Flash fiction is a form I've got into comparatively recently and I must admit I really enjoy writing it.  It's a great cure for over-writing given every word has to count.  It is also a great exercise to try if you want to practice your editing skills!

For Cafelit I usually write 100 words short stories.  For other sites (usually competition entries) I write between 250 and 750 words.  But the challenge is for the stories to make sense and for them to read as if you couldn't possibly leave another word out.

Flash fiction, for a writer, is the ultimate in "short but sweet".  I find proverbs can make great titles and be wonderful inspiration for very short work. One new flash fiction piece of mine is:-

THE CIRCLE OF LIFE

People throw kittens into the river here.  I hate that.  It’s so cruel.  What can I do?
    I thought I’d rescue the poor animals but they’d only be thrown in again when I’m not about.  I know my people.  Subtle they are not.
    So I decide to create a need for cats.  If people need them they won’t drown them so the kitties win as well.  How to do this?  Easy peasy.
    Get all the mice I can find and unleash them on the village!  I’ll be setting the first lot free at dawn.
    
    ENDS.

My great writing love is fiction, especially short stories, but I have developed a huge love for non-fiction, especially blogging.  Prior to blogging on my websites and Chandler's Ford Today, I tended to save my liking for non-fiction to reading history for pleasure and so on.

Of course blogging might be a relatively new term but the idea behind it is centuries old.  Just how far back does the first diary entry go and who wrote it?  ("Adam - Day Four in the Garden of Eden - Eve has just found a nice looking apple.  Thinks we should try it.  Can't think why we've not found it before" - Maybe not!).

So in fictional worlds, who keeps the equivalent of a diary and why?  Do diaries get published?  Do these cause controversy?  My rebellious fairy godmother, Eileen, does not keep a diary because she would not want to risk having any information in it used against her.  And she feels it would be!  She assumes not only would her enemies do this, but so would the Council when it was particularly fed up with her.  It would be a good way to have a go at Eileen.  So Eileen will give nothing away, in writing at least.

But which of your characters perhaps feels the need to express themselves in this way and why? Is the information used against them?  Equally how do they keep their diaries truly private so nobody could use that information?

I think if I was to get any of my characters to write a diary, I would probably make it the Chief Witch on the grounds she has nobody she can confide in (the Queen can at least talk to Eileen). Something to think about perhaps for future blog posts on my Fairytales with Bite website.

Many thanks to Richard Hardie, Authors Reach stalwart, YA writer and fellow blogger for Chandler's Ford Today, for sharing an excellent blog piece on email scams.  Tonight's post, which Richard and i have written jointly, is called Scam Alerts  and I finish the piece with further good advice and a classic of a You Tube clip.  The scammer on this clip is never going to win Mr Mastermind and do have a laugh when you hear who he claims to be!

So going back to fictional worlds in general, what would count as technological crime?  Does your world have computers, laptops or mobile phones?  If not, what is your world's equivalent?  If your world is a magical one, how could magic be mis-used in a "technological" way - for example could crystal balls have their inherent powers boosted artificially to give those doing this an unfair advantage over everyone else?

How does your world police itself or is it a case of every being for themselves? 

While sorry for the necessity of yesterday's Chandler's Ford Today on phone scams, I have been glad to see positive comments come in about it.  A further post on more scams will follow in the next day or so based on a blog item written by fellow writer and CFT scribe, Richard Hardie.  More details nearer the time.

In any fictional world, there will be the honest and dishonest characters.  So how do the latter operate? What makes them dishonest in the first place?  How does their dishonesty impact on others?  Does their greed prove to be their undoing?

What are the downsides to trying to enforce rules and laws in a magical environment when those you're trying to apprehend are likely to be at least as magically powerful as you are?

I think there would be scope for comedy there too.

On my Fairytales With Bite website, my blog post tonight was about honest characters. Eileen, my rebellious fairy godmother, is honest and it lands her right in in regularly.  From my viewpoint, this is huge fun to write!

So for this blog post, I turn to honest writing.  I think one of the most important things for any writer is to write true to their characters.  Eileen, based on her attitudes and outlook on life, has to be blunt.  Anything else would let her character down and I think weaken it.

