Tag: Using the weather in stories

Author News – Allison Symes – Out and About With ACW

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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. Many thanks to Janet Williams, my lovely editor at Chandler’s Ford Today, for the image of me at the most recent Hiltingbury Book Fair. I now use this as my Gravatar! Screenshots taken by me, Allison Symes.
Hope you have had a good week. Had a lovely time watching The Chameleons perform Arnold Ridley’s Ghost Train. Review to follow in due course. Am off to another amateur production soon too. It’s all go. Author newsletter out again tomorrow. How can it be almost November already?

Facebook – General and Chandler’s Ford Today

31st October 2025 – First Post

Am thrilled to share Author News – Allison Symes – Out and About with ACW as my Chandler’s Ford Today post this week, I review last week’s Autumn Gathering run by the Association of Christian Writers. I reflect on the presentations given (with so many helpful thoughts for all writers) and celebrate what was a lovely event. Hope you enjoy the post.

Author News – Allison Symes – Getting Out and About with ACW

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31st October 2025 – second post

As an extra post to the Chandler’s Ford Today one, I am delighted to say the Association of Christian Writers now has its own YouTube channel.

One thing to come out of the Egham day was that ACW members in attendance with books out had the opportunity to share a little bit about their books on this channel. Hope you enjoy the video below.

You will spot I am in full “just come in from a walk mode” here (so apologies for the wild hair but it is the authentic me you are getting!) but do check out the other authors and books here. There will be more videos to come too. There was a fantastic range of ACW works at the book table last week.

 

Hope the day has gone well. Quiet over the park but Lady and I had a lovely time. I then got on with my autumn working out – raking up leaves. (Lady is no good at this but is excellent in running through leaves, scattering them everywhere).

Writing wise, I’ll be sharing Author News – Allison Symes – Out and About with ACW for Chandler’s Ford Today this week. I’ll be looking back at a fabulous event in Egham last weekend and share some of what I thought came out from the theme of the presentations, all useful for any writer. Link up tomorrow. See above.

Am off out this evening to see The Chameleons’ latest production – Ghost Train (which was written by Arnold Ridley of Dad’s Army fame, he was Godfrey in that). Will review for CFT in due course. Will say now it was an excellent story but more to come in a future review.

Pleased to be back on More than Writers, the blog spot for the Association of Christian Writers, with my latest blog post, Memories and Fiction. I look at how memories can inspire fiction and why characters should have memories (it helps make them more believable for one thing). Hope you enjoy the post.

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Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

I don’t celebrate Halloween as I prefer to commemorate 1st November – All Souls Day – where you remember and celebrate those who have gone to heaven.

But for this week’s Friday Flash Fiction story I have come up with an appropriately titled piece for this time of year. I hope you enjoy Pumpkins.

One thing with flash is it is suitable for almost any topic but you do have to focus on one particular moment, one particular character. The essence of flash is to hone a story down to its essence.

What can be tricky is working out what the particular moment is you have to share with readers. Often you’ll have a great idea for a story but it will take more than your allowed word count to put in everything you want so you have to hone down to get to the spirit of the piece and focus on what will serve that alone.

It is why flash is a wonderful discipline and why it will do so much for your editing skills. With time and practice, you develop skills and instincts as to what does really matter in your stories.

Hope today has gone well. Lady got to see her Hungarian Vizler pal on what has been a murky day here.
I don’t tend to use the weather much in my flash and other stories. It can be open to cliche but you could use weather to influence your character’s mood and, as a result, what their attitude and behaviour might be. This will be especially effective if other characters in your story know your lead person isn’t normally like this.

Also the weather can be used to put another obstacle (or several) in your character’s way. What will they do/can they do to overcome that?

Fairytales with Bite – Magical Events

What kind of events are commemorated in your magical setting? I am thinking along the lines of historical events for your world but it could also include “scientific” discoveries in the field of magic being commemorated, especially if they have brought great benefits to your setting.

For example, if a particular spell helped boost your world’s equivalent of medicine, how would that be commemorated? Would your characters be encouraged to look at how life was before it was discovered and compare it with how things are now?

