Characters - we need them

I've just taken part in world book night again. I've added a link so that you can see what this fabulous initiative is all about. I've been involved each year in the business of giving out books to people in order to encourage a love of reading. This year I chose to distribute M.C. Beaton's Quiche of Death, the first in a series of books about an unlikely detective in the shape of Agatha Raisin, a retired PR Guru.
The book could be categorised as cosy detective in terms of genre. It is a light and humorous read with an interesting central character. Agatha Raisin is in her fifties, a bit grumpy and solitary in her ways and often ungenerous in her thoughts. She has good points and bad points and the author allows some delicious insights into her ungenerous points of view. The most important feature she has is that of the tenacity to make her a good amateur sleuth.
I was impressed with this character and the twenty or so kitch and funny novels that have been woven around her. The detective genre lends itself to characters who can appear time and time again in  a number of mysteries. Readers love to catch up with someone who feels like an old friend.
In the television series the part of Agatha Raisin is played by a glamorous woman. In the book she's well dressed but somehow plain and matter of fact and I wondered how much she resembles the writer.
Can you think of a fantastic character to hang twenty novels onto and have fans begging for more. Wouldn't it be wonderful? A writer's dream.

To make a start at finding your character think of someone you know, maybe even yourself, who has the power to drive a story along. Consider the following to help you shape the character further.

Is s/he modern or traditional in habit and dress?
Does s/he have strong views or liberal views on life issues and politics?
Is s/he religious, or lapsed in religion or a pagan?
Can your character cook?
Who are they friends with?
Have they or are they married? Just once or are there a few ex spouses?
Who are the members of their family?
What environment are they in and does this provide the potential for many stories?

Please do have a go and come up with a prize winning character with whom you can share your writing room and grow rich. 


worldbooknight.com

www.agatharaisin.com

Fantastic endings.

I've been teaching creative writing for many years and in that time countless people have told me that they've thought up a fantastic idea for a novel, story or play. Very often these ideas are fantastic to the point that I wished I'd thought of the myself. I have such ideas myself. Superb locations, three dimensional characters and a plot with more that its share of twists and turns.

No one has ever approached me with a fantastic idea that comes with a satisfying, well thought out and unexpected ending. An ending, yes, but something memorable? That's a lot harder.

Have you ever spent time reading a story, watching a film or play and been disappointed at the the way things turned out? I suspect we all have. Have you ever read a book and felt that the writer concentrated more on the first half of the book, the half that got your interest, than they did on the second half?

We end up coming away from these experiences feeling let down and possibly avoiding anything else by the writer whose ending wasn't up to much.

I've just read Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.

What fantastic plotting and planning has gone into this piece of work. Before I got to the ending I made a couple of predictions about what it might be. I was wrong and the ending she gave had both a sense of finality about it and a sense of implications for the future.

When I wrote my play Have I Enough for BBC Radio 4 the producer didn't like the last couple of sentences that formed the ending and asked me to come up with something more pleasing. I didn't have a plan B and so came up with a technique for getting ideas from nowhere that I call wracking my brains!! I'm also a great list writer and so I made myself write a list of five suitable endings. Not an easy task.

Are your story endings as breathtaking as your opening lines? If not, why not?

Have you -

Spent more time on the beginning than the ending.
Focussed your attention on how it starts but not how it ends.
Forgotten your audience.
Failed to plot thoroughly.
Considered all the ways in which the story might possibly end.

Why not dig through some of your work. A piece that you're not quite happy with or that has been rejected. Re-write the ending. Doing that will involve some re-writing throughout but it might eradicate an ending that's not surprising, too predictable, not worth waiting for.

To strengthen your endings

Make sure you know what your characters want - do they get it? do they get something better, worse? Understand the big things that they want, such as a perfect partner/job or a car. Also understand their small needs such as good coffee, restaurants that don't have carpeted floors, clothes that flatter their body shape.
Make your characters three dimensional and complex so that you have plenty of material to work with.



And when you've done that....read Gone Girl for inspiration.


gillian-flynn.com/gone-girl/

Book Stash

The picture above is of one of my book stashes. It's in a cupboard above my bed and shows only a third of what's in there. I have stashes all over the house and only buy books at the moment if they will be useful to me at work. The rest I borrow from the library or buy at charity shops and return. I have lots of books and tidy them regularly with a view to throwing a few out...I find throwing out very difficult.

It occurred to me that I could simplify this situation by writing a one paragraph summary of the content of each book. 

Fortune Hotel, for example, is a book of urban and edgy short stories about travel. I read it once in a while and an entry in a book of book outlines might read


Short stories about the terrors experienced by unthinking westerners who blunder into the unforgiving worlds that rely on income from tourism.

If I did this for every book I could clear my house of clutter and concentrate on the joy of empty spaces.


Exercise:

Pick ten of your books and summarise them. A couple of paragraphs is more than enough. Use the paragraphs to prompt new ideas for articles, poems or  short stories.

classes for writers

My creative writing class will run again at Oldham Lifelong Learning Centre in Oldham. It starts again on Friday 1st May (10am - 12noon) and finishes on Friday 6th June. It's six weeks only with a break in the middle for half term. 
A variety of topics will be looked at with the aim of getting pieces written and using them to learn from.
Enrol at the central library in Oldham. Costs depend on income. Phone 0161 770 8029 and ask.


