Found in translation.

Misery by Stephen King (stephenking.com) was written in English and has been translated into many other languages. I have a copy of it in English with explanations for French people who are learning English. You can see in the photo above.


It's fantastic to read translated work as it gives an insight into other people, their lives and sensibilities. It's not just translation that takes place but interpretation. I have had my work, a play called Walking De Niro, translated into German. An interesting process.

Consider a few translated writers. Isaac Singer wrote in Yiddish, a language he considered more vibrant than others, and believed was more expressive than English.

 J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels have been translated into dozens of languages.

If you understand more than one language try translating a few lines from work in one language into another.

Try writing some dialogue in your usual style. Re write it in the voices of different characters, for example someone very psh. Someone very un-posh. Does it make a difference?

Read some translated work and a bit about the people who did the translating. Very insightful.

Comedy

What makes you laugh? I like slapstick. I wish I didn't but I do.

Do people laugh at different things in different countries. I was in Australia one and watched as the Aussies roared with laughter at a comedian who left me feeling as though I hadn't left school. Do people get British humour?

Have you ever sent an email that was supposed to be funny and when you read it back realised it could be taken the wrong way.

Some things are funny, some people are funny. Why is this.

Write down what makes you laugh.

Try to write a sketch of about one minute in duration (one typed page) and look at it after a couple of days to see if it works.

Who are the funny people in the world?

 woodyallen

mirandahart

What is it about them that makes you laugh?





 Try to analyse this and bear it in mind in your writing

Editing your work

I've mentioned Edgar Allan Poe a few times lately. I'm reading his stuff and it's taking ages because I keep going over the long and elaborate sentences and imagining them as they might be if they were more modern and more brief.

It isn't just EAP who gets this treatment. I recently wrote a story that was rejected by a magazine editor. When I came to look at it again I decided it could be made shorter. I got it from 2000 words to 1000! Not something to be proud of. What twaddle had I written that wasn't missed after a hefty edit?

Do it now. Get one of your stories and see if you can remove 20% of the content without changing the story. It makes you resourceful. Maybe you could remove more. Always a good thing to put stuff away for a while and come back to it with a view to reducing it to make it powerful and tight.

If all your stories are edited, try looking at Poe and see what you come up with when you reduce his sentences.



Random picture of me at a storytelling event.

Tips and wrinkles.

What is the best bit of advice you've ever been given? Who gave it to you and when? Do you live by it?

Ask a few of your friends and family for the best bit of advice they got and why? Ask who gave it to them?

You'll get some fantastic answers and if you have enough pieces of good advice you could compile one of those little books of helpful ideas.


What's the worst bit of advice you have ever had? Who gave it to you and what happened when you followed it?  There's another little book in the making but more of a dark book or tragic comedy.

What bit of advice do you give. Have you ever taken it yourself?

The best bit of advice I had was written down. It said .....to love life is to love many things....I think that's true. The advice I give people is to accept yourself as you are and forgive your limitations. Good advice or a cop out?..

Music.

Music is a big part of our lives regardless of who we are and where we are from. As a writing exercise choose two or three pieces of music that are important to you. Play them if you can and then immediately after write notes about the memories they invoke.

Can you make these recollections into a story? This may involve standing back from the memories you have evoked and writing about yourself as a fictional character.

Try writing continually for five minutes about your music and what it makes you think of. Write  stream of consciousness.

Could you write a poem of any style made from your recollections?

If you wrote about all the songs that have formed a soundtrack to your life you might have a novel...


I'm thinking now about Kung fu fighting. It always reminds me of a fantastic holiday I had as a kid.

Secrets in noisy cupboards

This piece of furniture is French. What makes it French is the long drawer in the middle which has been designed to store baguettes. It's an entirely functional piece of furniture intended to be very useful but the cupboards are stiff and open with difficulty and a loud noise. 

Create a scenario in which a person wants to retrieve an important document from the cupboard but can't because the house is never empty and opening the cupboards alerts everyone's attention. Imagine the document is a birth certificate that contains proof or evidence of great importance to the character.

The person is motivated to recover this document and this motivation drives him or her forward to take risks and think resourcefully. Motivation, risk and resourcefulness are wonderful ingredients for drama. 

This scenario could be very funny or it could be sinister or a combination of the two.

Think about why the document is important.

What will happen when the evidence is found?

Why can't the protagonist just walk up to the cupboard and open it?

Why is the protagonist so powerless?

Who in the household is the protagonist scared of offending or causing trouble with?

There's a film in this... or a novel...if you keep writing.

Is there a place in your home where secrets are kept?

Who keeps them and why?

Names and their influence.

The Royal couple have named their baby boy George. I wonder what his name would have been had he been a girl. A friend of mine - very muscled and masculine - told me his mum was going to call him Janet if he had been born a girl. Janet??? I could never look at him without thinking of him with that name.

My parents would have called me Blake if I'd been born a boy. 


What were the names your parents chose for you - the ones they didn't use?
How would your life have been different with another name?
If you are a parent, what names did you write on a list for your expected child? What made you pick the one you chose and reject the others?

Are you named after anyone? 

Write a story beginning with a name you might have had and go on to describe a day in the life of the person you might have been.