Developing a story - wow, it's hard!

With the creative writing course, we have been guided slowly, but surely, into developing the skills needed to create a believable scenario. It's something I've taken for granted all my life, and didn't realise just what skill is required to make anything you write,

1) hold the interest of the reader and,
2) draw the reader in so that it is as real to them as their own life.

Of course, this also depends on exactly which genre you decide upon, as fantasy and sci-fi, while extremely popular, especially by me, is also reasonably obviously not real. I guess the trick of drawing in your reader depends on your skill as a writer and, while I'm sort-of getting there, this course has made me realise my many shortcomings as well as my few strengths.

I've been busy catching up with the activities we are supposed to be doing, and the one I completed this morning, Activity 10.8, was a peice that is supposed to help us practice towards the second TMA, or tutor-marked assignment, that is due in on the 5th January. This activity was a 1,000 word story which, as well as using repetition, should also show some, or all, of these technical elements:

A dramatic present
A dramatic action
Habitual time
Flashback
Foreshadowing
Starting in medias res (in the middle of the story)

I went slightly over the word limit, even after copious editing, which is one of my weaknesses, alas, but I didn't want to cut any more for fear of losing the flavour of the peace. I'm still not sure if I've covered the brief given, but I thoroughly enjoyed writing the story, and so decided that I'd put it here for you to read - and you can decide yourself if it's any good!



Kidnapped

Jenny dabbed at the sweat trickling slowly down her neck, trying to keep her movements unnoticed. Her heartbeat was uneven with the fear she felt, and tiredness had settled heavily in her bones. She puffed up at her fringe, but there was no relief from the heat and closeness of the room. She moved her head carefully, trying to check up on the children sprawled in uneasy sleep all about her on the hard-packed, earthen floor, and she tried to spot the third man, who she knew was somewhere behind her. She could feel his eyes boring into her back. Be strong!
It amazed her that she was in this position. After all, it was only last week that she had landed in Malaysia, and this morning that she had started her job as infant teacher to the charity-run school. Then all hell broke loose, and she ended up with three lunatics holding them all hostage. She only wished that her aide and translator, Sahrizan, had been in the room with her when they came – at least then she’d have some idea as to why it was happening. She took a slow, deep breathe, trying to get some air into her lungs.
The heat and humidity had been a big shock to her on her arrival, especially as this was January, and she still hadn’t quite adjusted to air that felt as if she were swallowing it down like water, rather than breathing it in as she had the clean, crisp air of her welsh mountain home. She missed home terribly at this moment, remembering the Christmas just gone, and she struggled to contain the tears that sprang to her eyes. She couldn’t afford to show a moment’s weakness to these men. She knew that if she did, any advantages she might find would be gone and, if she were to keep the children safe, then she needed to be strong.
The clock on the wall ticked away the dreary hours, and she waited, sweat sticking her shirt to her back. The children all gradually woke up from their heat-induced sleep, and they slowly crept around her on the floor, getting as close to her as they could, and as far away as possible from the men carrying guns. It had turned four o’clock before there was any change in the stillness of the room, and it was disturbed when someone knocked on the door, and spoke loudly in the local Malaysian dialect that Jenny was having such difficulties in understanding. Jenny’s heart beat faster in fear of what was to come but, as one of the men opened the door, she was relieved to see her aide, carrying two gallon containers of what she hoped was water into the room.
The children still sat unnaturally still, the presence of the gunmen keeping them silent. Jenny looked at Sahrizan, trying to catch his eye, but he looked behind her, at the unseen man, ‘Selamat tengah hari,’ he said to the gunman, and Jenny knew this was just a ‘good afternoon’ greeting. There was a second’s silence, then the man behind her spoke.
‘You may speak in English, Sahrizan, so that the new teacher will know what it is we do here’.
Jenny’s head span around as far as it could with her awkward position on the floor, and she stared in amazement at the man sat casually behind her on the seat provided for her in the classroom.
She saw immediately that he wasn’t armed as she had assumed, and realised that he must be British by his accent, which held the slightly rough cadence of the south Londoner.
‘What in God’s name is going on,’ she burst out, a flush of anger burning through her body. She quickly struggled up to her feet, and stood, legs braced, and hands balled into fists on her hips.
‘Who the hell are you, and why have we been held here like this for most of the day?’
Her breath came in gasps, as anger drove her to breathe more deeply of the humid air. The man just sat there staring intently at her then, to her shock, he suddenly burst into laughter, peal upon peal bursting from him as if he had been told the funniest joke ever.
Jenny’s face flushed with anger, and her temper snapped. With a cry, she lunged forward, swinging her arm towards her tormentor’s face but, quick as she was, he caught it before her hand could connect with his face. In an instant, he was up, and had Jenny in a hold that, no matter how she struggled, she couldn’t loosen, and it was this helplessness that sobered her, changing anger to fear. She stopped struggling, and the man’s voice came calmly from behind her.
‘That’s good, Miss Evans. Losing your temper doesn’t help, and could only bring trouble to yourself and the children. Now, I’m going to release you, so could you please be still, and you’ll get the explanation you deserve to have?’
Jenny stood stock still for an instant, then her body relaxed a little, and she nodded her agreement. His hand left her face and she felt able to breathe again. She was slowly released, and was turned to face him once more. He stared at her, then nodded, and indicated for her to sit in the chair he had left.
‘I’m sorry you were involved with this, Miss Evans, but it couldn’t be avoided, as the exercise had been organised long before we knew you were coming and, yes, it was just an exercise. I work for a security firm that works out safety measures. Measures that people can put into action, in order to stay safe from terrorists and the like. I’m afraid you got involved because, although you were new here, our plans couldn’t be changed’
Jenny looked around her at the children scrambling happily around Sahrizan, grabbing for the little cups full of water he was handing out, and realised just how idiotic she felt. Taking another deep breath of the humid air, she gave the man in front of her a wry smile, and then held out her hand.
‘Well, you know who I am – don’t you think I deserve to know who has been holding me captive all day?’

