Tag: Imagery in Fiction

Imagery in Fiction – oh and Cherryade too!

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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. I’m talking about imagery this time and share a new tale on Friday Flash Fiction, which is loosely based on fact. One of the great joys of any of the creative arts is they are beneficial to you as the creator and not just to those you hope will read your work, enjoy your music etc. And in troubled times that is so important. It may not change the world but it will change you – positively.

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Facebook – General – and Chandler’s Ford Today

Am pleased to share Imagery in Fiction my latest post for Chandler’s Ford Today. I look at how writers “paint images” with words, how I use this for my flash fiction, and look at the role of book covers.

Imagery matters which might sound odd for something so obviously text based but let’s just say you’re not getting a pink fluffy cover for a Gothic novel!

And writers have to select the details the readers need to know to make sense of the story and to help bring that tale to life in the readers’ minds. So you plant images created by the words you’ve chosen. I also look at how objects can be used to represent themes in fiction so when you see that object referred to in the text, you see that theme. And then there are the images needed for marketing – chosen to represent the book well “out there”.

So imagery crops up more than you might think. Hope you enjoy the post.

Imagery In Fiction

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I’ll be sharing my Imagery in Fiction post for Chandler’s Ford Today – link up tomorrow. See above.

Being a flash fiction writer means I have to choose my words for my stories with particular care as I am looking for the maximum impact in the fewest possible words. So I am thinking of those choice words and phrases that will conjure up the most powerful images in my readers’ minds.

But whatever length of fiction you write, this is a great habit to develop. It will make your writing more striking. Readers will remember the images you create that much better. Tight writing is taut, powerful writing. Choosing the details you need your readers to see is good fun and you only show them what is the most important things for them to know.

So images then have a purpose in our prose. When you know the basics you want to get across, it is then a question of asking yourself have I chosen the very best images to show your readers? I’ve lost count of the times I’ve gone through my first draft and then spotted something that could be strengthened by replacing one word with a more distinctive one. Details matter.

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Is it true that nothing you write is ever wasted? I think so. I can’t tell you how many rejections I’ve received in my time (and these days they tend to take the form of not hearing back from a competition etc). What did happen is where I could ask for feedback on my work (usually at a modest additional fee), I did that and learned a lot from the judge’s comments.

I’ve also found the more I write, the more ideas come to me (ideas have this lovely habit of sparking off other ones but you to have to learn to trust the process). And in writing story after story after story, you get better over time at figuring out what works and what doesn’t. You learn a lot from what doesn’t work, funnily enough.

And I can’t stress enough the importance of studying the market you think you might want to write for, whether it is a print magazine or an online one. For one thing, you will pick up on “house style” and for another, you get to see what they like and can work out from that whether your piece is likely to fit in.

You do want to be a square peg in a square hole!

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Am pleased to be back on Friday Flash Fiction with Cherryade, a flash acrostic. This one was great fun to write especially as it is loosely based on fact! Hope you enjoy it. And do check out the other stories on there. You’ll be in for a fabulous read. Perfect start to the weekend, perhaps?

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Don’t forget Friday Flash Fiction will have new stories up tomorrow. See above. I hope to have something in there but will report back on that one! Meantime, do check out the wealth of stories here. It will give you a good “feel” for what flash fiction is and can be. It is a great way of getting in contemporary reading in my field in as well so win-win there! And you can literally see what 100 word stories actually look like.

Now I deliberately mix up how I write my stories as you know. I love playing with acrostics, all dialogue tales, setting stories in the past, the present and the future etc. It keeps things interesting for me (and I hope readers).

What you don’t want to do, regardless of what you write, is to rest on your laurels. You need to keep striving to (a) write better, (b) discover new markets for your work, (c) to develop being able to respond to different writing challenges and (d) to get work out there.

Persistence pays. And when a story doesn’t work in one market, have another look at it, Maybe you can send it out elsewhere. I’ve done this and have had work published on a second or third go.

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When I am writing to a specific word count, I tend to have the ending of my story in mind first. This is so I have a clear goal to aim for, of course, but also I then work out what “juicy details” I need to get to that ending. I select only the very best.

The ones that impact on me the most will have the same effect on a reader and I do have an Ideal Reader in mind all the time. It is a good habit to get into to think of your intended audience from the word go. I’ve found just doing that has stopped me going off at unnecessary and ultimately unhelpful tangents. These only get cut out in the edit anyway.

