Go Back to A Guide To Creative Writing
Today is Thursday 28th May 2020 and the new web site really starts here. Up to now I have just been restoring my previous U3A web site and adding extra inprirational resources. So the new writing groups starts now today, ready and waiting for the group opening at TheHub, drop in centre, Market Weighton.
As with everything in life our ‘jumping off’ point is a single thought.
Problem one: I don’t have one single thought, well not about writing I don’t…
Problem two: My thought isn’t very interesting…
Problem three: My thought is a scary one…
Problem four: I don’t like where I think this may be going…
Problem five: No one would be interested in what I think…
Problem six: It will never develop into a worthwhile story anyway…
Problem seven: Procrastination is the thief of time.
Get into a habit of !JUST WRITING!
REMEMBER a writer writes
My single thought was about COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN.
”When I speak, you don’t listen. When I listen you don’t speak. You don’t want to listen, you only want to speak. I have no Voice.”
I am sure that this is a very common thought that a lot of peope have, frustrated by someone, who never seems “to be there for them.”
To tell this thought as a story there are limitless options. POETRY might well be your thing. You want to ‘sing’ your story. Let’s stick to short prose format for now and see where we go from here.
JOHN walks into the kitchen.
Its morning and he has just got out of bed.
He has not slept very well and is not loking forward to work today
His wife slept like a log, snored like a hog, and would not engage sexually.
——————————
Julie was feeling very alert, yesterday had been a very tiring day “his mother had visited!” waited on hand and foot as usual.
John had joined with his mum, sitting sipping and goss sah BLOODY pipping Grr! Bastard! no Bastards, plural!
NOTE: – ONE SINGLE THOUGHT HAS BECOME MANY
QUESTIONS: –
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- Is this the beginning , middle, or end of a much bigger story?
- are these characters the main characters or are there others that need bringing into THE PLOT?
- What is the main cause of the COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN? There’s a glaringly obvious one BUT try to think ‘out of the box’ try to surprise your reader by bringng in some extra information that ‘changes things.’ A TWIST.
- Who is telling the story? THE NARRATOR.
- The main character (1st. Person)
- An observer (3rd Person)
- An entity – TV report, a diary, email list, court proceeding record, a ghost, god, angel ad infinitum
- Is this a…
- short story?
- LONG STORY?
- ‘stand alone’ story?
- Part of a longer story?
- a blog or meme…BIOGRAPHY
- IS THIS fact or fiction?
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AND ALL THIS BEFORE BREAKFAST
There are some people ‘out there’ that say that Creative Writing cannot be taught AND maybe that is true? You could go through all the methodology shown above and still ‘not have a clue’ about what you are doing. That’s the time when you need to look at what else you learned along the way.
- you learned something about your thought processing
- you exercised (maybe after a very log gap) your imagination
- you learned some WRITING TERMINOLOGY
- You discovered PLOT, CHARACTER, SCENE, SUSPENCE.
- You stopped being purely a reader and became a Reader/Writer.
- You are working on becoming a CANDO. It’s like a giant jig-saw puzzle – when you finally get all the peices, then you can do the puzzle, but until that day arrives then you are very much ‘a work in progress.’
TITLE: examples – good or bad? you decide.
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- Rain Again
- Tea Time
- Reggie got it
- Bouy Drowns
- A sinking feeling
- Abby Knew
- Shocking Fire
! VERY IMPORTANT ! The decision you make here is vital. Make the title a ‘hook’ and your reader will decide to read your work. Make the title dull, uninteresting and BORING and guess what? Your reader isn’t!
That’s enough for now. Think you have got it all? Bet you haven’t Just to test if we are on the same page….
Write 200 words on anything that happened yesterday that ‘stuck’ in your mind & describe how it made you feel.