This is where I think interviewing your characters can be a wonderfully helpful aid to finding out about them so you can write honestly for and about them.  Questions can vary from your characters' own assessment of their weaknesses and strengths to their tastes in books, music, food and so on.  I've also asked my characters about their biggest regrets and tailored other questions to how they felt about the situations I put them in! Other good questions include favourite/earliest memories but the whole point of the interview is for you to really get to know your characters so well you almost have no choice but to write honestly about them.

Honest writing shows, as does a writer who is "holding back", but I've always found the stories and characters that convince me the most are the results of honest writing by the author.

Monsters in fictional worlds usually have certain key ingredients in common.  These include:-

1. Being ugly.  I can't think of one pretty one can you?
2. Having more limbs than the monster can reallly control/make use of.  It contributes to the ugly look and makes said monster more fiercesome if it is seen to be thrashing limbs about.
3. Having more teeth than strictly necessary.  Again this falls under the category of look as fierce as possible.
4. Never being vegetarian, yet alone vegan.  All good monsters like their meat, fresh flesh preferred, yours ideally.
5. Wanting to destroy vegetation, landscapes etc when there is no strict need for the monster to do so.  All monsters have a destructive streak.
   

My latest Chandler's Ford Today post, Phone Scams, is one of those sad but necessary posts.  I hope the advice in it stops some from falling victim to the greedy scammers. 

Scammers of course try to prey on the innocent/naive, the gullible and the vulnerable.  I used to love the series Hustle where the theme was it was impossible to con an honest man/woman.   I also loved the Robin Hood element of this series where the "heroic scammers" always ripped off the greedy, selfish and dishonest often as punishment for their scams on the innocent.  The idea of to catch a thief, you need to set a thief was fully explored in this show.

In your fictional world, who would count as innocent/naive, gullible and/or vulnerable?  Why are they this way?  Do they have people to stand up for them?  Is there a criminal justice system with courts, prisons etc when the scammers are brought to book?  Is this type of theft taken seriously enough?

How can people defend themselves against magical frauds?  (I'd assume a magical fraud was designed not to steal money as such, you don't need magic for that, but to pinch magical gifts, powers etc).  There could be some interesting stories in these ideas.

Most people I think have no problems with the Ten Commandments in that most agree with "do not kill" and "do not steal" themes at least.  Jesus's command to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" also makes sense (it takes revenge out of the equation for one thing.  How many conflicts have been made a lot worse as people seek to take revenge for something?). 

But what would be the moral code on your fictional world and where does it come from? Is there a sacred text your world refers to and if so how did that text come about?  Do all accepts its teachings or is there rebellion against its restrictions?  

When you write your first stories for your fictional world, what time setting are you using?  When the moral code is up and running or whilst the peoples of your world are still trying to agree on one?  What happened to make the world decide it needs a moral code?

How your characters interact with each other can, in itself, tell you a great deal about the characters themselves.  For example, are they generally kind, happy to help others or do they resent people intruding on their time? 

Are they happy to give advice to others or do they keep useful hints and tips to themselves?  The sprites in my Fairy Kingdom are upfront about loathing one another and fights are frequent.  The higher magical species despise them for this but there is no love lost between the fairies and the witches, to name one example.  It could be argued the sprites are at least more honest about their loathing for others.

Do the species in your fictional world interact with other species or do they limit inter-species contacts?  Could there be a Romeo and Juliet situation set on your world?  When different species do have to co-operate (maybe because they're all facing a fearsome external threat), do all the normal barriers come down or is there still restraint here?  After the threat is dealt with, do the barriers go back up again or are inter-species relationships changed, for better or worse, afterwards?

For a book or story to be realistic, no matter how fantastic the setting, characters and species have to interact (so often this is the source of the conflicts driving the tale).  It is how you handle this interaction that can ramp up the tension in your stories or kill it off completely.

Interviewing your characters is a great way of finding out just how much depth, or otherwise, they have.  Some possible questions to help with outlining your characters before writing about them could include:-

1. What motivates you?  What is the one single thing you want to achieve/be?
2. Why do you like/love/hate character X, Y or Z?  What triggered this?
   
