Tag: Flash Fiction Flexibility

Starting A Piece of Fiction

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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 – she’s been catching up with her pals. Many thanks for great responses to my posts about the October issue of Writers’ Narrative where I’m the Featured Author. It’s not often you get to be a cover girl in your late fifties but there you go!

Facebook – General and Chandler’s Ford Today

Hope you have had a good day. Lady saw her Hungarian Vizler pal and Coco, the lovely Labradoodle. Lady has had a fabulous week in that she has seen most of her friends most of the time this week. I think most of us would count that as a great week.

Writing wise, I’m pleased to share Starting A Piece of Fiction on Chandler’s Ford Today this week. Hope you find it useful.

Once I get started on a flash tale or short story, I am generally “away with it” (though I do use outlines to help me). What can be tricky can be knowing where to start and this post shares some thoughts and tips I have found useful over many years to overcome this.

I also share a useful template (which is easily adaptable) which, again, I hope you find useful.

Starting A Piece of Fiction

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Will be sharing Starting A Piece of Fiction on Chandler’s Ford Today tomorrow. The following week, I will, as you will probably have guessed, be sharing a piece on Ending a Piece of Fiction. I hope both will prove to be useful. After that will be a fabulous interview with John Puzey about his book, Captive Audience, so plenty going on at CFT at the moment. John is also a member of our excellent local theatre company, The Chameleons.

Have been busy this week working on a presentation and pitches. Have sent the latter off. The presentation will be for the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group later this month. So far it has been a non-fiction heavy week but I will be switching to the fiction side again soon.

And Lady had a great Thursday meeting up with her Rhodesian Ridgeback and Hungarian Vizler pals so she has had a great day, as did her friends.


Hope today has gone well. Lady saw her Hungarian Vizler pal today – nice time had by both dogs.

Writing wise, I’ll be sharing Starting a Piece of Fiction on Chandler’s Ford Today on Friday. Will be sharing tips I’ve found useful for overcoming hesitant starts to stories. I find once I get started it’s fine. It can be the getting started which can be tricky sometimes. I hope the post will prove useful. See above.

Marketing Tip: Consistency matters. It’s better to focus on a few things you know you can do (and keep doing) than spread yourself too thin. This is why I’m not on every social media platform out there (though that doesn’t preclude me from changing the ones I am on or adding others later). But I know I can post regularly where I currently do so I keep that going. Over time, consistency pays off. Readers know where to find you.

Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

Am thrilled to be one of two Editor’s Choices on Friday Flash Fiction with my tale, Finding Out The Hard Way. Hope you enjoy it.

Congratulations to Jim Bartlett for his story, Safer, which was the other Editor’s Choice.

Having two stories chosen doesn’t happen often so this was an especially nice surprise today.
We talk about having flashes of inspiration and they do happen but I find they come more often when I am at my desk working out ideas for characters and situations to put them in. Then the flashes can come.

Basically, I’ve got to put the work in, which is fine because I love that.

Where I do a get an idea out of “nowhere”, it usually is because something has been bubbling away in my subconscious for a while and it comes to the surface when I am working on something it could be useful for.

Often that something bubbling will be due something I’ve read so this is another reason to read widely and well, contemporary and classic works, short and long forms, and non-fiction because you want a wide pool to fish from for ideas to bubble like that.

It is also more likely you will get more ideas the more you read (and write).

Another aspect to flash fiction flexibility is mixing up the word count ranges you write to within the overall limit of 1000 words. You do develop favourites over time. My overall favourite will always be the drabble, the 100 worder, as it was my way into flash fiction in the first place, but I often write to 300 and 500 words especially. This is handy as so many flash competitions go to these word count limits. As you can imagine, I’m sure, this is no coincidence on my part!

Also when I have submitted stories for potential broadcasting, I am usually looking at the 200 to 250 word count tops for these, so it pays to practice writing to this kind of count.

You do, with time, get used to seeing/knowing what 200 to 300 words will look like on the page/screen so get better at knowing where to stop your story. You get a feel for what will fit in that word count limit.

I can usually tell at a glance now when I draft a 100 word story for Friday Flash Fiction, by roughly how much I’ve gone over on that first draft (and I always do go over). I’m not usually out by much when I compare my thought to the word count on the screen.

