Creative writing mini-lesson: no.8 ‘immersive description!’ #SaturdayMotivation #SaturdayThoughts #Lockdown #coronavirus #creativewriting

The two passages below use the ‘rule of 5’ to provide an immersive description. But what are the five things? What five things are being appealed to?

1. Setting a scene

When described to someone who had never been there, Arlford often sounded colourful and exciting. But viewed up close, it was pretty much all one colour in various shades; and that colour was brown. The main streets on either side of the river were always churned up, even in the hottest summers. With horses and herds so regularly brought into town, the streets were a constant slurry of dung. It covered boots, buildings and faces alike. Brown even got into the water, judging by its brackish taste and the particular flavour of the local ale. It hung in the air and was breathed deep into lungs.  

[from The Book of Orm]

2. A fight scene

His face was pressed against sun-metal. His skin had burned away, and now his soft interior and eyeballs were cooking. He had slipped from Luhka Sha’s grasp by changing form, but the Lead Warrior had followed him down and pinned him where there was no chance of escape.

‘Smells good,’ Luhka Sha drooled in Ba’zel’s ear, broadcasting the thought to the avid assembly so that they could share in the moment. The smell of charred flesh spread through the chamber and saw a number of the nearest spectators unable to resist chewing on their own limbs.     [from Tithe of the Saviours]

 

Answer: both scenes appeal to all five of the senses – sight, smell, sound, taste, touch. It’s a simple but effective trick if you want to help the reader ‘imagine’ they’re actually standing there experiencing Arlford. Referencing all five senses makes a scene vivid or ‘360-degree’.

So, I’d suggest adding the ‘rule of 5’ to the other techniques we have already looked at for providing engaging descriptions: mini-lesson no.4 ‘metaphor’ and mini-lesson no.5 ‘enactment’. Indeed, to give you a classic example of enactment when describing a town, let’s return to Arlford, shall we?

Nearly all goods being traded between the northern and southern reaches of the region had to pass through Arlford. There had always been a market there, where goods of every kind could be found. It was also a place where men of every type could be found – mercenaries to protect caravans from bandits; hawkers and hauliers; sellers of weapons; labourers; flesh-traders from more distant parts; a motley of minstrels and jugglers; conjurors and charmers; itinerants and philosophers; priests and mendicants; whoremongers and doxies; physickers and the purveyors of potions, tonics and elixirs; arrangers and well-guarded lenders; and then a good number of simple butchers, blacksmiths and ostlers. All life was to be found at this meeting place of humanity.

[from The Book of Orm]

You’ll notice that the third sentence of the passage above is a very long and colourful list. Listing is a simple device for mimicking the overload of images a new visitor to a place experiences. It’s a chaos, hubbub, and a melting point. The extended length of the sentence also demands unusual organisation and punctuation – reflecting humanity’s diversity and general disorganisation. It’s a sensory assault on the reader that ‘immerses’ them in the scene.

Quick task

Write a short description of a panorama, city or battle that appeals to all five senses!

If you’d like me to look at how successful your attempt is, please do feel free to email me (Adam): adz_d2003 @ yahoo.co.uk – deleting the two spaces either side of the @ sign.

I’ll be posting a new lesson every day (Monday-Friday), to help people who are stuck at home because of the coronavirus situation. These mini-lessons will give you a useful daily routine, and might just keep you sane! Stay safe.

If you enjoyed this mini-lesson, do SHARE it with others.

Creative writing mini-lesson: no.7 ‘plot-shape!’ #FridayMotivation #FridayThoughts #Lockdown #coronavirus #creativewriting

Put the following 6 steps in the correct logical order to describe the plot of The Hobbit.

a. High adventure, fun and peril, but leading to a calamity: the party are in the mountains; they enter the goblin warren; Bilbo finds the magic ring but becomes isolated from the others and lost among the lowest levels of the mountain

b. Moral dilemma: should Bilbo selfishly stay in the safety of his burrow, knowing the world will be destroyed by the goblins and Smaug, and that the evil will eventually come to the Shire, or should he go on an exciting adventure with Gandalf that is so dangerous it may cost his life?

c. The original dilemma revisited: in the dark, Bilbo encounters Golem, a creature of Bilbo’s own species who selfishly stole the ring and murdered a friend… all leading to Golem living alone and isolated in the dark; should Bilbo use the ring to murder Golem and escape with the treasure… or should he not, and probably end up dying?

d. Results of ‘wrong’ decision: the ogres catch Bilbo; the dwarves come to rescue him and they too are caught; they are all about to be cooked and eaten; Gandalf arrives in the nick of time to save them; Gandalf warns Bilbo that if he doesn’t give up his selfishness then they are all doomed

e. Our hero makes the ‘correct’ decision this time, meaning the lesson has been learnt, he is a ‘better’ person and salvation is achieved: Bilbo realises that murdering Golem, to keep the ring selfishly, would be to repeat the same crime as Golem had committed (meaning that Bilbo would become this dark and lonely version of himself); so Biblo relies on his wits to achieve a near impossible escape instead, and becomes a virtuous and superpowered hero who is able to defeat the dragon Smaug (Satan) himself!

f. Trigger event that causes the ‘wrong’ decision: becoming boastful at the party with the dwarves, Bilbo promises to go on the adventure, and then on the adventure, as the party’s thief, he selfishly tries to steal gold for himself from the ogres.

