Writing Competitions

September 19, 2025Leave a comment

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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. Wet, wild and blustery here. Writing going well. Am so glad it’s generally an indoors job when it comes to this time of year! Lady has got to see all of her chums already so is pleased with how her week is going.

Facebook – General and Chandlers Ford Today

Delighted to share my latest Chandler’s Ford Today post where I talk about Writing Competitions. I look at the benefits of these and share tips, including things to watch out for when you are thinking about entering competitions. And, yes, do watch out for scams.

Hope you find the post useful. I sometimes write the kind of post I wish I had to hand when I was starting out as a writer all those many moons ago and this one does fall into that category.

Writing Competitions

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Delighted to be back on Authors Electric with my latest post – Writing Prompts. As I write a lot of short fiction (short stories as well as flash fiction), I am always glad for prompts which help me come up with ideas and tales I would not have created in any other way. Good prompts encourage lateral thinking, which is always useful. I share other advantages to using prompts and hope you find the post useful.

(Good news: you are never going to run out of prompt types to use – there are thousands if you consider all of the different random generators, proverbs, sayings and other things which can be used as prompts, some of which, like photos, you will have on your own phone).

Hope you have had a good day. Lady had a lovely one, getting to play with her Rhodesian Ridgeback and Hungarian Vizler pals and all before the rain came in so we all count that as a win.

Writing wise, I’m looking forward to sharing Writing Competitions on Chandler’s Ford Today on Friday. See above.

Plus I will have further author interviews coming up on CFT in October. Will share more nearer the time.

Looking forward to going to see The Ghost Train which will be performed by The Chameleon Theatre Company in late October, aptly for the Halloween weekend. This was written by Arnold Ridley of Dad’s Army fame. Will be interesting (and a great performance I’m sure).

My next Authors Electric post is out tomorrow. I’m looking at Writing Prompts this time, which is a favourite topic of mine (and a useful one I think). Again, see above. Has been a busy week on the blogging front!

Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

It’s Friday, the end of the working week for many, and time for another story. Hope you like my latest on Friday Flash Fiction – Getting Better With Time.

I’ll be looking at linked flash for the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group meeting next week. For my Seeing The Other Side, I have written more examples of this and found it great fun and a good challenge to do. It’s where focusing on character helps. A good character with a strong voice can be used more than once, which is what I love about linked flash.

One compelling reason to focus on character when writing flash, in particular, is I do want to see and experience the story through their eyes because that is what I want a reader to see and experience. It is also more direct and immediate and that is one of the strengths of flash fiction.

It can help cut word count considerably too because it will be what the character needs to show you that you will focus on – no room for any kind of waffle.

Even when you have a character prone to waffling, they will have to rein it in for the purposes of the story. You will just need to show a “little waffle” but that will be relevant to the character portrayal so readers will understand that. You just can’t go on at length, which is no bad thing!

Fairytales with Bite – Changing Seasons

This year in the UK at least we seem to have gone straight into autumn after a long hot summer with pretty much no or little warning of big drops in temperature and heavy rainfall. Often there is a small period of adjustment weather wise as the seasons change.

In your magical setting, are the seasons the same as ours? If not, how do they differ? How do your characters respond to the changing seasons? I love autumn, my late maternal grandmother did not.

How is daylight affected by the change in the seasons? How would things like clothing, the food your characters would eat, and general activities change as the seasons do?

Are there things your characters look forward to in each season or are there aspects they dread? Could things like magic be affected by the change in atmospheric conditions as the seasons change? Are there specific laws your characters have to follow at certain times of their year? Why were these introduced (public safety could be a good route to explore here)?

There are certain things I look forward to in each season here. I love to see new life appear in spring, love the nice holiday feel to summer, adore the changing colours of the leaves of autumn, and feel the silhouettes of non-evergreen trees in winter time have their own specific beauty.

What would your characters pick and what does this reveal about them to you? Could you use what you find out in further stories?

This World and Others – Geographical Considerations

In your magical setting, what role does the geography play? Is it constant (generally as we know, though we have exceptions like active volcanoes)? Can it be affected by the magic being used in it or is it immune? If it was affected, were the changes in it useful or not? Has that led to rules being brought in about the use of magic and where and when it can be used?

Naturally geography will play a role in how well or otherwise your characters do on any journey or quest they undertake. Certainly it can give them added complications. How would your world arrange things like its transportation system to overcome geographical complications for getting around (mountains do tend to get in the way!)?