3. What do you most fear?
   
4. What is/was the greatest love of your life and why?
   
5. What are your tastes in food, drink, music, the arts and so on?
   
6. What do you most like/hate about the world in which you live?
   
7. Name the biggest influences on you and why they are.
   
8. What are your favourite examples of wildlife (flora and fauna) on your world?  Which ones do you dislike?
   
9. What is the one thing about yourself you would change?
   
10. What would you change about your world if you could?
    

It can be fun thinking up the questions too!

As you may have noted by now, I love writing lists.  Some more interview questions for your characters could include:-

1. What is your family background?
2. Are you still in contact with your family and, if not, why not?
   
3. What is your personal history?  What are you keen to hide and why?
   
4. What is your assessment of yourself?  (Do others agree with that?).
   
5. What are your prejudices (and don't try claiming there aren't any.  Everyone has some!)?
   
6. What would you ask for if you were allowed three wishes?  (Good question to put to a fairy godmother.  In my fictional magical world they are definitely not allowed to grant their own wishes.  They have to put their requests to the Queen and her Council for consideration.  Yes, bureaucracy gets everywhere!).
   
7. If you could rule your world, what would you do that the current rulers are not?
   
8. What is your favourite form of relaxation that you are happy to talk about in public?!
   
9. What is your favourite area to live in/holiday in on the world where you are and why?
   
10. What creature/person/foul fiend etc fills you with the most dread and why?
    

It was huge fun writing my current Chandler's Ford Today post called Watching the Detectives. Part of this post shares my favourite memories of fictional detectives and some great theme tunes. 

So what would trigger memories in your characters?  Favourite fictional characters of theirs?  Tunes?  What does your fictional world have in the way of entertainment that people would want to remember?

Equally does your fictional world discourage people remembering the past because there is a new government, maybe one that took over by force, that wants their citizens to focus on the future?  What happens to those who persist in remembering and go public over it?

Or are memories implanted in people?  If so, who does the implanting and how?  Can the implanting process go wrong?

Of course favourite memories are different from person to person.  Memories can cause conflict (if only between two people who remember things very differently.  See the song I Remember It Well for a wry take on this).  But what if those two people are of great importance in your fictional world?  What could a fall out between them mean for that world?

What foods and drinks are standard fare on your fictional worlds?  What foods and drinks are only available to the super rich/powerful?  Is food plentiful or does it have to be rationed?

What foods and drinks would anyone looking into your fictional worlds see as exotic?  My Fairy Queen, Roxannadrell, enjoys sampling different foods from various planets and cultures though her own world serves up Griffin Surprise to name one example of what we would consider an exotic food.  (Nothing was as surprised as the griffin concerned incidentally).

How is food produced?  There is some agriculture on my fictional magical realm and it is felt that freshly produced food is the best.  It is also felt magically produced food, though very useful in an emergency, lacks some of the taste and flavour of the same food grown or cooked naturally.  It is felt particles from the spell as it is recited gets into the food and spoils it.

In a magical world, such as the one I write about, there are "civil" crimes (similar to our crimes) and magical ones.  The most serious magical crime is to deliberately inflict cruelty leading to a painful death on another when the Fairy Kingdom is at peace.  (It is allowed when the Kingdom is at war, something the realm makes very public on the grounds people should be warned.  The fairies, especially, have never claimed to be that nice).

Punishment for this kind of magical crime is to have that same crime inflicted on the criminal.  The Fairy Kingdom is a great believer in rough justice (and argue it is better than no justice at all).  This is one of the few attitudes in the magical realm my awkward fairy godmother Eileen has always agreed with.   Certainly there is no question of any other kind of justice being offered by Eileen herself.

Punishment is inflicted by senior fairy godmothers such as Eileen and Hanastrew though most groups organise their own for their own.  Let's just say it pays not to be a witch who offends the Chief Witch.  Life expectancy is greatly reduced!

One of the great joys I've had in writing blog posts for Chandler's Ford Today has been getting to interview people, especially writer friends of mine.  I particularly enjoyed interviewing  YA author, Richard Hardie and friends, Gill James of Bridge House Publishing and Chapeltown Books, as well as Felicity Fair Thompson of Wight Dimond Press.  The latter I knew from the old days of going to the Isle of Wight Writers' Conference which is also where I first met Gill.  It truly is a small world.

I also love reading writer interviews in magazines like Mslexia and Writing Magazine.  I always learn something.  And I have found interviewing my own characters has been a great way of really finding out what makes them tick and would highly recommend doing this for any fiction writer.  Such interviews could of course make for good posts on websites as a great way of giving your readers extra information about your characters. 

