Tag: Lighting Up by Allison Symes

Things I Wish I’d Known Earlier

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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 the week so far has gone well. Lady has had a lovely few days with her Rhodesian Ridgeback pal and I’ve kept busy with the writing and editing. Also went to a fun ACW Zoom group (on science fiction and fantasy). So not a bad week at all so far here.

Facebook – General and Chandler’s Ford Today

Pleased to share Things I Wish I’d Known Earlier on Chandler’s Ford Today this week. Have focused on writing things here. Am sure there are plenty of thoughts here which most writers will identify with!

Hope you find the post useful and encouraging. I think it helps to know you’re not alone as a writer on things like the topics (time taken to get published, rejections, opportunities which may not seem as if they are at first etc) I share in this post.

Things I Wish I’d Known Earlier

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Hope you’ve had a good Thursday. Lady had another fabulous time with her Rhodesian Ridgeback pal (they’ve had a terrific week!) and saw her lovely spaniel friend, the gentle Daisy, too.

Writing wise, I’m sharing Things I Wish I’d Known Earlier on Chandler’s Ford Today this week. Link up for that tomorrow and I restricted the post to just being about writing otherwise the post would’ve been far too long! See above.

Later in the month I’m off to see The Ghost Train (written by Arnold Ridley of Dad’s Army fame) performed by The Chameleon Theatre Company. I’ll also be off to the Association of Christian Writers in person meeting at Egham where I’ll be pleased to catch up with members of the flash fiction group in person, as well as other ACW members I haven’t seen for a while.

Plus I will have further author interviews coming up on CFT too so plenty to look out for and plenty going on with me at the moment. But then that is how I like it to be.

Lady was overjoyed to see and play with her Rhodesian Ridgeback friend again today. Lots of cuddles were exchanged. Sweet to see.

Pleased to see my author newsletter went out this morning. I was looking at short fiction forms for this one (and that will be the theme of the October Writers’ Narrative which is due out at any time).

I am also looking at Things I Wish I’d Known Earlier for Chandler’s Ford Today this week. Link for that up on Friday. To prevent the post from being far too long, I have limited the topic to things associated with writing! Am sure you will identify with a lot of what I will be sharing here. Again, see above, and if I hadn’t limited the scope of the post, I really could have written chapter and verse on the topic!

Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

Pleased to be back on Friday Flash Fiction with my Lighting Up. I hope you enjoy the story and would you like Marian as a friend or relative of yours?

Flash gives me the opportunity to have fun with genre as I have written flash crime stories, flash historical ones, flash fairytales, and many more types. I love the variety here. I have to lead with my characters given there isn’t room for much in the way of description though that in turn makes you focus.

I show you what the character needs to show you. The character only gives you the dialogue and internal thoughts you need to make sense of what they are doing and why. But given I can put my characters anywhere, I do take advantage of that. It makes life more interesting for me and I hope for my readers too.

Certainly for the collections, it leads to a good variety of stories. I love reading those as well as writing them so know I want to see plenty of story types in my collections.

Hope the day has been a good one for you. Not bad here. Looking forward to going to an ACW Zoom group tonight – always good fun.

Am pleased to know a few of the Flash Fiction Group will be going to the in person ACW event later this month. It will be lovely for us all to come out of our “Zoom boxes” and meet in person”! Naturally we will put in the word about the joys of flash fiction at some point (and I will be sharing some of this in the October Writers’ Narrative which is due out at any minute I will share the link as soon as I can).

Character Tip: One of the strengths of flash fiction is it does mean you have to focus which is why I recommend for our story to focus on one character and one moment in time, especially if your story will be 500 words or fewer. I like to think of this as not “diluting” your story.

Fairytales with Bite – Natural Light

As I write this in October 2025, the autumn season is well under way. The nights are drawing in, the leaves are changing colour (which is one of my favourite sights at this time of year) and the acorns are coming down rapidly (you should hear the sound as they hit the car roof!).

Now much as I love autumn, it is always a shame to see the amount of natural light fading. While it is lovely to cosy up inside with writing and good books, I also love being able to enjoy the natural light as long into the evening as possible. So this led me to wonder, how does light “work” in your setting? Do they have a sun (or more) as we know this? How are your characters affected the amount of natural light available?

Can natural light be created artificially? Does your setting have electricity as we know it? (I always loved the old character Catweazle describing it as electrickery. For those who don’t know, this was a 1970s UK children’s programme and many have fond memories of it. Catweazle was a time travelling wizard effectively).

