This session was about Gothic Style of writing and we were going to learn how to construct a tale of mystery, deceit and woe.
ACT I. SCENE I.
A DESERT PLACE. THUNDER STRIKES
Enter three Witches.
FIRST WITCH. When shall we three meet again?
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
SECOND WITCH. When the hurly burley is done,
When the battle is lost and won.
THIRD WITCH. That will be ere the set of sun.
FIRST WITCH. Where the place?
SECOND WITCH. Upon the heath.
THIRD WITCH. There to meet with Macbeth.
FIRST WITCH. I come, Graymalkin.
ALL. Paddock calls. Anon!
Fair is foul, and foul is fair. Hover through the fog and filthy air. Exeunt.
William Shakespeare (2015;1130). Macbeth
The Setting for any story is the first priority.You should consider, landscape, weather, how your characters blend(or not) with their surroundings. The scene above is the opening scene from Macbeth. It was written by William Shakespeare for James the 4th in 1603. This king was a particularly fidget and could not sit still for very long. You had to grab and hold his attention all the time. Writers are still doing that now. Hook & Hold or be dismissed. A good plan is to make your setting Scary in whatever way possible.Get your reader to engage his brain and try to make connections inthe paragraphs that you write. Spoon feed them clues as to where thestory may or may not go
Ali led this session
From Andrew Michael Hurley: The Loney, 2014
Anti what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? W B Yeats, The Second Coming.
It had certainly been a wild end to the autumn. On the Heath a gale stripped the gloriousblaze of colour from Kenwood to Parliament Hill in a matter of hours, leaving several oldoaks and beeches dead. Mist and silence followed and then, after a few days, there wasonly the smell of rotting and bonfires.
l spent so long there with my notebook one afternoon noting clown all that hadfallen that I missed my session with Doctor Baxter. He told me not to worry. About theappointment or the trees. Both he and Nature would recover. Things were never as bad as they seemed.
I suppose he was right in way; We been let off lightly. In the north, train lineshad been submerged and whole villages swamped by brown river water. There had beenpictures of folk bailing out their living rooms, dead cattle floating down an A road. Then,latterly, the news about the sudden landslide on Coldbarrow, and the baby they’d found tumbled down with the old house at the foot of the cliffs.
Coldbarrow. There was a name l hadn’t heard for a long time. Not for thirty years.No one I knew mentioned it anymore and I had tried very hard to forget it myself. But I always knew that what happened there would not stay hidden forever, no matter how much I wanted it to.
The study story is The Loner. Study the paragraph above and note how wonderfully
well this author sets his scene. Not only do you get the bleakness of the place but he sets the tone of the story (if you like the mood) certainly by interjecting many uncomfortable words and phrases. This whole piece should scare you, there underlies death and danger. Look carefully at the use of these words:
a wild end – death2. rotting – (rotting what? note the inside rhyme with the word bonfires) – death3. mist and silence – danger4. all had fallen – death5. submerged – danger6. swamped – danger7. dead cattle – death
and so on.
This scene reminded some of us of the disaster at Aberfan where a school had been engulfed by a slag heap. Coldbarrow is a fictional name: it just oozes the hint of bad things happening. We were asked to think of a name for our fictional place?
