Creative Writing Course – Week #2

Last night was the second week of the Novel Writing course I've started this term. Some of the session was spent re-capping from last week, a section was spent discussing the various points of origin for story ideas, and the rest was devoted to hearing how people had got on with the task from last week – write the first paragraph of a first chapter.

There was some discussion of the strange phenomena that a lot of writers suffer from – inspiration and ideas coming to you when you are least able to propogate them. This happens a lot at the point of falling asleep. When your mind is disengaging from all the minutiae of your every day life, creative ideas and concepts present themselves to you. Wake yourself up to write them down and you won't be able to go back to sleep. Go to sleep and you'll probably lose those ideas forever. I'm glad I'm not the only one who suffers from this.

As this term is going to be focused on the opening chapter of a novel, the session covered the structural forms of a first chapter. This can be broken down into looking at the chapter it terms of its constituent parts – Where/Who/What/Why. The idea being that we should apply this formula to the opening chapter. The same concept can be used to look at the whole novel too.

I've already written the first four chapters of the novel I am working on now, and I was pleased to see that a lot of the ideas covered can be applied neatly to my opening chapter. The tutor told us to think of our first chapter as having its own start, middle and end, almost like a very short story. The rest of the novel then expands and explores the elements uncovered at the beginning. I can already see that my opening chapter is going to go through dozens of edits before the course is finished, but I am relieved to find it does cover a lof of the bases. Phew.

Several of the class read their opening paragraphs out, which were then given feedback by the fourteen or so other attendees. I am still a reading-virgin, as the class came to an end before I got to read mine, so I'll be doing that next week. It's a strangely daunting task, reading your writing out to a room full of strangers for them to praise/destroy, but I'm sure once I've done it it will be fine.

I really enjoyed hearing other people read their work, especially as it was all of a very high standard. There was a variety of styles and genres and it was clear that the class is made up of people who are already quite accomplished writers. This is very different to the previous course I attended, where work would be read out which was either poor or very rough, and an embarassing silence would descend on the room as no one wanted to say what we all thought. What they'll make of my opening paragraph remains to be seen, but I'm looking forward to the points of view and suggestions that the class make about it.

Feedback from virtual strangers is invaluable. They'll almost always pick up elements and themes you either haven't noticed yourself or didn't consciously intend to be there. And of course they'll suggest ways you can economise on narrative or strengthen characters or plot. Over the course of a 25 week course, it seems we'll all become quite familiar with each other's work, and get to see it develop and flourish.

Between now and next week's class, I have to ponder the question posed to us by the tutor:

'What single thing has bugged you most in your adult life?'

That's quite a question, and I am as yet unsure of how I'll answer it!

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