Mind you, that tells me how much I have to edit and I start by removing all of my wasted words (that, very, actually etc). Its amazing what a difference can be made to your word count removing words like that can do.

Fairytales with Bite – Options for Magical Beings

What options do your magical beings have in your setting? Are they born with their powers or do they develop these as they grow up? Which powers come to them as naturally as breathing and which do they have to learn? How would all of that impact on the kind of careers they can have later?

Do your magical creations get any choice at all on their career? Can anyone “rebel” against their “default setting” and do something different? What would the consequences be of that?

Are your characters happy with the skills they are born with and/or go on to develop? What are the advantages and disadvantages of them? Could any of your characters with powers envy those without them and why would that be? (Simpler lifestyle and less complications would be one thought springing to my mind).

This World and Others – Careers

In your setting what kind of careers are available for your characters? Is this dependent on magical skill set (see Fairytales With Bite above) or can anyone go for these careers as long as they’re willing to learn and work hard? How have the careers developed in your world? Is magic an advantage here or not?

Also are there careers not possible in your setting but which are still needed for your society to function?

Could magical power get in the way of these needed careers so your world has to import people /other beings of choice to carry out these vital roles? How does that happen? (There could be many a tale of alien abduction here – at least it would be for a reason that made sense!).

Are there careers your characters are desperate to avoid or get? How can they avoid/get them? Why do they feel this way? Could a story involve a character facing up to having to do a career they don’t want for a greater purpose?


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Flash Flexibility, Writing Workshops, and Supporting Other Writers

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Image Credits:-
All images from Pixabay/Pexels unless otherwise stated. Book cover images from Chapeltown Books and Bridge House Publishing. Screenshots taken by me, Allison Symes. 
Hope you have had a good few days. Summery weather at last which Lady and I have loved. I have publication news too so it’s a good start to the week in that department too.

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Facebook – General

Lovely day today and Lady is very happy because she got to “boop” her best mate, the lovely Rhodesian Ridgeback. Usually the Ridgeback boops Lady. For dogs, it really is the little things in life that bring them the most joy (oh and dinner of course!).

Delighted to say I can now reveal I will have another story on Cafelit on 27th June. Looking forward to sharing the link on that then. The piece comes from a homework exercise I set for members of the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group.

Will be off to the theatre again in July with my lovely editor from Chandler’s Ford Today, Janet Williams, Looking forward to seeing the latest production from The Chameleon Theatre Group. Will review in due course. I should’ve finished my In Fiction series for CFT by then – wish me luck finding something suitable for the letters V and X! I hope my years of Scrabble paying might help here!

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Hope your Monday has been okay. Busy as ever here though the weather was lovely. Glad to say I’ll have further publication news to share soon so that’s a smashing start to the week.

My Chandler’s Ford Today post this week is about Underlining In Fiction. I’ll be looking at how to stress points to a reader without needless boring repetition and talking about planting the right clues. Link up on Friday.

Amazon currently has offers on the paperback of both From Light to Dark and Back Again and Tripping the Flash Fantastic. See the link.

Writing Tip Number 3,004 or something like that but one I’ve found incredibly useful: time away from a piece of work is crucial. You do need the distance in terms of time away from it so you can see where it has strengths and, more importantly, where it hasn’t!

With my judge’s hat on, I can spot those stories where an author has clearly given themselves enough time away from their story as they have then edited it effectively too.

The trouble with editing a story immediately is there tends to be two responses to it – this is a work of utter genius, no work needs to be done to this deathless prose, or this is a work which I really shouldn’t have bothered with, everyone will loathe it. Neither are true. The truth is your story will have promise but needs polishing up and sharpening to show bring its potential out.

Screenshot 2022-06-20 at 20-11-22 Amazon.co.uk Allison Symes

Many thanks for the comments in on Time Off, my latest tale on Friday Flash Fiction. Some smashing feedback, all appreciated.

Going back to my Authors Electric post yesterday on Writing Workshops, I can’t stress enough how important it is to support other writers (something Friday Flash Fiction does very well, as does CafeLit). Nobody produces a perfect bit of work immediately (and is there any such thing anyway? I can look back at my earlier stories and see immediately how they could be bettered but they were where I was at during that time of my writing life).

