Tag: Journalism

Broadcast News and Knowing Your Characters

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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. Weather now stormy and wet. Delighted to have been on North Manchester FM over the weekend. Looking forward to taking part in Flash NANO again in November. Also have a fabulous interview coming up with Anita D Hunt to discuss her domestic noir novel, Behind The Curtain, on Chandler’s Ford Today on Friday. Do look out for it. Plenty of useful tips and advice. This is one of the great things about author interviews You learn so much from them.

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Hope you have had a good day. Drier today, thankfully. Am also thankful Lady drives off quickly and doesn’t mind my towelling her down. Not all dogs like this. Lady sees it as a chance to get another cuddle in!

Looking forward to the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group meeting on Zoom tomorrow night. Always good fun. Theme this time is marketing. Talking of which, I’ve been busy preparing pitches, one of which I’ve just submitted, the other is almost complete ready for reviewing.

Writing Tip: Consistency helps a lot with (a) getting your writing done and (b) with your marketing. I’m not on every social media platform. I am on the ones I know I can keep posting to on a regular basis.

Being consistent helps you build up your brand

Delighted to be able to share a single link now to Hannah Kate’s Autumn Equinox show on North Manchester FM on Saturday afternoon. Do check out the stories on there – I found them to be a great mix. It was lovely listening to it on Saturday afternoon.

Don’t forget I’ll be chatting to Anita D Hunt about her domestic noir novel, Behind The Curtain, on Chandler’s Ford Today on Friday. Plenty of advice and tips shared, this is one of the great strengths of author interviews, I find. You learn so much from other writers’ experiences.

Screenshot 2024-09-23 at 17-36-41 Hannah’s Bookshelf Autumn Equinox Special - 21_09_2024 by Hannah's Bookshelf Mixcloud

The storm hit Hampshire today. So much water on the road. Glad to get back home. Much as I love autumn, torrential rain does nothing for me save get me wet (and Lady dries off quicker than I do).

Writing Tip: I sometimes know what mood of story I want to write – funny, sad, scary, etc. Sometimes that mood is set by the theme of a writing competition too. What I do here is work out the kind of character who would suit that mood and as I outline them, I find myself discovering ideas for the situations they’d be likely to face. Put all that together and I have an outline for my first draft.

Knowing my character well enough for whatever length of story I write to works for me. Asking a few questions helps me to get to know that character well enough. Obviously the longer the story the more I need to know but even for flash I have to know what drives them and why.

There are often hints as I outline them as to where that drive has come from. If their drive is to make money and plenty of it, are they being greedy or are they fearful of debt because they’ve know what it is to face that?

I could write two different stories depending on how I answer that question. There is nothing to stop me either from writing two stories with two characters who answer that question differently and this is just one example of the benefit of some forward planning.

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Broadcast News: Enjoyed listening to the stories on Hannah Kate’s Autumn Equinox special show on North Manchester FM this afternoon. Lovely mix of styles. I’ve shared the links – link one above, link two below. My story, Spade Work, is on the second half of the show coming in at about the 22 minutes mark but do listen to all of the tales. You will be in for a treat. Do note I now have a single link to the whole show above and it may be easier to use that one.

Many thanks for the kind comments coming in on the Ruth Leigh interview I shared on Chandler’s Ford Today yesterday. Much appreciated. I think this interview proves a point I’ve made before about learning from author interviews. You can pick up all sorts of tips which will be useful to you.

Am pleased to say there is another super interview coming up next week with Anita D Hunt, who will be discussing her domestic noir novel, Behind The Curtain. Looking forward to sharing that. I’ve loved author interviews since I started writing seriously. I know I’ve picked up so much useful help and advice from them and it is a great joy and privilege to conduct them for CFT.

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Anniversaries can make a useful theme to write about. Not only are there the obvious anniversaries, which you could show in relation to your characters and what they make of them, bear in mind your characters might also have specific dates they commemorate, which would be meaningless to anyone else.

So what would your character commemorate that nobody else would? How do they do this? What made them start doing this? A magical character could commemorate the day they “graduated”, for example. How do they celebrate – crate a new spell for the occasion, say?

Room for humour in stories like that, I think.

Fiction reflects on our lived experiences so certain themes are bound to occur regularlyIt’s Monday. It’s been raining heavily all day. And it’s a darker than usual Monday due to the weather. Time for a story then. Hope you enjoy my latest on YouTube – Appreciation.

