My Hero

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Try this as a creative writing prompt:

Choose a well-known hero or heroine – doesn’t matter what sphere they inhabit.  They could be literary, cinematic, artistic, philosophical, historical; fact or fiction, living or dead. Maybe they’re a favourite fictional character, or a hated politician. They might be the same sex as you; they might not.

List their attributes – these traits can be positive or negative.

Now think yourself into the character and build a story, from the point of view of this real or imaginary person. Mould this 2-dimensional cut out into a real person. What motivates them? What do they like? What do they fear?

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Word Association Football

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What are your favourite words?  What makes them favourites? Do they have a particular feel on the tongue, or sound in the ear?

Some of my particular favourites: –

Serendipity; Bliss; Sandwich; Wimple; Shiver; Cornucopia; Jelly; Flatulence; Fabulous; Thimble; Blether; Lollipop; Bishibarnibee  (that’s a ladybird, or ladybug in this part of the world); Fluorescence; Blancmange; Doodle; Bowling; Scribble; Bubblewrap.

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Heroes and villains

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I was on local radio yesterday evening, reading one of my stories and it occurred to me that the majority of the short stories I’ve written have happy endings and are mostly about quite pleasant people who come into contact with something or someone horrible. But I actually find it much easier to write about villains – malevolent people in horrible situations. Maybe it’s an unconscious urge to pit myself against the horrors of life and see who comes up smiling, or maybe it’s art reflecting reality. I can think myself into a villain’s mind without a problem – but does that say more about me than my creative ability?

Yesterday’s offering features one nasty piece of work, but it’s mainly a feel-good story. It’s called ‘Charity Ball’ and you’ll find it under the Short Stories tab.

Memories

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I attended a Reminiscence Therapy seminar last week. Part of the morning was spent in an interactive Life Story workshop, where several poems on the theme of memory were recited. Then – pause for collective intake of appalled breath – we were all encouraged to write our own poems.

I don’t do poetry (unless you count a series of humorous poetic monologues in the style of Stanley Holloway that I composed when I was at college), and judging by the reaction of almost everyone in the room, neither did anyone else. However, and this might be a particularly British trait, we all knuckled down without a complaint and produced something.

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Words, words, words

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If you want to succeed as a writer, you have to read. All the advice from the experts is the same: Read. Make time for it; enjoy it; learn from it.

Discovering a new author is thrilling; I have to read their entire back catalogue as soon as possible. The excitement I get from reading a truly great book is, funnily enough, beyond words. It’s one of the most satisfying things I know. I couldn’t put it better than Holden Caulfield, J D Salinger’s protagonist in ‘Catcher in the Rye.’

‘What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.”

Obviously, I’m endeavouring to be that special author, but simultaneously I’m a devoted reader and it all takes time, which I never have quite enough of. I wish there were 26 hours in a day and 8 days in a week. I wish I was independently wealthy and didn’t need to go to work – it seriously impedes my writerly progress.

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A cliché too far

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Along with adjectives and adverbs, the poor old cliché comes in for a lot of stick.

A cliché is a platitude, a figure of speech which has been so overused that it has lost its original meaning and relevance and is no longer effective. Often humorous, these trite expressions would have been considered original and loaded with meaning when first used. Clichés are often derogatory, but they are not necessarily false or inaccurate. In his autobiography, ‘Moab is My Washpot,’1997, Stephen Fry says, ‘It is a cliché that most clichés are true, but then like most clichés, that cliché is untrue.’

They’re clever little things; readymade idioms often summarising lines of description in one pithy phrase that everyone understands because they form part of our cultural fabric. They can also have an implication which is different from its true meaning. For example, ‘do you think I’m made of money?’ implies just the opposite.

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Stuck in a creative vacuum?

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Writer’s block? Or just having a blank moment? Bring out the Five Ws and One H.

Say what?? Rudyard Kipling immortalised the concept in the opening of  ‘The Elephant’s Child’, a poem that accompanied one of his Just So Stories, written in 1902:

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.

Used widely in journalism, interrogative pronouns are basic tools for gathering information. Continue reading →

Apostrophe Catastrophe

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Lots of talk on the interweb about the poor old apostrophe. Apparently Waterstone’s are going to phase theirs out. Let me nail my colours to the mast straight away – I LOVE apostrophes!

The apostrophe is probably the most misunderstood and misused piece of punctuation in the English language, but it’s fundamental to making our work comprehensible.

Lynne Truss, in her seminal work about English punctuation ‘Eats, Shoots and Leaves’, mentions her ‘inner stickler’ who rails against the incorrect use of the apostrophe. Me too – although I appreciate that I can come across as rather pedantic whenever I bring it up. Eyes glaze over; people start humming snatches of ‘Here I go again’. Do I care? No.

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Great expectations

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My first novel is finished; I’ve brushed its hair and straightened its clothes in preparation and now it’s as ready as it will ever be. I’d like to get it published, so these are the necessary first steps, but why am I so reluctant to pat its bottom and send it out into the world?

The need to examine it one more time, to substitute a better turn of phrase or rewrite that clumsy paragraph yet again, is almost overwhelming. It threatens to ruin the whole; I must release my grasp and let it fly.

The novel is entitled ‘The Silly Season’.  Click on the tab to read the synopsis and some extracts.

Accents and Dialects

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An accent is an individual mode of pronunciation often associated with a particular locale. A dialect is a form of speech peculiar to a district, usually employing colloquial vocabulary specific to that geographical area.  In fact, George Bernard Shaw once observed that, England and America are two countries separated by a common language.

For such a small geographical area, the United Kingdom has hundreds of dialects, many existing almost side by side but sounding like different languages. I come from Yorkshire, a county once divided into three Ridings; East, West and North (Riding is an old term meaning a third – the South Riding that Winifred Holtby wrote about was fictitious), where the local dialect can be very thick. I’ve lived elsewhere in the country, and in the US, and the rough edges have been smoothed, but whenever I return to Yorkshire, I fall back into the accent and dialect without a second thought.

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