(1,053 words)

Thinking on new year resolutions

As I don't celebrate christmas, it's given me a lot of time to get on with my course work - although I'm a little bit behind due to health problems, alas!
But what it's also made me do, is think of the new year, and what I want to happen then.

I learned long ago not to make resolutions - I always fail at them, and it just makes me feel bad, so I just stopped beating myself up about it - probably at the same time I stopped 'doing' christmas itself!

So, what do I want to happen?

Well, I've got my second TMA due on 5th January, so I'm hoping that the effort I'm putting into it will pay dividends, as it's worth 30% of the total course markings!

I'm already working on it, along with trying to catch up with the course work, and I'm fairly pleased with the idea I've come up with, so I'm hoping that, with some tweaking and editing beforehand, it'll do for my tutor!
I realised today that I haven't put much of all the stuff I'm working on up on the blog - but it's all quite bitty so far, and I don't like putting partially done stuff up for perusal, so I've decided to wait until our next block, which is poetry, to put up any work I might have done.

It helps that poetry is the one thing consistent in my life. I've always jotted down impressions, and feelings onto paper or, nowadays, directly onto the computer.

I've found that this is a great way to focus on any problems that have occured in my life, and the sheer concentration needed to create something out of the chaos of emotion, is a great way to sort out a solution to whatever problems have occured in my life.

I am really looking forward to this next block! Lol

Hope you all have a relaxing time over the holidays!

Are We Having Fun Yet?

The biggest surprise to me so far, with this course I'm doing, is how much sheer fun it can be!

What could have been sheer hard work - or even thought of as torture - has become an event that I look forward to on a daily basis, and is, in fact, a reason for me to get up early to concentrate on. It's also a great distraction from my various woes both physically, and mentally!

At this moment, we are concentrating on 'showing' and 'telling', learning the technique that should give our narrative voice it's power to draw the reader into our world - and keeping them there - and all by the sheer delights of our ability to show our characters in all their glory, or to tell of their situations without becoming a bore about it. A tricky one, this!

Despite the fact that I've been writing all my life, I was almost unaware of the technicalities of writing. Most of the things we are learning, I have been doing almost instinctively - albeit, not very well - but there is a big chunk of technicalities that I was practically unaware of, so this course is definitely teaching me a thing or two, or three . . . Lol

Right at this moment, I'm trying to absorb a section called Dialogue and Stories - we are supposed to write something with dialogue, and 'show' what's happening, leaving out the 'telling' altogether - not an easy task, and I have to confess to struggling with it a little (hence, the distraction of catching up with my blogging! Lol). But I will do my best, as we have an eTMA looming, due in for 5th January, 2009 - at the latest!

