With some of our travellers returned to Benalla we had a larger group this month, which always makes for interesting discussions.
Hints:
We talked about finding names for our characters. This included not giving characters similar names, not using the same start initial, not using the same end letter and not using the same length. All of these can interfere with the flow as readers struggle to remember which character is which. Readers will often look at patterns like initial and length rather than actual spelling of the name. Tim and Tom would be a great example of what not to do! And watch for names that will have a preconceived meaning such as Buffy or Hannibal … unless of course it is appropriate to the story.
Our challenge:
For our challenge this month we looked at some more cliches, writing new versions of some well-worn phrases. An example “His eyes dropped to the floor” became “His eyes did a backflip”
OR
“A tear fell down her face” became “the faded freckle on her face was washed by a single tear”. These gave a clear picture of the emotions or actions.
Our stories:
For our written work to share with the class there were three prompts:
I have mentioned it before, but we always seem to have different people come up with a similar idea without any consultation. This time two people wrote about young men and their first car. You would expect that this would be an obvious coincidence as one of the topics was “on the road again”. But neither author wrote on this topic. One was about being caught in the storm and the other was around the great sensation with both occupants of a car being safe after an accident. Outback travels appeared twice, with descriptions of the landscape and people met on the road. Then we had a great description of walking around the lake, which inspired members of the class wanting to get out and take the same walk (if it had not been so wet).
Finally a class member had recently come across the concept of “Metafiction” and provided an attempt at writing in this manner. This is a very hard to describe – a story in a story. (I am not going to try to explain further, but perhaps try Google if you are interested in exploring this).
The topics for our 10 October class are:
We are always ready to welcome new storytellers to the class.
Joy Shirley
Hints:
We talked about finding names for our characters. This included not giving characters similar names, not using the same start initial, not using the same end letter and not using the same length. All of these can interfere with the flow as readers struggle to remember which character is which. Readers will often look at patterns like initial and length rather than actual spelling of the name. Tim and Tom would be a great example of what not to do! And watch for names that will have a preconceived meaning such as Buffy or Hannibal … unless of course it is appropriate to the story.
Our challenge:
For our challenge this month we looked at some more cliches, writing new versions of some well-worn phrases. An example “His eyes dropped to the floor” became “His eyes did a backflip”
OR
“A tear fell down her face” became “the faded freckle on her face was washed by a single tear”. These gave a clear picture of the emotions or actions.
Our stories:
For our written work to share with the class there were three prompts:
- On the road again
- They had both got out, and it caused a great sensation
- A storm was brewing and hours had passed since they’d left the camp
I have mentioned it before, but we always seem to have different people come up with a similar idea without any consultation. This time two people wrote about young men and their first car. You would expect that this would be an obvious coincidence as one of the topics was “on the road again”. But neither author wrote on this topic. One was about being caught in the storm and the other was around the great sensation with both occupants of a car being safe after an accident. Outback travels appeared twice, with descriptions of the landscape and people met on the road. Then we had a great description of walking around the lake, which inspired members of the class wanting to get out and take the same walk (if it had not been so wet).
Finally a class member had recently come across the concept of “Metafiction” and provided an attempt at writing in this manner. This is a very hard to describe – a story in a story. (I am not going to try to explain further, but perhaps try Google if you are interested in exploring this).
The topics for our 10 October class are:
- Magic! Whoever would have thought you could find it in….
- With a loud roar, the wild beast charged
- The promise of spring was in the air
We are always ready to welcome new storytellers to the class.
Joy Shirley
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