When I’m writing to a more open word count, I focus on how much can I “wring out” from my unfortunate characters! This is because with 1000 words to play with, I can give more depth and show you more of my character’s life as they overcome whatever obstacles I’m making them face. I may even be able to give them more than one hurdle to overcome. But when the character has done all they need to do, I stop, whether that story is at 400 words, 750 words, or right up at the flash fiction limit.

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Fairytales with Bite – Using the Senses

Now in fiction, we are always advised to use all of the senses (where appropriate to do so naturally). It is easy to focus on what a character hears or sees. It’s easy to forget to use the sense of smell (which can evoke memories and powerful associations for your characters).

Touch is probably easiest to use for the romance writers amongst us but it can be easy to forget to bring that one in too. Having a character pick up a photo frame with their loved one’s picture inside it will resonate with readers. We’ve all done that. Taste can be brought in obviously for food and drink scenes but in your magical world, are there other senses which you could bring in?

Can your character detect when magic is about to be used, for example? What reaction does that cause in them so they can detect it? Do they generate it themselves when they are about to let fly with the magic wand? Are their “normal” senses heightened in an way in the presence of magic? How can you use these things to help or hinder your character in your story?

 

This World and Others – Cooking and Culture

One of the nicest ways of appreciating other cultures is to discover their food and enjoy it! Everyone needs to eat and drink after all. So can you use that element in your stories? Which cultures would you bring together? Which foods do they have in common? Which foods are distinctive to each one? How is cooking done in your stories? Is it as we would know it or by magic?

I maintain there is nothing as good as properly produced food and I would worry about whether magic could contaminate the food in some way. After all if you’ve just used your wand to turn someone into a frog, would there still be elements of that spell remaining in the wand when you then use it to whip up a souffle?! (You could get humorous stories from that kind of scenario).

Sometimes cooking can divide people as to the best way of producing a meal. In the UK, there are two ways to have scones with cream and jam. Some maintain that the cream must go on the scone first, then followed by the jam. Others insist it is the other way around and never the twain shall meet! So you could use things like that to cause division and conflict in your stories that your characters must find a way of overcoming.

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Anti-Scammers and the Three C’s

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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.
With the awful news going on right now, I think it is more important than ever to appreciate all of the creative arts – and avoid those who would scam you as a result of your trying to follow your dreams here.

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Facebook – General

Many thanks for the wonderful responses to my anti-scammers post yesterday. See below. And do bear in mind there are plenty of sharks who try to lure in the unwary writer too. Never be afraid to check things out and organisations such as The Society of Authors and Alliance of Independent Authors should be your first ports of call for advice. This is also another advantage to joining in with writing groups, whether these are online or in person, because writers share what they learn from one another and that includes warnings about which so-called “services” to avoid etc.

It’s also a good idea to regularly read the writing magazines too as you learn so much from these too and check out websites like Writer Beware! This is an American site but the principles of what they expose for rogue publishers etc applies the world over and you will at least know what to look out for.

It was only when I had been a writer for a while I realised how much there was I didn’t know and needed to know but recognising that and then doing something about it like joining writing groups etc is a good first step into being more savvy about the do’s and don’ts of the writing life. Don’t be conned!

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I’ll be talking about Imagery In Fiction for Chandler’s Ford Today on Friday. I look at writers using words to “paint” images with and the importance of book covers. One way or another, imagery comes into fiction a lot, even if it is not always obvious.

Will be giving a talk soon on historical flash fiction soon – looking forward to that and, of course, next week, I’ll be heading off to Scotland once again. I’m at the Scottish Association of Writers Conference from 18th to 20th March and will be running a flash fiction workshop there. Plenty going on then and I will report back from Scotland for Chandler’s Ford Today in due course.

Oh and a word to the wise – I am getting emails in from those who say they have a proposal for me. I bet they have too – how to check my email address is a genuine one and use it for phishing at best. Stay well clear of these things, folks. I delete immediately and then clear my delete folder immediately too. Never click on the links they send you.

Not sure whether this one is targeted at me because I’m a writer or whether it’s a huge mailshot and they only need a few people to respond to make money (and that is what they’re after – your money). Hmm… maybe there’s a flash fiction story or several in which scammers like that get scammed themselves. Something to think about!

Where do my ideas for stories come from? All over the place which I know is not exactly helpful. The point though is to be open enough to recognise something as a potential idea. My ideas come from things I have read, fiction and non-fiction, and from triggers such as the random generators I often use. Also overheard snippets of conversation can be the starting point for a story.

But what matters is recognising what I call the “aha moment” when I come across something and think yes, I could do something with that. And the more you read, the bigger the pool you have to fish in for ideas of your own. We all build on what has gone before.

