Tag: flash tip

Writing Progress, Word Counts and Anthologies

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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 was one image from the 2024 Autumn Gathering run by the Association of Christian Writers. The shot ties in nicely with my belief it is good to write first, edit later. See further down.
Hope you have had a good weekend. Lovely one here. Good weather, able to wear plimsolls and lighter coat rather than boots and heavy dog coat. Nice to see more flowers out. Plenty of stories submitted over the weekend too.

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Hope your Tuesday has gone well. Nice one here and Lady saw her Hungarian Vizler chum again.

Enjoyed a writing related Zoom last night. Looking forward to the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction group meeting on Zoom later in the month. The use of Zoom was one good thing at least to come out of lockdown as it has given alternative ways of having workshops etc and I was especially glad to have these during that dreadful time.

I’m glad to continue to enjoy online and in person writing events. Certainly the Flash Fiction group couldn’t meet in person so Zoom has made more things possible writing wise which I welcome.

Hope you have had a good start to your week. Lady got to see her Hungarian Vizler and Rhodesian Ridgeback pals today and it has been another fine day too. So win-win all around there.

Writing wise, I’ve had a productive weekend. Got three stories off to various places. Hope to be drafting more later this week. Made progress on my long term project and I hope to get that submitted this week.

Also later this week, I need to put up a couple of blog posts for different places which are due to appear mid month roughly and latter end of the month respectively. Texts for both need editing and then I’ll create some pictures to go with them but, as with my stories, I draft the blogs and rest them. Then I can see where I need to improve things and there always is something to improve.

I never mind this. It’s the nature of writing.

Another nice day, more butterflies out, and I even spotted a very early bluebell (outside a neighbour’s place). Lady enjoyed her time in the park but this is where I am grateful she does not share one trait with my first dog, Gracie. The footballers were out today and Gracie would have wanted to go on to the pitch to join in. Lady gives them a casual glance and then resumes playing with her own ball, thank you!

Looking forward to starting flash fiction Sunday afternoon shortly plus I hope to review and send in a longer short story. Did so too!

One Liner Tip: Ideally keep short and snappy. Think character and action in one short burst, which a reader will know has to led on to something. The reaction from a reader has to be somethlng like now what? Only way to find out – read on, so they do just that to find out what does happen.

For example, how about The dragon blew but no flame emerged. I know I would want to read on to find out what happens next and what does the dragon do?

A lovely sunny day. It was nice to wear lighter clothes, a body warmer and plimsolls (instead of heavy dog coat and boots, makes such a nice change!). I also spotted my first butterfly of the year (believe it was a Cabbage White). Lady loved the weather and her time in the park too.

Writing wise, I will be sharing Writing Competition Tips on Chandler’s Ford Today next week and then after that there will be a wonderful author interview with fellow Swanwicker, Joy Wood. More details on each of these nearer the time.

Have a couple of submissions I want to get out by the end of the weekend. Am also working on a presentation for the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group later this month.

Writing Tip: Think about how you can show us your characters in action, so to speak. Rather than get them to run quickly up a hill, get them to race up. You save on word count (important for flash writers especially) but raced is more definite than ran quickly. I can run quickly compared to a snail but that does not say much, I can tell you!

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Write first, edit later is one of those tips I wish I’d picked up sooner than I did especially since I now do this all of the time.

For flash especially I just get the story down, sort out any problems with it after having a break from it, and then worry about the word count. I know I have to get the story right first and then I can figure out what to do about the word count.

I often find, when I know I want to write 100 word stories, my first draft usually comes in at 150 or 160 or thereabouts. But usually better ways of phrasing things help me get that count down without losing anything important from the story.

It is the way of it though that I can’t find better ways of phrasing things until I do get that first draft down!

It’s Monday. It’s a lovely sunny one where I am but it is still Monday when all is said and done. Time for a story then, a darker one this time. Hope you enjoy my latest on YouTube called Book Ends.

