Creative Writing Course – Week #4
"A million reasons to quit, only one reason to keep going."
This was a comment made by the tutor last night in relation to the discipline of writing a novel, and it's so true. This week focused on the importance of the physical act of writing, getting words down on the screen/page. Once the bulk of your narrative starts to emerge, you can return to edit and correct it, but without that, you have nothing.
There are a multitude of distractions which can beset a writer, and some of them are writing related. One of them is the enormous choice of words available to you, vocabulary can serve to constrict the writer's work as well as expand it. Spending time searching for the perfect word to use in a sentence when working on the first or second draft of something can waste a lot of time, only to see you changing it back anyway. Your first instinct is often the correct one.
The three terms of the course are to be spent looking at the creation and honing of the first three chapters of a novel. Term one is the first chapter, term two is the second chapter, etc. For the first chapter of a novel, it's essential for the writer to discover his or her voice, which will give essence to your work, making it sound the way you want it to.
I've already written the first four chapters of my new novel, and I read the opening couple of paragraphs from the first chapter out loud to the class last week. I'm pleased to see that the immediate, punchy pace I wanted to achieve was picked up on by the class and tutor, so hopefully I have gone some way to finding the appropriate 'voice' for this project.
The homework for this week is to complete a full biography for your protagonist. I've done this kind of thing before, but always in a really sketchy form without any real depth. We were told to look at everything that might influence the character's behaviour in our writing, from their birth to the present day. By considering every aspect of the protagonist's life, a deeper understanding of them should emerge for the writer. We were also warned that this can often throw up issues and story elements the writer had not previously considered. This in turn can steer the novel in a direction not previously intended. This is not necessarily a bad thing, and it will be interesting to see where this leads me.
I can see that one thing I might need to tease out as an integral character trait for my protagonist is the possibility of a dark past, ghosts that haunt him and play out in the actions and reactions of his story.
Who knows where this exercise will lead me? I know I certainly need to examine my main character some more before I commit many more words to the story, so I'm sure it will all help.
The bad news in terms of the 'one million reasons to quit…' thing is that I plan to get a copy of Modern Warfare 3 for the Xbox this weekend, and coupled with Battlefield 3, I can see a lot of time being sunk into video games as opposed to writing!
