Tag: open titles

PowerPoint, Writers’ Narrative, and Doing Right

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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 seeing friends and family at the weekend for birthday get together. We all have a fab time. Lady loves (a) seeing everyone, you should see her face when they go home, looks so sad (aaah!); (b) Lady loves playing with a family spaniel, the lovely Lily; and (c) both dogs make excellent hoovers and have a great time there too! Not so much writing over the weekend but I will, to quote the Terminator, be back! Meantime a huge thank you to all who have donated to the Salvation Army through my fundraising post on Facebook.

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Facebook – General and Chandler’s Ford Today

A huge thank you for the birthday messages coming in today (22nd March). Much appreciated.

First up tonight, I discuss PowerPoint for this week’s Chandler’s Ford Today post. It is an odd thing to have something come back into use after a period away from using it. Usually something is superceded. PowerPoint is the rare exception to the rule here.

With the advent of Zoom, PowerPoint has come back into its own and I use it frequently. I share thoughts and tips on making the best of it and hope you find the post useful. (Combined with Zoom, it makes for an excellent way of presenting presentations).

PowerPoint

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Secondly up tonight, I am delighted to say the April edition of Writers’ Narrative is now out. Just in time for the perfect weekend read, I’d say!

The theme this time is editing and my piece is called Editing – Do You Love It or Loathe It?

There is a great deal of excellent advice on what can be a thorny topic in this month’s magazine. Do check it out.

Lady got to see just her Hungarian Vizler chum today, both had a lovely time. Bluebells out on our regular walk back home. Lovely to see them (my garden ones always come up later).

I’m discussing the joys of PowerPoint for Chandler’s Ford Today this week and will be sharing useful tips. The advent of Zoom for writing workshops has brought PowerPoint back into my regular usage again. I use it at least once a month. I find it handy especially for the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group I lead. Will be using it again at next week’s meeting!

PowerPoint is a good match up for online work but appropriate too. It encourages you to keep to the point. There’s nothing for a flash fiction writer to dislike there, is there?!

Link up tomorrow. See above.

 

Hope you have had a good day. Nice to see some spring weather. Got warm! (First time since last autumn!). Lady got to see her Hungarian Vizler and Rhodesian Ridgeback pals – all three had a fabulous time. Not going to get much writing done today as off to a meeting this evening but this kind of thing happens and it is where my planning out how to use the available writing time pays off. So have a few small jobs to do which I can tick off my list. Back to longer pieces of work when I have more time tomorrow.

Looking forward to the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction group meeting next week. Will be looking at Endings and Beginnings (and yes deliberately that way around as I thought it apt as the meeting will be so close to the Easter weekend. Good Friday is an ending. Easter Sunday is a new beginning. Naturally I will be looking at crafting good endings and beginnings for flash fiction).

Writing Tip: Have a range of writing tasks to do. It’s fun. It helps you make the most of available writing time. On busy days, you will still feel like you have written something useful for the excellent reason you have! Also pockets of time mount up if you see them over a longer time period.

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Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

Pleased to be on Friday Flash Fiction with my 100 words tale, Doing Right. This is my first entry for the Andrew Siderius competition FFF are running for the next couple of weeks.

My story next time will have to be eligible for the longer flash word count section. No comments on any of the stories at the moment either for obvious reasons. Comments return after the competition is over. Good luck to all who are taking part.

Screenshot 2024-03-22 at 09-55-13 Blog PostsI’ve always liked creating characters. It’s my favourite part of storytelling. I like to know who my “stars” are going to be. Flash fiction writing means I am creating characters all the time and the more you do this, the easier it becomes to find ways into creating characters. I’ll be looking at this more for a future Chandler’s Ford Today post.

Flash makes you focus. The word count limit means you have to work out how to make the best use of it. I’ve found characters leading the way into the “action” of the story helps keep the word count down because they won’t waffle on. They will want to get straight on and do what has to be done to get the story resolved. Also readers can be taken straight into the characters’ mind sets and the tale feels more immediate because of that, I feel.

It helps to know what you like and loathe about character portrayal. You will know what you want to achieve and what you want to avoid. This is where reading widely is a must I think for writers, regardless of story length. You do find out likes and dislikes.

433603785_10161790366532053_7822517670405261763_nWhen I have small amounts of time in which to write (and today is one of them!), a good writing exercise to try is just to jot down titles, opening lines, closing lines etc. You can then come back to these when you have more time. The time away will give you the break you need to evaluate these ideas properly and which ones are worth your writing up and which ones are not.