 

Answer: 1b, 2f, 3d, 4a, 5c, 6e

The general plot-shape above is popularly known as ‘The Hero’s Journey’. It is a model that is used time and again in fantasy, YA fiction and science fiction narrative. It is the model used by many, many Hollywood films, including Star Wars: A New Hope, The Matrix, E.T., The Hunger Games, and so on.

Academically, The Hero’s Journey is known as ‘The Monomyth’, first described by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949). Campbell considered all the great works of classic literature and decided that the same general plot-shape was shared by all of them. There is only one story, and that story is ‘The Story of Life’.

If you think about it, The Hero’s Journey is also a coming-of-age or rites of passage tale, about a person growing up, maturing, moving from selfishness to selflessness, and entering the dangerous adult world. At the same time, we need to be aware that it is quite a Christ v Satan story, so potentially ‘too’ Christian, and that it is also a model that comes out of the literature of patriarchy and Empire, so perhaps encourages ‘toxic masculinity’. Even so, the damn thing really works!

Quick task

The passage below provides you with an opening moral dilemma. Make up and write down the next five steps of the plot using the model of The Hero’s Journey.

Our hero is rushing to a job interview for their once-in-a-lifetime-dream job. They get a phone call saying that a close relative has been taken into hospital and may be about to die. Your hero is asked to come to the hospital to be with the loved one in their final moments – and the loved one has asked for them specifically. But that would mean missing the interview. Argh! What to do?

If you’d like me to look at how successful your plot-shape is, please do feel free to email me (Adam): adz_d2003 @ yahoo.co.uk – deleting the two spaces either side of the @ sign.

I’ll be posting a new lesson every day (Monday-Friday), to help people who are stuck at home because of the coronavirus situation. These mini-lessons will give you a useful daily routine, and might just keep you sane! Stay safe.

If you enjoyed this mini-lesson, do SHARE it with others?

Creative writing mini-lesson: no.6 ‘narrative hooks!’ #ThursdayMotivation #ThursdayThoughts #LockdownUK #coronavirus #creativewriting

Look at the opening lines from specific novels below. What question does each line generate in your mind?

1. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. [from 1984, science fiction]
2. My name, in those days, was Susan Trinder. [from Fingersmith, historical fiction]
3. All children, except one, grow up. [from Peter Pan, YA fiction]
4. They threw me off the hay truck about noon. [from The Postman Always Rings Twice, neo-noir thriller]
5. The corpse opened its eyes. [from Necromancer’s Gambit, dark fantasy]

Possible answers:

1. How can clocks strike thirteen? What world are we in?
2. What’s her name now? Why did she change her name?
3. Really? Which one? How is such a wonderful thing possible? What’s the secret?
4. Why did they throw you off? What did you do? Or was there something about you they didn’t like?
5. How can a corpse open its eyes? Whose corpse is it, by the way? Do they feel anything? How did they die? Who killed them? Do they want revenge?

What all the opening lines have in common is that they provide a ‘narrative hook’, a piece of incomplete information that triggers questions in the reader’s mind. Once the reader is ‘hooked’ they’ll keep reading… so the writer should resist giving the answers to the questions for a good while. The writer needs to resist explanation and exposition.

TV shows and films often use narrative hooks too. Think about the CSI show. Even before the title sequence starts, we are shown the bizarre crime scene, and we start wondering how the person died and who might have been responsible for the death. Think about Lost. It’s just one hook after another, with no answers ever given.

Even Shakespeare knew to provide a narrative hook in the opening line of his plays: ‘Now is the winter of our discontent’! And if narrative hooks are good enough for Shakespeare, then…

Quick task

Write the opening line for each of the following plots/scenarios…

• a crime novel that starts in an underground public toilet. Our detective suffers from OCD.
• a horror set in a world where the ground is now barren. Nothing grows anymore. The only sustenance left is meat…
• a science fiction novel set on an intergenerational star ship, five generations into its mission.
• a fantasy novel in which a blacksmith has been forced to turn mercenary.

