We attended our third creative writing session with Margaret Johnson in Norwich today. We were both very impressed with the day and I think I will devote this writing to my thoughts.
First about the reception of my homework efforts from the previous week, I did not get a chance to read my Epistolary piece as I don't think there was time for all of us to read out our efforts. When it came to submitting our examples of dialogue from books we have read, I put forward "Crime and Punishment", by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and I gave the chapter and part of the book containing the interesting dialogue. Sadly I did not bring any examples of the dialogue to share as most of the others did, I stumbled and spoke too softly and quickly I think, to get my message across clearly. I still feel quite uncomfortable about this mistake, although the response from everyone was good. I think perhaps we are all our own sternest critics.
The first exercise for this session was wordplay. We had to write our names down on paper and use the first letter to construct a sentence. I did this and it was incredibly well received by everyone.
Jazz ~ Or ~ Highbrow ~ Never ~ Lose ~ Love ~ Or ~ Yesterday's ~ Dreams. ~~Yesterday's ~ Ending ~ Orifice. ~
Next we were issued with a printout of an extract from a novel entitled. "Dead Souls" by Nikolai Gogol.
This was an example of creating a setting as a Character Portrait.
I came up with the following piece of writing.
Horse brasses covered the chimney-breast and the mantelpiece. A glass cabinet containing a large spoon with hieroglyphics embedded in the wooden handle was attached to the wall. The door to the cottage creaked on rusty hinges, whenever anyone entered. The interior of the cottage was spotless and well taken care of by the lady of the house. A pile of mail, mostly long brown envelopes was stacked on a wooden desk in a corner. A shotgun was leaning up against the back door, and a brace of pheasants hung in the kitchen. In the master bedroom there was a locked ornate chest at the end of a four-poster bed, with drawn curtains. On entry you realised at once that these people had not lived here for very long, some suitcases remained unpacked and there was a stack of cardboard boxes in a corner. Whenever a visitor rang the doorbell it was a long time before it was answered, and the lady of the house was always the person who answered the door. The master was rarely, if ever, seen. The was an aura of mystery about the spoon, which was never referred to or discussed openly. It was rumoured in the village the new tenant and his wife had something to hide and there was an untold story.
Again I felt I had read this too fast and I felt I was hesitant with the explanations, I felt I was not getting my point across as clearly as I would have liked, but it was politely received by all, even though I was relieved when I had finished reading it aloud.
A piece of advice from Margaret J. That I think is worth remembering is to leave out any unnecessary descriptive writing. Stick to description that is relevant to the character or leave it out.
There was then a general discussion on the uses of dialogue in writing.
Dialogue describes Events and the Plot, it can be used for driving the plot forwards.
Characters Feelings, although the dialogue might be saying one thing and doing another. Emotions.
Dialogue sets the scene. Revealing a characters Age, Social characteristics and the relationships between characters.
We then started a dialogue exercise using a printout that has had all the information taken out, leaving behind just the spoken words. We did not have time to complete this but I came up with this segment.
They stumbled over a log in the dark on the lane.
Mary screamed, 'Jim!'
'What'
'I think he's dead'
'No he can't be. You haven't checked properly.'
'I have! You saw me. There's no pulse.'
'Hell!' He shouted. 'What shall we do?'
'I don't know, Jim. And less of the 'we'. This is your fault, you decided to come here.'
'Now wait a minute, Mary'
'No, that's just what I'm not doing. You can call the police yourself. I shouldn't have let you involve me in the first place.'
That is as far as I got with that exercise and I will finish working through the rest of it tomorrow. All in all I think this has been a very interesting satisfactory day for both of us.
Margaret J. Then said that the last week of the course would be a read-back week, that is the week after next.
Between now and then we have to compose a piece of written work, possibly based on the character we have built over the last three weeks, about 1000 words long. E-mail the result to her on~
margaretkjohnsonauthor@gmail.com
We will then read the work aloud to the group and get some feedback on our efforts.
