Character Building
'Colourful Characters' - a writing course
Dear writer
When did you last invest in yourself as a writer?
What, never? Yep, me too. Some hang up about ‘spending money on myself’, perhaps. Maybe, just maybe, a reluctance to push myself forward. Surely I just put pen to paper. Just write, right?
Anyhow, it was about time.
I booked myself on one of the four courses run by over at Write Beyond The Lightbulb. This is a post about lessons, listening, and learning by doing.
It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.
― William Faulkner
Lessons *
Who you learn with is every bit as important as what you learn. I had a strong sense of Matt’s values and approach before I signed up. Finding someone with the right soft skills as well as the knowledge was important to me. At the heart of his approach are the 4 Es … encourage, excite, elucidate, extend.
“It is impossible to learn that which one thinks one knows already” Epictetus
Participate. Learning is about give and take. If people take the time and trouble to review your submissions, offer feedback on theirs.
There is a fine balance to be struck between rewriting someone’s work as you would write it and offering ways to improve the way they can write it. Suggestions are great but picking faults (this word for that word, preferred punctuation marks etc) is frictional.
Learning to get inside the heads of your characters always improves the way you write about how they will react to the situations you put them in.
Show, don’t tell.
I found it unexpectedly difficult to spark off other people’s writing prompts, particularly knowing that the piece I was writing was ‘homework’.
First drafts are meant to be rubbish. That’s how we turn second drafts into something better. BUT … there will always be good stuff in that rubbish first draft. Don’t get rid of it - don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.
Sometimes, not all the work you produce is for sharing. A violinist wouldn’t release an album of tuning up exercises. I wrote a piece for the ‘Senses’ section of the course. It was too hard-hitting, too brutal. I withdrew it and started again - the second go was fun to write and fun to read, a piece that I’ll end up editing and doing something with, I’m sure.
I made the mistake of trying to weave too many other activities into the weeks when I should have been 100% focused on the course. I left no room for the ebbs and flows of my creativity which compromised the value I should have squeezed out of the learning. That said …
Some learning is always better than no learning.
* This is my second burst of lessons from this course (or from the process of putting myself back into a learning environment). They’re written as reminders to me but I hope some of them strike a chord with with you too.
Just Write, The Newsletter
In the first newsletter of 2024, my thoughts will include some learnings from learning. I decided it was high time I invested in my writing, flying a little less by the seat of my pants and a little more with murmured asides from a more experienced co-pilot. I’m stretching the analogy to breaking point so I better get on with it.
Show Us Your Workings, Mr Fables
In my head, I am not very good at writing dialogue. I avoid it in that way some of us have of only doing the things we think we’re okay at. But when ‘Voice’ is one of the topics, there is no hiding place.
There was a writing exercise focused on dialogue so I just had to get on and write some.
Exercise 3 - Voice
‘It’s not easy, is it?,’ she murmured from the shadows.
‘What?’
Her brow furrowed. ‘Confessing to something.’
‘Something you did?’, he growled, scrolling to the blond girl’s profile.
‘No, not yet,’ she whispered, the serrated edge of the hunting knife sharpening her tone.
‘Why are you telling me, babe?’
She saw his lies in the harsh glow of the screen, wondering what she ever saw in him. ‘Maybe I just need to get it off my chest before …’
His disinterested drawl seeped into the chasm grown between them, ‘Jeez, you’re boring me now. Will you just spit it out.’
‘Before they come and arrest me.’
All of which brings us, dear Writer (or reader), back to the original question;
When did you last invest in yourself as a writer?
If the answer is not enough / not recently / never I can heartily recommend the courses
has put together in ‘Writing Beyond The Lightbulb’
Barrie, this is such a lovely post. Thank you so much for recommending my courses. It's so wonderful to hear you've taken so much from them. It was such a pleasure to work with you and I hope we'll have the chance to do so again in the future. You're a star!
Number 6 - three words and yet at times it feels impossible not to fall in your the telling trap!