Instructions Write an active scene (a dinner, a romance, an adventure) from the first person POV of no more than 500 words. Now take the exact same scene and write it again from the omniscient POV, entirely from scratch and without looking at the first version. Submit both scenes, and further, please comment on what… Read More Craft of Character – Assignment week 4
Events do not make what we are as adults. But events reveal who we are. Similarly, our characters are shown through the events that they face. You need to choose a series of events through which you reveal your character. Writing characters is an experimentation of self-knowledge. You always put something of yourself into your… Read More Craft of Character – week 4
Instructions Create a scene (700-1000 words) with at least three characters. Two of these characters should have different viewpoints on the world; one should be an “insider” in the world you’re creating, and one should be an outsider. For example, you could set the scene in your country and have one person be native and… Read More Craft of Character – Assignment week 3
“It is important to craft your character in such a way that they have distinctive voices that the reader can identify, to help the reader understand who is telling the story.” You reveal your characters through their actions, thoughts, and the way they speak. The choice of words is what makes identify and discover the… Read More Craft of character – week 3
Originally posted on McSweeney’s Internet Tendencies, by MATT BACA Product Use Clarification 1: It turns out that our product is not “100% säfe,” no matter how creative your definition of “safe,” “safety,” or “säfe,™” which is a word we are legally required to inform you we just made up. But what in our crazy world is… Read More Our Combination Butter Substitute, Face Lotion, Insecticide is 100% Säfe.™
A character must a voice through which it speaks to us. That does not mean mere voice, but it’s its entire image that conveys a message. What does the character do when it speaks? does it shake its foot? does it play with its hair? Come up with special features by looking at people and… Read More Craft of Character – week 2
As he was speaking, the room was completely immobile. Nobody was moving. Solely the silent sound of the streets two floors below, filtered by the double-glazed windows, dared to enter the room. Everyone was holding their breaths, almost afraid that a sound could break, not only his train of thoughts, but his fragile person as… Read More Silence for a voice
A simply wonderful screenplay on Brexit, politics, civil service and everything around it. By James Graham. Originally posted on The Guardian. Dramatis Personae Minister for Brexit Male, 40s, Tory MP Permanent Secretary Female, 50s, from the Cabinet Office Dale Special adviser, 30s Erica Special adviser, 30s Whitehall, London, 2016. Night time. The offices of… Read More Trigger it!
‘But if you don’t eat people like others,’ Sophie said, ‘then what do you live on?’ ‘That is a squelching tricky problem around here,’ the BFG answered. ‘in this sloshflunking Giant Country, happy eats like pineapples and pigwinkles is simply.not growing. Nothing is growing except for one extremely icky-poo vegetable. It is called the snozzcumber.’… Read More Snoozcumbers
Choose a book or film that you have recently enjoyed, or select a story from mythology. Identify the core desire, need, or ambition in at least two main characters in the book/film/myth. Write one paragraph to familiarize your reader with this context. Then, create a new character based solely on your idea (not on anybody… Read More Craft of character – First assignment
The Last True Enchanter – http://wp.me/p4H24K-lB
Lecture 1 When we start to think about a story we naturally think about three questions: Who is it about? Who matters to me? Who do I want to tell the story about? The heart of character is, who matters to you. Not who you think will be interesting to other people, but what you… Read More Craft of Character – Week 1
Life if full hope. Mine is definitely erupting hope today. I am starting my second course on creative writing. The first one, Start writing fiction on Future Learning, was not great at all. The take home from that course was basically that characters are important, there are many ways to describe them and keeping a… Read More Let’s get started
Salander once found herself in a fight with a much bigger and stronger boy. She was no match for him physically. At first he amused himself shoving her to the ground several times, then he slapped her when she tried to fight back. But nothing did any good; no matter how much stronger he was,… Read More Defenceless
‘ I found your toys,’ Salander said. She held up a riding whip and poked around in the heap of dildos, harness bits, and rubber masks on the floor. ‘What’s this one for?’ She held up a huge anal plug. ‘No, don’t try to speak – I won’t hear what you say. Was this what… Read More Sadist
Apparently, we owe Frankenstein to a volcano in Indonesia which erupted, made turn the weather rubbish in Europe and created many dark and stormy nights over the Geneva Lake. Frankenstein: Freak events that gave birth to a masterpiece When Mary Shelley sat down to write Frankenstein, in May 1816, in the Villa Diodati near Geneva, she… Read More Frankenstein and the Indonesian volcano
‘ I can’t forget what happened. But my motives have changed over the years. At first it was probably grief. I wanted to find her and at least have a chance to bury her. It was about getting justice for Harriet.’ ‘In what way has that changed?’ ‘Now it’s more about finding the bastard who… Read More Hobby?
Our word were like eucalyptus blossoms of spring tossed away by the wind. The destruction of schools continued. From I am Malala, by Malala Y.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03ty0dz Having a read through the first manuscript of Frankestein by Mary Shelley and…another beloved editing hand. Thank you BBC
Armansky said nothing, hardly daring to breathe. From The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo, by S. Larsson
The best of this movie rests in its silence. I don’t waste time summarising the plot and the setting. Just check out Wikipedia or IMDb which probably do a better job than me. The point of view is that of two junior analysts. The first one is clever and looks at the big picture, while the other is… Read More Margin call, directed by J. C. Chandor
I loved the book, from the start to the end. It is a mix of action and crime novel. However, you finish it and you are left with basically a CSI episode written in the form of an e-book. That’s the thing with this kind of books, I think. They hook you in, they make… Read More Private, by James Patterson
Vote 6.5 On one side, it is extremely well written and researched (more on this later) and for this I pumped up my 6. On the other side, the ending left me a bit disappointed, and that set the benchmark around 6. The setting in 1171, Thomas Beckett has just been killed and Henry II has… Read More The Mistress of the Art of Death, by Ariana Franklin
Take a tough guy, ex-convict for murder, make him dress a t-shirt in February in Edinburgh. You have a strong protagonist. Take a bipolar weirdo with an affection for violent friends and mad girlfriends. You have a nice villain. Make the two of them meet in the worst of the circumstances. Add a woman constantly beaten by… Read More Two-way split, by Allan Guthrie
‘It’s possible, in a poem or short story, to write about common-place things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things – a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman’s earring – with immense, even startling power. It is possible to write a line of seemingly innocuous dialogue… Read More Extraordinary versus ordinary
Again I stood riveted to the spot as the crowd around my son drifted to the center of the yard where punishments meant to dissuade onlookers from similar activities were staged. My son called his mother. I heard this above the clatter of 250 plantation slaves. I grabbed the arm of the strongest kin to… Read More Slaves
‘One sentence inspires great novel’: it could be a headline. Often the motivating force behind the writing of a story can be an odd line or image that somehow sticks with the writer.
They realise there’s something missing in their own lives, something they search for but cannot find in this now, now, now generation “The message of my father’s book is about sincerity in love,” she corrects me. “Loving without expecting anything back. Love for love’s sake.” We study a picture of her standing close to… Read More Censor the love
I rewind the tape while it’s playing: another old game of ours. Both of us chipmunk along with the voices. Julia stands, wraps the curtain around her like it’s Dracula’s cloak. She’s got another joint dangling from her lip, lights it as a reverse guitar solo blares. The cherry glows. Smoke rises up and leaves… Read More The Queen
The world outside my head seemed insubstantial, as if the present could be a dream and my memories much more solid and alive in the now. Sounds were irrelevant. From Private, by J. Patterson
GetSomeSky 