h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I went to the first session of my new course - Advanced Writing Workshops, held in the Writers' Place set up by New Writing South in Brighton. I'd met up with a few of my group outside. We went in to find ourselves in a seminar room which was only just big enough for the table it contained. With all of us round the table (16, I think) there wasn't room to move.

Susannah Waters, our tutor, said that her objective was to get us moving forward with our writing. She challenged us to write a page a day, and encouraged us to keep notebooks. I'd bought a notebook specially, but it was too big to carry in a pocket, which was the idea. (Actually, being a senior I need not only a notebook and a pen, but a pair of glasses, too.) She also read from Paul Auster who said that the idea of producing great literature is the enemy of writing. He said it took him ages to write a paragraph. Even for the best writers, writing takes two elements: ideas and a load of work.

I know I tend to write and rewrite, which is why it takes me so long to get anywhere. I think, if you're writing fiction, your understanding of your characters and the world they inhabit grows as you write. My people have acquired friends and likes I didn't know they had; my plot has developed extra complications along the way. That's why the process of writing is so interesting - it's a voyage of discovery.

Susannah asked us all to read a few pages of the story we're working on. Unfortunately, this exercise took too long and we ran out of time. It's hard concentrating on people reading aloud for any length of time, so the stories tended to merge into one another. If I'm going to blow my own trumpet for once, I might say that mine was one of the better ones. I write visually - I like to have a picture in my head of the scene and the people in it - and this may come out in the writing. I would like to think of myself as painting landscapes with figures.

Anyway, I've written my page for today. I've got Brian buying an old clock at a vide grenier (the French equivalent of a jumble sale) and thinking he can make some money selling it. Brian sees himself as an ideas man, but many of his enthusiasms are short lived or ill informed. Meanwhile, poor Alison is working all hours at Les Saules restaurant. Her relationship with Francois is beginning to develop...

This is very descriptive, I feel like I'm in the class, at the table. I'm nervous already! Very real, I love it! Wish I was there.

Hah! A new notebook!

Splendid! An update on your people, who are my people, in my life, through your writing, because of the pictures you paint, yes! of course you do! Painting landscapes with figures. I love that.

That's interesting, what you said about how your characters develop their own lives, as time goes on.

I love the way you write about them, as if they are outside of you, which of course they are, I guess, once you have written them.

That's awesome really, characters with lives of their own. Help! my character just called me from Aberdeen airport, to say she can't come round tonight with a chinese takeout, because she is 300 miles away. Aberdeen? What is she doing there? She never said.

Thank you cc.

What could your character be doing in Aberdeen? Having a willd fling with an oil worker? Going on a birdwatching holiday? Seeing her son, who's studying computer science at the university?

Give your characters choices and see what they do!

That's actually a very interesting technique! This could suit me. Let the character speak. Let the character loose, give them choices. Uh oh ...I could be surprised. This is much more enjoyable for me than trying to plan the fate of a character. After all, who am I to argue with fate....

Well, (writing spontaneously), she is in Aberdeen because she had a call from her cousin. It concerns the house by the river, the house that her uncle owned. The uncle died and the cousins are clearing the house. There's a picture. That picture .....


(What picture?? And???? ... speak to me, fates. .... heads to notebook) .......

Pictures are powerful - especially family photos. There are so many opportunities for the stories that have laid untold to emerge, frightened, into the daylight.

So the uncle, who spent much of his life in Africa, turns out to have a wife and children in Ghana.

I have a photo of my grandfather in the uniform of a sergeant. He was obviously a brave man, because he won the Distinguished Conduct Medal, but he was killed in 1917 and buried in a war cemetery at Senlis, north of Paris. Apart from the fact that he came from Weymouth, I know little about him. It seems a pity that those stories get lost.

my character is...

raising Angus (in the plural, how do I spell that?)

they might not be all boys or cows

I really like family photos mvp, we look at them and tell the stories

Anguses? Aberdeen Anguses?

So your character is raising cattle - beef cattle, if they're Aberdeen Anguses. Somewhere in Scotland, and finding it hard - what with bad weather, and high prices for winter food. Does he stick with it, or sell up and get a job in Glasgow?

