Libby

Thanks @squidge – a great blog.

I’d be interested too @squidge.

@squidge I’d be interested in seeing those notes too.

I agree with you both about using the character questionnaire and other exercises at the early stages. It isn’t helpful for me. I need to write stuff and let them emerge. However at the end of first draft stage (which is where I’m at) I am finding it very useful for pinning down things about…[Read more]

I’m glad it wasn’t just me who read the wrong bits! Some of the suggestions in this chapter are quite subtle and may be beyond my sledgehammer approach. 🙂 Was interested at the example of the waitress and how she was characterised by her actions while the customers were characterised by their looks.

I shall have to give this questionnaire some…[Read more]

Ah another person in search of their murderer. I wrote 90% of my first draft before I identified mine!

I too found it fairly alien until recently but it works for me in a weird way, nudging my unconscious to sort problems out if that makes sense.

I am absolutely loving doing the character questionnaires, using the characters from the splurgy and shapeless first draft of my current WIP. Like @squidge though, I am not sure if I would get so much out of doing it before I had written extensively about them. It would feel like inventing a character rather than discovering one. Has anybody tried…[Read more]

Ditto from me @katemachon . Another quote from, I think, later in the chapter is ‘There’s nothing generic about fiction’- probably misquoted as I didn’t write it down. And also from The Art of Character – ‘It’s through character that we bring the general down to earth.’I am feeling both inspired and daunted!

I haven’t finished this chapter yet, but I’m already fascinated. Love the Sloane rule that speech ‘must do more than one thing or it is too inert for the purposes of fiction.’

And the example of the argument about sinking the oil rigs was an eye opener – to engage us emotionally in a disagreement, the characters must have an emotional stake in…[Read more]

Or choose a character you’ve developed already and see if the character questionnaire sheds any new light. Like you, I tend to discover who they are as I write.

Yes! I think that is what the MA is all about.

Thanks for all your hard work @woolleybeans.

Nice summary @JaneShuff. I think you’re right – it’s about getting in the mindset of making notes and creating work regularly. I read an interesting quote from Ira Glass about closing the gap between what you want to be creating and where you are now. That was all about doing a big volume of work and having deadlines. It’s back to the old idea of…[Read more]

I hope I’ve understood what is required/suggested for this part of the course. My overall aim is to expand my range in terms of writing habits and the type of writing I do which up to now has been very focussed on writing one novel after another.

I write every day already unless I am away from home or it is really impossible.

My plan t…[Read more]