Tag: New in Town by Allison Symes

Acrostics and Focusing

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Image Credit:-

All images from Pixabay/Pexels unless otherwise stated. Some images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos.

Book cover images from Chapeltown Books and Bridge House Publishing. Screenshot of part of my latest story video was taken by me.

It has been a hot few days here but Lady, my collie cross, prefers to keep it cool. Image of Lady and me taken by Adrian Symes.

LADY DISCUSSES TTFF WITH ME

Facebook – General

A bit cooler today. Lady and I weren’t sorry about that.

I’m going to have two blog posts to share on Friday. My Chandler’s Ford Today one is on Brand Recognition and Why It Matters. This is so important for writers given we all have to do at least some marketing. So therefore it pays to think what brand we want to put “out there” that readers associate with us and will like.

I’ll also have a post out on Authors Electric, which is called Reading Into Writing Will Go. Those of you of a certain age will recognise the words “will go” from the way division used to be taught in Maths. So what has that got to do with writing or reading? I look forward to sharing the link on Friday when you can find out!

So look out for two Facebook posts from me on Friday with two links.

Meanwhile back in Hot Hampshire I am so glad I live in a property that faces north. It means more heating in the winter but it comes into its own right now – it is cool here! (It is quite nice that something is cool here because I do know I’m not!).


Baking day – outside that is! Lady had a reduced exercise session before it got too hot. Although she is usually as daft as a brush, she is sensible in warm weather, knows all the shady spots to head to, and is the first of my three collies who willingly drinks water! I rarely go out without water for her and, in these conditions, it is one of the first things I get ready to take with us.

I have a good spot on our patio area where I can do a pavement test (back of hand held down on said area for at least 15 seconds. Let’s just say if I can’t keep my hand there for the required time, Lady doesn’t go out. One issue with going out later in the day is the ground has had time to bake, literally, so please if you’re a dog owner, always carry water with you, and do the pavement test before you go. If in doubt, don’t go). (Lady has happily curled up in the shade for the rest of the day and has been enjoying snoozing and woofing at my shopping delivery man so she has had a great day!).

Writing wise, a huge thanks for all the fabulous comments on my New In Town on #FridayFlashFiction. Feedback always appreciated.

Do you find it harder to write in hot weather rather than cold? Makes no difference to me as I make sure I’m comfortable enough at the old desk but I can understand if concentration levels dip somewhat. (I swear there are times my laptop is cooler than I am!). I don’t use weather in my fiction at all partly because I don’t want to fall into the “dark and stormy night” cliche trap but also I can think of several more important things for a reader to need to know than what weather my character is experiencing. I can only see relevance here if you’re sending your character on a quest (and generally you need longer than a flash fiction piece to do that well!).

Looking forward to sharing my next Authors Electric piece later on in the week too.

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Another warm and sunny day in Hot Hampshire (and a sympathetic salute goes to all hayfever sufferers!).
Stories come in all shapes and sizes but this goes for non-fiction too funnily enough. Especially when I interview someone for Chandler’s Ford Today, I want that person’s story and love to get behind what led them to write the books or stories they have. I suppose this is because (a) I’m nosey and (b) I know no two writing journeys are the same and I find it fascinating and instructive to learn from others here.

For fiction taking a bit of time out to think about what makes your characters the way they are leads to better characterisation (you really have got a handle on your person here) and stronger plot lines. So looking for the story behind the story then is always a good idea. We’re encouraged to dig deeper and not just go for the obvious ideas for stories. Looking into what makes your characters tick in more depth is a great way to achieve that.


Hope you have had a good Saturday. Glorious weather here. Lady enjoying it – sensibly. Currently curled up behind me in a nice cool study.

Coming up on Chandler’s Ford Today in the next month or so will be a fascinating interview with someone I first met a few years back at the Hursley Park Book Fair, which I wrote about for CFT at the time. Very much small world syndrome here but a delightful one and the interview is a smashing one. I’ll also be sharing how I met this author again as it is a great advert for networking in person where you can and online anyway. Looking forward to sharing more on all of that in due course.