If you’d like me to look at how successful your opening lines are, please do feel free to email me (Adam): adz_d2003 @ yahoo.co.uk – deleting the two spaces either side of the @ sign.

I’ll be posting a new lesson every day (Monday-Friday), to help people who are stuck at home because of the coronavirus situation. These mini-lessons will give you a useful daily routine, and might just keep you sane! Stay safe.

If you enjoyed this mini-lesson, do share it with others.

Creative writing mini-lesson: no.5 ‘literary style/enactment’ #WednesdayMotivation #WednesdayThoughts #LockdownUK #coronavirus #creativewriting

Look at the passage below and decide if the female character is worried about the mouse or not.

“It is large, so a house mouse, not the country cousin field type which are more petite, she knows that much, and although she doesn’t like it, shudders at the thought of it running over her sleeping body, doesn’t care to share her home with it, or pick it up, or touch it, or even have it sitting this close, and is very aware of the fact that it is bound to mean them, she is heartily relieved that it’s not a rat and therefore isn’t overly concerned.” [Tony Dew]

Answer: despite the assertion by the main character that she ‘isn’t overly concerned’, the reader can tell that she is actually very concerned about the mouse!

But how can the reader tell that? Well, it’s something to do with how the passage has been written. The passage represents the character’s internal thoughts. The passage is a single, long sentence, almost a ‘stream of consciousness’. The short phrases scurry this way and that way, like the actual mouse that she is watching. Therefore, the mouse is filling and defining the character of her thoughts – she is fixated on it. She is extremely concerned by it.

When the style of the writing matches what is happening in the plot or scene (and shows us the character’s emotions, rather than telling us those emotions), it is known as the narrative device of ‘enactment’. It is a hallmark of superior or literary prose. Why is it? Well, because it makes reading a delight – our ‘reading between the lines’ has been enabled and we become privy to secrets. It gives the act of reading an extra reward.

Quick task

Look at the opening lines below. Choose one of them and try to write a short passage starting with that line. Make sure the style in which you write ‘enacts’ the nature of the character or the scene in which they find themselves.

1. There was something unfinished about him, something… interrupted.
2. ‘Rubbish!’ came her firecracker voice, making the audience jump.
3. Here was a slow and methodical man, a man who believed in being sure of the wherefores and wherebys before approaching anything that he would term a conclusion.

If you’d like me to look at how successful your writing has been in terms of enactment, please do feel free to email me (Adam): adz_d2003 @ yahoo.co.uk – deleting the two spaces either side of the @ sign.

I’ll be posting a new lesson every day (Monday-Friday), to help people who are stuck at home because of the coronavirus situation. These mini-lessons will give you a useful daily routine, and might just keep you sane! Stay safe.

If you enjoyed this mini-lesson, do share it with others.

Creative writing mini-lesson: no.4 ‘metaphor’ #TuesdayMotivation #TuesdayThoughts #LockdownUSA #coronavirus #creativewriting

I’ll be posting a new lesson every day (Monday-Friday), to help people who are stuck at home because of the coronavirus situation. These mini-lessons will give you a useful daily routine, and might just keep you sane! Stay safe.

Look at the two passages below and decide which one is good and which one is bad.

a) Her umbrella was batlike. She looked up at the sky. What a bright and beautiful day!

b) Her umbrella was batlike, flapping and buffeted in the wind. Lightning flashed, silhouetting the looming mansion high above her on the cliff.

 

Answer: of course, b) is the good one and a) is the bad one. But why?

The simile of ‘batlike’ contributes to the dark and spooky scene in (b): it is ‘sympathetic’ to its context, if you like. By contrast, the use of ‘batlike’ in (a) actually works against or contradicts its context. Bats don’t go out in the daytime, especially when it’s a ‘bright’ day!

Therefore, a good metaphor is one that is sympathetic to its context or ‘extended’. If you can successfully extend your metaphor, then you are beginning to write a ‘dual narrative’ – two stories being told at the same time, creating the sort of symbolic or supernatural effect that can make you a successful writer of the gothic, horror, fantasy or magical realism (or your money back)!

Two stories at the same time? How come? In passage (b) above, we have the simple narrative of a girl in bad weather, and then we have the more supernatural narrative of a girl being harassed by a bat, a malign storm and the suggestion of a ‘looming’ evil.

Quick task

Look at the passage below. It actually uses metaphor and connotation to create a ‘triple narrative’. But what are the three stories being told at the same time?

The wind came up behind him and placed an invisible hand upon his shoulder. He shuddered and thought of his recently deceased father. There was a rushing sound and he imagined he heard words whispered at his ear.