That's ages away, I hear you cry! Well, it may seem so now, but I've got to produce a 2,200-word story, using all the techniques we've learned so far, and it's not as easy as I'd thought it would be. To be fair, I've got the nugget of the story already written down, but am having great difficulty deciding on a narrative point-of-view. I've written it in first-person limited omniscience, but I'm not sure whether it's working as well as I'd hoped - which means I'm going to have to experiment with various other viewpoints, to see which one will work best!

A writer's work is never done! Lol

I am sooo tardy it's ridiculous!

I can't believe how long it's been since I posted on here!

So much has happened since the last time, that I'm almost lost for words - well, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration?

Since my last post, I've done six weeks of my course, and passed my first eTMA with a comfortable 67% - not as good a pass as I'd hoped for but, unfortunately, with a creative writing course it's all a bit subjective as to whether your tutor will really love the way you write or not.

My study-buddy group have discussed this, and we've decided that it's purely the luck of the draw as to whether each of our tutor's will love our style of writing or not - a little unfair maybe? Well, I guess there's all the technical stuff that we're learning to take into consideraion as well - let's be fair, you can write the best story or poem in the world but, if it's full of spelling mistakes, and the syntax and grammer are appalling, then you are bound to lose points!

As well as coping with all the various activities we've been set, and trying to remember to write in my notebook whenever I think of something, I have also made an epic journey (for me, anyway!) across country from the coast of west Wales, to Norfolk in East Anglia, in order to visit my family for the first time since I left there 24 years ago!

The visit was both emotionally and physically exhausting for me, but I'm so very glad I went - taking my daughter with me, who hadn't met most of her relatives since she was five! I spent an awful lot of time crying, but they were catharctic tears, and I'm all the better for them - and I was so happy to see Mum & Dad again.

I was so saddened that I hadn't managed to get there in time to say my goodbyes to my sister Caron, who died of cancer just a couple of weeks before I made it, but I visited her grave, and said a prayer for her, and was glad that she was out of her pain at last.

The unfortunate side-effect of my visit, was that it has taken me a couple of weeks to recover from it all physically. I didn't realise what a strain it had all been on me, until I colapsed when I got home. That's the trouble with having so many things wrong with me - there are times they all gang up on me and tell me 'enough!'

But I'm almost back to what I call normal for me - still mostly bed-bound, but at least I'm able to think again, and I have just managed to catch up on my course work again - I absolutely hated being behind! Lol

At the moment we are learning how to develop characters and settings, and I'm having a lot of fun developing my own 'voice' in my writing - it's become a real adventure for me, and great fun to discover just what my mind will dream up when I give it a scenario, or ask it a question.

This was my last activity from yesterday:

I was instructed to invent a character, and place him, or her, into a place of historic interest, or with an atmosphere, then I had to write 250 words in which my character feels ill and worries about the symptoms - this is what I came up with:

Feeling Unwell

Sarah stood silently while the guide expounded on the history of Grimes Graves. She wasn’t really listening, as she’d started to feel strange the moment she had reached the cramped floor of the pit thirty feet beneath the surface. The dimness of the place was oppressive to her, and she felt that, almost within range of hearing, there was the faint, echoing, tap-tap of antlers on stone coming out of the grated openings of the shafts.

It amazed her that anyone could have fitted into those small openings, and that brought it home to her how much humanity had physically grown in the thousands of years since these men had come in search of flint for tools.
Sarah felt a little giddy, and she leaned against the rough wall, hoping that the faint sickness she felt wasn’t anything serious. She started feeling hemmed in by the closeness of the people around her, and had a picture flash in her head of falling so ill she would need help back out of the pit.

She started to take slow, but deep, breaths, slowly in through the nose, and out of the mouth. The giddiness started to recede, and the roiling that had started up in her stomach settled quickly. Of course! It was a touch of agoraphobia - that hadn’t happened to her in years!

With the panic receding, Sarah tuned in once more to the story the guide was telling his rapt audience – thank heavens nobody had noticed her temporary affliction!