Coming up this Friday for CFT will be a piece called Brand Recognition and Why It Matters – so I combine writing with some marketing for that one! (I also share thoughts and tips here and look forward to sharing this later in the week).

Thrilled to bits my latest story on #FridayFlashFiction, New in Town, has had a wonderful response to it. Acrostic stories are good fun to write though I have found you want something (a) short and (b) open to interpretation for this kind of thing. In case you missed it, here’s the link for it. Oh and it has been a great joy responding to the comments on the site itself on this one. Thanks, everyone.

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Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

Many thanks for the response to my acrostic flash tale called Fiction yesterday. Good fun to write and create a video for. I have discovered the joy of animations on Book Brush and used a “pulse” one for Fiction. I use Book Brush a lot for my blog work as it is lovely putting captions into the pictures I use – and they look better I think. Only downside? It is too easy to lose a lot of time playing with Book Brush but there are worse writing problems to have!

But it is creative and part of the old marketing so that’s okay then! (And the videos are a simple way to share mini-flash tales – basically under 100 words or so).

Screenshot 2021-06-15 at 20-42-49 Allison Symes

For the rest of the story you’ll have to go to the link – see below.


Pleased to share my latest acrostic flash fiction story video with you. This one is called Fiction and many thanks for the comment that has come in on this already. Hope you enjoy. There is a time for dancing in the streets…and a time not to!


I’ve mentioned before that titles carry a lot of weight in flash fiction. They indicate mood/genre of the story, freeing up precious word count room for what matters – the story itself. But it pays to keep your title short to maximise the impact of it and to allow for the fact some markets and competitions count the title as part of their acceptable overall word count limit. Do watch out for that! Also shorter titles are more memorable and that’s important to your reader (and therefore potentially to you too). You want your readers to remember your titles and the books they appeared in!

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Glad my story New In Town went down so well yesterday. Acrostic flash tales are good fun to do but work best, as I mentioned on my author page on FB earlier, when kept short and if the word or words chosen can be taken in more than one way. Double meanings, as well as hyphenated words, are great assets to the flash fiction writer!

Twice the meaning for only one “lot” of words and hyphenated words mean you get two words for the price of one. So glad to have discovered that one especially as I have made good use of it in my time. (No. You can’t just hyphenate any words – that would be cheating!).

Misjudging people can be a great theme for any story but I have used it in flash. In Tripping the Flash Fantastic, my character, Walter, makes up his mind about the new postman in my story Identity. Can’t say more than that. The story is about whether Walter was right or wrong. But what was interesting here was I didn’t need to give you the postman’s backstory. You just see things from Walter’s point of view and then the story goes on to show you whether he was right or wrong.

I’ve mentioned before that with flash focusing on one character and one important incident is the way to go. Here it was a case of focusing on Walter’s viewpoint and then following it through to a conclusion. I could have brought in something from the postman’s viewpoint to indicate whether Walter was right or not. In not doing that, I’ve made the story more focused and, I think, it has greater impact.

Goodreads Author Blog – Kindles for Kinds of Books?

I love reading. Okay no big news there. I love reading in all kinds of formats and listening to audio books. Again no great breaking news story there. But I wondered if you save your Kindle or other e-reader for certain types of book. I do.

I use ebooks to test out authors new to me and for a lot of non-fiction (especially where the print version would be too big and bulky to handle. I can think of a few tomes here that would break your toes if you dropped the book on your foot – the Encyclopedia Britannica anyone?!).

I also use ebooks for short story and flash collections as these are ideal for reading on a screen.

The Kindle is one of the first things I pack whenever I get to go away (and that still won’t be for a while yet given Covid) and its finest “moment” is saving every avid reader from ever having to worry again about how many books they can fit into their suitcase. I appreciate my Kindle for that alone!

So do you save certain kinds of book for your e-reader and, if so, which?

