Creative writing in an hour
How do you encompass creative writing in a one hour lecture? I posed myself that task this week, deciding this was the missing element in an undergraduate module I'm teaching.
First stop was to major on point of view. As soon as writers start entering a scene through the perspective of others, their imagination is engaged. I burrowed through my bookshelves (getting harder since my books that haven't passed on to other lives through charity stores are now housed on shelves in five separate locations) and West Hampstead Library's collection for first and third person examples.
On then to choice of tense. Most amusing was to take a passage from Jeannette Winterson's Oranges are Not the Only Fruit and switch it from past to present. I've played similar games with whole novels of my own - and must say Winterson was improved by the process. The passage gained immediacy.
From tense a shift into one of my own warhorses, advising people to avoid using the past perfect tense where they can, to beware that use of 'had'. Often writers report stories in this way rather than entering them, dramatizing them as they reveal themselves to the character.
We looked at 'voice', a character's, a story's, a writer's. Finally I reckoned it was worth pointing out the importance of utilizing the five senses ... touching, tasting, smelling, heading, seeing. Just as important as these for me is the quality of movement, the breeze that stirs a stalk of grass even in a still landscape, the play of light as sun moves behind cloud, movement and the senses showing that something is actually alive.
Who best to show off this use of senses? I picked book after book off the shelves, expecting to find some show of mastery on every page. Salman Rushdie? I'm afraid not. Late Winterson? No way.
Then I picked up V.S.Naipaul's A House for Mr Biswas, read a passage, and would have been content to abort the whole lecture writing exercise and simply curl up with a great book. Finding my examples was easy. Each page was alive with them.
Aaaah for great writing. So much of what we laud is no such thing.
First stop was to major on point of view. As soon as writers start entering a scene through the perspective of others, their imagination is engaged. I burrowed through my bookshelves (getting harder since my books that haven't passed on to other lives through charity stores are now housed on shelves in five separate locations) and West Hampstead Library's collection for first and third person examples.
On then to choice of tense. Most amusing was to take a passage from Jeannette Winterson's Oranges are Not the Only Fruit and switch it from past to present. I've played similar games with whole novels of my own - and must say Winterson was improved by the process. The passage gained immediacy.
From tense a shift into one of my own warhorses, advising people to avoid using the past perfect tense where they can, to beware that use of 'had'. Often writers report stories in this way rather than entering them, dramatizing them as they reveal themselves to the character.
We looked at 'voice', a character's, a story's, a writer's. Finally I reckoned it was worth pointing out the importance of utilizing the five senses ... touching, tasting, smelling, heading, seeing. Just as important as these for me is the quality of movement, the breeze that stirs a stalk of grass even in a still landscape, the play of light as sun moves behind cloud, movement and the senses showing that something is actually alive.
Who best to show off this use of senses? I picked book after book off the shelves, expecting to find some show of mastery on every page. Salman Rushdie? I'm afraid not. Late Winterson? No way.
Then I picked up V.S.Naipaul's A House for Mr Biswas, read a passage, and would have been content to abort the whole lecture writing exercise and simply curl up with a great book. Finding my examples was easy. Each page was alive with them.
Aaaah for great writing. So much of what we laud is no such thing.
1 Comments:
There's enough sound advice in this post to help any writer. Thanks.
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