Writing and selling short stories for women's magazines. Saturday 26th September 2015 at Waterside Arts, Waterside Road, Sale, Manchester M33. £35 for a day long workshop - 10 - 3. A focussed look at what magazine fiction editors want for their readers.


Creative Writing in business situations. Two hour sessions or day long workshops in which creative writing is used to aid fresh approaches to situations in workplaces. Designed to address the requirements of participants and organisations. Ask me for details.

email me at carmen_walton@hotmail.com   

Time to write plays

The last time I posted I was extolling the virtues of the pint sized play. Since then I have discovered that my own competition entry to The Irlam Fringe Festival has been selected for production, along with five other plays. It's called Large White Loaf and a Tin of Rice and is about a fragile love triangle. I'll tell you more about the process as it happens.

This is a pleasing result for me as for a while I've only been able to write and sell short pieces. A fifteen minute play is fifteen pages long, so while it's not huge it's still an advance in  terms of developing plot and characters. 

Time has been an issue for me and is for a number of writers. I'm in the middle of everything and I only get writing time if I'm careful with my time in general. Here are some of the ways that I have created time to write.

• Get up earlier than everyone else in your house in order to have peace in which to write.
• Go to bed later than everyone else ....
• Reduce or cut your tv viewing / computer game playing / surfing.
• Improve the way your writing is organised so that if you get some unexpected free time you don't waste it looking for your work or trying to remember where you were up to.
• Reduce your involvement with high maintenance situations. These are different for everyone but for me they have been people who talk about themselves/family/colleagues all the time and people who are chaotic, People who offload or stay on the phone too long / outstay their welcome. This makes me sound anti-social and I'm not. A little often is fine and I like to meet up with people for lunch or coffee. Sometimes. 
• Too many possessions can be high maintenance as they have to be stored, used, washed, kept in good repair. All things that take up time you could spend writing.
• Don't put pressure on yourself to keep your house sparkling and your washing gleaming. Good enough is good enough.
• Keep cooking simple unless there's a special occasion.
• Gardening, if you have a garden. Keep it simple and realistic. Keep on top of it.
• Keep paper and pens with you so that you can write in down time such as waiting in your car to pick someone up, having a haircut, waiting to be seen for appointments, lunch hours at work, bus or train journeys.
• Be organised. Have places for things that can get lost such as keys and phones. Looking for them wastes time, is stressful and can make you late for your plans for the day. Go shopping with a list so that nothing is forgotten and you don't have to make several journeys. Keep a diary so that you can see where you are and what opportunities to carry out your business exist in that area. Don't visit somewhere twice when once will do.
• Delegate some jobs if you can and accept the offerings of others rather than expecting them to do things to your standards.

And then, with the ten minutes here and half an hour there that you've saved....get writing. 


Why not try one - or both - of these quick fire, time based writing exercises?

1. Set your clock for one minute and use those sixty seconds to write a stream of consciousness on the subject of time passing.

2. Write a list of all the things that have wasted your time. Can you see the makings of a poem in this list?

fantastic short plays

My good friend Jenny Roche  jennyroche.co.uk is a mine of extrememly useful information. She has reminded me that the JB Shorts event is almost upon us. It's the 13th season for this event and I would recommend it.

You get to watch about six short plays that have been written by people with television experience and are performed by superb actors. The whole night with a pint of lager and a packet of nuts isn't much more that a tenner. Money well spent.

Shorts and short plays are terms now used to describe what was once known as a one act play. They are often shown in a group and set in pubs and bars in front of non- traditional theatre audiences. It's live entertainment that doesn't cost too much and is accessible.  

If you can't get to the JB Shorts night in Manchester which is on from 14th-25th April then go to something similar.

To get tickets go to wegottickets.com/jbshorts

To see some fantastic short plays that are 10-15 minutes long read the book published by the pint-sized play initiative.  pintsizedplays.org.uk   It's full of sharply written stuff. Better still go onto their website and have a look at the competition they are running until May 2015.

If you're good with dialogue and can stretch your imagination to make a pub bar feel like an Elizabethan street (for example)  with no props then you'll love the challenge.

stereotypes

What's a stereotype? Are you stereotypical? Is it a derogatory term or a useful one?

I don't think I am easy to stereotype but I was chatting to a man once who nudged me into a stereotypical position by asking me if I was going shopping. I am female and in some quarters people believe that women enjoy recreational shopping. I don't.
Scottish and Yorkshire stereotypes include frugal and dour sorts. Aren't black people supposed to be good at sports and singing? And accountants of any origin are likely to be boring.
While I don't dismiss stereotypes I think it's useful to consider how a character is portrayed. It might not work to have a nursery nurse with an abrupt manner, a dark side and no patience but you might be able to create a vicar who is free of the tea and cake, church fetes and overt politeness without her losing her integrity.

I've identified a group of people who are often stereotyped. Try identifying those attitudes and characteristics that are used to typify them and then create a character who doesn't fit the template.
When adjusting the stereotype don't head for the polar opposite. Look for subtle characteristics somewhere between opposite ends of a spectrum.

Have a go.

School teacher.

Drummer.

Social worker.

Confectioner.

Plastic surgeon.

Actor.

Hairdresser.

Dinner lady.

Prisoner

Office worker.

You might find that you are liberated by tweaking stereotypical expectations or you might come to the conclusion that they exist for a reason. It depends on what type you are.