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Finding Themes

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Image Credit:-

All images from Pixabay/Pexels unless otherwise stated. Some images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos.

Book cover images from Chapeltown Books and Bridge House Publishing. Hope you have had a good week.

It has been a reasonable week. At least the summer has now turned up (not before time in the UK if you ask me!) and I share a new Friday Flash Fiction acrostic story too. (Screenshot of part of that story taken by me, Allison Symes. You’ll need to follow the link below to read the rest of it!). Screenshot of my profile page on CafeLit also taken by me, Allison Symes.

And whatever your writing/reading journey has been this week, I hope it was a good one.

All forms of fiction and non-fiction, short or long, will take you into different worlds and sometimes back and forward in time too

 

Facebook – General – and Chandler’s Ford Today


Pleased to share Finding Themes, my latest Chandler’s Ford Today post. Glad to see comments coming In already. Do feel free to comment on the CFT page.

I discuss some of my favourite themes here and why I find having a theme useful in story telling. I also look at spotting the underlying themes in stories and what the purpose of themes is for a writer.

Of course any writing competition which isn’t an open one gives themes for writers to try so it is worth practicing writing to a theme. The classic ones come up time and again and rightly so as these have powerful resonance.

There is never going to be a time without love stories, justice tales etc. We relate to these things at deep levels. Fiction reflects life and what matters to us after all (and yes even the fantasy ones do as it tends to the characters we related to based on our own experiences of life).

Hope you enjoy the post.

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Finding Themes, my latest Chandler’s Ford Today post, is up tomorrow. Do themes come easily to you? I have certain ones that I adore (justice will out, eventually is one of mine) but I find that my characters can dictate the theme. For example in my The Pink Rose from Tripping the Flash Fantastic, my two characters, mother and daughter, make the theme obvious – love continues no matter what life throws in the way. (Also that simple ways of showing love are often the best).

Certain themes dictate the kind of characters that have to serve them. For example, a justice will out theme has to have an antagonist and a protagonist. Someone must have done something wrong for that wrong to be righted. What can vary here is the kind of people you use here. They don’t have to be all action heroes. Perhaps an older person (or other being of choice) finds a way of righting a wrong they themselves committed long ago and they finally want to make atonement.

Link up for CFT tomorrow. (Comments always welcome on the CFT page incidentally).

Allison Symes and some early works.


Another lovely day and Lady gets to play with her best buddie, the Rhodesian Ridgeback. Both of them had an excellent day! Looking forward to a refreshing swim tomorrow. You can tell the weather is hot outside when the pool water feels refreshing rather than perishing cold (though I think the latter is a ploy to make you start swimming quickly – it works too!). Had my hair done again today too – lovely job done as ever by Lisa from Snips.

Writing wise, I’m busy drafting pieces for submission in the next week or so and I am trying to keep at least a week ahead on my Chandler’s Ford Today posts. I have found that pays off, especially with my longer projects on the go. My CFT theme this week is, appropriately, Finding Themes. Link up on Friday.

I have got into the habit of drafting blog posts for a variety of places, including here, that I can schedule in advance or have to hand to share when writing time is limited or if tiredness is getting the better of me. (It does for us all from time to time!). This is a great use for those pockets of time when I’ve got time to draft something short and fancy writing some non-fiction in that time. (Naturally when I fancy fiction, I’ll be drafting flash fiction stories).

There is no one way to write that will suit every author. How can there be? No two writers approach what they do in exactly the same way. We are all inspired by different things (though there will be things in common too). What is the “secret”for an effective and efficient writer is to work in a way that you can manage and sustain and still find enjoyable after xxx numbers of years writing.

I can’t imagine writing on the fly, so to speak. I am one of life’s planners. What I do like is jotting down ideas that I can play with and write up later. I don’t have any preset ideas here as to how I’m going to write up those notes but ideas do come. I think it is the case the act of jotting down that note plants something useful in my subconscious I can draw on later. It is also a question of refilling my imaginative well regularly too (and the best way of doing that by far is by reading! What’s not to love about that?).