If you’re not sure of the answer(s) or would like to check your answer(s), please do feel free to email me (Adam): adz_d2003 @ yahoo.co.uk – deleting the two spaces either side of the @ sign.

If you enjoyed this mini-lesson, do share it with others.

Creative writing mini-lesson: no.3 ‘writing humour’ #MondayMotivation #MondayThoughts #LockdownUSA #coronavirus #creativewriting

I’ll be posting a new lesson every day (Monday-Friday), to help people who are stuck at home because of the coronavirus situation. These mini-lessons will give you a useful daily routine, and might just keep you sane! Stay safe.

Look at the passage below and decide which word makes it funny?

‘Through the fathomless deeps of space swims the star turtle Great A’Tuin, bearing on its back the four giant elephants who carry on their shoulders the mass of the Discworld. A tiny sun and moon spin around them, on a complicated orbit to induce seasons, so probably nowhere else in the multiverse is it sometimes necessary for an elephant to cock a leg to allow the sun to go past’ [from Terry Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters]

Answer: of course, the phrase ‘cock a leg’ makes us smile or laugh. But why? It’s not simply that the word ‘cock’ is a bit rude in certain contexts. So what’s the bigger secret to writing humour like this?

If you think about mini-lesson no.2 and the issue of ‘Latin and Anglo-Saxon’, then you might recognise that the phrase ‘cock a leg’ uses short Anglo-Saxon words and comes as the punchline to the extensive use of longer Latin words before it: ‘a complicated orbit to induce seasons, so probably nowhere else in the multiverse is it sometimes necessary’. Latin, as used in English, tends to be formal and academic, and the language of science. The long Latin phrase, therefore, sets up an expectation in the reader that they are about to receive a complex astrophysical or philosophical explanation of how the cosmos operates. Instead, their expectation is defeated by the informal, emotional and satirical ‘cock a leg’. It’s a simple trick, but works superbly well, and is used by Pratchett again and again in his ever-popular writing.

Quick task

Look at the passages below and put them in order of how funny you think they are (1=the funniest, 4=the unfunniest). Then try and identify which word or words make each passage funny.

a. Lord Poncenby insisted that all individuals understood how very educated, important and powerful he was. He would consume the finest and most delicious cuisines, and refuse to admit he ever farted. [by A J Dalton]

b. ‘The Pig’ – a poem by Roald Dahl

In England once there lived a big
And wonderfully clever pig.
To everybody it was plain
That Piggy had a massive brain.

c. Although it was a complicated recipe one taste had been enough to know that it was made out of fish entrails marinated for several years in a vat of shark sick. [from Terry Pratchett’s Mort]

d. Agnes: Pretty please… Pretty please?

    Gru:     The physical appearance of the please makes no difference, still no.

[from Despicable Me]

If you’re not sure of the answer(s) or would like to check your answer(s), please do feel free to email me (Adam): adz_d2003 @ yahoo.co.uk – deleting the two spaces either side of the @ sign.

If you enjoyed this mini-lesson, do share it with others.

Creative writing mini-lesson: no.2 ‘Latin and Anglo-Saxon’ #SundayMotivation #SundayThoughts #lockdownuk #coronavirus #creativewriting

I’ll be posting a new lesson every day (Monday-Friday), to help people who are stuck at home because of the coronavirus situation. These mini-lessons will give you a useful daily routine, and might just keep you sane. Stay safe.

Is the sentence below good or bad writing?

‘I’ll never inform you where the magic lamp is!’

Answer: it’s awful. What makes it so bad? Well, ‘inform’ is a Latin-based word (with the Latin prefix in-, and the suffix -tion when we form the noun) while the other words in the sentence are mainly from Anglo-Saxon. Latinate words, when used in English, tend to be longer and formal in tone, while Anglo-Saxon-based words tend to be shorter, informal and emotional.

The tone of the sentence is ‘pitchy’ (like bad singing), with differing levels of formality competing with each other. If you think about mini-lesson no.1 and the issue of ‘shifting narrative perspective’, then you might recognise two different voices or perspectives in the sentence: the voice of the character but also the intrusive voice of the author.

Why has the writer used the polysyllabic ‘inform’ instead of the monosyllabic ‘tell’, then? Well, a lot of kids are told by their teachers: ‘Try to use longer words. They sound more literary.’ There’s your problem.

Quick task

Look at the following passage and try to find the words that are particularly problematic because they represent an unfortunate shift in tone.

‘Given these new complications and the issue of costs increasing in an uncontrolled manner, we would recommend that the management just stop everything.’

If you’re not sure of the answer or would like to check your answer, please do feel free to email me (Adam): adz_d2003 @ yahoo.co.uk – deleting the two spaces either side of the @ sign.

If you enjoyed this mini-lesson, do share it with others.