Tag: Stories in Other Forms

Stories In Other Forms/Top Ten Tips For Researching

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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 you have had a good weekend. Mixed bag here given the weather got in the way of getting certain tasks done but hey it is February (and it isn’t January!). Lady doing well. Writing going well too and the new look Writers’ Narrative is about too. Do check it out.

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Hope today has gone well. Busy one here though it was good to get into the swimming pool today.

Writing wise, I’m looking forward to sharing my review of Camelot The Pantomime which was recently staged by my excellent local amateur theatre company, The Chameleons. It’s always a joy to go to these things and a great pleasure to write them up afterwards.

Am about to be a co-judge on a flash fiction competition for a writing group. Looking forward to reading the stories and yes judging stories can often be enlightening as to where you’ve come on your own writing journey. It can also encourage you to “up your own game” when you read high quality entries.

My first post on Writers’ Narrative is now up on Substack. I share Top Ten Tips for Researching and hope it proves useful. Remember it is free to sign up to Writers’ Narrative so do check it out. 

Hasn’t been a great Monday for me (though Lady did have a lovely time with her Hungarian Vizler pal) but what has cheered me up has been the new look Writers’ Narrative is now out. Do check it out. My articles on here will be appearing soon.

And in other news, Editor’s Choice: Friday Flash Fiction Favourites is now out on Amazon. I have a few stories in there. Looking forward to my copy arriving later this week as it will be a lovely final hurrah for what was a fabulous website.

Hope your weekend has gone well. Weather has been a mixed bag though at least it is less rainy and stormy than earlier this week!

Glad to say my author newsletter went out earlier today and the new look Writers’ Narrative is out too. Be sure to subscribe. My first posts now it is on Substack will appear later this week. One huge advantage to the platform move is it is going to make it easier for you to look up topics by title that the magazine has covered. I can imagine that being a blessing to many.

Writing Tip: When thinking of topics of your own to write about (for fiction or non-fiction), play a quick game of Word Association first and list all the words you can think of connected to your topic/theme. As you write more words down, you will find more possible connections and ideas for your piece.

31st January 2026

Well, we’ve got there. Finally it is the last day of January! Naturally February will go by in a flash as it always does. January has been a funny old month with more downs than ups this time, unfortunately. I do hope things have been better for you. On the plus side, the writing is going well and, especially when times are not as good as I’d like, I do find writing to be wonderfully therapeutic.

Writing wise, I’ll be reviewing Camelot The Pantomime which was recently staged by our excellent local amateur company, The Chameleons. That post will be live on Chandler’s Ford Today from Friday next week. It is always a pleasure to go to their shows and a joy to write the reviews.

My author newsletter will be out again tomorrow, 1st February. Writing a monthly newsletter is a literally timely reminder of how quickly the year goes by. I do sometimes use the seasons as good topics to write pieces about for the newsletter. There are calendars of events on this day out there which can also be inspirational both in terms of the event itself giving you something to write about, but those things can also suggest wider themes to write about too. Well worth checking out (and just as useful for fiction as non-fiction). For example, if a topic is about a historical event, you could just as well write a story about it as write an article.

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Flash is a wonderful vehicle for exploring ideas. Occasionally, what I think will make a great flash tale proves to need a longer word count and I find myself with a longer short story instead. That’s fine. I can find a different market for that.

But when you have a story where you want the maximum impact for the minimum amount of words, flash fiction is the way to go.

It’s Monday. It’s not been a great one for me this time. So I too definitely feel in need of a story. Hope you like my latest on YouTube – Staying At Home.

When can a deliberately missed opportunity be the best thing of all? And does the dog agree? Find out here.

 

From the longest month ever to the shortest one but it lovely to be in February at last. I get to spot more signs of spring for one thing.

When you think of this month, certain topics spring automatically to mind as possibles to write about. Nothing wrong with the love theme but think about what you will bring to it which will make your characters and story stand out.

I know I have to care about the characters in some way for their stories to have any chance of succeeding with me and that goes for long, as well as short, form work.

Talking of short form work, it’s time I got on with Flash Fiction Sunday Afternoon!

January cannot be said to be a “flash” month given it doesn’t go quickly! Still, we’re almost there now. By the time I post this, there’ll only be a few hours to go!

My author newsletter is out again tomorrow and, amongst other things, I share an exclusive 100 word story in it. I hope to find another home for further 100 word stories in due course. The Friday Flash Fiction Editor’s Choice book is due out in February. Now out. See above. I have stories in there and will share the link once I’ve got it. Am looking forward to getting this myself. I do know from the quality of the stories on FFF the book will be an excellent representation of that.