For titles, I like to keep things open. I like to be able to take titles in more than one direction so I can then decide which mood I’d like to go for.

For example, my story Bypassing The System (Tripping the Flash Fantastic), I could take in several ways by working out which system, who is doing the bypassing, and are they doing this for criminal or more honourable intentions. Not going to say which way I went on this one but I do like to have manoeuvre room with my titles. I find it triggers even more ideas. That I always welcome!

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Fairytales with Bite – Birthdays and Other Celebrations

This is a timely post as this will go out on my birthday. Looking forward to seeing friends and family soon too.

In fiction, my favourite birthday celebration is that of Bilbo Baggins at the beginning of The Lord of the Rings. Say what you like about Gandalf, he knew how to do fireworks! Also hobbits know how to throw a good party.

For your own characters, and the settings in which you’ve placed them, are birthdays marked in any way? Are celebrations only saved for “official” events and is everyone expected to take part in those, whether they like it or not?

If private celebrations do happen, are they similar to what we would have or are parties etc literally not of this world and what forms would they take? What would the food and drink be like?

Who would your characters invite to events? Who would they leave out? Bear in mind that can have consequences. See Sleeping Beauty for more on that one.

Could you use a celebration event as the trigger for a story? If you use a birthday here, what would happen to your character(s) between one celebration and the next?

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This World and Others – Public Gatherings

Following on from Fairytales with Bite, does your setting allow for public gatherings? Are these strictly regulated or not? Who administers such regulations? What forms do public gatherings take?

Also give some thought as to what events those in power would want there to be public gatherings for. What would be the history behind these? How to the authorities persuade folk to to? Does anyone resist that?

Are there public events which are not celebrated or remembered but which should be and are kept suppressed by the authorities because they fear public reaction to them? What would happen if someone broke the mould here?

Give some thought too as to how public gatherings are organised. Is there a police force overseeing everything? What would happen if things went wrong? What would cause a public gathering to go wrong? Who would be behind it and what are they trying to do?

Story ideas here for sure!

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Looking Back at Swanwick 2022

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Image Credits:-
All images from Pixabay/Pexels unless otherwise stated. Book cover images from Chapeltown Books and Bridge House Publishing. Most images from the Swanwick Writers’ Summer School for my Chandler’s Ford Today post were taken by me, Allison Symes, as were any screenshots (and photos of Lady naturally).
A big thank you to Jennifer C Wilson and Penny Blackburn for images they took of me that I’ve used in my CFT post. Tricky to take pics of yourself when about to give a writing session! Hope you have had a good week. Not bad here and thankfully much cooler. Lady is pleased about that too.

 

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Facebook – General – and Chandler’s Ford Today

I’m thrilled to share Looking Back at Swanwick 2022 for Chandler’s Ford Today this week. This post was a sheer joy to write. It was also lovely not having to worry about sourcing the photos – I took most of them and friends shared the rest. Many thanks to #ValPenny and #JenniferCWilson here!

(I generally do use Pixabay and then enhance images via Book Brush as you know but it is also nice to share pics I’ve taken from time to time).

This post shares a little of what it is like to be at the Swanwick Writers’ Summer School. I look at taking part in workshops and fun events such as the Open Prose Mic Night and share a little of the joys of being immersed in the world of writing for a week, especially when you are always made so welcome whether it is is your first visit or your 50th.

Hope you enjoy the post and maybe see you there for Swanwick 2023.

Looking Back at Swanwick 2022

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Hope you had a good Thursday. Many thanks to those who came to the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction group on Zoom last night. It was great fun and lovely to see familiar names popping up on online magazines who welcome flash fiction. Keep writing!

I’m so looking forward to sharing my Chandler’s Ford Today post tomorrow. I’ll be Looking Back at Swanwick 2022 and this post was a real labour of love to write. I love writing all of my posts but some always stand out as special and writing about Swanwick does that for me. Link up tomorrow. See above.

Have, after a bit of a break, got back to reading on Kindle again. Good to be back to that. Am so glad electronic book shelves can’t give way under the weight of all I’ve got on that!

My flash collections are available in Kindle and paperback

Strange day weather wise here in Hampshire – drizzle, cloudy etc and then boy did it warm up!

