February 14th Session - getting ready for our anthology!

Nobody can escape it – the year of the Blakenhall Writers Anthology is here! We want to take every opportunity to give our members the chance to create some really compelling content ready to submit to the anthology, so we are tailoring our sessions to the theme of our identity, and our local community.

For February’s session, we decided to respond to the group’s request for further work on character development and dialogue. We gave it a local twist by using some old photos of residents of Wolverhampton from the past. There were schoolchildren, factory workers, and even the head of the workhouse, who were just waiting for us to give them a Blakenhall makeover.

First, we did a bit of work to turn these pictures into characters.  We tried to answer some questions about the characters, including ‘what do they like to do on a Saturday?’ ‘Describe the most important person in their life’ and ‘What is it like where they live?’

This exercise meant we could really get inside the character’s head, as well as giving us some good ammunition for writing a short story. But now we had some ideas brewing, we had to give our characters a voice.

We learned that dialogue has a purpose in a story; to show the relationship between characters, to move the story on, or to build tension. It’s important that this is effective, or your work will not be believable.

We explored some dialogue techniques, including the importance of the word ‘said.’ Did you know, that if you try to use lots of different words to describe how your character is feeling, you lose the impact of the words? Using ‘said’ is a sure-fire way to maintain a neutral playing field and let the words themselves do the talking (so to speak!)

Then we tied it all together by writing a scene for a story in which the character we built in the first exercise was speaking to another character, to practice the techniques we’d just discussed. You can find some good tips here.

I hope this has given everyone a starting point for a story they might like to submit for our anthology! Try to work on your piece for next month’s meeting and bring it along for some feedback.

Don’t forget, you need to submit some work for our feedback session to the Blakenhall Writers email address by the date of our next meeting (March 14^th). Please send up to 3 poems or up to 400 words of prose that you would like some constructive comments on. We will distribute them to the whole group to review, and bring our comments in to the April session.

June 14th Session & June Writing Task

For our June session, Roma talked to us about how to create effective characters in our writing, and the benefits of doing so.

She posed us some questions to get us started thinking about a character:

-          Where does your character live/where are they from?

-          How old is your character?

-          What are your character’s mannerisms?

-          What does your character look like?

-          What does your character do for a living?

-          How does your character deal with conflict and change?

-          What is your character’s goal or motivation in this story or a particular scene?

It’s important to bear these in mind when writing as it will influence how you write your character. If your character follows behavioural patterns in accordance with the traits you’ve given them, they will come across more believable.

e.g. a character’s age will usually indicate their maturity level and wisdom which will influence how they react to certain situations.

We then had an exercise to write about one of the above questions in detail to bring our character to life.

Then we did an exercise to create a detailed personality for a character. We each took a piece of paper with 12 lines and wrote the name and age of the character at the top. Then we passed it on to the next person who answered the next question and so on…

1. To whom does your character turn to for advice?
2. Write one word that your character would use to describe themselves.
3. Write one word other people would use to describe them.
4. Write about a frightening situation or moment from their childhood.
5. What is their best trait?
6. What is the first thing other people notice about them?
7. Describe an incident they’d rather forget.
8. Who is their best friend?
9. How do they express anger?
10. What is their weakness?
11. What is their relationship with food/body image?
12. What music do they like?

We ended up with some quite eccentric characters this way! Not everybody looked at the previous answers to line up a believable character but it was good fun to see how people’s minds worked together to create a character from nothing more than a name and age.

Next we looked at how to create villainous characters! We explored 3 examples – Voldemort from the Harry Potter series, Mr Hyde from The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, and Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty. We discussed what made them effective villains.

-          Credibility – most villains are powerful, which allows them to cause problems for the protagonist, and also means they often have followers or minions to help with their evil deeds.

-          Believable motivation/goals – there must be a reason the character has decided to act in this way. What are their goals – power? Wealth? Revenge?

However, antagonists aren’t always ‘bad guys’. Sometimes they’re just opposing viewpoints to the protagonist. From their point of view, YOUR protagonist is THEIR antagonist.  A back story explaining their motivation and goals can make them more likeable, if you don’t want them to come across too villainous.

With this in mind, we created a brief back story for one of the following characters:

Ruby – a young socialite who seduces men for money

James – a teenage bully in a local school

Mark – a corporate boss who9 disrespects his workers and never show gratitude

Agnes – a mistress who is bitter and spiteful to her lover’s wife

This helped us to remember that antagonists are characters too, and that they should also have believable goals and characteristics, just like ‘good’ characters. Otherwise they will be one-dimensional and clichéd.

Thanks Roma for a very useful session!

Can you create a piece of writing using a character you’ve built up using these techniques? Bring it with you next session to share with the group.

Join us next month to learn about Life Writing, led by Kuli and Nirmal.