RawCastle Crag
My Story (about 35 minutes work)
The weather had certainly been murky and the gently moving air swirled mist all day, round and round. Huge clouds were stuck above so little light came through to gladden the land or get the clouds malignant shadow to depart.I looked at the front door. Like me it had not moved all day. Heavy wooden thoughts. The telephone rang and broke the silence. I listened to its insistent cry and was both glad when it finally departed and sad that Claire would not have got a message through to me. Last Tuesdays order of Service lay on a table near my very worn chair. I decided to consult it later and hoped the passages would life my mood. It got even darker outside. I switched on the centre light, my reflection in the brass letter box looked like I felt. Washed out. I moved a step or two and my reflection vanished. This house was remote and I needed company but I knew many things prevented it’s selling.part 2 was completed after further instruction and feedback on Part 1
Thinking better of the readings list, it was swiftly grasped. Cor 12 Mmm and Claire was the greatest of these. I kicked the coal scuttle several times to level its contents. Its sound it made was not unlike the incense burner in the church. The following silence was profound. I walked down my long straight corridor, glancing occasionally at familiar walls and lay down at its end with my feet facing the kitchen door. I lay silent and my mood was grave. A distant radio announced the news. My huge ginger cat pushed the door open. No Cheshire here, he regarded me with complete disdain and left me lying there. The floor was cold. I reached and easily touched both walls. The just painted ceiling was the brightest white.There are many clues in my story that the reader can piece together to get an overall picture of what is going on here. As instructed by Ali and Deb there is much use of the weather & general lack of light to help set the scene. The word list helps to inform this is not a happy tale and I hope that there is created an empathy for the very bereft and lonely soul who is the main character of this opening chapter. He loves Claire very much and she is not here. She might be a departed wife and he may be remembering the earlier happy wedding. OR she may be a daughter who has just got married. Our reader at this stage has to guess at which. The censor is brought into the story and some readers will associate it with funerals but it is used at weddings as well so this is an unhelpful clue designed to get the reader thinking.All agreed this was a very beneficial workshop and it is not possible for me to accurately report back everything that was done there. All I can do is encourage you to attend and let’s see where this solid input leads the group.
A ThoughtTree Workshop
How do they do it?
How did Frances Harding’s The Lie Tree; catch the attention of the judges and win theCosta Children’s Book Award 2016; and BOOK of the Year!
A children’s story that can only he enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the least. C.S. Lewis (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe] Novels with central child protagonists: Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird (Scout),Catcher in the Rye (Holden Caulfield) Harry Potter series – classics with universal appeal.
Enter Faith, the precocious 14-year-old protagonist in The Lie Tree, clumsily rocking between childhood and adulthood, in a male dominated Victorian society, where women were generally excluded from education or debate. Faith’s family flees from scandal to anuninviting island, but the story really begins when her father dies in mysteriouscircumstances. Ever curious, Faith is determined to untangle the truth and discovers astrange tree that feeds off whispered lies and in turn reveals secrets long kept hidden. Part horror, part detective, part historical, this is a fantastic story with great central characters and narrative tension make it is a real page turner. James Heneage, Chair of Costa judging panel.
So the judges loved it. But what works best? Perhaps, above all, it is Harding’s descriptive writing that brings the story, setting and characters alive. Her descriptions are concise but muitl-dimensional – they immerse the reader in a sense of place, time, physical andemotional experience,
What techniques can we identify in the opening chapters – and learn from?
Use all the senses (though not all at the Same time]
The boat moved with a nauseous. relentless rhythm, like someone chewing ron a rotten tooth. p.1, opening sentence.
* Have a purpose to the description:
* what should it create tor the reader?
* Mood?Action that pushes the story on?
* An aspect of character brought to life?
There was hunger in her, and girls were not supposed to be hungry. They were supposed to nibble sparingly when at table, and their minds were supposed to be satisfied with a slim diet too. A few stale lessons from tired governesses, dull walks, unthinking pastimes. But it was not enough. All knowledge, any knowledge – called to Faith. and there was a delicious,poisonous pleasure in stealing it unseen. p.8
Create mood Use descriptions to reveal changing emotions {show rather than tell]
The wind rattled the shutters and bolted door. and sometimes behind its moan she heard a distant, roaring boom, like a sound from an animal. She knew that it must be a trick of the wind, but her imagination painted some great black hear out on the headlands, haying amid the storm. p.26
Not too much showing Show don’t tell – but don’t wear us out. Be economical.
* it was an old farmhouse, slate-roofed and built of lagged brown stone that looked like shattered caramel. p.21
* Describing change Most stories involve a journey, literally and/or metaphorically.Hardinge uses imagery to great effect in this case.
* A long journey leaves one depleted, like a paintbrush that has been drawn across a broad stretch of canvas. ‘ p.23
* Be original Be surprising — steer away from clichés and create something new.
* Rumours are like dogs. Flee from them and they give us chase.&p.9
