Facebook – General and Chandler’s Ford Today

Hope your day has gone well. Another gloriously sunny day here. Bit of a contrast with last week when I was wrapped up in a coat walking along the gorgeous Golspie beach!

Am delighted to share A Change of Scene for Chandler’s Ford Today which I hope you’ll find useful.

I look at the purposes of a change of scene for your characters and share thoughts on how you can keep these parts of the story as riveting to read as the rest of it.

Another good reason to read in and out of your genre, contemporary and classic works, is to learn from other authors and how they handled their changes of scene when characters need to take some “time out” ahead of the next big action/happening in the tale.

I also look at how changes of scene can help develop character realism. We need breaks. So will your story stars.

And if you get to have changes of scene (holidays etc), I hope you and your writing come back reinvigorated!

A Change of Scene

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21st May 2026
It’s strange how the time goes. Today is the ninth anniversary of Dad’s passing.

On a happier note, Lady and I made sure we made the most of the lovely sunny day today. Lady and I loved our time in the park, especially as she saw her Hungarian Vizler pal again. One great thing about dogs is over time you can see close bonds form between friends and it is always nice to see.

I’ll be sharing A Change of Scene over on Chandler’s Ford Today tomorrow (see above) and after that will come a wonderful interview with Esther Chilton about her latest children’s book, Myths and Magic. This is book two in her six book series, Saffy’s Secret Quest. More to come in the interview and I’m looking forward to sharing that.

Nearer to that – today in fact, 21st May – I’ll be “off” courtesy of Zoom to a book launch event being held by Bridge House Publishing. These things are always fun (and I hope to have news on my own account here later – watch this space as they say). It was a great event which I loved, a little more on this below.

Hope you’ve had a good day. Lady enjoyed catching up with her Hungarian Vizler pal again and we saw our neighbour’s lovely Golden Retriever too.

Will be sharing A Change of Scene on Chandler’s Ford Today this week. See above. I go into more depth on this topic than I could do for my recent Authors Electric post (though do see that as a useful intro!).

For CFT, I’ll be sharing tips on how to make changes of scene continue to be an interesting read for your readers. The danger with a change of scene is that is the point where a reader could switch off, which is the last thing you want. More on this on Friday.

Also looking forward to the next meeting of the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group next week.

And it won’t be that long before my next author newsletter goes out. I share news, tips, story links and more here. One lovely thing about flash fiction writing is so many of the tips for it can be applied to longer forms of fiction too. If you’d like to sign up do head over to my landing page at https://allisonsymescollectedworks.com

Talking of which, a huge thank you to my subscribers too – your support is much appreciated.

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Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

Loved attending the Bridge House Publishing book launches on Zoom last night (21st May 2026). Nice to catch up with old friends online and to meet new people, especially flash fiction writers new to me. It was a great event and I hope everyone does well with their respective books, one of which I worked on as editor. It’s always a joy to see books you’ve worked on like that be published.

Part of the conversation last night was on the challenges of flash fiction but also in recognizing writing it regularly is such a good discipline. I’ve mentioned before it teaches you to edit well, to think more closely about word selection for maximum impact with minimum word count usage, and more.

It is also a fabulous warm up writing exercise ahead of longer work and the great thing here is these exercises could go on to be published work with further revision. At least one such story of mine will be in my forthcoming Seeing The Other Side.

Moments in time can make for intriguing flash fiction tales. You have to focus on one special moment – the word count tends to dictate that – but there can be such a powerful impact from this as the focus is intense relative to the length of the story. No waffle room either (which is always a good thing).

So why not give some thought to what would be a specific moment in time your character(s) would want to recall and why. You can also write stories around those things they’re desperate to forget but are forced to face up to again.

Hope you can get some good drafts out of those thoughts. Happy writing!

I often find a one word topic can be a great theme for flash fiction (and would also work for longer fiction forms). Often they’re the basis for many a writing competition too and you may find yourself writing often on themes which particularly appeal to you. Some of the one word topics I throw out for consideration are:-

Justice
Mercy
Love
Revenge
Ambition
Security
Greed
Pride

I suspect if you wanted to, you could put all of those things into one story! Certainly they often turn up in novels. But why not pick one of these at a time and write a flash fiction story around it? (If members of the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group read this, you could see this as additional writing exercises!).

Now thinking about it, I’ve often written to many of these themes. Sometimes they combine too. Justice combined with mercy is a popular one. I haven’t written so much about a character’s need for security. Hmm…. maybe I’ll make a note to change that!

Fairytales with Bite – Improving Skills

In any walk of life, most seek to improve their skills and get better at what they do, possibly with an eye on promotion and even better prospects. So why shouldn’t this apply to your magical setting?

What skills do your characters have they wish to improve? How have they improved in the past? What kind of training is given in your magical world? I’m working on the premise here it is better for your magical government to have magic which is controlled rather than having it not controlled at all or controlled badly.

Could other characters get in your lead’s way and, if so, what are they hoping to achieve by doing that? Does the wish to improve skills indicate a real desire to learn and get better or is there hidden ambition behind all of that? Another character’s wish to stop someone improving doesn’t necessarily have to be out of bad motives such as jealousy or resentment someone else can improve while they possibly can’t or have to wait longer to do so.

What fuels your character’s desire to improve? Are they worried about being left behind? Are they the main breadwinner so have to improve as much as possible to ensure their continued employment?

Definitely story ideas here.

This World and Others – Learning from Past Mistakes

Linking in with Fairytales with Bite above, one key way to improve skills is to learn from your past mistakes. Am sure The Sorcerer’s Apprentice did this! (Indeed, have written some flash stories around that thought).

How well or otherwise does your character learn from their past mistakes? Do they do this willingly or does it take someone else/a major incident to wake them up to the fact they have made mistakes? (We all know folk like that – fiction reflects life. It doesn’t flatter generally either).

Does your character go on to better things/being a better being due to learning from their mistakes and, if so, how? Are there mistakes they tend to repeat?

Also, give some thought to the mistakes your magical society has made. What can your characters learn from those? What can they do to make things better for the future of their society?

Again, story ideas there.