How does the geography of your setting, including light and darkness, challenge your characters? How can they use natural light, or the lack of, to their advantage?

There will be story ideas there.

This World and Others – Character Types

How many character types does your setting have and are they anything like what we have here? Are species easy to differentiate? Is there a clear hierarchy in terms of magical power etc? Is there a dominant species and what led to them becoming that way?

I have an interest in hierarchies in settings because I am always looking out for the underdog in a story and seeing what they get up to. I guess that comes from my long love of the classic fairytales where the underdog often turns out to be the hero/heroine.

I also have a soft spot for non-human characters but then I have written from the viewpoint of a mother dragon before now. As long as readers can understand why your characters (of any kind) are the way they are, why they have the attitudes they do, why they act the way they are, then the story will follow through. I also think variety in character types is a good thing. The Lord of the Rings would be much poorer without that.

Why does your setting need the character types it has? I would expect to see geography and climate to have an impact here given we have different species suited to different conditions so it would be odd if a fantasy world didn’t have something similar.

Also give some thought as to how your character types developed the skills, magical or otherwise, that they have? Is there evolution going on here? If there is an overall creator in your world, how do they control how things/characters develop? Is there a limit to how far they can go?

MailerLite – Allison Symes – Newsletter Sign Up

WRITERS’ NARRATIVE SUBSCRIBER LINK 

AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES

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Outlining and Prompts

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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. Looking forward to going to the Association of Christian Writers Autumn Gathering in Rugby at the end of the week. Will be good to catch up with folk. Am looking forward to the workshops too. Won’t be long before Flash NANO starts in November either. Have found that great fun to take part in over the last couple of years and am looking forward to being part of it again.

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Taking part in Flash NANO

Facebook – General

Hope you have had a good day and managed to avoid at least some of the rain. Mu gutters were doing their usual splendid impersonation of Niagara Falls at 9 am today! Thankfully it was dry when Lady and I went out and she did get to see her Hungarian Vizler friend, much to the delight of both dogs.

Looking forward to sharing a fabulous interview with Miriam Drori about her new book, Loyalty and the Learner, on Chandler’s Ford Today on Friday. Looking forward also to my trip to Rugby on Saturday to join the Association of Christian Writers for their Autumn Gathering. Am hoping the weather will be better!

Writing Tip: I often outline my characters by interviewing them. A couple of pertinent questions gets the ball rolling nicely. Once I know the character well enough, I can write their story up. So I look at what motivates them (and from that, why). I also look at what secrets they might keep and why.

For example if my character is motivated by the need to be discreet, I would probably discover a secret from their past which is so horrendous, discretion has become second nature for them. I can then decide whether to reveal their secret and how they handle the outcome of that or take another route and get them doing something drastic to keep that secret. Either would be a good story to write up.

PROMPTS - I like to mix up the kinds of prompts I use, it encourages more creativity

7th October
A deeply sad day.

Writing wise, I’m working on blogs, editing, judging, as well as flash fiction at the moment. Enjoying it all too. I find writing therapeutic at times in terms of it giving me a creative outlet and I escape for a while into the world I create. Reading helps me escape into worlds other writers create – love that too.

Having said that, I don’t always like what my characters get up to and some of them I definitely wouldn’t want to meet for real, so to speak. It is the way of things but I also take comfort from the fact my characters should have a life of their own, else they would only be cardboard cutouts. Nobody relates to those.

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Drizzly but clearing up here today. Hope your weekend has been a good one.

Busy editing and judging at the moment. Will be enjoying flash fiction Sunday afternoon too today.

Character Creation Tip: It’s not unknown for authors to base their characters on aspects of themselves. Well, you draw on what you know here, right? True but I’d be wary about doing this if writing horror, erotica or even crime! You do want to separate the author from their work!

My approach is to take what I know about human nature/behaviours – and specifically what can result from a trait – and ask myself questions especially the What If one. The What If question is useful for getting an outline/rough idea together. I look at what a character would do and why.

Knowing the why is important for me because I can then write the story up with confidence knowing where it and its characters are going. The why makes motivations understandable (though not necessarily nice).

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Hope you have had a good start to your weekend. I’m looking forward to going to the Association of Christian Writers Autumn Gathering next Saturday. Looking forward to catching up with people and enjoying the workshops.

On Chandler’s Ford Today next week, I’ll be chatting to fellow Swanwicker, Miriam Drori, about her new novel, Loyalty and the Learner. Looking forward to sharing that.

