Next Week: Adelaide Writers' Week: Live Radio Broadcast & Live Tweeting

Adelaide Writers' Week: Live Radio Broadcast & Live Tweeting

1.05 pm Thursday, March 1st, 2012


Can’t get to Adelaide Writers’ Week this year? In the country, another state or the other side of the world? That’s okay, this year we’re online.

Listen to live coverage of  Adelaide Writers’ Week on ABC @ Writers’ Week digital radio and online. See the full schedule here.

On Twitter? We will be Live-tweeting from Adelaide Writers’ Week. To follow the sessions online and take part in panel discussions, follow:
@adelaidefest
@adelwritersweek

Make sure you add columns for #AdlWW (East Stage) and #AdlWW2 (West Stage) so you can follow individual sessions easily.

We will be taking questions from the Twitterverse during panel discussions so you can take part in the conversation at Adelaide Writers’ Week no matter where you are.

You can find session information here and in our free iPhone and Android app or you can purchase the Adelaide Writers’ week program here. 

[Source: Adelaide Festival]

I remember...

Start writing a piece with the words: I remember...And see what comes out.
I remember...
Not much actually. Lots of thoughts cross my mind but I am not int the mood to write about those memories, even if it is nothing special.
I do remember suddenly being up on the 15th floor of the NZ Police office building in Wellington. That floor housed the cafe and I was often there for a cup of coffee in the morning, meeting with my manager and enjoying the views over the harbour towards eastbourne. If it wasn't for work I could sit there for hours, watching the weather passing by. The cloud formations were often spectacular! But also when there wasn't a cloud in the sky it was the best place to be. The colour of the sea turned an emerald green that I've only ever seen in new zealand. It's beautiful and mesmerising.
That office building was one of just a few tall buildings In that area. Being up on the15th floor gave you the opportunity to look down on Thorndon and its heritage-listed houses with their interesting rooflines in a great variety of colours. Even better was it when the local girls college next door was on: there were pupils hanging about on the sports field and walking to and from different buildings, which from above looked very much like anything but not school buildings, being old and fascinating with all those nooks and crannies and verandahs. Sipping my cup of coffee high up in that building I often felt like being in a parallel universe, invisible.

- Evelyn

Self portrait

Write about yourself as you are at this moment, use all the six senses.
I am sitting on the couch. It is evening, nearly bedtime. It has been cold today, not more than 16 degrees. We have the heater going and I have a soft blanket wrapped around my legs, as the leather couch didn't seem to be warming up tonight. I hear Age unpacking the dishwasher and rattling with cutlery and crockery. I also hear the wind, or rather, the wind against the windows and now and then the wind whooshing through the space between the ceiling and the roof. I am typing on my iPad which I took with me from work today. It feels solid on my lap and the backside is nice and smooth. To type properly I really have to remove that comfortable blanket from my legs, throw it on the side, and change into the lotus posture. My bling-bling bracelet catches my attention now and then, it has Swarovski crystals in it and is very shiny. I smell the wine in Age's glass.


This piece of text hasn't been edited. I would probably change a few little things in the sentences, maybe a few words, but not too much.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

60 second exercise

We still don't know who the killer is. We have seen a lot of suspects, but no idea whether the real killer is amongst them. That doesn't happen often, and we've seen at least 19 episodes! Well thought out plot.


This was a 60 second writing exercise where you write for 60 seconds whatever comes up in your head.

Exercise: write a piece without using the letter 'e'

It was a dark and stormy night....

This is the beginning of a paragraph you are about to write and you get two minutes for it. There is one thing about that paragraph: you are not allowed to use any words with the letter 'e' in it! Notice that 'it was a dark and stormy night' doesn't have e's in it?

So...

We did this in class. Some people had two to three sentences, others went completely blank. I managed to do this:

It was a dark and stormy night....
And I was still at work busy writing on my first book. With howling wind, rain and ligthning I was happy as. My iPad wasn't working tonight.

My short story is about....