Is Sheila the helpless old lady she seems to be and where do her book ends come into it when she is faced with an aggressive burglar?

 

Hope the weekend has been a good one. Nice one here.

Drafted a flash piece (a 500 words maximum piece) I hope to submit next weekend. Have stories to review and send in later on.

I am looking through the Flash NANO pieces I drafted last year. One or two I’ve already polished up and sent off but hope to come back to the others in cue course. Most I know I can use.

There was only one I know for sure won’t be seeing the light of day but that’s fine. A duff piece is a duff piece. It was a good exercise to try but nothing more.

How do your characters respond to the seasons? Today has been a lovely spring day where I am and it lifts the mood. How could you use this to help your characters achieve more than they might otherwise have done? Equally can you use geographic and climate conditions to get in the way of your characters and could magic and/or science be used to make this happen deliberately?

Flash Tip: Why not write four stories about one character but set the tales in the four seasons? Compare and contrast your character’s attitude and actions due to whichever season they’re in. Could be some interesting linked flash stories here.

Goodreads Author Blog – Story Competitions and Their Anthologies

I’ve been privileged to have stories of mine win competitions and appear in anthologies as the prize. Separately, I have had work in other anthologies brought out by independent presses (as these are a great way of highlighting what they publish).

Why mention that? Simply because I want to commend anthology reading. There is the obvious reason I’m in some of course, but I have found reading these books has introduced me to authors I would not have known about otherwise.

I’ve also found reading some of those authors’ short works has encouraged me to engage with their novellas and novels but all because I discovered their work in an anthology first.

Plus I want to encourage short story reading as part of an overall reading “diet”. We celebrate stories here in all their forms so why not check out the shorter forms in a convenient book form?

WRITERS NARRATIVE SUBSCRIBER LINK

AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES

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What I Look For In A Good 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. Many thanks to Lynn Clement and Janet Williams for publicity shots of yours truly above. Screenshots taken by me, Allison Symes.
Hope you’ve had a good few days. Has been bitterly cold, not that Lady appears to have noticed. Looking forward to listening to all of the 23 festive flash pieces, including mine, which are due to be broadcast on Hannah Kate’s Three Minute Santas show on Saturday 14th December from 2 to 4 pm on North Manchester FM. Should be a fabulous afternoon of being read to!

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Facebook – General and Chandler’s Ford Today

Delighted to share What I Look For In a Good Story for Chandler‘s Ford Today this week. I share an ingredients list for what I think is crucial for a cracking read, look at character -v- plot, and ask short or long term fiction or both. Hope you enjoy the post and you end up with even more good stories to enjoy over the Christmas period.

What I Look For In A Good Story

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Another cold day today though Lady was too busy running around with Coco, the fabulous Labradoodle, to notice. Both dogs had a fabulous run.

Will be sharing my What I Look For In A Good Story on Chandler’s Ford Today tomorrow. See above. Comments are always welcome in the CFT comments box. And I hope Santa provides plenty of chances for you to discover even more good stories this Christmas time!

The following week’s post will be a festive flash and other news round up and I hope to include the link to the Three Minute Santas show as part of that.

I will take the chance to say a big thank you now to all those I’ve interviewed on CFT this year. Without exception, the resulting articles have been excellent. I hope to conduct more such interviews in 2025 of course.

Meantime, it’s back to finishing various bits and pieces off ahead of 31st December. It’s the nearest I get to finishing the year with my desk clear (and I really mean my electronic desk aka my laptop as my actual desk, while reasonably tidy, cannot be said to be uncluttered! I was cheered up enormously when I saw a picture on Facebook of Albert Einstein’s desk as he left it. I felt so much better on seeing that – there is hope for me yet!).

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Hope you have had a good Wednesday. Another chilly one but Lady was overjoyed to see her Rhodesian Ridgeback pal again this morning. Plenty of running around. Those two didn’t feel the cold.