Naturally such events could be manipulated to keep folk under control so who would be behind that and why did they feel the need to have the Roman equivalent of “bread and circuses” to contain their magical world?

Who set up magical events in the first place and, even where there is a good reason for having these things, what did they have to do to persuade others to have these things?

I’ve always imagined that organising magical beings to do anything would be like herding cats – technically possible, of course, but nigh on impossible to actually do, so how did your person get these things set up?

Could be some funny stories here. Also there could be good stories to be had with the magical event concerned as the backdrop.

This World and Others – Commemorations and Sombre Events

Now for Fairytales with Bite above, I was assuming the magical events in question would be jolly ones. But there are other types of events of course, including formal commemorations and more sombre events.

For example, what would your world’s equivalent be of Remembrance Sunday? All worlds would have some history behind them. If there is one thing I do know about history, it is that it is so often grim. And while that may not come into play for your story directly, a world setting would hint at its past in some way, including things like this. It would help a reader picture your world more. It would make it seem more real.

Also your characters would refer to events of any kind going on, especially if you did use them as a backdrop. Also it could form part of their conversation – e.g. “did you get to Event X last week? Did you hear what happened?” etc. That kind of chatter would have a direct impact on your story. There would be consequences from the chatter as well as from readers finding out what did happen.

In the development of magic, there would be good developments and bad ones. So could your more sombre events remember those times when things went badly wrong? How did your world come to terms with this? What impact does it have on your setting now? Were your characters involved in these things in any way or are they the descendants of those behind what may well have been a tragedy? How do they come to terms with the past here?


MailerLite – Allison Symes – Newsletter Sign Up

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AMAZON AUTHOR CENTRAL – ALLISON SYMES

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Characters You Love and Loathe

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Image Credits:-
All images from Pixabay/Pexels unless otherwise stated. Book cover images from Chapeltown Books and Bridge House Publishing. Screenshots taken by me, Allison Symes. Very, very hot here in the UK right now. Lady and I keeping things as cool as possible. Take care, everyone.

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Facebook – General

Had a lovely swim earlier today. Came back to my car, parked beautifully in the shade and discovered the internal temperature was 38ºC! Am grateful for air con to cool things down quickly. Much quieter day for Lady today (and no car travel for her on days like this either). She has not been sorry about that. Am not a fan of excessive heat (due to the dog and being asthmatic myself).

Still it is relatively cool at my desk so I write on. Many thanks for the great comments which have come in on my Authors Electric post yesterday. It seems my dislike of a certain Jane Austen character has caused comments – good! See link below.

Do I dislike any of my own characters? Oh yes. There are a few I definitely wouldn’t want to meet for real. But that’s how it should be I think. I should be able to come up with unlikeable characters as well as the ones who I am obviously going to root for. Otherwise crime writers, for one example, would never to be to write up their villains would they?

AE - July 2022 - Working out what you dislike can be useful

For Authors Electric this month, I look at Characters You Love and Loathe. Many thanks for the great comments coming in on this one already. Let’s just say I make my dislike of one particular Austen character clear – what do you think about her?

I go on to look at why characters make or break a story and why I have to see where they are coming from. It doesn’t mean I have to agree with their actions though. But I do have to be gripped by a character to enjoy their story.

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Hope you’re enjoying a nice relaxed Sunday. Am looking forward to sharing my new Authors Electric post tomorrow. See above. Later on in the week will be my penultimate post in my In Fiction series for Chandler’s Ford Today. I’ll be looking at Your Lead Character in Fiction for that. I’ll also be including a mini quiz in the post. And yes I have thought of something for the letter Z when it comes around soon. Phew!

Looking forward to being back at the Swanwick Writers’ Summer School in August. Will be lovely to catch up with friends and make new ones. I’ll be running a one hour workshop there on Editing – Both Sides of the Fence. Would like the weather to be nice but not so hot for all of that though.

And now on to some flash fiction writing – for me Sunday is story time. Hope to share the results later in the week.