Are there certain geographical areas which are uninhabitable and what could make a character have to go through that area to get to somewhere else? How would they manage this? How did those areas become uninhabitable if they were not always like that?

Story ideas there I hope!

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WRITERS’ NARRATIVE SUBSCRIBER LINK

AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES

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Authors Electric: Writing Prompts by Allison Symes https://t.co/yRMYwbopdk Pleased to be on AE with Writing Prompts. As I write short fiction, I'm glad for prompts which trigger ideas. Good prompts encourage lateral thinking. I share other advantages to using prompts too. pic.twitter.com/mUNf8U5d3V
— Allison Symes (@AllisonSymes1) September 18, 2025

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It’s Friday, the end of the working week for many, and time for another story. Hope you like my latest on Friday Flash Fiction – Getting Better With Time.https://t.co/1sLXn2WmYm pic.twitter.com/tN4uhP6aXa
— Allison Symes (@AllisonSymes1) September 19, 2025

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Writing Competitions https://t.co/wytFliQ0Il
Delighted to share my latest CFT post about Writing Competitions. I look at the benefits of these and share tips, including things to watch out for when you are thinking about entering competitions. Hope you find the post useful.
— Allison Symes (@AllisonSymes1) September 19, 2025

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Questions To Ask Your Characters and Using The Weather

July 9, 2024Leave a comment

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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, as were the photos of my lovely dog, Lady, and pictures from the local wildflower meadow which is always stunning.

Hope you have had a good weekend. Lovely family meal out here. The calendar may say July but outside it is definitely saying autumn! Hope things are better with you. Not that Lady minds. She’s pretty good about accepting the need to have paws wiped etc after a rainy walk out. I must admit though I am a bit put out I am back in my walking boots though – in July!

Facebook – General

Another soggy day but Lady got to meet and play with a lovely Golden Retriever called Winston. Good time had by both.

Had a lovely Zoom meeting last night on a topic I love – history. Looking forward to the next ACW Flash Fiction Group meeting on Zoom later in the month. Can’t help but think I may have been optimistic in choosing summer as a theme!

Need to look up some writing competitions to have a crack at – these are good for making you write to a deadline and often to a theme as well. They’re also good for getting you into the habit of submitting work to someone who will truly evaluate it independently.

How do I know the latter? That’s because I have been (and still am) a competition judge. All entries are submitted to the judges anonymously so we really can’t tell who has written what. I’m looking forward to putting my judge’s hat on again in the summer and autumn for flash fiction in both cases. Will be fun.

Hope you have had a less soggy day than Lady and I. She dries off better and quicker than I do. No danger of a suntan here – rust might be a possibility though!

Writing Tip: If you are going to use the weather in your stories, be specific about it. Let us know your character has got a drenching rather than became slightly damp. You can show us how that drenching changed the character’s mood.

I would be specially interested to know if they were happy about it given that is not most people’s reaction to getting soaked. Has the character got other troubles which put the drenching into perspective, for example? Could the drenching help them in some way (it gives them a good excuse to get out of something, say)?

Anyone would think it was autumn around here – strong winds, heavy rain etc. Still on the plus side the wildflower meadow is in full bloom at our park – it’s a joy to see. Lady approved too!

Good questions to ask your characters when you’re trying to discover more about them could include the following:-

What would you like to do if you could get away with it and why?
What would you never do even if circumstances allowed you to do so?
Who would you consider to be a hero and why?
What do you think is the most important thing in life and why?

Answering those would give you a good outline. It’s often the reasons why which reveal much about a character.

If my character decided they would love to rob a bank but, only because they know they could get with it, because they were once sacked by a bank, then you’ve got a clear, understandable motivation of revenge (doesn’t mean you have to approve!), and you could write a great story based on this. Knowing the likelihood of getting away with it is remote, do they find other outlets for their need for revenge instead?

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Has been a strange blustery day where I am. Hope it has been much better with you. Managed to get the lawn cut before the rain came in – will take that as a win.

I’m looking at the topic of Writing Fitness for Chandler’s Ford Today next week. More details nearer the time but I will touch on issues such as screen and other breaks and being ready for the ups and downs of the writing life. (Oh and another author interview to come towards the end of the month).

Looking forward to flash fiction Sunday tomorrow as I get a fair amount of flash written then. Lovely way to spend the afternoon.

Just over a month away to The Writers’ Summer School, Swanwick – so looking forward to that.