More importantly I have found such interviews have made me think much more deeply about what my characters are all about and I believe I now write for them/about them with more conviction.  I think that conviction shows in confident writing.  And that you can't fake.  (Well I don't think you can.  I know when I read something that really grips me, it usually is down to the strong characters and that tells me the author has done their homework.  Perhaps part of that homework was their own interviews with their own characters before they started writing the story in earnest.  Let's just say I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case).

So interview away and have fun finding out more about your characters.  It is bound to help you write about them with more depth.

Eileen, my rebellious fairy godmother, always enjoyed a great deal of job satisfaction with dispatching evil doers and other fiends.  Hanastrew finds likewise.  The Queen genuinely tries to use her position to serve her people (though Eileen feels most of her cousin's job satisfaction comes from knowing she has the power of life and death over every other being in the realm).

One of my Shortbread Short Stories was called Job Satisfaction and I share this here now.  Hope you like it.

JOB SATISFACTION

Thud!

The fairy returned to what she’d wrongly sworn was an open window.

Damn!  Every bloody window was shut.  Her scowl curdled the street’s milk.  She fired a spell at the letterbox to keep it open.  Many fairies narrowly escaped being sliced in half by a clanging letterbox but nobody cheated her of an overdue incisor yet alone a snoring bully…  

Outside her client’s bedroom, the fairy rummaged through her pockets.  When humans made her work harder than necessary, she returned the compliment.  The fairy grinned at her pliers.  There were times she really loved her job.

END OF STORY

In my fictional Fairy Kingdom as well as there being "standard" crimes, there are also magical ones.  Those with the highest powers have the greatest responsibilities (and number of rules to follow) and also face the gravest punishment for breaching these (usually execution by another magical being with similar powers).

There were historical magical wars in my fictional realm and the damage done to certain areas so severe the land became barren.  Then there was the tremendous loss of life because of the wars and their after effects.  Nobody wants this again so the rules were brought in to control magical beings.  It was felt (and still is at the time of my novels) that this kind of control would ensure wars could not erupt.  (Many of them did out of feuds).

So, especially if you write fantasy and/or science fiction, what counts as a crime in your world?  How is it punished?  Who carries out the punishment?  What are the reasons for the laws on your world governing this aspect of life?

One of the important things about history is the way it gives us all the opportunity to remember what should not be forgotten.  After all this is why we hold things like Remembrance Day. 

My current Chandler's Ford Today post travels back in time 600 years to bring news from Agincourt (!) though in fairness it shares news of a new woodland trail, a festival and an interactive map (worn as a scarf!) launched by the Road to Agincourt project.

So what do your characters remember?  Stories can look at personal histories, society histories and so on.  What is important enough to be included in your fiction?  Even if you don't bring histories directly into your stories, there should be some sense of your world having existed and what is important to that world.  What is important to that world should be important to your character(s), unless they've deliberately chosen to rebel against that and if they have done this, why?  What aspect of to he history do they dislike and why? 

My Eileen has written has own version of Fairy Kingdom history which is far more critical of her own side than the official version.  She has no regrets over this and only her status as the Fairy Queen's cousin and heir stopped her getting into serious trouble over this.  So who writes the histories in your fictional societies?  Who controls it?

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  Well I think that can apply for monsters too.  What we think of as monstrous (in attitude, outlook or physical creature) must vary from fictional world to fictional world so how would your monsters appear to be?  Were they driven to be monsters (see Frankenstein) or were they monsters from the outset?

What makes them monsters in the eyes of the majority of your fictional world (and are they right to think this?  The majority doesn't always get things right).  Where do the monsters live?  What do they prey upon?  How are the monsters overcome (so they don't run riot and destroy everyone)? 

Can there be friendly monsters (see Roald Dahl's BFG)?  Can these monsters find acceptance or is everyone biased against them because of what others of their species do?  Do the monsters recognize themselves as monsters?  What are their intelligence levels and can they improve themselves?