Don’t forget I’ll be looking at What I Look For In a Good Story for Chandler’s Ford Today on Friday. And on Saturday once I’ve heard the Three Minute Santas show, I would have heard 23 good stories! I hope to be talking about that show and the Bridge House Publishing Celebration event in more detail for CFT on 20th December, my last pre-Christmas post for the year. It’s amazing where the time goes, is it not?

Am not entering any more competitions until the New Year now though I have entered the festive and/or flash related ones I wanted to try.

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Pleased to be back on Friday Flash Fiction with my second story for their Christmas competition. This time the word featured is good will. See what use I make of it in my story, And To You, Pal.

I am sure that is something we have all said or thought at some point but hope you enjoy the story anyway! Find our why my character thinks the way they do and whether or not for once poetic justice is seen to be done. Can my character be full of goodwill after all?

Screenshot 2024-12-13 at 09-54-02 And to You Pal by Allison Symes - Friday Flash Fiction
Hope the day has been a good one for you. Busy working away on various pieces I want to put to bed before the end of the year. Making good progress. (Also making some on the festive preparations – have started wrapping some presents much earlier in the month than I usually do!).

Flash Tip: It is worth having some flash pieces drafted on always topical themes such as hope, light, darkness etc. These topics come up often and it means you’re a little ahead of the game here. Also think along the lines of having some flash pieces connected to genre – there will be competitions for flash crime stories, love theme ones etc.

Something you’ve started as a flash piece could always be expanded out into a short story. I’ve occasionally done this when a character has gripped me and I want to share more of their tale but then I save this as a short story only and submit it to the appropriate market. But without the idea for the flash piece in the first place, I wouldn’t have gone on to have done this.

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Plan to look at my Flash NANO drafts sometime in January. It’ll give me enough time away from them to evaluate them properly. I will be issuing an author newsletter on 1st January though I suspect most reads will take place much further on in the month! I’ve just found the first is the easiest day to remember for a newsletter. I receive a number of author newsletters myself on the same day so am clearly not the only one who thinks this!

Looking forward to a more informal Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group meeting this time next week as it is a wonderful way to wrap up our writing year. Plan is to share any flashes for feedback and to discuss all things writing related. It has been a great year for the group with four of us having festive flashes broadcast this coming weekend. More power to our pens and PCs, folks!

Fairytales With Bite – Fairies and Festivities

What involvement do your magical creations have with any kind of festivities? My thoughts are always drawn to the line by Slade on their fabulous Merry Xmas Everyone to the line about “fairies keeping Santa sober for a day”. Am assuming that takes some work!

But what do your fairies to to help or hinder festivities? (Forget the one about sending a young princess to their doom via spinning wheel needle – it’s been done!). Is magic welcome at celebrations or does it get in the way? How do fairies celebrate their festivities? Is food created magically or is that done the old school way? Is magic saved for fireworks, decorations, music etc? What would your fairies celebrate in the first place? Do they allow other species to join then or it is just for the fairies only?

I would imagine there would be some sort of celebration when a new fairy graduated and “got her wings” (sorry, couldn’t resist that one) so what format would this follow given this would be likely to be a tradition.

I would certainly hope your magical creations had a great deal of fun, as I hope you do too with your Christmas traditions.

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This World and Others – Managing Celebrations

As well as private events, I would expect your setting to have some sort of official public celebration for varying things. There will be commemoration events. There will be something to indicate the end of a certain time period as we do here every 31st December.

Within your setting and if you have specific countries, there will be historical events to commemorate in some way – some of which will be sombre in tone and others anything but.

So who would be responsible for ensuring public events were conducted “properly”? In the UK we have an Earl Marshal who organises coronations etc. But who would your creation be and what would they have responsibility for exactly? Are celebrations managed well or otherwise?

Has historical precedent meant there has to be someone organising it all now? What would happen to anyone who went against what is expected in terms of public behaviour here?

Above all, do your characters have fun at these things. Do the events serve as a way of the public letting their hair down (including magically) without it all going horribly wrong?

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WRITERS NARRATIVE SUBSCRIBER LINK

AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES

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