Has been a busy and soggy weekend. Hope things have been okay for you. Don’t forget my author newsletter is coming out again soon. To sign up just head over to my landing page at https://allisonsymescollectedworks.com

I’ll be talking about author newsletters for my More than Writers post for the Association of Christian Writers later this month too. I write a few monthly blogs and, as with my newsletter, I do plan out when in the month I will have these ready by. I’ve found this pays. Doing this frees up other writing time which I use for marketing and writing more flash stories. Win-win as far as I’m concerned.

Talking of flash, I’ve also found it useful to hit the ground running with my tales. I want to set up curiosity in the reader immediately and I can do this by setting a question you know the story has to answer or by giving an intriguing opening and you have to find out where it goes from there.

In my Enough Is Enough (Tripping the Flash Fantastic), I start with the opening line of She knew she had to stop it. What I hope that line does is set up immediate questions for the reader – who is she, what has she got to stop and why, and is she successful? The story does have to answer all of that. (It does, of course!).

I’ve found it helpful to think along the lines if it intrigues me, it should intrigue someone else. It can be a useful place to start, regardless of what length of fiction you’re writing.

It was a joy this afternoon to listen to wonderful autumnal flash on Hannah Kate’s show on North Manchester FM. It was a joy to be part of the show too. Autumn is a wonderful theme to write about because you can take it in many directions. You can look at a character’s attitude to it. You can bring in the changes in nature. You can bring in the sense of things winding down.

My maternal grandmother hated the season because she saw it as the time when everything died. I’ve used that thought in my story, Spade Work, which was broadcast this afternoon. I also used my own attitude to the season where I don’t agree with my grandmother’s view. My character, Holly, shares my view autumn is the time of beautiful changes and sees this in her Virginia Creeper where its leaves change from green to a fabulous shade of red.

But thinking about what your character makes of autumn or indeed any of the seasons can give you great insight to your creation. Their attitudes will also have a direct impact on their behaviour too and there will be story ideas there.

If they hate autumn, what would they do to get out of having to go any seasonal events? How would characters around them react to their behaviour here, especially if they love the season and the events?

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Goodreads Author Blog – Books I Could Not Do Without

With a title like this, I know I could go on at some length but decided to limit my choices to ten but have included some collections. So what ten books could I not do without then?

  1. The Bible – I especially love the Psalms (wonderful poetry) and Jesus’s stories (especially The Good Samaritan always a challenging one that).
  2. The Lord of the Rings – THE fantasy book in my view.
  3. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe – loved the story. Cried when I first read what happened to Aslan at the hands of the White Witch.
  4. The classic fairytales – I am especially fond of Cinderella.
  5. Men at Arms – Terry Pratchett. A classic whodunnit as well as a wonderful addition to the Discworld canon.
  6. Nemesis – Agatha Christie. Her best Miss Marple novel I think.
  7. The ABC Murders – Agatha Christie. Her best Hercule Poirot book (though I was torn between this and Murder on the Orient Express).
  8. Jeeves and Wooster – P.G. Wodehouse. Can’t pick any single one. They are all brilliant and never fail to make me smile.
  9. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens. The ultimate ghost/redemption story. Simply wonderful.
  10. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen. Her best book, I think. Wonderful characters and Elizabeth Bennet is ahead of her time.

Which ten books would you choose?

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WRITERS NARRATIVE SUBSCRIBER LINK

This time I share the October 2023 edition, which had horror as its theme. My article is on Writing Horror: The Telling Details.

AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES

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Conferences, Dead Time and Reading

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Thoroughly enjoyed the Association of Christian Writers’ day in Derby on journalism on Saturday. Love learning from writer events like this. Have found before that, even though I might not use some information now, I do end up using it later! Brought home some ideas I hope to investigate further and am not saying more than that for now.

On the fiction side, I am finalising a short story for a competition. I am also looking forward to sharing a two-part interview with a fellow Chapeltown Books author on Chandler’s Ford Today. Part 1 will be up on Friday.

Am getting better at using “dead” time. I spent my train journeys to and from Derby using the fabulous Evernote to draft a blog post for ACW, a future CFT one and some ideas for what I hope will end up being my third flash fiction collection. I also got to talk to a children’s writer on the train home. One of the lovely things about writing is, when you do meet up with fellow writers, you’ve got an instant topic of conversation!

Oh and you never get bored!

 

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The only problem with going to writing conferences is catching up with things again on getting home! Still, I can think of worst problems.

Sorry to hear about Ken Dodd. Never got to see him live but enjoyed his TV and radio shows. (Radio 4 Extra sometimes repeats the latter, expect they will soon. Worth a listen).