One of the joys of writing is you do have two interests in one here. Every writer I know has a serious addiction to books and stories of all kinds and loves to read in and out of their genre. I try to keep my reading “diet” mixed and interesting.

I catch up with things like Writing Magazine over lunch but I read books to help me with my writing, novels, ebooks, collections etc (using paperback and the Kindle for this) most nights before settling to sleep. It is only if I am already too tired I don’t do that. I make up for it the next night instead.

I love stories. I love writing them. I love reading them. Win-win here. And in making writer friends, I get to ensure I read contemporary fiction as well as the classics. I like to find out what friends are bringing out after all and I have a lovely collection of their signed books to me on my book shelves. I treasure that.

And the great thing about flash fiction in all of this? It proves an entertaining story can be 100 words long as well as the novels proving it at 100,000! I like that. To me there is a pleasing symmetry going on here.

May be an image of text that says "Regardless of genre and setting, all stories need a proper beginning, middle and ending."

Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

It is lovely to be back on Friday Flash Fiction after my break at Swanwick last week. Hope you enjoy my tale, Fitting In, which has a book-related theme. It also shows you can never be always sure of who your audience might be.

Screenshot 2022-08-26 at 09-20-17 Fitting In by Allison Symes

I like open titles for my stories, ones that have to provoke curiosity in a reader. Sometimes I subvert a title or phrase (as in my Punish the Innocent from From Light to Dark and Back Again).

Titles are your first hook to draw a reader in and I have judged competitions where there are no titles. I do think writers are missing a trick here. It pays to have a good title. I jot down an initial idea and then change if it I need to. I know what my story line is going to be (because I know who my character is) and that usually gives me a starting point for a title. Doesn’t mean I necessarily have to stick with it though. Again as with my story itself, I just need something to get me started.

I like alliterative titles but try to avoid using them all the time. They’re memorable but you don’t want to get sidelined into using only one kind of title. I’ve used proverbs. I’ve used phrases. I’ve used ideas thrown up by random generators. I like keeping my options, as well as my titles, open!

Questions are useful for themes and titles

Writing tip 7008 or thereabouts: Don’t worry about your flash word count immediately. Get your story written. Then rest it. Then look at it again with fresh eyes and get rid of wasted words, look at ways to improving your phrasing and so on.

I then find a story will be “settling” at the circa 100, 200 or 300 words mark. I then and only then think will I try to reduce the story down to the lower word count or leave it as it is? If I feel a reduction will take something away from the story as such how it flows, characterisation that adds depth to the tale, I leave the story at, say, 224 words and then find a market or competition looking for pieces under 250 or 300 words.

I ask myself questions during the editing process mainly along the lines of do I need this and, if so, why? That helps enormously in helping me to judge what really should stay in. You don’t want to lose the soul of the tale. Editing should always enhance this and bring the best out in your story.

The only thing to cut out is waffle – now if only politicians took the same view, yes?!

Simple writing equals no waffle

Fairytales With Bite – Character Profiling

I often use random generators to trigger story ideas but you can also use the random question one to help you get to know your characters better. I use https://faculty.washington.edu/ejslager/random-generator/index.html mainly because I have a soft spot for the duck on their page (go on, check it out, you know you want to!).

I generated the question What is your theme song? You could apply that to your character and find out more about them by then asking yourself why they chose that one. In a fantasy setting, you could also work out what kind of music they would have. Is it comparable with what we have here?

I find I have to know what my character traits are (because actions, thoughts, capabilities all stem from that) but the generators are a great way of getting into profiling your character quickly. No reason why you can’t use them for fairytale characters or others of a fantasy/magical ilk.

Screenshot 2022-08-21 at 20-35-24 Random Qs

This World and Others – Character Roles

What roles do your characters play in your stories? What roles are available to them? Are roles assigned by gender, ancestral heritage or anything like that? Do your characters like or resent their roles?

The role of women has changed considerably over time here – what would be the equivalent for your characters? Do things like war change what people are expected to do? How does technology change roles? Doles your world have the equivalent of the Luddites who went around smashing machinery to try to save their own jobs?

If your world has androids or any other kind of robot, what are their roles and could they break their programming? Do humanoid characters resent the role the robots do or are they relieved they don’t have to do this kind of work?

Characters can have roles they didn’t expect thrust on to them (Frodo Baggins, anyone?). So how do your people handle this? Is their new role the making of them?

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