We all have to start somewhere. We can all improve on what we do. It takes time and practice. There are no shortcuts for anyone.And people remember those who support them. They also remember those who were unsupportive. Which would you rather be known as – a supportive writer or not? I know what camp I want to be in! (That thought is assisted by the old saying make your words sweet as you never know when you’ve got to eat them!).

18th June – Authors Electric
It’s my turn on the Authors Electric blog and this month I’m talking about Writing Workshops. I discuss what I love about these, whether I run them or go to them, and look at how old school pen and paper can come into their own at these things. Hope you enjoy (and I’m looking forward to running another workshop at the Swanwick Writers’ Summer School in August).

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Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

Flash has more flexibility than you might think. Yes, there is the word count issue but I’ve written stories in the first person, the third, as diary extracts, as well as setting my characters backwards and forwards in time. I’ve written fairytales with bite, crime tales, the odd ghost flash piece etc.

What influences all of this are the kinds of story I’ve loved reading over the years and which I continue to love and read. It really has paid off for me to read reasonably well and widely (I don’t think anyone can claim to be perfect here. Why would you want to be anyway? You want there to be other books and genres to discover after all!).

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Many thanks for the views on my YouTube tale last week (or should that be tail?) – The Unexpected. But it is Monday once again and time for another video. Hope you like this one – The True Picture. I used a random verb generator which triggered the word picture and here is what I came up with for that prompt.

Sometimes I have an idea for what I think will be a flash piece but the story really does deserve a larger word count. So I simply write that piece for the short story market instead (and my stories tend to come in at 1500 to 2000 words for that). Sometimes what I think could make a good short story really does work better as a shorter, tighter flash piece. And that’s all fine.

It’s why it has paid me to ensure I have a foot in both camps when it comes to short form storytelling. What matters is the story is right for the character (and vice versa) and the story has a proper beginning, middle, and end. The story ends with a proper resolution to the dilemma the story is about and sometimes that will come in at a longer or shorter word count that you might have originally anticipated.

 

I’m chatting about Writing Workshops for Authors Electric this month (see my author page on this – https://www.facebook.com/allison.symes.50) and one advantage to flash fiction here is these are easy to share when you want to discuss elements of story writing. They don’t take too long. They also demonstrate the points you’re trying to make. (And it’s another way of spreading the word about flash fiction so win-win there!).

I’ve found flash pieces are especially useful for demonstrating the old advice of show, not tell. Precisely because I don’t have the word count room for description, I do have to get my characters to show the readers what matters. And showing a point gets things across more clearly I find. I’ve been on the receiving end of that benefit many a time from workshops I’ve been to and have always appreciated that.

Screenshot 2022-06-18 at 20-05-37 (4) Allison Symes Facebook

Goodreads Author Blog – Book Covers

For a book to grip me, I have to be gripped by its characters, but the right book cover is what is going to get me to look at the blurb, the opening page, and then go on to buy said book. I want the cover to show me something of the mood/genre of the book, to be attractive, and to intrigue me enough so I do pick the book up in the first place. Not asking much. Hmm…. No wonder book covers are so difficult to get spot on.

My favourite quote on the topic comes from the wonderful P.G. Wodehouse who, in a letter to a friend, said “God may forgive Herbert Jenkins Limited for the cover of……… But I never shall!” Book title deleted here to protect the guilty. I highly recommend the Wodehouse books of letters by the way – there is a wonderful one edited by Frances Donaldson (Yours Plum, the Letters of P.G.Wodehouse which is where I came across this quote) and another which was edited by Sophie Ratcliffe (Wodehouse: A Life in Letters). Both are fascinating reads.

It is some comfort to me as a writer that even the big names didn’t/haven’t always liked the book covers they’ve been “given”. I’ve been fortunate here in that my small indie publisher has ensured I have had some input into my covers which is something I’ve appreciated.

The author ought to have some idea of themes etc that their book cover could draw on though, rightly, the publisher should have the final say given they know what has worked for them already and can drawn on that kind of knowledge one author is simply not going to have.