Priorities this week are to finish editing a short story and, as always, CFT. Why does editing always take longer than you think it will, no matter what your level of experience is?! Or is this just me? Answers on a postcard….

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Do you like short, sharp paragraphs or longer, more detailed ones? For me, it depends on the kind of story I’m reading or writing. I would expect a thriller to have the first kind of paragraph with a family saga having more of the second kind.

Overall, what matters is that each word, each paragraph etc moves the story on and genuinely can’t be cut from the tale without wrecking it. You know you’ve carried out a good editing job when you reach that point in a story!

Sometimes a more detailed paragraph can be used to indicate the time period a story is set in, given you would expect more “wordy” paragraphs in a tale set long before social media came in. Choice of words must be appropriate to the character, the time period and the setting.

The wonderful world of stories. Image via Pixabay
Love this image! Image via Pixabay
A clean sheet can lead to some fascinating characters and stories. Image via Pixabay
Nobody gets their ideas right first go. Image via Pixabay.
Reviews can have global reach. Most impact I think can often be local to the writer.
The keyboard beckons…
Getting the word out! Image via Pixabay

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I’ve spent a lot of the weekend in Derby at an Association of Christian Writers’ Day on journalism (it was fab) so used a lot of the time on the train journeys scribbling away via the wonderful Evernote on my phone. Jotted down ideas for several flash fiction pieces and am really looking forward to writing them up.

I am getting better at using “dead” time like this and when I had to take my car in for service, while I was waiting, I wrote three flash pieces (which are part of my second collection now submitted to Chapeltown Books). I felt distinctly miffed when they told me my car was ready as I had settled down quite well, thank you. There was a tea and coffee machine, loos, and I was all set for further writing! The really great thing here? No distractions… ah well.

 

Most of us struggle to have as much time to read as we'd like - image via Pixabay

I think most of us struggle to find as much time to write as we’d like.  Image via Pixabay

Publishing has to start with a blank page - image via Pixabay

From start to finish here perhaps?  The blank to the printed page.  Image via Pixabay

 

The To Be Read pile - image via Pixabay

The to be read pile! Image via Pixabay

A few books to choose to read from here - image via Pixabay

Plenty to enjoy here! Image via Pixabay

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Do you start your story with a title in mind or do you write the tale and then the title comes to you as a result?

I find I must have a title to “peg” my ideas to but often have to change the title to a more suitable one, once I’ve got the story down. I have, on occasion, tried to work without a title but soon found myself feeling “lost” without one! So I take the attitude now it is all in draft anyway so it doesn’t matter if I change the title half a dozen times until I’ve got it right for the piece.

Books are the keys to knowledge. Image via Pixabay
Fiction is strengthened when backed by fact. Image via Pixabay
Escape with a good book. Image via Pixabay.
Such a beautiful place to read. Image via Pixabay.
What ever writer needs. Image via Pixabay
Says it all really and applies to non-fiction equally as fiction. Image via Pixabay.

Goodreads Author Programme – Blog

I have spent many a fine evening re-reading favourite novels and short stories. For me, there is no such thing as a book beyond its “read by”date.

It has been my experience even books written in styles we wouldn’t use now have some entertainment value and I can usually learn something from the way the author has written their characters. I usually pick up something on each reading.

As for contemporary reading, I am reading a fair number of flash fiction collections, I love reading history (and historical fiction), as well as crime. I am reading far more non-fiction than I used to but I think this may be a reflection of the fact I’m writing non-fiction now as well.

Having a Kindle has increased the amount of reading I do too. I do like the “Look Inside” feature and have often used this. I was glad it was available on my own flash fiction collection. This has given me many chances to try books I wouldn’t have necessarily thought of trying.

Not arguing with this! Image via Pixabay
What new worlds and scenes will books show you? Image via Pixabay
Some very strange creatures are in books. Image via Pixabay
Well, would you? Image via Pixabay
Is the truth welcome in your fictional world? How does your community react to it?. Image via Pixabay.
Connections to what you read and what you write. What are yours? Image via Pixabay.
Always time and space for the pen and paper method of drafting
Well, why not? Image via Pixabay.
Escape with a good book, it’s good for you! Image via Pixabay
Some of the strongest ideas have a simple theme. See A Christmas Carol as a classic example. Image via Pixabay.
It can take a lot of self-belief to be able to call yourself this at times. Image via Pixabay
How the very best fairytales start… Image via Pixabay