New Stories by Allison Symes
Image Credit: Images created in Book Brush using Pixabay photos. Book cover image from Chapeltown Books. AI images avoided.
I usually take part in the Open Prose Mic Night The Writers’ Summer School, Swanwick hold every August. It’s a great opportunity to discover how stories go down with the audience. In 2025 I read out one or two tales from my then forthcoming Seeing The Other Side precisely for that reason. Am glad to say the tales concerned did get laughs the way they were meant to.
When I take part in these events, I look for a balance of old and new stories to share. I like to mix up the moods of the tales too to show what flash fiction can do and be. It is a wonderful format for humorous writing but it can also pull you up sharp and make you think, make you react. I still feel a chill at Hemingway’s classic For sale: baby shoes, never worn.
The great thing with the Mic Nights is everyone gets the same amount of time (usually five minutes) and it does make you think what is your best story, old or new, to share. I rehearse what I’ll read. It does wonders for the nerves knowing I’ve done that.
It also means I know I can be spot on with timings. Zoom is useful for this because as well as giving me my timing, I can hear how I sound and how I would come across to the audience. It gives me a chance to ensure I have got my emphases in the right places too.
Reading work out loud is something I’ve long advocated. Experience has shown me what looks good written down doesn’t always read out loud well. If I stumble, a reader is likely to as well. It’s often a good sign I’ve overwritten something and it’s time to get out the editing pen again.
Mic Nights give you great opportunities to hear new stories by many authors (and poems for the poetry ones). I love that aspect too and am more likely to check out books by the authors whom I’ve heard share some of their tales this way.
I also love the idea of having new stories read to me. If you get the chance to read some of your work like this, I’d say go for it. It’s a good way to practice public speaking (and I use Zoom to help me rehearse though Audacity would also work well and is what I used years ago).
The lovely thing with Mic Nights is the audience is on your side. They want you to do well. They want you to entertain them. And I’ve found that thought alone has encouraged me to bring my very best to the event. Readers like to connect with stories, I know I do, but events like this can help build a following for the author too.
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