Tag: Interactions

Dialogue in Fiction

Leave a comment
Image Credits:-
All images from Pixabay/Pexels unless otherwise stated. Some images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. Screenshots taken by me, Allison Symes. Book cover images from Chapeltown Books and Bridge House Publishing.
Hope you have had a good week. I hope to be on a train on my way to Derbyshire by the time this goes out (and it will be lovely to meet up with members of the Association of Christian Writers Committee once again, I’m their Membership Secretary). I’ll be at The Hayes, Swanwick – and I got to book my place for that in August this week so it has not been a bad week at all!

BookBrushImage-2022-2-3-20-3438

Facebook – General – and Chandler’s Ford Today

I look at Dialogue in Fiction for my Chandler’s Ford Today post this week. I also include internal dialogue (aka thoughts in this and discuss the use of dialect. I also share my policy on whether a character should swear and list what I think the functions of dialogue should be in any kind of fiction. Hope you enjoy it and find it useful.

Dialogue in Fiction

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Hope you have had a good day. Has been a bit mad here. Glad things are winding down a little. Posts from me over the next couple of days will be at differing times as I am away on Association of Christian Writers business for a couple of days.

Before you ask, Lady isn’t coming but she will be spoiled rotten while I’m away. She always is! She’ll sulk a little when she knows I’ve gone (she tends to look around my side of the bed just to double check I’ve not sneaked back during the middle of the night) but will mug me for all she is worth when I do get back.

Now what is it that you like best about books? Yes, I know. It’s a question of where to start on this one, isn’t it? For me, it’s where I’ve got to the point in the story where I’m rooting for the character to succeed or fail because I know the book has now gripped me and I will just have to read on to find out what happens. And it doesn’t matter whether I’m reading a flash piece or an epic fantasy trilogy, that point doesn’t change for me.

My next favourite bit is getting to the end of the tale and finding the author has made good on their promise – the character has succeeded or failed, as is appropriate for them and the story they’re in. I must admit I do feel so disappointed if I’ve read a story with promising and interesting characters and then find the ending falls flat. But the best ending in the world won’t work for me if I’m not gripped by the characters in the first place.

BookBrushImage-2022-2-3-21-2813

Many thanks for the views on No B Gratitude, my latest YouTube story. This is a short and fun tale and I manage to get a pun in on the choice of music for this too. I’m off at an ACW Committee Retreat soon so I may well be putting up a video later than usual next week. Will just have to see how things go. Likewise for getting a piece in to Friday Flash Fiction but I am really enjoying producing something for both of these things once a week. Keeps me on my toes and I am finding more uses for the random generators I love so win win!

Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

I hope by the time you read this I will be in lovely Derbyshire on Association of Christian Writers business for a couple of days. (I’m their Membership Secretary). But right now it is the end of the week and time for my weekly drabble. Glad to share my latest on Friday Flash Fiction and this one is called Timing. Again I used a random generator for this and the question behind it was what was the most recent silly thing you did? So I got my character here to answer that one! All great fun and I hope you enjoy it.

https://www.fridayflashfiction.com/100-word-stories/timing-by-allison-symes

Screenshot 2022-02-04 at 08-57-53 Timing, by Allison Symes

Screenshot 2022-02-03 at 21-31-38 Friday Flash Fiction

 

Your first audience for any story you writer is, of course, you. If you’re not gripped by the characters and the situation they’re in, nobody else will be. This is why I outline my character so I can get a “feel” for who they are, what they’re capable of, and as a result I can determine whether they really do have a story in them that should be told.

With flash fiction I reach that “yes, got to write this character up” stage very quickly indeed and you get better over time (and with practice) at spotting promising characters earlier. I don’t always know the length of the story at this point unless I am writing to a specific word count market such as Friday Flash Fiction, but I don’t let that worry me. I get the story down. I edit it. I leave it for a bit and then look at it again and read it as a reader would. I ask myself tough questions particularly of the “do I really need this in here” variety! That question is useful because you have to be able to say an emphatic “yes” to that one.

BookBrushImage-2022-2-3-21-3739

Hope you have had a good day. Lady got to play with her best pal, the Rhodesian Ridgeback today. Two tired and happy dogs went home again. I do sometimes write flash pieces based around dogs. One of them is Jumping Through Hoops from From Light to Dark and Back Again. Let’s just say I am very much on the side of the poor dog in this one!

Fairytales with Bite – Dreams and Nightmares

Most of the classic fairytale characters go through a nightmare stage before their dreams come true (though it is always useful if you have a kindly fairy godmother turn up armed with a large wand and bigger pumpkin!).

