Creative Writing Course – Week 23

There wasn’t a class last week, due to the Queen’s Jubilee and most people being off for the week, so this week’s blog post is from the previous week. We’re almost at the end of the course now, next week will be the submission day for our third and final chapters. The first three chapters of our novels have been lovingly crafted and edited by us and appraised by the tutors, so all the chapters that follow after the course has finished will no doubt be unspeakable rubbish. Or maybe that’s just me…

Here’s what I remember about the previous week’s class from my sketchy notes;

We went around the class talking about ways in which our plots could develop and ways in which we could tighten up our work. This kind of thing is really useful – bouncing ideas back and forth with someone who’s read your work but is unconnected to it is a great way of finding flaws and/or developing new subplots.

In more general terms, we looked at what our characters’ ‘wants’ and ‘needs’ are to find out their motivations, so that we better understand how to write for them.

What are their fears?
What are their secrets?

We were urged to create narrative bridges to link chapters to each other so that they lead a reader through the story. This sounds obvious but I think it’s something that needs to done carefully to avoid a disjointed feeling when reading your work.

On a similar note contrasts in style and settings can also make for distinctive writing. This is especially useful if you have characters or locations that are markedly different from each other. I’ll be trying to employ this tactic when switching between two of my main characters. In this particular crime novel I have a drug lord who keeps a low profile and is discreet with his business and wealth, and a street dealer who is brash and loud about his illicit work. By switching from one to the other frequently hopefully I’ll be able to set in contrast their differing lifestyles, despite being in the same line of work. That’s the intention, anyway…

After next week, which is the final week of the course forever due to it being axed by the University, I’ll have to find something else to ramble on about in this blog. I’m making an effort to keep it writing/books/literature related otherwise it will degenerate into surreal and often very dull rants about nonsense. I might just serialize the chapters from the novel I’ve been working on, just to keep me working on it.