What we do is bring our unique take to an idea or a theme and make it our own. Prompt books are always useful too. What I find matters is finding a way in to writing a story. And you have to love reading stories to know that you yourself want to write them.

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Fiction has a variety of purposes as I’m currently exploring in my In Fiction series for Chandler’s Ford Today. Escaping from worries via a variety of genres or exploring the human condition or confronting evil head on via what our characters go through is all fine.

What matters is that fiction is truthful. It has to be to have any meaning. And for fiction to be truthful, the characters have to be true to themselves, whether they’re the best hero of all time or the worst villain.
This is why I need to know the major trait for my characters before I write their stories up. I can look at how and why they’ve developed that trait (and this is so often a springboard for further story ideas).

Major traits can tell me so much about the characters in themselves. If my character’s major trait is they like a good laugh, I can look at what has driven that. Is their life sad and they want to escape sadness at any cost so put on a jolly persona to cover that up? Is it their way of being accepted by others and what drives the need for that acceptance?

Also, I can take things another way and show how their good laugh helps another character or causes problems. All sorts of story ideas can come from just knowing my Character A will do almost anything to have a good laugh. And that is just one example of how knowing a major trait can trigger ideas. For me, that’s more important than knowing what the character looks like.

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Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

In any story regardless of its length, there has to be conflict, character, and change – the three C’s! Without a character experiencing conflict, even if it is internal only, there is no story. There should be change. Did the character overcome or succumb to the conflict? Either way that is a change though one is obviously more positive than the other!

One of the lovely things about flash is I can have, as a story, a self-contained moment of change for my character which simply isn’t long enough to even be a short story yet is still insightful.

How your characters react to things tells you so much about them. How you react to the character’s reaction may well shed insights about yourself – fiction can be illuminating like that. Flash does it more intensively than any other form though so be warned!

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You know I’ve written from the viewpoint of a mother dragon before, yes? (See my book trailer for Tripping the Flash Fantastic). Well, I think I’ve upped my game a bit here. See my latest YouTube video and see what you think. Hope you enjoy it.

 

Writing a short story, such as flash fiction, is not easier than writing longer work. Nor is longer work easier than writing shorter items. You need the idea. You need to get that first draft down. You need to edit it. And edit it again. You need to rest it for a while. You look at the story again, spot the errors you missed first go around (and we all do that!), correct those, and once happy submit the piece or save it for a collection. And you do this over and over again because you love the challenge of it.

As I’ve mentioned, I find I can get a first draft down quickly. It is the editing and crafting of the story, even my 100-worders, that takes the time. Rightly so too. I want to get every word right. Where I can find a better choice of word that gives more “oomph” to my writing, I will change to that word. And if I am writing to a specific word count, as I so often am, I then have to check I haven’t gone over that and adjust things where I have.

The one thing I have learned over the years is I’ve got to give myself enough time to follow things through thoroughly enough. But that’s fine. I’m drafting more pieces while resting others so I always have something to work on. No chance of getting bored and I love that too.

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Just to flag up Amazon have an offer on the paperback of Tripping the Flash Fantastic. See link for more.
I like the variety flash offers me. I can write across a number of genres, write my stories as acrostics, all-dialogue pieces, monologues etc., and I can choose my word count up to 1000 words.

My hopes for flash is that it will encourage the reluctant reader to dip their “toes” into the wonderful world of books and encourage people to write their own stories. Creative writing is good for you. And writers read so book sales go up! There’s nothing to dislike about that scenario!

But I hope flash brings characters to life for people. Those brief glimpses of a character’s life, I hope, will intrigue people to want to read longer stories, novellas, novels etc. Characters are the draw for readers. We need to know what is going on in a character’s life. You don’t necessarily need to write an epic to give that fascination to a reader.

Allison Symes - Flash Fiction Collections

BB - Flash with a Dash for TTFF

Goodreads Author Blog – Realistic Characters

I’ve never been fond of characters who seem too good to be true. I love the characters with flaws and who change for the better. For any fiction, regardless of genre or length, I’ve got to be able to “get” where the character is coming from and why. I don’t necessarily have to agree with them though!

For my own writing, I like to work out my character’s major trait as all sorts of things can come from that. If a character is brave, are they reckless with it? If they like a laugh, what will they do to get that laugh from others? Plenty of story ideas there – and you can explore the idea of when things go wrong too.

So I like characters to resonate with me in some way. While I will always root for the hero/heroine to win, I want to see that the villain does have reasons to behave the way they are. Their objective has got to make sense. There is never any room for the pointless character. I suppose writing flash fiction with its restricted word count of 1000 words maximum has made me more aware of that.

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