Tag: The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

Consistency and When Is A Story Truly Finished?

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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. One image of me with books was taken by Adrian Symes.
Hope you have had a good weekend. It was a Bank Holiday in the UK. Also commemorating the 80th anniversary of VE Day this week. Lots of fascinating and brave stories will come to light this week and it is good we remember. Stories are wonderful things for helping with remembrance.

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Hope you have had a good day. Lady had a lovely time playing with her two best doggy pals again (and should hopefully get to do the same again tomorrow).

Looking forward to sharing Building On What Has Gone Before for Chandler’s Ford Today on Friday. All writers do this. We need to do it too. More in the post later this week.

Consistency plays a huge part in my writing routine. I focus on certain aspects such as my author newsletter, regularly updating my blog, having time set aside for flash fiction writing and so on. I find it works. I work out my writing tasks over the course of a week and find I cover what I want to do most of the time doing this.

Sure, life gets in the way sometimes, but I just pick things up from where I’ve left off and that’s okay. It’s taken some time for me to be able to reassure myself it is okay but I’ve got there! Learning not to beat yourself up over what you can’t get done because… well, it takes time.

What is, for me, even more important is ensuring I enjoy what I do writing wise. That matters. It is what helps keep me going when life does get in the way because I have it to look forward to again and that cheers me up a lot.

Hope you have had a good start to your week. It’s a Bank Holiday here in the UK and I was pleased I did get to see the flypast over Buckingham Palace to mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day. Nice to see some of the talks with veterans too.

Lady had a fabulous time at the park with her Rhodesian Ridgeback and Hungarian Vizler pals so her week has begun well. Nice to see the first rhododendrons out too.

Didn’t get to sort out my competition entry as hoped but I hope to do that this week. Having said that, I did have a good weekend writing wise with plenty of other work I needed to get done finished. It’s another reason I give myself plenty of time ahead of any competition deadline. Things like this happen. I’ve got used to that idea and it no longer throws me the way it would once have done.

Hope the weekend has gone well. Enjoyed catching up with some of my fellow Swanwickers on Zoom last night. 

Friday Flash Fiction are having a brief break from taking story submissions but will be reopen again soon. See screenshot.

Question for the Day: When is a story truly finished? It isn’t necessarily when you write those magical words The End. For me, that is the end of Stage 1, getting that draft down. But there does come a point when, having edited as well as possible, you do have to let your story go and get it out there. So for me a story is finished when I have submitted it and it has been accepted.

When it isn’t, I have another look at it, make any improvements I can now see thanks to the break from it, and then have another go at finding a more suitable home for it. Sometimes I can’t see any obvious improvements to make so again try to find a more suitable home.

Sometimes stories are turned down because the editor has recently accepted something on a similar line. It isn’t necessarily the case there was something wrong with your submission.

But I do see the end of my story is when I have placed it somewhere. To me that is happy ending!

Hope you have had a good start to your weekend. Have started wood treating a fence – I know, I know. The glamour of it all!

Writing wise, I’ll be looking at Building On What Has Gone Before for Chandler’s Ford Today. Link up next Friday. This topic is something which is true for most people/most industries and writers aren’t exempt. Looking forward to sharing more of this, and why building on what has gone before is a good thing, next week.

Writing Tip: Mix up how and where you get your title ideas from. It will keep things fresher and interesting for you. Also it is a good idea to have more than one way of generating these in any case. I like to have a Plan B, a Plan C etc etc!

I use phrases, proverbs (and sometimes subvert these), as well as using part of my character’s dialogue or their thoughts for a title which I hope acts as a hook to get the reader to find out what the story is about.

I always ask myself would this title interest me if I came across it if it was written by someone else. It’s a good thought to have in mind, I find. Always think of the reader.

Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

Flash fiction is wonderful for capturing those moments which are lovely to write and read but shouldn’t be stretched out or padded to make a standard length short story. Padding never works and I think most readers can easily spot it.

I also like flash for thoughtful slice of life stories which I feel work best when kept short and to the point. Flash helps a lot there with its word count limit!

It’s Monday. Okay, it is a lovely sunny one (mainly) and it’s a Bank Holiday in the UK but it is still Monday. Time for a story then.

Hope you like my latest on YouTube – Acting the Part. Members of the Association of Christian Writers Flash Fiction Group who were at the most recent meeting may well recognise the opening line here! Hope you enjoy the story.

You work so hard at your job. You know standards are slipping. You think of something which will improve things. How does it go? Find out for this Dark Lord here.

 

Flash fiction has many advantages, including its ability to be a useful warm up writing exercise for those writing longer works. Best of all there is nothing to stop you revising those draft flash pieces and submitting them as well at a convenient time. You have a market for these things now.