Writing Tip: Do, as part of your editing, check there are no plot holes. Is everything tied up which should be? It is easy to over look something so make sure all marries up as it should. All should make sense, even in the most fantastic of settings.

What you are after here is to avoid anything which might make readers think “but…”. What you want them doing is rooting for your characters to succeed or fail. That way they will keep reading with nothing to jar their reading enjoyment.

Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

More rain. Should have guessed. Wimbledon’s on! If anything is guaranteed to bring out the rain, it is the tennis.

My favourite all time moment from SW19? There could only be one. It is when Andy Murray won the title for the first time. Had the great joy of ringing my Dad, who was a life long tennis fan and had been waiting for a British champion all his life, who was all over the moon about it.

Now how do I link that to writing flash fiction? Easy peasy! Flash focuses on the important moment of a character’s life. Nothing more. Nothing less. It is the figuring out of what is the most important moment which can be tricky so I ask myself questions here. What does my character have to achieve by the end of the story and why? Get that sorted and I have my outline. I have what I know I’ve got to focus on.

It’s Monday. It’s more like October than July at the moment out there. It’s definitely time for a story then. Hope you like my latest on YouTube – Routine. When all is change and turmoil around him, can Larry keep his job? Will his routine ever be the same again? Find out here.

Hope you have had a good weekend. Will be looking at the theme of summer for the next Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group meeting later this month. I hope summer will be back by then! It’s more like autumn where I am at the moment.

If you are ever stuck for a theme to write to, do check out the random theme generators. These can be useful for getting you started on something. I’ve found the broader the theme, the more I can do with it.

A theme like summer I can take in all sorts of directions from holidays to someone hating summer because they have the world’s worst case of hayfever to stories which focus on legends and/or sports associated with the summer season.

Another good place to start with themes is looking at what interests you. I love music of a wide variety but classical is my favourite. So I could base a story on a character who loves or hates classical. I could use a classical concert as the backdrop to a story.

So often it is getting started on a story which is the issue so having a wide variety of “methods in” is useful. This is why I use the random generators, story cubes, books or prompts, my own photo, all sorts of things. Sometimes I will look for the theme or something which is an intriguing opening line so I can work out how I would follow on from said line.

Mixing things up is fun and keeps you on your toes. That in turn encourages further creativity.

A favourite theme of mine for flash stories is someone not being all they appear to be. Sometimes the character is a magical one who has absconded from their old life to live somewhere else, usually here on Earth. (The Past – Ready Or Not? is one example from Tripping the Flash Fantastic. And yes I did have the old “coming, ready or not” phrase used in childhood games of Hide and Seek in mind for the title here).

What I do is give small details to indicate to the reader my character is hiding something. Those small details add up so the reader can work things out.

Sometimes my character is as human as you and I are but they know someone who isn’t. That can cause issues because they don’t want the neighbours finding out about their dodgy connections – see my What The Neighbours Think as an example of this and how my character handles this.

Again it is the small telling detail which packs a great deal of punch here. My character wonders what it is about her that attracts the oddballs. From that you know said oddball is going to turn up/has just turned up and my character has to handle it/keep things quiet as they see fit.

What I don’t do is give lots of details about the hidden past/dodgy connection. The reader doesn’t need to know all of that. They do need to know how my character is going to deal with it and an idea of what it is they have to handle at all.

Goodreads Author Blog – Books of Letters

I love books of letters. I have books of letters by Evelyn Waugh (his own and those he exchanged with Nancy Mitford) and P.G. Wodehouse on my shelves (real and electronic). Yes, the letters do shed insights into the writing life which are fascinating and useful. I also have a book of letters by Jane Austen and I must finish reading that so this post has proved useful in reminding me to do so!

I do so wish Agatha Christie had done this though. Am sure her letters would have been insightful. Having said that, her The Moving Finger does have its plot focus around a string of poison pen letters so she brought them into her fiction at least!

What I like about letters are they do show something of the writer and the recipient. I’ve made use of this as a wiring technique in my Punish The Innocent (From Light to Dark and Back Again). Good fun to do and it makes for a freshing change of story format but one I think best done sparingly. You do have to have strong characters to carry this off successfully.

Maybe that is why more writers haven’t produced books of their letters. They would rather get their characters to show you something of themselves rather than of the writers themselves. What do you think?

WRITERS NARRATIVE SUBSCRIBER LINK

Am sharing the bumper January/February 2024 issue of the magazine this time which looked at new beginnings AND romance writing. I looked at New Beginnings for Characters and asked Flash Fiction Romance: Is It Possible? for this edition.

AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES

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liked Allison Symes's blog post: Books Of Letters https://t.co/ZZlWNyR9K4 via @goodreads I share why I love reading books of letters by authors and why letters themselves can be an interesting story device for Goodreads this week. pic.twitter.com/tAMhg8t2iD
— Allison Symes (@AllisonSymes1) July 6, 2024

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It’s Monday. It’s more like October than July at the moment. It’s definitely time for a story then. Hope you like my latest on YouTube – Routine. When all is turmoil around him, can Larry keep his job? Will his routine be the same again? Find out here.https://t.co/5KXjrsBT45
— Allison Symes (@AllisonSymes1) July 8, 2024

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Blueways, Publication News, and Non-Fiction

May 23, 20232 Comments

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. One image of an unexpected visitor to my garden taken by my other half, Adrian Symes.

Hope you have had a good weekend. Lovely one here though Sunday was a day of mixed emotions as my post below shows. Mind you, it did lead me to think about how we can portray characters with mixed emotions. They shouldn’t be cardboard cut-outs after all. Oh and I discovered what blueways are as I wanted to write a story based on a colour so did so and added to my vocabulary knowledge at the same time. Good result and I hope you enjoy the story further down!

Facebook – General

Am thrilled to announce my story, Desperately Seeking Talent, will be in the new Bridge House Publishing anthology, Gifted, due out later this year. Many congratulations to all who will be in the new book with me. Good to see some familiar names there. It’s nice to “do the double” given I will be in The Best of CafeLit 12 due out again later this year. Great start to the week and it’s only Tuesday! Nice job of the week: returning my contract to the publisher which I plan to do tomorrow!

Also had an unexpected visitor in the garden this evening – a young fallow deer, female. Lady will go potty later on when she goes out just before bedtime, picking up on the scent! But what a lovely creature to see! Thankfully, she did not steal Lady’s football.).

Hope you have had a good start to the working week. Gorgeous weather again today and Lady got to play with her Rhodesian Ridgeback buddy (and show off in front of her Hungarian Vizler pal who Lady treats as “mum” and you always show off to “mum”, right? Well, Lady does anyway).

Many thanks for the kind responses to my post yesterday. Much appreciated. Anniversary dates can be strange things.

Looking forward to the Association of Christian Writers’ Flash Fiction Group on Zoom on Wednesday night. I love preparing material for these. Keeps me on my toes and it often triggers ideas for stories for me so win-win there. Have also got a story in draft for another competition which I’ll be working on later this week.

Amongst the random generators there are picture and object ones. I need to use these more often because that kind of prompt can make me think laterally. Why is the object important? Who does it belong to? What is their story? It’s easy to stick to the word based random generators – or at least I find that’s the case.

Funny day today in terms of mixed emotions. Today was the sixth anniversary of Dad leaving us. I was also ordained as an elder at our church this morning (which Dad would have liked to have seen).

Now characters can (and indeed should) have mixed emotions at times. It should be clear to a reader why they feel this way. None of us are cardboard cut-outs after all. Our characters shouldn’t be either but there should be good reasons for them feeling this way.

Think about what would motivate you to feel mixed emotions. This is where drawing on what we know helps our fiction writing no end. It also encourages empathy in the reader for the characters. Without that, they won’t read further. I know I’ve got to care about what happens to the characters to read on so I have to have some empathy for them at least to be able to do that. And for villains, I’ve got to want them to get their comeuppance so I’ve still got to care a bit!

Hope you have had a good Saturday. I’ll be sharing a local author news post for Chandler’s Ford Today later next week as these are a great way to bring a round up of happenings in one handy post. Also hope to be interviewing authors again soon.

Writing Tip: Look out your old notebooks from when you’ve been to writing events. Most workshops will set exercises. You only get a few minutes at the time to write something down. Why not revisit these and see if there is anything you can do with them? You may well have something that could be turned into a flash fiction story. Worth a go! (And you may even find something which you can work up into something which proves to be a short story, novella, beginning of a novel etc).

Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

I’m running a flash fiction workshop for the Association of Christian Writers tomorrow night and I’ll be looking at picking the telling details. For flash fiction where you haven’t got the word count room to go in for a lot of description, picking out the right details to get the images across to your readers that you want to put in their heads is a useful skill to develop. It helps with other forms of writing too.