I have two cows,three childen, a shelter, staying put for the winter

as I'm not sure selling me cows cows will get us Glasgow...

still should we, get to Glasgow, minus the cows, what jobs are there, just out of interest like

also I only have half of one arm, it is a genetic deformatity

please feel free to slap me if I am not being helpful

This is great! There's a writing course developing here, we are being visted by characters, exciting! my type of learning.

Photos, strange you should mention them, we are doing a family photo thing at the moment .... I just said to the spouse yesterday that this picture is a novel in itself ....stories, those sepia tinted stories ... dot dot dot. heheh. Quite a lot of dot dot dots.......

So ... developing the character in this way, not planning, it will all come out in my notes, personal history and fiction, and things one is thinking about, and fears and ideas, then see if there's a character trying to emerge from that ....which will be all this things but maybe in disguise, which is good, then see what he or she has to say about it all.

Trouble with me is that I always end up writing these peculiar psychedelic dialogues because that's my direction, I'm like a moth to a flame. There must be a way to do that without the person being either a junkie or mad. Because I am neither. Ahem. , so I don't want my character to go that way. hmm.

So Uncle Ruben (fictional) (writing spontaneously right now) .... so Uncle Ruben (imagine looking at photo of Uncle Ruben, what does he look like, well he looks a bit like ... ohmigod it's him, who? the photographer fellow I meet in my dreams who ended up in Mexico), well you know he was the guy who painted that picture of those pine trees. what? Scots pines, OK ... shadows ... OK... (place scots pines in context), and what's that white building? I think ....

oh, have to go.... ...I shall continue with these notes, addicted now. .

PS

Is it possible to write the dialogue first, then see if the character is attracted to it?

Can the creation of characters become almost mediumistic at times?

(mvp might be regretting this writing course)

No, seriously, this is amazing. I have a scots pine dialogue going here, its beautiful in a shadowed kind of a way.

I can see how writing a story or a novel can be time consuming. Already Uncle Ruben needs a biography, and I have no idea who he is.

A Scots pine dialogue? That would have to be v-e-r-y s-l-o-w, like that of the Ents in the Lord of the Rings.

But you could have Uncle Ruben, who painted Scots Pines, talking about his work. He could have returned from Mexico, where he lived in a white hacienda, and painted cacti.

And there's this character who keeps Aberdeen Anguses. But I'm not sure how he fits in!

You could write your dialogue first, and decide who your characters are by the way they talk, and what they talk about.

PS again ....

(sorry about this, I'm inspired) ....

That's it! Dialogues. They are the direction of my notes for a while, that way characters, those who are speaking, might appear. I can hear Ruben already. Interesting.

Really grateful, mvp, for this.

How's yours going, Peanut? Your characters sound kind of interesting ..did they just emerge spontaneously?

Oh! mvp we posted simultaneously. Of course, of course, he painted cacti, Mexico, of course! yes! and I can hear him speak about the paintings.......thankyou.

Oh, , I realise what I said, a dialogue between trees , that would be interesting ...you know what, I never heard of Ents (just checked)

this is hard!

my character came from my Nan although as far as I know she never owned a couple coos

I have learnt for me very very beginer and with the limited imagination, start with what you know. I'm stuck in Aberdeen, I have started researching common land and feel overloaded now with Scottish history

So I am wishing now that I was on the levels somewhere in a land/landscape I am familar with, historically and actually, . But I like the idea of a journey, a move

These trains of thoughts prompted me to phone me Mum and ask how the devil did my Nan get from the Highlands to South of England and trying to flesh out and order the details I had.

Now I can't write a fictional story out it but I have a least page worth of family history some of which I didn't know and this I can pass on to Hiccup, 'the story of our family, not just the funny bits'

Good for you.

You've got a story. What made your Nan move from the Highlands to the South of England, and what happened to her there?
And you've got researched material to provide her background.

Thank you mvp

How are you getting along with a page a day?

Depends on the size of the page!

I've done a chunk every day since the class, but I'm going to France tomorrow, for a week. So I'll miss some days, though I'm quite capable of sitting in our old house in France, writing about these English people who are living in an old house in France...