As promised and procrastinated, here is the gist of the workshop I gave to the Mount Gambier U3A group a few weeks ago. Titled "Creative writing the modern way", the workshop was only two hours long and into that short time I managed to compress material that could easily be expanded into a whole writing course. It was a valuable experience for me because the elements I talked about are all things I am still working on myself. There is no surer way to learn something than to teach it to others, since in the preparation and teaching of new material the instructor's thoughts and opinions are clarified and gaps in his or her knowledge are made glaringly apparent.

U3A patrons are generally over 55, which means they grew up with very different styles of writing from those of today. Authorial intrusion, "head hopping", fly-on-the-wall description and sometimes quite floridly purple prose were commonly used until about 1960s. By that time, movies and television had begun to impact on reader expectations, and by the turn of the new century readers were deserting books in droves and turning to more visual forms of entertainment.

But writers were striking back! They realised that in order to compete with the visual media, books must give the reader a sense of immersion in the story's world and in the sensations, emotions and thoughts of the point-of-view character. Action began to play a critical role: something has to happen on page one and be followed by a tension-building series of events to keep readers enthralled for anything up to 900 pages. A tall order.

The notes I handed out to the students encapsulate the material presented in the two hour workshop:

1. Start “In Media Res”
Get right into the action, preferably on page one!

2. Show, don’t tell: use plenty of sensory description
At the end of any scene, three of the five senses must have been engaged. (This is not new: the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, who died in 1904, said, “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”)

Compare these two passages:
Her visitor strode across the room, swung his pack from his back to the floor and bent to kiss her cheek before taking the seat opposite hers.

There’s nothing wrong with that. It gets across what happened in a few succinct words. But look at this rewrite:

He brought a draught of cold air with him as strode across the room. Shrugging free of his pack he tossed it to the floor and caught her in a hug. Laughing, she threw her arms around the rough dewy wool of his cloak. She tilted her cheek up to his as he bent to kiss her, suppressing a shudder at the sudden chill contact.

Exercise: Write a paragraph showing a meeting between two people that tells us more than the fact that one is waiting and the other arrives.

3. Voice and narrative style
• Editorial (or intrusive)
• Neutral (or non-intrusive)
• Invisible author – today’s preferred style. Requires use of plenty of sensory detail and the “close” (or “tight”) 3rd person POV.

4. Point-of-view (POV)
The “close third” limits itself to the sensory information available to the point of view character, even in the narrative passages.

Compare these two passages:

Cinderella looked beautiful and important in her new gown and little gold bell-shaped earrings. Her eyes sparkled in the firelight as she twirled across the kitchen floor. ‘I’m going to the ball!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’m really, truly, going!

If Cinders is the POV character, in close 3rd you might write something like:

Cinderella had never felt so beautiful, so important. The silk of the gown caressed her skin and the golden bell earrings jingled as she twirled across the kitchen floor. ‘I’m going to the ball! I’m really, truly, going!’

Exercise: Rewrite this passage in close 3rd POV:
Red Riding Hood’s voice carried to the edge of the forest as she sang all the way to grandma’s house. She stopped singing and her face paled when she saw a wolf padding along the path towards her.

5. The Unities
Many modern stories honour a revised version of Aristotle’s unities:

• A story should have only one POV character. (Usually presented in close 3rd POV but sometimes in 1st)
• A story should follow temporal sequence with no gaps in the narrative and few, if any, flashbacks.

(While these are by no means universally observed, few popular writers today adopt the opposite extremes – “head hopping” and messing around with the time line.)

6. Beats and Tags
The tight third POV uses as few dialogue attribution tags (“he said”, “she grumbled”, “he thought”) as possible and often replaces them with “action beats” (“He crossed the room”, “She put her book down”)

7. Strong Writing
Insofar as possible, steer clear of adjectives and adverbs. If you feel you have to add an adjective, look for a stronger noun instead. If you feel you have to use an adverb, you possibly have the wrong verb.

And that's my workshop in a hazelnut shell. In the interest of brevity, the notes are simplified to a degree that might even be misleading, but they suffice, I hope to give you an idea of the points we discussed, and I'll be interested in reading your opinions of the points I chose. You will notice that I drew on the excellent assistance I had from Ursula and others on the Online Writers Workshop, which I mentioned in an earlier post.

Next weekend is Easter, which each year brings Swancon, Western Australia's Speculative Fiction Convention. It looks to be a beauty (this year it's also the National Convention) with several of my favourite authors on panels, including Glenda Larke, Juliet Marillier and Karen Miller. I'm actually going to be on two panels alongside some very fine writers. I expect to learn a lot! I might be late posting next week as the convention doesn't end until Monday afternoon, but never fear, I'll soon come tiggering back with a full report!

BTW, over on my other blog, I've posted a new Shakespearean meme, together with a lament about the lack of interest in Shakespeare among the younger generations:-(

This time last week I was feeling really despondent about the critiques I've been getting. For years, people have been telling me that my characters need more depth; build-up needs more tension; narrative needs more showing, less telling - and the one I forgot, which has actually turned out to be the really essential one - I don't use enough sensory description.

In despair I uploaded a new chapter to OWW with a plea that critters would not just tell me these things, but show me exactly where and how to include them. Now most critters balk at this. Re-writing another's work looks arrogant. No sensitive critter will do it. But why not, just now and then, put a practical spin on the adage we keep passing around like a mantra "show, don't tell"? In this case, it turned out to be the final ray of light that illuminated the room where my book lives.

Here's what happened: by (unwillingly, I might add) actually rewriting two sentences of my WIP, crit buddy Ursula demonstrated what people have been telling me for at least five years. Her review lifted me from down-in-the-dumpiness to up-in-the-cloudsness in the time it took me to read her advice. Look at the difference between these ways of writing the same thing.

My original version:
Her visitor strode across the room, swung his pack from his back to the floor and bent to kiss her cheek before taking the seat opposite hers.

Nothing wrong with that. It gets across what happened in a few succinct words. But look at Ursula's rewrite:
He brought a draught of cold air with him as he strode across the room. Shrugging free of his pack he tossed it to the floor and caught her in a hug. His skin was chill against hers as he bent to kiss her cheek.

In that brief passage Ursula caught the essence of what people have been trying to tell me all these years. All those criticisms were saying the same thing, as if my critters were coming into my story-room through four different doors; doors labelled Depth of Characterisation; Tension Building; Sensory Description and the old chestnut, Show, Don't Tell. At last, I've realised these are just four doors into the same place.

Adding sensory detail makes it easier for the reader to see the character close up. To walk a mile in another person's shoes we have to feel those shoes pinching. If we don't feel the sensation, we won't understand what s/he's going through. In experiencing what the character is feeling on the physical level, we more readily feel the tension not just in the character's body but in the situation s/he is in. And through that feeling and experiencing we are being shown, not being told.

To think of all the times I've been reminded to do these things and not understood what was needed! Dear critters, you must have been thinking that I was either dense or stubborn. Perhaps I am both, but most of all, I am obviously a slow learner. But now, please rejoice with me, for reading that passage Ursula re-wrote made me see that all my problems boil down to one: the need for More Sensory Detail.

So although I've written one and a half chapters this week I've actually spent more time editing; playing with the interconnectedness of those four persistent criticisms. Thank you, Ursula, for your kind help, and thank you all the people who were probably dying to re-write my stuff but hesitated because I never thought of asking you to. At last your patience has paid off, and hopefully you'll start to see an improvement in the functioning of all four of those doors into my story!