As year one at University finished I didn’t want to be left without the support of fellow writers for long periods of time so I joined Mungrisdale Writers in the beautiful Lake District. It is a well-established group led by the author Angela Locke (www.angelalocke.co.uk) for most of the year and by other authors and lecturers during the summer.
I thought at first that it would not have any direct relevance to my book, it being quite structured, very much tutor-led and quite focused on poetry. I decided, however that I would try to take one thing away from each session that I attended. Here are a few examples of how I have done that, although it hasn’t happened with every session.
Angela asked us to imagine we were writing the opening scene for a film called The Antique Shop. We had to give stage directions referring to the shop from outside, inside, in relation to anyone who was there, or anything else that came to mind. Our homework (oh yes, we get homework as well) was to think about the back-story for the shop and its characters. I immediately knew that Phoenix Antiques would be the opening scene in the Hexham part of the story.
Nick Pemberton, a guest tutor in the summer of 2010, asked us to write a series of statements that were not related to each other. This is not as easy as it sounds, but one of them jumped out at me as an angle to the story that I hadn’t considered. It led to other trains of thought.
Jannie Howker, another guest tutor, suggested we write some dialogue around a process being performed. I have taken that idea and have set conversations that happen over the course of a meal, while feeding the ducks, and of course during tasks being carried out in the cash office.
Finally Mike Smith talked about starting the story by establishing the time and place early on and giving a clue as to the ambience and the theme. He also talked about endings and it gave me a chance to make sure that all the strands and loose ends would tie up together.
Writing this today I realise that I have not reflected on the last few sessions. That’s a job for tonight while I catch up with an episode of Gray’s Anatomy and have a glass of wine.
Now, there’s a bit of time, place ambience and setting!
Hi Annie
ReplyDeleteAnother enjoyable and informative blog, and do feel that joining this group has been a really valuable experience especially having guest speaker whose 'talks' can spark new ideas for your own book.
I am so pleased you said "it gave me a chance to make sure all the strands and loose ends would tie up together" as i have read a few books over this past couple of years where the author has not tied up anything and appears to have left the reader to decide on what the end will be almost as if they don't know how to end it themselves!!! Perhaps some folk enjoy this but i like my books to have a beginning middle and end which isn't ambigious.
Do you know when your book will be completed yet i really look forward to reading your weekly blogs.