Marketing Thought: You’ve written a long piece of work (novella/novel). How about writing some flash pieces to use as advertising for the book itself? For fans, these could be added material to run with your novella/novel. It will be a bonus for them and a way in to the longer work for others.

As ever am looking forward to flash fiction Sunday tomorrow. I hope to get a flash piece out for a competition then too.

Have sent in today a six worder for a fun flash competition linked to The Writers’ Summer School, Swanwick. Great fun to do. Never let anyone tell you the short form is easier than the longer forms of writing. It isn’t necessarily so!

But do bear in mind the six word form makes a great writing exercise. Why not try it sometime? You could also develop the stories further later if you wanted to do that.

Goodreads Author Blog – Short Novels

Most of the novels I read come in at around the 80-90,000 words mark. There are exceptions. The Lord of the Rings is a mammoth of a book but so wonderful.

But I do read under this standard word count. A lot of the anthologies I read/have work in can be under this count but there is a novel too, which stands out for me, and it is always a joy to re-read.

This book has had a huge impact on me (and many others). It comes in at under 60,000 words. It is the magnificent The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey, which made me think again about Richard III. It remains the only fictional work to make me change my mind about a known historical figure.

It is a story about Inspector Alan Grant, confined to a hospital bed, who looks into whether there is a case for Richard III being guilty of the murder of the Princes in the Tower. It is thought provoking to say the least.

What is lovely about this novel is it does what it has to, so to speak, without a word wasted. There is no padding. I can learn from that as a writer. And it does prove short novels can work as well as the much longer ones. Highly recommend checking this one out.

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BEGINNINGS AND ENDINGS

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Well, it is an appropriate theme given we’re rapidly heading out of 2017 and into 2018.  Happy New Year to you all!  I hope your writing and/or reading brings you much joy in the New Year.  Literacy is a truly wonderful thing…

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When is a story finished? When the ending is appropriate for the tale and to add any more would be to “over-egg the pudding”.

I often get to a point when I’ve finished the story and realise I’ve gone on a bit beyond where I really need to be so out those extra bits come. They don’t push the tale forward or add anything useful.

For me, that’s the guiding principle when I’m editing. Do I REALLY need this in the story? The same goes for the ending though I’m also looking for maximum impact on a reader so I ask myself does this line achieve that? My finishing line must always be that one which does achieve that impact and then it is time to go!

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Facebook – General – Story Beginnings

When it comes to the start of a tale, I find I begin and then, later, cut until I get to the “real” beginning of the story.

I often don’t know the “real” start of the tale until I have written the whole thing and look back and see this point here would make a better start than what I originally came up with, but that’s fine. I see my original start point as the basis for getting on with the story. Everything, including that, can be tidied up or cut as appropriate later.

The deciding factor is which starting point has the most impact. It’s the same factor that helps me work out what the ending should be.

Happy New Year to you all. Happy writing and editing too!

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Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

Contrary to its name, flash fiction isn’t written in a hurry! The real work comes in when you have a story and you need to edit it down without losing its meaning and yet it still counts as flash.

There are other names for flash fiction. I think my favourite of these is postcard fiction as this sums the genre up very well. What you can write on a back of a postcard basically would be a flash fiction story. (This gives me some scope as my handwriting is tiny and my postcards to friends and family are legendary for the amount of information I can get on these things!).

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Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

Firstly, happy New Year to you all! Secondly, hope 2018 is a great writing year for everybody.

The highlight of 2017 for me was obviously the publication of From Light to Dark and Back Again. Am currently putting the finishing touches to the follow-up book. Would like to write more stories in 2018 than I did last year and have some thoughts as to how I will achieve that. Will hopefully say in a later post if what I think works!

I hope flash fiction continues to go from strength to strength and that more reluctant readers find it a useful way of getting “into” stories at all. Now that would be a result…

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Goodreads Author Programme – Blog

I must admit the book cover has got to lure me into wanting to read the blurb. Once the blurb has then interested me, I will read the opening paragraph or two and then if still interested, I buy the book.

There are exceptions. I’m a huge fan of history (fiction and non-fiction) and almost anything on Richard III is going to trigger my immediate interest. Much as I love the Bard of Avon, I don’t rely on HIM for historical accuracy!

One of my favourite novels is The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey. The title comes from the phrase “Truth is the daughter of time”, which I think is lovely. It is also one of the few books to make me change my mind about something, in this case, the guilty of Richard III regarding the Princes in the Tower.

The book’s “star” is Inspector Alan Grant who is confined to a hospital bed by a nasty accident and who decides to investigate Richard III from that bed as a means of passing the time (Grant is VERY bored in the hospital). The conclusions Grant reach are startling. Highly recommend this great book.

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Allison Symes’s books on Goodreads