Writing Tip: What have I found to be the most useful piece of writing advice I’ve picked up over the years? I’d say it was to write first and to edit later and that’s it’s okay to write a rubbish first draft. Everyone does! Just get those ideas down and then come back to them, after a suitable break away to evaluate them properly and then do the inevitable tidying up work which needs to be done.

The time away from your first draft is vital to be able to judge it properly but I use that time away to go and draft something else. I can then rest that one and come back to the first piece. It means I always have something on the go. I like that.

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Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

Looking forward to the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group meeting in a couple of weeks. Will be looking at how to make the most of Flash NANO, which stars on 1st November, and I’ll be sharing tips on how to make the most of writing prompts. I’m writing on prompts again for Authors Electric this month (due out on 18th October).

I use a wide variety of prompts. It keeps things interesting for me but it also means I’m not fazed when I’m set them by other writers. I know I can produce something. I can polish things up later and only I see the first draft!

I use the prompts directly but I often do put my own twist on them and get yet another idea. So if an opening line prompt says something like He wasn’t amused to get a parking ticket, I would change that to something like The alien wasn’t amused to get a parking ticket. I know I could have fun with that one!

PROMPTS - The advantage of writing to prompts is it gets you used to writing to topics set by someone else, handy for competitions with set themes, and writing events
It’s Monday. Time for a story. Hope you like my latest on YouTube – Lighting Up. I expect many will identify with this one!

 

There are plenty of flash fiction competitions out there. A quick Google search will bring up loads of them. All of that is good news but do make sure you check out the terms and conditions and you are happy with these.

I never enter competitions which require me to sign away all of my rights (just what is in that for me?! I also may want to do something else with a the story in the future. Signing away my rights means I can’t do that).

I also check the entry fee is proportionate to the prize on offer. I also check out the competition’s website. Usually there are FAQs here which I find it pays to look at. The competition should be easy to find online. If they have a Facebook page, do check out the comments. If you’re not sure about a competition (a) walk away, you have to be comfortable with where you’re sending your work as you want it to reflect well on you and (b) do ask the writing community.

If you’re part of online writing groups do ask around here too. Someone is likely to be able to answer your query. Also the competition organiser should cover a lot of the common queries in their FAQs and, if not, be amenable to you putting a query to them.

Always walk away from those who don’t want to be helpful – you have to query why, right?

462210759_992961259510402_736286537237125836_nOne reason I love writing something for Friday Flash Fiction most weeks is it gets me back to my first introduction, and therefore love of the flash fiction format, the classic 100 word story otherwise known as the drabble.

For flash competitions and markets, unless they want a specific word count, I write to just under the overall limit. I want to make the most of the word count room I have available. So if I have a 250 words limit and my story comes in at 150, I will save it for a competition or market which is looking for word counts of 200 words or fewer.

The reason for that is so I can make every possible use of the word count limit I have got. If I’ve got the room for that powerful line which shows something useful about the character it’s going in. Here it is a case of adding depth to the story and character.

No line will ever go in, regardless of word count, if it doesn’t add something useful to the story in some way but if I’ve got some extra room, I see it as a wasted chance if I don’t use it this way.

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Goodreads Author Blog – Books With Impact

To an extent, all books have impact. The first impact is on you as the reader making you decide whether you loved the book or not. But when I talk about books with impact, I mean those stories which stay with you long after you’ve read them initially and which you will happily re-read at any time.

For me, this includes The Lord of the Rings, Pride and Prejudice, most of the back catalogues of Agatha Christie, P.G. Wodehouse, Terry Pratchett, and the classic fairytales.

What pleases me now is I’m increasingly adding non-fiction to that mix. It makes for an interesting “reading diet” and I would include most of Ben Macintyre’s books in the “will happily re-read” category.

I don’t mind the book format I use either. I mainly read paperbacks and ebooks with hardbacks every so often coming into the mix (but I have to be very sure of the author for those!).

The impact I look for in fiction is entertainment. For non-fiction it is in learning something new to me in a way that entertained me (and I welcome the development of creative non-fiction here because this is one of its strengths).

Screenshot 2024-10-05 at 17-43-41 Allison Symes's Blog - Books With Impact - October 05 2024 09 43 Goodreads

WRITERS NARRATIVE SUBSCRIBER LINK

This time I share the link to the September 2023 issue of the magazine which had marketing as its theme. Always a timely topic, that one! I have two pieces in here – Marketing Your Books and Writing for Online Magazines. And it really isn’t long to go now before the magazine is back with us again!

AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES

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