First about the reception of my homework efforts from the previous week, I did not get a chance to read my Epistolary piece as I don't think there was time for all of us to read out our efforts. When it came to submitting our examples of dialogue from books we have read, I put forward "Crime and Punishment", by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and I gave the chapter and part of the book containing the interesting dialogue. Sadly I did not bring any examples of the dialogue to share as most of the others did, I stumbled and spoke too softly and quickly I think, to get my message across clearly. I still feel quite uncomfortable about this mistake, although the response from everyone was good. I think perhaps we are all our own sternest critics.
The first exercise for this session was wordplay. We had to write our names down on paper and use the first letter to construct a sentence. I did this and it was incredibly well received by everyone.
Jazz ~ Or ~ Highbrow ~ Never ~ Lose ~ Love ~ Or ~ Yesterday's ~ Dreams. ~~Yesterday's ~ Ending ~ Orifice. ~
Next we were issued with a printout of an extract from a novel entitled. "Dead Souls" by Nikolai Gogol.
This was an example of creating a setting as a Character Portrait.
I came up with the following piece of writing.
Horse brasses covered the chimney-breast and the mantelpiece. A glass cabinet containing a large spoon with hieroglyphics embedded in the wooden handle was attached to the wall. The door to the cottage creaked on rusty hinges, whenever anyone entered. The interior of the cottage was spotless and well taken care of by the lady of the house. A pile of mail, mostly long brown envelopes was stacked on a wooden desk in a corner. A shotgun was leaning up against the back door, and a brace of pheasants hung in the kitchen. In the master bedroom there was a locked ornate chest at the end of a four-poster bed, with drawn curtains. On entry you realised at once that these people had not lived here for very long, some suitcases remained unpacked and there was a stack of cardboard boxes in a corner. Whenever a visitor rang the doorbell it was a long time before it was answered, and the lady of the house was always the person who answered the door. The master was rarely, if ever, seen. The was an aura of mystery about the spoon, which was never referred to or discussed openly. It was rumoured in the village the new tenant and his wife had something to hide and there was an untold story.
Again I felt I had read this too fast and I felt I was hesitant with the explanations, I felt I was not getting my point across as clearly as I would have liked, but it was politely received by all, even though I was relieved when I had finished reading it aloud.
A piece of advice from Margaret J. That I think is worth remembering is to leave out any unnecessary descriptive writing. Stick to description that is relevant to the character or leave it out.
There was then a general discussion on the uses of dialogue in writing.
Dialogue describes Events and the Plot, it can be used for driving the plot forwards.
Characters Feelings, although the dialogue might be saying one thing and doing another. Emotions.
Dialogue sets the scene. Revealing a characters Age, Social characteristics and the relationships between characters.
We then started a dialogue exercise using a printout that has had all the information taken out, leaving behind just the spoken words. We did not have time to complete this but I came up with this segment.
They stumbled over a log in the dark on the lane.
Mary screamed, 'Jim!'
'What'
'I think he's dead'
'No he can't be. You haven't checked properly.'
'I have! You saw me. There's no pulse.'
'Hell!' He shouted. 'What shall we do?'
'I don't know, Jim. And less of the 'we'. This is your fault, you decided to come here.'
'Now wait a minute, Mary'
'No, that's just what I'm not doing. You can call the police yourself. I shouldn't have let you involve me in the first place.'
That is as far as I got with that exercise and I will finish working through the rest of it tomorrow. All in all I think this has been a very interesting satisfactory day for both of us.
Margaret J. Then said that the last week of the course would be a read-back week, that is the week after next.
Between now and then we have to compose a piece of written work, possibly based on the character we have built over the last three weeks, about 1000 words long. E-mail the result to her on~
margaretkjohnsonauthor@gmail.com
We will then read the work aloud to the group and get some feedback on our efforts.
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