’d inherited from my gran. There was nothing in the mirror. Now I know I’m not a vampire and you’ll just have to take my word for it on that. This is when my panic settings went from mild to through the roof and up into the stratosphere territory. Well, you just would panic, wouldn’t you?

And then I remembered. I was rushing home from work and bumped into a scatter brained old lady who stepped in front of me in such a way I had no time to stop. I shouted at her to look where she was going, was she blind or something, and yes I know I was bloody rude and I am sorry about that. I’d had a horrendous day at work and I just wanted to get home. I know – no excuses but I want you to know I’m not normally rude.

Anyway she called out that she would teach me to look and I just laughed at that and thought nothing of it. I laughed even more when she got a big stick from her handbag and waved it in my direction. Who did she think she was – a fairy godmother or something?

I don’t know what to do. Will this wear off? She did call out I’d have to come and grovel to her soon. I laughed at that too.
Trouble is, it doesn’t seem so damned funny now.

I’ll be off. I’ll get my coat. If I’ve got to grovel, I’d rather get it over and done with.

Ends

Allison Symes – 23rd May 2020

 

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Hope you enjoyed my story, In Time, yesterday. This is the first time I’ve used the random question generator as the theme of the story, rather than as the title, opening or closing line. So yet another use for the generators then!

I’ve sometimes come across writing prompts that I would like to have a go at but I’m not happy with the ideas I come up with so I will bear using the prompt as a theme instead. I think that will give more flexibility.

What I would be inclined to do here is save such stories generated this way for open competitions where you set the theme anyway.

It means an idea could well produce something for you that you might otherwise have written off if you weren’t happy with something you’ve prepared with a specific theme-set competition in mind.

I’ve always found it best to submit the very best stories I can produce. Anything I’m not happy with for any reason doesn’t get binned. Neither does it get submitted. I save it and see if I can salvage something from it later and usually I can. Okay it can’t go in for that competition but that’s fine. If the author’s not happy with the story, the competition judge won’t be either!

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What would you say are your favourite kinds of stories and why?

I love:-

Humorous prose, especially fantasy, as I enjoy a good laugh.

Crime(though not the very violent type) as I enjoy the puzzle and seeing justice being done.

History – fiction and non-fiction. I learn from both. A well told historical fiction story does seem to transport me back to the era it is set in. (Music can do this too. I love Ralph Vaughan-Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis for that reason). A good non-fiction book will show me aspects of a historical character I’d not considered before.

Fairytales –first love, storywise. Always enjoy seeing the deserving get what they deserve (and this is even more true for the villains!).

And what I love most about flash fiction is the form is open enough for you to write in those genres and many more. All you need worry about is the word count and even there you have flexibility from the very short to the right on the 1,000 words limit. There are competitions and markets to suit the entire range too.

 

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I mix up how I approach writing flash fiction in terms of word count. There are times I know I want to write to a specific count (usually 75 or 100 words) for a chosen market and/or competition.

At other times, having outlined my story and character(s), I write it and then work out what word count it works best at. I then keep that story one side until a suitable market/competitiion comes up.

If a story works best at 250 words, I keep it there and won’t try and edit it down to get to a sub-200 word competition.

And how do I judge where a story works best?

It’s always about the impact of the character for me. The next thing I ask myself is whether there is anything I could add to or take out of the story which would improve the tale and its impact. When the answer is no, I’m there!

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Goodreads Author Blog – Book Events

One of the things I miss most as a writer at the moment is the ability to go to book events.

Much as I do deeply appreciate what is available online, and it is a lifeline, I miss going into libraries and bookshops.

I also miss going to author events and I look forward to being able to do all of these things again in due course.

The Waterloo Arts Festival is going to be online this year. I’ll be taking part in that as one of the winners of their writing competition and I made a video for this.

It was good fun to do but oh I shall miss meeting up in person with my fellow writers. (We will all miss the pub lunch beforehand too!).

But the good news is books can still be celebrated and they should be. Of all the times to need books for escapism, it is now, isn’t it?

Whatever you’re reading, I hope you have a wonderful time “between the covers” and, whoever it is you’re reading, do consider leaving a review in the usual places including here. It really does help.

At a previous Bridge House Publishing event. Image by Debz Brown
Very happy Cafelit and BHP writers. Image by Paula Readman
Reading work aloud is always a joy. Image by Dawn Knox
My table at the Hursley Park Book Fair. Image by Allison Symes
Happy Waterloo Arts Festival writers. Image by Ana Coelho