Grudges cast long shadows.  Things from the past affecting today form the basis of many a great story.  Anything you can use here?  And bear in mind that a character’s development takes time.  Eileen has become awkward because she has become fed up with being “used”.  The Witch wants to take the Kingdom to avenge slights, real and imagined, on her family by the fairy royals.  The Witch “forgets” her own family attacked the royals, naturally the royals were going to fight back. 

Have your characters got enough to play for?  Their ambition has got to be strong enough.  It’s no good just wishing for something to happen.  Have they the means, or the ability to find the means, to achieve them?  What will they do to achieve them?  Have they got limits? Can they see to the end of the road?  Do they know where they want to end up?  Does personal history affect their behaviour here?

Does your setting have a history, which may well affect your characters?  The Fairy Kingdom has a history of wars between witches, wizards and fairies, leading to barren areas, which in turn is leading to overpopulation in certain parts of the realm.  This led to Eileen suggesting the more responsible magical beings living, in disguise, on other worlds.  She got shouted down yet she knows this issue won’t just go away no matter how much the Queen and Council try to ignore it.  Has your world got issues it needs to face?  What is its system of government?  If your world seems real to you, it should seem real to your readers.  And every world has to be run by someone - someone with a past, character traits that can benefit the realm/cause it great problems.

Can you make use of your character’s memories to shape them?  For instance, the Queen’s mother was murdered, obviously having a traumatic effect on the Queen and triggering her wish to keep her family close to her, no matter what it takes.

My next Chandler's Ford Today post will be bringing news from Agincourt (yes, really!) as the Road to Agincourt project shares news of some of the latest events they're running to commemorate the battle and its times. 

Spreading the news 600 years ago would have been by King's messenger, town crier, eye witnesses to battles and so on.  Spreading the news now is far faster (thanks to multi media and technology) but isn't necessarily more accurate.  News is still reliant on witnesses.  And where you get witnesses you willl always get personal bias which can skewer what is being reported.  I can't see a way around that (though it does mean the news always has a personal touch).

How is news spread in your fictional world?  What are the known biases?  Is the news accessible by all or only just to a privileged few?  Do the journalists come from a specific background or is the news room made up from all backgrounds?  Are standards high?  How is the news actually reported?

Visiting historical buildings such as Salisbury Cathedral or The Tower of London can bring home how time has passed in the life in a country, a particular location and so on. 

All historical locations have their own stories.  All historical locations have their start points, something that specifically turned them into a historically important building (for example the cathedrals were all just meant to be places of worship.  There had been no anticipation that Salisbury Cathedral would become important as one of the homes of one of the surviving copies of the Magna Carta just to name one example).

So what locations in your fictional world are historically important and why?  Does everyone honour this importance?  How are these locations treated?  Is there such a thing as archaeology in your fictional world?  Is there a tourist industry based on important locations?

Who writes the history of your world (within the fictional setting itself.  My Eileen writes her version of historical events in the Fairy Kingdom but this is not popular with the government or the Fairy Queen.  Eileen dares to criticize and, as with other aspects of her life, she is not subtle about this!).

Can time/history be manipulated within your fictional world?  Who gets to do this and can it be challenged?  What is the true version of history in your world?

Ask questions about your tales such as:-

•How are your characters’ basic needs met? 

•What is the hierarchy (and there has to be at least one, someone has to be top dog)?

•How is your world governed? Are there rules nobody can break?  What are the reasons?

•In dealing with magic, can everybody produce the same amount?  Or do certain groups have more magic than others?  Can those lower down the scale “earn” or “learn” more magic to bring them closer to their superiors?

•What happens if someone defies the basic rules or some lowly herbert betters themselves magically so they become superior?  What would the fall out be?

•What happens if someone from the superior class magically speaking rebels against that or the structures of your society?

•What do your characters do to relax?  How do they show stress? Do you have any “stiff upper lip” types?  If so, how do they show stress?  The traditional way would be a nervous tic but can you show a unique way for your unique character to reflect their state of mind? 
•
•Bad habits? What do your characters have?  How did they develop these?  Do they drive a loved one mad?  Who are their loved ones?  How did those relationships develop?  You may well find you don’t need to put all or any of this into your story but as long as you know the answers you will be able to write about and for your characters with confidence, which will show in your stories.
•
•Good habits?  Quirks?  Do they agree with their world’s politics?  Have they any ways of showing their views?  What are the consequences?

There are loads of stories to be found in answering these!!!