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Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

Thrilled to say my New In Town, a new acrostic flash tale, is now up on #FridayFlashFiction. Many thanks for the comments that have come in on this so far – the feedback on this site is so useful. Like to think of this one as a cautionary tale. Hope you enjoy it.

Screenshot 2021-06-11 at 16-34-07 New In Town by Allison Symes

For the rest of the story, see the link!


I like to mix up the kind of flash fiction I write in terms of word count. Keeps life interesting! My favourite is the 100-worder (aka the drabble) but the advantage of the longer form (say between 750 and the 1000 words maximum) is that I can have more than one character in it. There’s even a little room for a minor sub-plot (but it has to be minor and serve the overall story to justify being in it).

Sometimes a flash story takes off and I end up with a 1500 words plus short tale instead but I simply edit this and then submit it to a diffferent market. Another lovely thing about CafeLit is they like tales of varying length too so do check them out if you like writing short stories and flash tales. There is a great mixture here.

My most recent one here, That Was the Week That Was, comes in at just under 500 words and spans a week in the life of my character. (Using a time frame for your story can work wonderfully for flash and short stories and I need to try and use this more often because it is an easy thing to overlook. Can help increase tension too as you read what happens day by day or hour by hour or what have you. Also there is a good structure built in with this kind of frame. You just need to decide how long that frame is going to be. In this case I knew it would be a week).
Allison Symes - Cafelit Profile page
I mix up the way I open a flash tale (or short story come to that). Sometimes I ask questions, which I then need to answer in the course of the story. Sometimes I make a statement which is out of the ordinary so readers have to read on to find out what is going on.

Sometimes I take a reader straight into my character’s head and that can be a fascinating, funny, or horrific experience, depending on the character I’ve written up and the genre of the tale. But what is common to all of this is that the opening has to intrigue. If I’m not intrigued by it, then a reader is unlikely to be.

And being intrigued enough to want to read on to find out what happens is the goal of any writer. Hook, hook, hook them in!

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Fairytales with Bite – Magical One-Liners

Potential throw-away lines from fairytale characters could include the following:-

Cinderella – You expect me to dance in glass slippers without cutting my feet to ribbons? Your wand is playing up isn’t it, fairy godmother?

Snow White – Of course I’ll have an apple with you, old apple seller. We’ve got to get our five a day in somehow, yes?

Goldilocks – What kind of bear has porridge for breakfast and lives in a house? Someone clearly hasn’t heard of the call of the wild then…

Sleeping Beauty – Time to wake up already? Can’t I just have another 48 hours? A girl needs her beauty sleep.

The Little Mermaid – Don’t let that fishmonger anywhere near me. I didn’t like the way he was looking at my tail….

The Snow Queen – It is never time to get the sunscreen out. We keep it chilled here. Mind, I do like ice in my drinks. It’s funny you should ask.

Hope you enjoy. (And I sympathise with Cinders here. I’d have been miffed to have gone out anywhere in uncomfortable footwear yet alone to a royal ball. Can you imagine the blisters on her feet the next day?!).

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This World and Others – World Building Favourites

When creating your fictional worlds, what aspect do you like best and why? For every type of story I write from the 100-worder upwards, it is the characters who intrigue me. I love inventing people (or those of other species. I’ve written a story from the viewpoint of a mother dragon in my time – well someone had to do so!).

Do you like the actual world building? I can imagine the great joy to be had in creating fantasy maps and the like – great fun to do I would have thought but given I’m useless at drawing (trust me Pictionary is not the game for me!), that one bypasses me completely.

I suppose because I am on the side of character in the great character -v- plot debate, it is no great surprise that I come in on the side of those who drive any story. It is the characters and what happens to them that we as readers want to find out more about.

But it is important to have fun with your writing, whichever aspect of it you like best. That fun and enjoyment helps to keep you going.

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