It pays to think about what you want to convey and then figure out how you want to get that across. There are various ways to do that and I’m looking forward to sharing some of them tomorrow night but you can use the senses here as well, which is also a great way of helping to make your characters seem more real to your readers. We can picture characters who use their senses.

It’s Monday. Hooray, it has been a sunny Monday! Still time for a story though. Hope you like my latest on YouTube – Blueways.
Blueways is the name for a trail designed for water users such as canoeists. I wanted to write a colour based story this time and came across this term and thought what could I do with this. Here is the result.

For the sub-500 word flash fiction tales, I find it useful to focus on one character and the single most important thing to occur to them. That is the story. What is even more interesting is when the character triggers a situation, even though they might not have meant to do that. What is the outcome? How do they resolve it? Can they resolve it? Soon get to 500 words with that!

Looking forward to the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group next week. Always good fun. I love setting a topic for these. Have been making more use of PowerPoint in the last couple of years than I had in the previous five to ten years!

I sometimes decide on a mood for my story and then work out what characters I could use to show that mood and what situation they would have to be in to trigger that. For competitions, where the theme is nearly always set for you, I work out which characters could best illustrate that theme. If the theme is one of justice, for example, I could have a character seeking to get justice or who has been on the wrong end of it. Either would suit the theme.

I like working out what I need to know before I write the story. Nearly always this is what my character is made from – are they keen to get justice if that is my theme? Why? I need to know what it is about this character that will make their story “worthy” to be written up. I’ve got to understand what drives them. There must be drive there.

Goodreads Author Blog – Non-Fiction

I have got into non-fiction a lot over the last few years and am glad to have discovered it. Sometimes ideas for stories spark from a non-fiction book so I am glad about this for that reason too!

Reading non-fiction has increased my knowledge of certain time periods which is great in and of itself and I suspect will fuel ideas for further stories later on. I’ve known that happen before. You suddenly find something out and it triggers an idea.

Sometimes it can be finding out what you thought was true might not be or at the very least there is another side to things which is also worthy of exploring in my fiction work. The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey is a case in point here as it made me think again about Richard III.

I love the way non-fiction has finally shaken off its “worthy but dull” image. Well at least that was the image I had for it. The likes of the Ben Macintyre books on various aspects of World War Two history read like novels. I like that.

AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES

liked Allison Symes's blog post: Non-Fiction https://t.co/SKrquuviaR via @goodreads I share the joys of non-fiction for my Goodreads post this week. pic.twitter.com/wzitiUS4AT
— Allison Symes (@AllisonSymes1) May 20, 2023

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It’s Monday. Hooray, a sunny Monday! Still time for a story. My latest on YouTube is Blueways, which is the name for a trail designed for water users like canoeists. I wanted to write a "colour" story, found this term, and this is what I did with it. https://t.co/s3jmqx9Q0K
— Allison Symes (@AllisonSymes1) May 22, 2023

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Delighted to announce my story, Desperately Seeking Talent, will be in Gifted, the new Bridge House Publishing anthology later this year. Many congratulations to all in the anthology with me. pic.twitter.com/5kVHW2K7dx
— Allison Symes (@AllisonSymes1) May 23, 2023

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Reading Lists and The Joy of Writing

December 3, 2019Leave a comment

Image Credit: Unless otherwise stated, all images are from Pixabay

Facebook – General – and Publication News

Delighted to share the link to Green Door, my latest story on Cafelit. I was particularly pleased with the ending on this one. See what you think and I hope you enjoy it.

Hope you enjoyed Green Door, my latest on Cafelit, which went up yesterday. More to come in December and January. I’m very fond of my lead character, Emily, in this one but I do have a very soft spot for feisty older heroines.

I’ll be taking a look back at my writing year in a couple of weeks’ time. I like to review what I’ve achieved, where I’m making progress, and what I’d still like to do. I then make plans for the coming year and give them my best shot.

One thing I have achieved this year which I am pleased about is entering more competitions. Okay I haven’t been shortlisted in them but I can (and have) reworked some of those stories and either will or have got them out elsewhere.

I’ve found very little is wasted in writing. Especially for short stories and flash fiction, taking another look at the piece, submitting to another competition or market, is very much worth doing.

One nice thing about this time of year as the weather gets colder is I get to write with Options hot chocolate keeping me going! This is where I am thankful writing is NOT an outside thing!

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I’m not the world’s most gregarious person but two things have got me chatting to people. One is becoming a dog owner. That really does break down barriers of reserve. The other is becoming a writer.