I am still keeping Sundays as flash fiction afternoon because I still need to write plenty of material for other collections and competitions, of course. It’s also a great way to wind up the week/begin the next one (either works!) as far as I’m concerned.

Goodreads Author Blog – Stories in Other Forms

I like taking in stories in various forms – books (paperback, hardbook, ebook and audio). I listen to some (audio books and radio plays etc). I sometimes get to watch them. I include the film adaptations here including Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Lord of The Rings.

But I also get to watch plays staged by my local and excellent amateur theatre company. I’ve just seen their most recent production, the wonderful Camelot The Pantomime, which was such fun. The joy with pantomimes is they are usually based on the classic fairytales and/or British legends so you’re reminded of those stories too.

But my local theatre company have also staged plays such as All My Sons by Arthur Miller and the stage version of Blackadder amongst many, many others. The range does go from funny to tragic and I have loved all of them. These plays have brought stories to me in a different way. Many of them I would not have taken in via any other medium. Some, such as Blackadder, I’ve seen via TV and audio. I did wonder how that would work on the stage but it was wonderfully done (and yes it included the iconic last episode of Blackadder Goes Forth).

So if you want to try stories in a different way, why not check out your local amateur theatre company? When their production is based on a book, you can then read that too after having seen it acted out for you.

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WRITERS’ NARRATIVE SUBSCRIBER LINK

See above links for February 2026 Writers’ Narrative. With Substack, the articles will appear every few days. But you can easily search for articles you’ve missed and so on.

ALLISON SYMES ON SUBSTACK

AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES

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Publication and Course News

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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.
Great start to week with publication news.
On the other hand I was sad to hear of the deaths of Ian Lavender and Michael Jayston (Pike in Dad’s Army and young Gwillam in Tinker Tailor Solider Spy respectively, the 1970s’ TV version with Alec Guinness). Both did much else besides but these are probably what they will best be remembered for. Wishing the King well too after his cancer diagnosis (but believe it is a good thing he has been open about it).
Lady has had a good start to her week too, getting to play with her best girlfriends.

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Firstly, may I just a huge thank you to the wonderful response to my post yesterday about The Best of CafeLit 13. See below. The response was fantastic. Will share details later on in the summer when the book is out. Looking forward to that. The CafeLit anthologies are a fabulous read and I would say even if I wasn’t published in many of them, honest! If you want to find out more do head over to The Bridgetown Cafe Bookshop.

Secondly, I’ll be looking at Planning Out Your Writing for Chandler’s Ford Today this week. I share thoughts and tips and hope this will prove useful. Link up on Friday.

 

Publication News (and a personal best!)

So delighted to hear I will have not one, not two, but three stories in The Best of CafeLit 13, which will be out in the summer. This is a personal best for me. I have sometimes had two pieces in one book but never three before. Thrilled to see many familiar names in the list of acceptances here. Congratulations to all!

The lovely thing with the CafeLit books is that the stories are voted on by readers of the website so nobody can know their work will get in, yet alone how many pieces might make it into the books. Every reader on CafeLit who has had a story on there in the past twelve months has a voting right and I was pleased to vote. Naturally nobody is allowed to vote for their own work.

Pleased to say what I voted for made it in the book too. Am looking forward to a great read! And in the meantime, why not check out the fabulous stories available at the website.
Screenshot 2024-02-05 at 19-35-10 Read our Stories

Course News

Pleased to say the details of my two part course for The Writers’ Summer School, Swanwick are now up on their website. So looking forward to Swanwick in August (and do check out the other courses and workshops. There is a wealth of wonderful information on offer here!).

Have been busy sending in stories for competitions. Have another ready to look at later today. Have ideas for where to submit that. Will be working my way through the Writing Magazine competition guide from next week as there were several possibilities of places so send in work. Some are charging a reasonable fee and others are charging no fee at all, but, as a rule of thumb, I always check out the background of a competition (and the organisers) first.

If happy, I go ahead. The reputable ones make it easy for you to find out their background, their terms and conditions and so on. Most of the competitions I’ve highlighted for myself I have already heard of, a few are new to me, but all are worth my checking them out.

Screenshot 2024-02-06 at 20-14-10 Short Two-Part Courses Swanwick School

Hope you are having a good weekend. Looking forward to sharing Planning Out Your Writing for Chandler’s Ford Today next week. Planning out writing is one of those topics which has huge resonance for me as my writing has progressed considerably since I started doing this.

Will be sharing thoughts and tips on how to make this work for you as each writer will need to figure out what works best for them to make the most of the time they have available to write. A bit of forethought here pays off considerably or so I’ve found.