My short story is about someone who survived nearly two months being trapped inside his snow-covered car.  He could have got out of the car, as he was only at the end of a road leading off a major highway, but he chose to stay in the car. He was close to death when he was discovered by people on snowmobiles. No-one has missed him.

Exercise: Critiquing Fiction

For the next class I have to critique a work of fiction that I have read. The title of the book is 'Songs of the Humpback Whale' by Jodi Picoult.


I like 'Songs of the Humpback Whale' a lot. It kept my attention fully. I think the target audience for this story is mainly adult women, I can't put the finger on why that is, but I do know that my partner doesn't like 'this kind of books' at all.

Jodi Picoult successfully creates tension. I kept reading and reading. I tried to read as slowly as possible, to enjoy the book for longer, but that was really hard.

The main character is Jane, and the whole book is used to get to know her better and to understand why she is who she has become and who she really is as a person. This character Jane and her relationship with her husband and daughter is unraveled like an onion.

The book reads like a road movie, with the main characters Jane and her daughter driving away from her husband in A, crossing the USA to B, with in the middle all sorts of chance events that bring Jane and her daughter closer together and further apart at the same time.


The story is told through the point of view of the main characters in the story: Jane, Oliver (the husband), and Rebecca (the daughter). The reader experiences the story through their individual eyes, which in my opinion creates a lot of tension, as you get to know their experiences and emotions first hand. There is also a character whose letters to Jane we get to see. The story jumps forward and backward through time.

I don't think the plot is always believable, here and there it's too dramatic. Especially at the end where the boyfriend of Rebecca (the daughter) falls from a cliff and dies - that could have gone a bit different and probably be better believable.

Jodi Picoult's strength for me lies in creating a certain mood throughout the story, which makes the state of the relationships between the main characters very clear. She is very good at sensory description, allowing the reader to feel what the characters feel. The dialogues are sharp, short and clean, which move the story forward, and make you want to read faster and more.

Components of a short story

1. Setting - geographical location, time, social setting, and a mood or atmosphere)
   
2. Plot - the sequence of events arranged with a beginning, middle and end. Characters are introduced, a catalyst for conflict enters the story, characters are challenged and react to the conflict that leads to a climax followed by a denouement or resolution. All stories need conflict. All characters need a reason to react. A conflict can be described as the character receives information, accepts the information and then reacts (makes a choice) about the information. Conflict can be internal and external.
   
3. Character - a character needs to be convincing
   
4. Point of view
   
5. Theme - the theme will not be stated plainly in the text but will be seen by the action of the characters
   
6. Show don't tell - a writer needs to show the reader by using imagery, tone of voice and sensory images.

Some tips:

• Start as close to the climax as possible
• The characters in a short story should be created by a writer, not discovered, borrowed or stolen from life. You will give them what they need to serve the purposes of your story
• In real life people may be thrown together in interesting or dramatic situations (such as a stalled lift) in which they all get along well without tension or conflict. In writing a story you will often create characters deliberately different and throw them into situations where these differences have to be worked through.
• In real life the scandalous surfaces of some people's lives create sensational headlines and stories that last for a day or a week and do not satisfy and are not remembered. The writer often looks more intimately at quieter moments in lives, or looks deeply into the intricate causes of unhappiness or happiness.
• What happens to your characters happens because you have planned it to happen, so that you can achieve a particular purpose in plotting or in character development.

About getting feedback

• Never show a first draft, except to someone who is an experienced reader capable of recognising what the first draft might become (according to the instructor we must expect to go over each text about a 100 times! That's terrible!)
• Don't talk your ideas through with people. You can talk yourself out of a good idea when you see other people's reactions to a half-formed idea.
• Never choose a member of your own family to be your critic. They usually have no idea of the process of writing, even if as readers they have good literary taste. They will also say 'That's not how it happened' more often than you want to hear.

Recommended texts

• The Writing Book: a workbook for fiction writers, by Kate Grenville
• The style manual for authors, publishers and printers, 2002, Sixth edicion, Australian Government Publishing Service.

There we go!

First creative writing class this evening!