Keeping as cool as possible here. Lady doing likewise. It’s about the only time Lady is sensible, bless her. I did go through the drought of 1976 and my abiding memory of that time is of the government appointing a Droughts Minister. Within the week, the heavens opened! Wonder if we’ll see that again.

A big thank you for the lovely comments in on Cookie Surprise, my latest story on Friday Flash Fiction. This is probably as close as I’ll get to writing anything connected to children’s literature. Am so enjoying using various random generators to trigger story ideas for FFF and my YouTube channel. The generators are great for making you think outside of your usual box and I highly recommend using them.

Screenshot 2022-07-15 at 16-53-16 Cookie Surprise by Allison Symes

Facebook – From Light to Dark and Back Again

Even hotter here today. Lady and I are definitely not keen on it. The impact of the hot weather is being felt everywhere and I do hope those fires are soon put out. Take care everyone.

A more positive impact is the impact of your flash pieces on your readers. What do you want to make your readers feel?

If you want to make them laugh (always a laudable aim), how will you do it? Is your chosen character up to the job? They don’t need to be out and out funny in themselves but capable of producing laughter in others. This is where pompous characters work so well. They kind of set themselves up for a fall almost and that is where we get the laughs.

Equally serious characters who come out with unfortunate turns of phrase where everyone around them laughs but they themselves don’t can also work well.

Funny characters come out of situations

Very hot in my part of the world today – Lady all okay but doesn’t like the heat much. Has spent a lot of the day chilling out.

I don’t tend to use the weather in my stories much. This is because I’m wary of imitating the old infamous beginning to a story “It was a dark and stormy night…”, which is NOT held up as an example of fine writing. Quite the opposite in fact! I really don’t want to go down that route for story telling.

I would also rather show you the weather by how my characters act. I would rather you saw my characters shivering or slapping on the old sunscreen. You can also use the other senses here – characters can be listening to the rainfall. They can taste snow on their tongues etc. They can feel the hail hitting them (and trust me I’ve done that a number of times when out with Lady, it can hurt).

There are ways to bring the weather into stories in ways which won’t switch your reader off or run the risk of you being put up for a bad writing award!

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One lovely thing about creative writing is it can encourage empathy. I do have to understand where my characters are coming from to be able to write their stories up. I have to be able to imagine how they would feel, act, and/or react in any given circumstances.

But the nice thing with empathy is it doesn’t have to be confined to writing stories. The world could always do with lots of it!

The creative arts as as whole can be therapeutic for the people doing them but it can spread wider than that. I hope fiction does help spread empathy.

I’ve only written a couple of characters where I have no sympathy for them at all (these tend to be my darker tales) but even there I understand why the characters are the way they are. I don’t have to approve though! And this is one very good reason why you should never judge the author by their work! (This is just as well for the horror writers I think!).

 

I occasionally use repetition in my flash tales. I know that sounds odd. A limited word count and you’re repeating a word or words you’ve already used, isn’t that a waste of your word count? Not really.

When I do this, I’m doing it for effect. I’m usually trying to get a rhythm going in my prose or the repetition is something important and I want the reader to pick up on that importance. I don’t use this technique a lot but sometimes it’s useful.

Whatever you write, you need to know why you are writing it in that way and does it suit the character and/or their situation? The answer should be yes, naturally.

Allison Symes - Flash Fiction Collections

Goodreads Author Blog – First Audio Books

I love audio books – really useful for long journeys. The first ones I listened to, and which are still great favourites, were the Terry Pratchett Discworld ones, narrated by Sir Tony Robinson. These were great for another reason. I got my better half into these stories thanks to the audio books and it mean for several birthdays, wedding anniversaries etc., presents for him were sorted! Alas no more because we’ve got the lot!

What was the first audio book you enjoyed? What made you go for it? Had you already read the paperback? I had with the Discworld ones but my other half had not.

I’m never worried about book formats. People find different ways into stories. There will always be a need for the printed book but I do love it when those who are not great readers, such as my other half, discover and love stories another way. Audio books are a fabulous invention.

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