Figurative Speech
Figurative Language Figurative language refers to words used in a sense that deviates from their obvious or original meaning to add emphasis, flair or encourage understanding. In prose as in poetry, figures of speech are used to prompt the reader’s recollection of sensory experiences, stimulate arresting images, create new associations of meaning and evoke […]
Drama is more than words
DRAMA NEEDS MORE THAN WORDS If you are new to playwriting you are about to rethink your approach to writing. Apparently actors or journalists are more likely than novelists and short story writers to make successful playwrights. Playwriting is an extension of acting; novelists have only words on which they tend to concentrate. Journalists too, […]
Story Construction – Check List
1.Did it begin well – or can you suggest an alternative opening? 2. Can you picture the setting? 3. Is there an atmosphere (happy, sad, eerie, etc)? 4. Were the characters credible? 5 .Did you understand what was happening? Too complicated? 6. Did it flow well or was it disjointed at all? 7. What did you enjoy […]
Creating Characters
Character is revealed via: 1. Physical description 2. Psychological description – motives, personality, prejudices, blind spots, attitude towards self and what an individual prefers to keep secret 3. What the individual doesn’t share, shares and how it is said 4. The thoughts, insights and feelings of the individual 5. Affiliations – with whom the individual chooses to associate and be intimate, who is avoided, and any preferences for solitude and silence 6. How others react to or comment on […]
Beginning Poetry
Some Thoughts On ‘Doing’ Poetry for The First Time By John Munson, Swanland U3A Creative Writing Group (personal capacity)with contributions from Christine Williams, Sue Robertson and Diane Wells. As a young English teacher in a tough Hull school I volunteered to organise the English Club and Magazine. One 14-year-old pupil brought me her poetry notebooks with the invitation to publish anything that I thought […]
Adding a new light
Ernest Hemingway Words = 1436 Some Spanish is used. The theme is nothingness and nada, meaning both nothing and nothingness, appears many times, along with nada y pues nada. This means either nothing and for nothing or nothing and then nothing. Otro loco mas = another crazy person. It was very late and everyone had left the cafe except an old man who sat […]
