story – Page 3 – Ruth Livingstone

Olympic Storyteller – my questions for the Brownlee Brothers

My first task, as an Olympic Storyteller, was to think of 3 questions to ask the triathlete Brownlee brothers – both of whom have medal chances in the 2012 Olympics.

In the end, I thought of dozens of questions; some boring and sensible, some completely ridiculous. But I could only choose three and one had to relate to the 2012 Olympics.

Well, these were the questions I finally submitted to the Brownlee Brothers.

Here are my questions for the Brownlee brothers:
1) In preparing for the Olympics, what is the most important piece of advice that Alistair could give his younger brother, Jonny?
2) If you could be a character from fiction, who would you be?
3) If you could choose your own theme music for the medal podium, what would you choose and why?

Will my questions be chosen? I don’t know. But I look forward to seeing what others submitted and, of course, reading the answers.

I am an Olympic Storyteller!

‘Congratulations! Your application to become a BT Storyteller for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games has been successful.’
Yikes! Now what?

Oh my goodness, gracious me. I swear I had forgotten all about it. Then I came home from holiday and found this email waiting for me.

Dear Ruth
Congratulations! Your application to become a BT Storyteller for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games has been successful.

You have been chosen to Continue reading “I am an Olympic Storyteller!”

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.”