In your fictional world, are your characters able to make their dreams come true and is this dependent on magic (whether it’s their own or someone else intervening to help them)? What would count as a nightmare situation for your characters and how do they overcome that?

Of course one person’s nightmare could be someone else’s dream – the villain wants their schemes to succeed, it would be their dream come true. How can you ratchet up the tension between Character A trying to make those schemes succeed and Character B who desperately needs them to fail? There should be plenty at stake here – just what do your characters have to lose or gain?

In a magical world, is the meaning of dreams taken seriously? Who interprets them? Do they do this honestly and do your characters act on what they have been told? What are the consequences of that?

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

This World and Others – Interactions

Fiction is dependent on interactions between characters. Story is dependent on conflict and resolution (even if the latter is not a happy one) so there has to be a case of a character wanting something and something/someone else getting in the way of them obtaining that.

Sometimes the conflict can be an internal one – the character wants to change some aspect of themselves and struggles to do so. You see glimpses of this with Gollum in The Lord of the Rings. There are times Frodo’s more positive attitude towards Gollum seems to be paying off and other times when Sam’s cynical view of Gollum is justified.

So yes a character can interact with themselves and Gollum does that a lot. Not necessarily to his own benefit either. For the record, I see Gollum as a tragic, evil character whereas Sauron is just evil. There is a huge difference here. I don’t like Gollum but the possibility of redemption is there – whether he takes it or not is another matter.

How do interactions between your characters play out? Does on character always seem to get the upper hand or is there more of a balance? The problem with dominant characters, as with dominant people full stop, can be they cause resentment (and rebellion) in others. Interactions matter – they fuel the conflict which is the heart of any story.

So give thought to what you want your characters to do and why they are the way they are. With Gollum, you can see what led him to become the creature he became. Your readers need to do that with your characters – and indeed with mine!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

By clicking submit, you agree to share your email address with the site owner and Mailchimp to receive marketing, updates, and other emails from the site owner. Use the unsubscribe link in those emails to opt out at any time.

Processing…
Success! You're on the list.

Good Writing Topics

Leave a comment
Image Credit:-
All images from Pixabay/Pexels unless otherwise stated. Some images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos.
Screenshots taken by me, Allison Symes. Book cover images from Chapeltown Books and Bridge House Publishing. A huge thank you to Fiona Park for taking the picture of me book signing at Swanwick.
Has been a busy few days but am pleased to share a new story (Friday Flash Fiction) which was inspired by my using a random time generator. Yes, there is such a thing. Now if I could only use it to help me be in two places at once when I could do with that facility!

Facebook – General – and Chandler’s Ford Today

Pleased to share Good Writing Topics, my latest post for Chandler’s Ford Today. I look at what makes for a good topic and apply this to fiction and non-fiction writing. I also suggest a few ways of picking good topics (so hopefully these ideas will give you a useful place to start). And I discuss some pointers for research too.

I mix up the way I approach my fiction writing because that keeps me on my toes, encourages me to think laterally and outside of the old box, and I do the same for non-fiction. Yes, there are certain tried and tested methods which are my favourites and which I use the most, but I make myself go another way every now and again precisely to trigger ideas and thoughts which would not occur if I stuck to my favourites all the time.

Good Writing Topics

Glad to say my story Clockwork is now up on Friday Flash Fiction. This one was inspired by a random time generator I found online. Hope you enjoy it.
 
Screenshot 2021-10-22 at 18-41-38 Clockwork, by Allison Symes

 

Brrr… it turned cold today. Not that Lady noticed as she had a “puppy party” with several of her pals over the park today. All went home tired and happy. Job done there then!

I was chatting about random generators as part of the ACW Flash Fiction Group meeting on Zoom last night. I use these a lot as they are excellent ways to trigger ideas for stories. The story I’ve submitted for #FridayFlashFiction was inspired by a time generator. Yes, there is such a thing. Yes, I too can “manipulate time” although only for the purposes of a story!

You set parameters (I used 9 am and 5 pm) and how many times you want to trigger between them. I went for five and yes my story made use of them all. Hope to share the link to it once it is, hopefully, up on the FFF site. Good fun to write and a great way to make use of time in your stories too. Link to story, aptly called Clockwork, shared below.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

Managed to get my flu jab today so well pleased with that. Lady wanted to come with me (well, after all I have to take her to the vet for her booster jabs!). Looking forward to the ACW Flash Fiction Group meeting this evening. Always good fun.

My topic for Chandler’s Ford Today this week is Good Writing Topics. I’ll be sharing some thoughts on what makes a good topic and developing ideas from them. Link up on Friday. See above. Ironically the topic itself is a good one as many threads can come from it (for example you could focus purely on fiction for this one or use it for non-fiction articles etc. Equally take a category you’re interested in such as history or fashion and think about how you could get stories or articles from that.

Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

I was walking the dog with my better half earlier this afternoon when we overheard a wildlife squabble. You can’t mistake the noise. One of the parties was a jay, we didn’t get to see what the other annoyed creature was. All I could think of on hearing the racket was, if they were speaking in human languages, both of them would have been swearing profusely and calling the other all the names under the sun. There was just something about the tone of the noise which told me the bird language being used here was anything but polite!

So what has that to do with flash fiction? Simple.

You don’t need a lot of words to convey tone (and imply character attitude).

A few well chosen words will have depth to them. Telling someone where to go is vastly different between characters who are arguing and one character helpfully giving directions to another one because they’ve got lost!

So if you have two characters in an argument, think about what the reader needs to know. They won’t need to know all the ins and outs of how the argument started. You won’t have the room for that but you can drop hints in what the characters do say to each other and let your reader pick up the rest from context. And they will.

I love it when authors leave me enough that I can work something out for myself. It is a question of leaving the right clues so a reader can do that. I dislike it intensely when an author feels they have to spoon feed a reader and I am likely to stop reading.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Hope you’ve had a good day. When I name a character it is for specific reasons.

I want the name to indicate likely age. I do this in my story Identity from Tripping the Flash Fantastic with my character, Walter. Highly unlikely to be a young person’s name.

I want the name to indicate class/likely social economic background. This can save a lot on the word count! But someone called Charles is likely to move in upper circles unlike someone who goes around known as Chas. I’ve used this for a conman story where my character takes advantage of having a posh sounding name to fleece the unwary.

I often write about characters caught up in unexpected magical events so their having ordinary names helps emphasize the unusual circumstances in which they find themselves.

Also because I do write flash pieces set on other worlds, I can use my character names to immediately flag up this being is not from our planet.

And you can use not just character names, but the names of things like the shops they go to as ways of indicating their background.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.


Am off to the online Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction group meeting tonight. Interesting chat, exercises to have a go at, markets to hear about – what’s not to like there?! Networking for writers can take many forms and Zoom has helped enormously here.

Best bit of all? You will find out info useful to you. You may well be able to give useful info out to others. Nobody knows it all and sharing knowledge and tips is the best way to develop as a writer. Networking can also help you avoid the scammers out there. And I’m all for that!

BookBrushImage-2021-10-22-20-2425

Fairytales with Bite – Charms and Spell

C = Character casting a charm but will be it be for good or ill?
H = Have a wish or three but respect the giver.
A = Always respect the wish granters or
R = Risk humiliation at best and probably worse.
M = Magical people don’t always look like they are.
S = Showing humility in a magical world is always a good idea.

A = Arrogance tends to be punished here.
N = Not unknown for animal transformations to be the result.
D = Do you really fancy that? Hmm… choice made. Your life is changing.

S = Spending your life as a wild beast is not fun.
P = Praying your one true love will turn up but now knowing if they will.
E = Eternity – you know a thing or two about what that feels like.
L = Living an animal life is far removed from what you’ve known
L = Love cannot come quickly enough to rescue you.

BookBrushImage-2021-10-22-20-3346

This World and Others – Interactions

How do your characters interact with each other? Is technology, as we know it, available in your created world or is it far in advance of what we know? If your characters can use telepathy, are there any rules on how they can use it? If not, what would happen if someone “pushes the bounds” of what is acceptable in your world? Not everyone is going to want their thoughts read and could react badly (or will find ways to disguise what they are really thinking and that may well frustrate the potential eavesdropper here so how would they react to that?).

How does your world interact with other planets near it? How do the countries in your world react with one another? What political systems exist in your created world? Does politics get in the way of more positive interactions between individual characters and/or countries?

Interactions are not single things. One interaction will trigger another. Someone has to respond to it but it will be how and why they respond as they do that will keep the reader’s interests. How can you ratchet the tensions up here? Conflicts have to be realistically based.

Readers need to be able to see why Character A wants what they do and why Character B is determined to prevent Character A getting what they want. Also think about what the trigger for the initial interaction will be – the classic one is someone wanting something desperately enough to do anything to get it. How could you use that? What could you bring to the mix to make it unique? What if other characters don’t understand your Character A’s desperate need for whatever the object or objective is and actively get in the way as they think it will be in Character A’s best interests not to get it?

BookBrushImage-2021-10-22-20-465

Twitter icon

Plenty going on with Twitter this time as I was on Twitter duty for the Association of Christian Writers over the past few days. I share useful writing tips on these so thought I would share again here.

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js