So then what works for you with book covers? I don’t like over-complicated ones. Indeed my Agatha Christie collection (good old Odhams Publishers) are simply red hardbacks with gold lettering – simple but effective. The Lord of the Rings trilogy has Gandalf striding out in bad weather and again works well (I know immediately this has to be a fantasy quest).

Screenshot 2022-06-18 at 20-24-23 Book Covers

 

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Running Orders, Book Brush, and the Brechin/Angus Book Festival

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Image Credit:-

All images from Pixabay/Pexels unless otherwise stated.

Book cover images from Chapeltown Books and Bridge House Publishing.

Facebook – General

Smashing autumnal walk with Lady today. Hard to tell who is more tired out of the two of us though!

Happy with the progress on my kind of NaNoWriMo project yesterday as I had one of those lovely moments where the words just flowed and it was just a question of keeping going with it. (That is the definition of the ideal NaNoWriMo really isn’t it?!). I’m adding new material now and enjoying it so hopefully future readers will do so too.

Am really enjoying playing with Book Brush. Latest effort below.

Oh and talking of CFT, my post this week will be a Local Author News one about yours truly in connection with the Brechin/Angus Book Fest I’m taking part in over the weekend. See https://www.facebook.com/groups/808280536653169 for more details on the Festival, which is part of Book Week Scotland. I will also flag up more news here as I get it. (Oh and I also flag up my Youtube channel on my CFT post but more on that on Friday).

Chandler's Ford Today post reminder picture(1)


After Saturday’s deluge, and a world record time set by me for walking Lady (20 minutes, bare minimum, both of us returned looking like drowned rats), it was a relief to have a dry, reasonably mild day today.

Sight of the week and probably the year: Lady’s best buddie, a Rhodesian Ridgeback, having a wonderful run and play fight with another Ridgeback – 100 kgs of dog between the pair of them. Wonderful sight. Just stay well out of the way! Lady decided to leave the pair of them to it and focused on her Chuckit ball, probably wisely.

Delighted to say I’ve been playing with Bookbrush again and for the first time have used the video function. Hope you enjoy the very short story that goes with this. Naturally this went up on my Youtube channel earlier today (I do love scheduling!). (Have also included the video here).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXGNt9XndN8

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPCiePD4p_vWp4bz2d80SJA

– Last Request by Allison Symes

Have spent time this afternoon doing some “housekeeping” on my website.
My About page is now my Home page and I’ve added new material to it, including those lovely images I created yesterday using Book Brush. (A big thanks for all the positive comments about those). Am so looking forward to using Book Brush more.

There is now a direct link to my Youtube channel on the About page too.
I like to add material to the website every so often to keep it fresh, of course, but it is easy to forget to do the housekeeping side of it such as removing things no longer relevant, finding better pictures than the ones you had originally and so on.

I’ve also tidied up my Books page too. I’ve not yet found a way of changing the URL slug for the Books page from Home to Books but will sort that out in due course I hope.

The ideal of a website is to make it easy to navigate, eyecatching, and fun for both you and your visitors.

Hope you enjoy the tidy up!

 

I went out with the dog once today. It was enough! So glad to be back at my desk. Still no watering of anything will need to be done for some time in my neck of the woods!

Many thanks to #LizHurst for her fab interview with me on Chandler’s Ford Today yesterday (Friday, 13th November, see previous post).

I’ll be talking about the Brechin/Angus Book Fest for my post next Friday. The fact I’m taking part in it is NOT coincidence! 😀😀

I’ve also been experimenting with graphics for my books (using Book Brush). See throughout this post for various images created since the weekend using this.  

This kind of marketing is fun! Hope to be doing more of this. This has come out of a Zoom event I was at on Friday night where I learned so much. Many thanks to #WendyHJones and #KathleenSweeney for running this.

Below are some of my earliest attempts at creating book adverts. Just need to replace the spaniel with my Lady for the dog one! Mind you, I suppose I could avoid telling Lady….


From Light to Dark and Back Again

Having a lot of fun experimenting with Book Brush. Latest effort for Tripping The Flash Fantastic below.

One thing I have learned though creating Feature Images for my Chandler’s Ford Today posts is to keep them simple and avoid over-complicating things. Great tip for writing flash fiction there too!