And don’t forget Kuli’s booklet, Rag Doll, is still available to order. J

Letters to Me: February Writing Task by Kali Ravel

Warning: Some strong language in this one!

Following the sessions we did on writing for children and writing exercises, I've been using the techniques we discussed to develop two of my characters. To this end, I found an exercise which consisted of a list of questions to answer, and began working through them for both characters. The final question, which I include below, was to write a letter to myself from the point of view of those characters.

My first character, Eloise Richards, is fifteen-years-old and lives with her Aunt Portia. Her life is reasonably idyllic, apart from a few things. She is home-schooled due to her issues with ADD and recurring nightmares, which prevent her from sleeping. She is also saddened by being separated from her parents; she was born as the result of an affair, and each of her parents has another, legitimate, daughter. Eloise was sent away in order to uncomplicate the situation.

Eloise lives in a universe very like ours, apart from the fact that certain people have special powers, including Eloise herself. If it sounds like X-Men, that's because I loved them when I was thirteen and first invented the character!

Mina Stafford, my second character, is markedly different to Eloise, and it was very interesting trying to write them both at the same time. Mina is in her mid-twenties. She was abused by her parents – sexually by her stepfather and emotionally by her mother. As an adult, she finally began to build a semi-healthy relationship with Leo, a Canadian con artist. When he died, she was unable to cope and slaughtered those who she felt were responsible before turning the gun on herself. Her letter to me is rather different from Eloise's.

A Letter from Eloise

Dear Ms Ravel,

Oh my god! Well, like, literally right?! You made me! You made my whole universe! Oh my god, this is such a big deal! Do you have magic powers? Can you make me fly?! Can you fly? I would fly, if I made the universe. Why didn't you just make everyone fly?

I really don't know what to say. I feel like I should ask you for something. Like, can you make the whole world peaceful, and make everyone immortal? I don't know how that would really work from like a space and resources point of view...can't you just like magically move people to other planets? Like with magic doors? And just make crops appear where they're supposed to so everyone can eat?

Can you make everyone not be ill any more? Can you make everyone happy? Can you make my parents be in love and make my sisters...well, maybe not never exist, because that's mean and I'm sure they like being alive, but, make them, like someone else's kids and someone else's sisters?

Can you take my nightmares away, and let me get some sleep? Can you make it so it's always a really nice spring day, with sunshine and light breezes, but not too shiny and not too breezy, and maybe a thunderstorm every so often to spark it up a bit? And, like, cure cancer? Will you cure cancer? And all those other horrible illnesses? Please?

Also, that flying thing. That would be awesome. But not wings, we'd all have to change our clothes so the wings would fit and it would just be so awkward.

Love

Eloise Richards

A Letter from Mina Stafford

Dear Ms Ravel,

Oh, I'm coming for you bitch. What kind of sick psycho are you, to do this to me?! You gave me parents who never loved me, a mother who didn't give a fuck what happened to me, and a stepfather who got his kicks from raping me! You gave me my Catholic beliefs, and now you're trying to take them away?! Is there even a God?! You're my goddamn creator, and you did this to me! You bitch! You took Leo! You gave me all that shit, then you gave me one person, just one person in the world who didn't ignore me or hurt me, and then you took him away! You took him away! He was good! He was a good man and he was mine and you took him AWAY!

Bring him back. You can do that. You made this world. Bring him back!

...I don't give a shit about “plausible narrative”. Those words are in my head because of you, aren't they?! I don't give a fuck how you do it, just bring him back!

You made me, and you made me a killer. I'm coming for you.

Mina Stafford

You can follow these links to read the character profiles for these two lovely ladies.

Read more of Kali’s work at her blog 'This is how it begins'.

Writing for Young People Character Profile

In our February session, we put together a profile of a young person who could be central to a story for a young audience. Here are the questions to answer to create your own character. This information will all provide a background to your story.

1. Name
2. Age
3. Place of Birth
4. Where did your character grow up?
5. What schooling did your character have?
6. Who are/were your character’s parents (or guardians etc)?
7. Does s/he have any siblings or family life?
8. Does your character have a job?
9. What physical characteristic would someone notice? (e.g. long legs/red hair)
10. Does your character have a special friend?
11. What kind of music does s/he like?
12. Does your character have any special powers?
13. What is/was your character’s nickname at school?
14. Do they have any hobbies?
15. What job would they like to do?
16. Would they want to go to university/college?
17. What is their favourite food/drink?
18. What is the best thing they have done so far?
19. What is the worst thing they have done so far?
20. Does your character have a disability? (e.g. stuttering, physical disability)
21. Who is your character’s closest grown-up friend?
22. Does your character have any irritating habits? (e.g. picking their nose, rubbing their hands together)
23. What is their favourite word/expression?
24. What is their goal in life?
25. Is there anything else that will make up the character?