STATIC CHARACTERS
Change of heart STATIC CHARACTERS MAKE FOR STATIC STORIES. BUT HOW CAN AUTHORS ENSURE CHARACTER ARCS FEEL BELIEVABLE ON THE PAGE?BY JACK SMITH If you’ve been a fiction writer for any length of time, you surely have a whole list of things you’ve picked up about character development – from your reading of good fiction […]
Essays
A truthteller’s toolkit5 components a personal essay needs to succeed – and sell.By Nicki Porter Once upone a time, a writer might contact an agent and confess their desire to publish an essay collection. And once upon a time, an agent might have resisted an urge to laugh in the writer’s face. As a form, […]
Story Construction – Check List
1.Did it begin well – or can you suggest an alternative opening? 2. Can you picture the setting? 3. Is there an atmosphere (happy, sad, eerie, etc)? 4. Were the characters credible? 5 .Did you understand what was happening? Too complicated? 6. Did it flow well or was it disjointed at all? 7. What did you enjoy […]
Creating Characters
Character is revealed via: 1. Physical description 2. Psychological description – motives, personality, prejudices, blind spots, attitude towards self and what an individual prefers to keep secret 3. What the individual doesn’t share, shares and how it is said 4. The thoughts, insights and feelings of the individual 5. Affiliations – with whom the individual chooses to associate and be intimate, who is avoided, and any preferences for solitude and silence 6. How others react to or comment on […]
Beginning Poetry
Some Thoughts On ‘Doing’ Poetry for The First Time By John Munson, Swanland U3A Creative Writing Group (personal capacity)with contributions from Christine Williams, Sue Robertson and Diane Wells. As a young English teacher in a tough Hull school I volunteered to organise the English Club and Magazine. One 14-year-old pupil brought me her poetry notebooks with the invitation to publish anything that I thought […]
Adding a new light
Ernest Hemingway Words = 1436 Some Spanish is used. The theme is nothingness and nada, meaning both nothing and nothingness, appears many times, along with nada y pues nada. This means either nothing and for nothing or nothing and then nothing. Otro loco mas = another crazy person. It was very late and everyone had left the cafe except an old man who sat […]