Writing Tip: Give some thought to themes you like to write to and then work out what could come from those. For example, with St. Valentine’s Day coming up soon, an obvious topic would be love. But there is more than one kind of love to write about. It doesn’t just have to be about romantic love, though obviously that can be written up into stories too (and will be for always given it has such meaning for us).

So if I was thinking about writing a story based on love, I would then work out whether it would be romantic love, the love between friends which can lead to incredible acts of courage, sacrificial love, which can lead to a character going well out of their way to support a loved one, and so on. It pays to jot down what can come from strong themes like love. Doing that can throw up interesting angles to write about.

 

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Hope you have had a good day. Lady and I didn’t see any pals today but she had a great time (give her a toy and she’s well away) and hopes to see her friends tomorrow. Don’t know why it is but there seems to be roadworks everywhere right now in my area.

Talking of which, how about this for a writing prompt? Put your character in unexpected roadworks. How do they react? What difficulties does it cause them? Does it show something of their character to another character and are they impressed, or not, by what they discover here? Have fun but this is not one to write up if you’re stuck in roadworks!

Oh and bear in mind if you write fantasy, you can still use this prompt. What would their equivalent of roadworks be? Does magic help them get out of their traffic hold up or does it make things worse? Good possibilities for humour here.
The best writing prompts of all
It’s Monday. It’s time for a story. Hope you like my latest on YouTube – Being In A Hurry. Suspect this may ring true for some of you! I know it does for me, the title alone has resonance for me.

 

When I write a humorous flash tale, I often know the ending first and then work out what led to it. Sometimes I know the kind of humorous scrape a character of mine would land themselves in and the humour arises naturally from how they get out of the situation I’ve dumped them in.

Sink or swim – my characters do have a choice, albeit a limited one! Both kinds of tale are great fun to write and I happily wave the flag for all humorous fiction. I do think it is underrated. I wish it wasn’t.

I like a mixture of story moods when reading and writing. I don’t want everything to be grim all the time. We get enough of that in the news!

421978905_823380589801804_7777162819593090925_nOne lovely review I had for Tripping the Flash Fantastic referred to the varied collection of characters and settings in the book. This is one of the things I love most about flash fiction, in terms of reading and writing it. I love being able to set characters wherever and whenever I want.

I get to focus on the single most important thing in the character’s life and hone in on that. It can deliver a powerful impact whether it is to make a reader laugh or cry or think. I like to think of it as undiluted fiction! I get straight to the point and that’s it. From a writing viewpoint, flash has shown me how to work out what is the most important thing to focus on and to get rid of waffle.

The advantage of the longer forms of writing is you can show more, all of which is relevant to the story. I love reading novels and discovering their layers. In series such as the Discworld one by Terry Pratchett, I love reading how established characters develop over the course of several books.

In flash fiction, there can only be one immediate layer but a good short piece will leave a reader thinking.

My The Pink Rose shows a relationship between mother and daughter and while there are not many words in this story, each one shows the depth of the relationship between these two. Little snippets of detail give information such as the mother not remembering teaching the daughter to read but the latter being so grateful she did. I like to think of that as layers within layers.


Screenshot 2024-02-06 at 20-26-43 Tripping the Flash Fantastic Amazon.co.uk Symes Allison 9781910542583 Books

 

Goodreads Author Blog – Stories in Other Forms

No huge surprises here, folks, when I reveal my favourite forms of story are always in the pages of a book! That goes for ebooks too as that is a case of electronic pages! However, I love taking in stories in other forms too.

As well as audio books, I love taking in stories through the radio. My favourite here was a broadcast unabridged reading of Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time. Having heard the story, I then went and got the book.

Film can be another way of getting stories across (and is how other members of my family discovered the wonders of The Lord of the Rings. They would not have sat and read the trilogy but adored the Peter Jackson movies).

Recently I’ve reviewed a performance of The Sleeping Beauty, staged by my local excellent amateur dramatic company, for my weekly column on an online magazine (Chandler’s Ford Today). Naturally I know the fairy story well. I love pantomime, a wonderful British theatrical tradition which is thought to date back to the 16th century. Pantomime is brilliant in bringing the fairytales to life literally in front of your eyes. It is fun, produces huge laughs, and is a superb way of getting the stories to people. People remember these too.

Acting out stories is wonderful when done well. It keeps the stories alive. I would hope it would encourage people to go and check out the original tales in their written form too.

Screenshot 2024-02-03 at 17-15-33 Stories in Other Forms

WRITERS NARRATIVE SUBSCRIBER LINK

Screenshot 2024-01-31 at 14-34-15 Writers'Narrative eMagazine January_February 2024 Issue

AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES

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