I like to hit the ground running with my stories, which is why I often use the first person as that encourages this approach.

It is often said for story writing that you have to get straight to the action and hook the reader immediately. That is true but flash helps you sharpen that skill which you can then adapt for any other writing you do.

Even for non-fiction you need to draw the reader in immediately.

Looking forward to sharing more about the Brechin/Angus Book Fest as and when I can later this week. I’ll be writing about it in my Chandler’s Ford Today post this week as well.



Hope your Monday has been okay. I’ve posted a mini flash story, Last Request, on my Youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPCiePD4p_vWp4bz2d80SJA

Good fun to do and I love the bats and that’s all I’m saying about that here!

paper bats and spiders on orange background

Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

I love many things about flash fiction but one of the major ones is that it is more flexible than it might at first appear. I’ve written stories across the spectrum from six words to the maximum of 1000.

I’ve written in the first person, the third person, and shown things from the viewpoint of a mother dragon (see my trailer for Tripping The Flash Fantastic).

It is a great format in which to have fun with your writing. If a story works well at 100 words, I leave it there. If it needs more and ends up at say 500 words, that’s fine.

I also think it is good discipline to practice writing to different word count lengths. For one thing, it means you can have a stock of stories in store ready to send to different competitions and markets depending on their requirements.

Happy story writing!


As well as selecting the stories for my flash fiction collections, thought has to go into the running order too. That isn’t an always obvious thing to decide.

For TTFF I deliberately kept two historical stories together as one is from the viewpoint of Richard III (Getting It Right) and the other is told by his niece, Elizabeth of York (Not Knowing). Those two were going to go together from the offset.

But I didn’t put all of the historical ones together in one batch. There are others later in the book.

I also look at the mood of the stories too. I like a mixture of funny, poignant, scary (think light horror – that’s as far as I go) and back to funny again. I also try to end a collection on a positive note too. Kind of “that’s a wrap, folks”!

Did I get the running order right immediately? Oh no!

Did I expect to? Definitely not!

But it is worth taking your time over. You want to think of the impact your stories will have on your readers and that helps a lot with working out an appropriate running order. I did the same for From Light to Dark and Back Again. It makes, I hope, for smooth seamless reads and an even more enjoyable reading experience for your reader.

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Well, I’m glad I don’t write stories which match the mood of the weather. Anything I’d come up with today would have been unremittingly grim!

Now you know I like the good old random generators for triggering story ideas. I’ve used random number, word, noun, and adjective generators to good effect. Ta da – I’ve found another one!

Welcome to the good old random object generator. Yes, really.

This particular site has four categories – All, Outdoors, Clothing, and Office.

You can select a number of items though I have found with all of the generators, you are better off selecting up three or four and no more.

So how can I use the random object generator in my flash fiction, I hear you cry?

1. The object has to be in the story somewhere.

2. The object has to have special meaning to a character in your story.

3. If you’re a crime writer, how about making the object either something to be stolen or the murder weapon?! (In my selection tonight, a pillow came up. I’m sure you can think of a way of using that in a crime story!).

But you get the idea. Have fun!

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Goodreads Author Blog – Effective Blurbs

The book cover is usually the thing that attracts my attention to a potential new read, of course, but following that comes the blurb.

I like a blurb that is (a) short, (b) intriguing and (c) gives an idea of what the story is about without giving everything away.

My blurb for Tripping the Flash Fantastic reads as “Allison Symes loves reading and writing quirky fiction. She discovered flash fiction thanks to a Cafélit challenge and has been hooked on the form ever since. In this follow-up to her From Light to Dark and Back Again, Allison will take you back in time, into some truly criminal minds, into fantasy worlds, and show you how motherhood looks from the viewpoint of a dragon. Enjoy the journey!”

Was it easy to write that? Not particularly! The stories were easier to do but many authors find that. It is hard to capture the essence of your work without giving too much away. After all, the idea is to entice the reader in to read your book, not leave them feeling as if they have read it all from what you’ve put on the back cover!

Is it worth taking time and trouble over to get right? Oh yes.

Put yourself in the reader’s shoes. What is it about your book that they would want to know to make them want to find out more? It is all about triggering interest and from that a wish to know more.

Happy (blurb) writing!

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