Instant topic of conversation at writers’ events and so on: what do you write, how long have you been writing etc? By the time you get to compare your favourite kinds of stationery (and you will), you’ll feel like you’ve known the person you’ve been talking to for YEARS.

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Top tips for writing:-

1. Enjoy it. Know you would write whether you are published or not. Know rejections are part and parcel of the writing life. Go into writing with your eyes wide open.

2. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different forms of writing. I didn’t start out writing flash fiction after all.

3. If you can, get along to good writing conferences. You’ll learn lots from them and hopefully make friends too. Having writer friends is wonderful. They will understand the ups and downs of the writing life better than anyone else.

4. Never be afraid to ask questions about writing services etc. All industries have their charlatans, publishing sadly is not exempt. (Do check with the Society of Authors/Alliance of Independent Authors and again writing friends can be invaluable here. You learn so much from them and they can learn from you too).

5. Have fun with your writing. The first one to enjoy your work should be you!

Trusted notebook! Image via Pixabay

Whenever and whatever you read, enjoy. Image via Pixabay.

Reading is wonderful. Image via Pexels.

Generating the writing ideas. Image via Pixabay.

What journeys are your characters going on? Image via Pixabay

Ready to write? Image via Pixabay.

Lovely books. Pexels image.

My desk is NOT this tidy. Pexels image.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Can’t have too many notebooks and pens. Image via Pexels

What every writer needs. Image via Pexels.

Love this bookmark! Image via Pexels

If your story grips you, all sense of time will go! Image via Pixabay.

Your blog, your topic, your theme – just be sensible on copyright and libel issues. Image via Pixabay.

Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

My goal on the flash fiction front is to try to get my next collection ready for submission. Hopefully I’ll then submit it next year.

I’m still adding stories to it, which is a joy, but I need to go through it and ensure only the very best make it.

Of course that is the challenge. What is the very best?

Again I am looking at the impact the stories have on me. If they have the impact I hoped they would have, then they’ll stay in because they’re likely to do the same for a reader. If not, out they come and I’ll rewrite.

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One liners can work well in flash fiction because they have to keep to the point. They can be a great ending to a story, especially a humorous one.

I sometimes draft a few possible one liners and then work out what could lead to a character coming out with them. (This is where writing the story with the ending mapped out and then work out what the beginning and middles are is useful).

The advantages of drafting one liners like this are (a) it’s fun and (b) your one liners will be justified. That in turn will lead to the story finishing on a natural, funny ending, leaving a reader with a smile and on a high point.

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Looking forward to the Bridge House Publishing event on Saturday. Plan to draft plenty of flash fiction and blogs on the journey to and fro.

I’ve long loved the train (I’ll be writing about that for CFT this week) but also love having that period of time when I can just sit and get work written. It’s extra to what I’d do back at the old desk and I get to go home, having had a wonderful time and feeling virtuous I’ve got new stories mapped out! Win-win.

Learning to work almost anywhere obviously increases productivity but I’ve found it helps me cut out distractions back at home. It’s a question of what works for you.

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A flash fiction story should be focused around one central character and one major point of change affecting that character.

There really isn’t room for anything else but I have found having a character think about another character or mutter about them under their breath etc is a good way of (a) showing something of what my main character is like and (b) the effect the character they refer to has had on them.

So much in flash fiction has to be implied but this is very effective. I know as a reader I don’t necessarily want everything spelled out. I want to come to some conclusions myself.

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Goodreads Author Blog – Reading Lists

Do you have a reading list (or several)?

I tend not to bother with this. I read according to my mood. I tend to flit between non-fiction, read that, then move to fiction and read that for a while.

I also mix up whether I’m reading books or magazines, short stories or novels.

I can see the point of a reading list. My worry is I’d feel guilty if I didn’t get to the bottom of it and, given there is always so much I would like to read, I never would! And reading should never encourage a feeling of guilt.

I also like mixing up my reading according to how I feel and not to some prescribed formula.

I receive notifications in from booksellers as to what is on their recommended list and I will take a look. I’ll go for the suggestion if it takes my fancy but if not, forget it.

What matters is getting the reading done, list or no list!

Books are a fantastic form of escapism. Image via Pixabay

Another beautiful library (this one is in Canada). Image via Pixabay

The wonderful world of stories. Image via Pixabay

The world’s most beautiful library perhaps? Image via Pixabay. But lots of lovely stories to read which may well spark off ideas for other stories. Only problem? Where to start!