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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 week. Lady has seen friends and I’m spotting more spring flowers out. Writing is going well too. Hope to edit a story for another competition over the weekend.

Facebook – General and Chandler’s Ford Today

Hope you have had a good Friday. Lovely to see some sunshine and more spring flowers out.
Pleased to share my latest post on Chandler’s Ford Today – The Writer’s Wish List.

I share five things I would wish for and this includes my thoughts on AI, tiredness. and finding out useful writing information plus much more.

Hope you enjoy the post. Comments always welcome on the CFT box.

The Writer’s Wish List

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Hope you have had a good day. Lady got to see her Hungarian Vizler friend again today and I am spotting more crocuses out both cheery things to celebrate I think!

Will be sharing The Writers’ Wish List on Chandler’s Ford Today. Link up tomorrow. See above.

Had a lovely session of the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group on Zoom last night. Good to see everyone.

I’ve been revisiting some of my Flash NANO stories from last year and sent a couple of those out to competitions, having polished and edited them. Now to wait and see.

Also happily working on future articles and a long term project. Hope to get that submitted soon.

Writing Tip: Even if you’re happily reading everything fictional you can get your hands on (and why not!) with the aim of writing plenty of fiction of your own, don’t forget to include non-fiction in your reading. Not only are the articles etc interesting, I’ve known non-fiction works spark off ideas for stories for me. Why not see if it can do the same for you?

Mixed bag weather wise today. Lady and I got wet this morning though we did see her Hungarian Vizler friend which cheered us up. For this afternoon’s walk, there was glorious sunshine. I guess that is proof – spring is on its way! In further good news, my first daffodils are out in the garden.

On Friday, I’ll be sharing The Writer’s Wish List on Chandler’s Ford Today.  See further up. And I hope to bring another smashing author interview before too long. More details nearer the time.

Looking forward to the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group meeting his evening on Zoom. Will be looking at Using Popular Themes as a topic. Glad to say the session went well. Nice to welcome new members to it too.

Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

It’s Friday once again and I’m pleased to be back on Friday Flash Fiction with my latest tale, Memory Issues. You know how you can see a face and swear you know from it somewhere, well so does my character here. Is he right or wrong though? What could be the consequences of being right?
The Bridport Prize has described flash fiction as “the art of just enough” which I think is a brilliant description of flash fiction. (Their competitions are open again incidentally. Deadline is the end of May).

It’s a great challenge to respond to and I’ve found it has helped my other fiction and non-fiction work. How?

Simply because I’ve got into the habit of thinking does the reader need to know this? I’ve got used to justifying every part of my stories and/or articles and/or blogs etc being included and ruthlessly cutting out anything which isn’t. Writing flash so regularly has helped sharpen my editing skills (and indeed has helped me lose all fear of that).

Other than for Friday Flash Fiction, where I always write 100 word tales, I do like to mix up the word count I use across the flash fiction spectrum. I do this to keep me on my creative toes but also because certain markets and competitions have specific requirements here.

I can think of markets which ask for strictly 75 words only, including the title, and another one which asks for 53 words. There are all kinds in between too all the way up to the 1000 word limit. And it is a funny thing how often I gravitate to the 1000 words mark.

For my Writers’ Narrative articles, these always come in at around the 1000 words mark. My shorter Chandler’s Ford Today pieces come it at about the same limit though my longer ones (such as author interviews) can be double that.

Word count then plays a huge role in my writing life though I like to mix it up. It keeps life interesting!

Fairytales with Bite – Turning The Tables

One of the things I’ve always loved about fairytales is you know things will work out all right in the end, usually with some magical assistance from a benign magical being. Turning the tables on the unkind and cruel can be guaranteed. Just ask Cinderella!

But we need to know early on in the story that such magical assistance is going to be possible. So we needed to know Cinders had a fairy godmother though she had been unaware of it until the lady deigned to turn up! I’ve always thought I would’ve understood Cinders if she’d greeted the lady with something like, “Where the hell have you been? Do you know what’s been going on here?” Well, you just would, wouldn’t you?

For tables to be turned, we need to know then that such a thing will be possible. Hints and clues need to be planted to the alert reader to pick up (and for the less alert ones to go back through the story later and then spot them – we all do this at times! It’s no bad thing either. You always pick up more on a second read and writers can learn so much from that).

With fairytales, there is the general expectation tables will be turned but you do need to see how this happens. In the case of Cinders, we know things will become better once that fairy godmother does turn up (and that magic will be the way forward here).

In other stories, look for the pivotal moment of change. Study what leads up to it. There will be things here we can apply to our own fairytales and magical stories. Often there is an early hint when we discover the setting is not of this world so that too is a huge clue magic or some other force for good will turn up at some point.

The fun thing here, of course, is you get to decide what clues to plant where. Then you can get your characters to reveal more. It’s why I love writing, as well as reading, what I call fairytales with bite. They’re a great source of entertainment and a small comfort in a world where justice is so often not done.

This World and Others – Accountability

With great power comes great responsibility (or should do!) and there should be some accountability as to how a character uses their powers. This isn’t meant as a commentary on what is going on right now but it perhaps reflects on us that accountability is always needed, I think.

In an ideal world (which ours definitely isn’t!) the most powerful have to have some restraints on what they can do otherwise there is no story. They would just get their own way all the time. There is no story in that.

I’ve long believed there has to be some hope in any kind of story (e.g. justice will be done in crime stories in some way) and I feel this should be just as true for science fiction and fantasy tales. Perhaps especially so since there is access to powers we don’t know here.

We understand power struggles here so can relate to those going through the same thing in the fantastic worlds we create. It is the characters, I feel, which draw us into reading the stories.

I rooted for Frodo and Sam in The Lord of the Rings and the details of The Shire, Mordor etc were fabulous but without those characters drawing me in would I have gone on to read the rest? Possibly not. Having said that, having sense of the setting in which they were travelling added to the story. Knowing Sauron could be brought down (and I refuse to believe that is a spoiler after all these years) gave hope. I was rooting for those hobbits to ensure Sauron did face his accountability even though it took an unusual way of doing it. It was vital Sauron had a weakness that could be used against him – therein the accountability and that evil would not triumph.

WRITERS NARRATIVE SUBSCRIBER LINK

Two issues here this time – the February one as we leave the month behind and the March one as we go into that month. Happy reading!

AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES

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It’s Friday again and I’m pleased to be back on Friday Flash Fiction with my new tale, Memory Issues. You know how you can see a face and swear you know from it somewhere, so does my character. Is he right or wrong though? What could be the consequences?https://t.co/N8MdRVyiOV pic.twitter.com/7RLnvESvua

— Allison Symes (@AllisonSymes1) February 28, 2025

The Writer's Wish List https://t.co/wE7Gb2TJAX Pleased to share my latest post on Chandler’s Ford Today – The Writer’s Wish List. I share five things I would wish for. This includes thoughts on AI, tiredness, and finding useful writing information plus much more.

— Allison Symes (@AllisonSymes1) February 28, 2025