Thoughts on creative writing – Page 4

Putting it off…

Final part of the final assessment for my Open University course (A174 Start Writing Fiction) is due in at the end of this week. Friday lunchtime, to be exact.

I am trying to avoid tinkering right up to the deadline.

But I can’t bring myself to submit it. Maybe I will miss that one typo? Or maybe I have misread the instructions and there is some vital ingredient I have omitted? Or maybe it is complete rubbish and I have time to start again, if I need to?

Or maybe I just don’t want to say ‘goodbye’ to the course? It has been good fun and the 3 months have flown by.

Morning distractions

The pile of notebooks holds the delicious promise of empty pages – waiting to be filled. Pink with white spots – this is the notebook that catches my eye. ‘Open me!’ it shouts, joyfully. ‘Open me and write.’

But wait. What else must I do before I begin? I write a ‘to do’ list. Number one, top of the list, must be my latest Open University assignment. Be quiet, pink notebook with white spots. Wait your turn. I will get to you soon.

Praise … makes me weak at the knees

I am doing block 3 of the Open University’s course – Start Writing Fiction. There have been ups and downs. Today was a definite ‘up’.

Posted a piece of work in the online tutor forum and the tutor made some nice comments.

It’s such a little thing – given the great events in life. But it meant such a lot to me. I finished the day on a high.

#Amwriting

Recently joined the #amwriting Web site. This seems like a friendly group of writers, many with published books, who all congregate around the Twitter hashtag #amwriting.

Probably the last thing I need is yet another blog! But it is good to be part of the writing community.

I have also recently discovered the Friday Flash site. This looks like another good idea and something to add to my list of writing challenges.

Characters – making them round.

I was disappointed. The writing seemed somewhat flat and the character remained distant. So, at the suggestion of the assignment, I retold the same scene using the present tense and from a first person perspective.

How do you create ‘real’ characters? Characters that are round, not flat? Personalities that are interesting? People your readers care about?

For a recent Open University assignment, we were asked to write a scene using a stereotypical character, but showing the contradictions in the character in order to make him or her ’round’. I had in mind a suited business person, very successful, whose family life was a little less organised. I wrote the scene in the third person and past tense (the classic ‘literary’ story telling style).

Here is my first attempt, written in the third person. Continue reading “Characters – making them round.”