Writing course update

It's all been pretty busy recently. Am having a brilliant experience on the St Martins course, due largely to the excellent teaching/ crowd control of Elise Valmorbida. She is obviously a good author (recommend The Book of Happy Endings and The Winding Stick), and as a copywriter spends a lot of time thinking about the effect of words on people, but more than those things she has a way of eeking out information. She insists that there are no authorial caveats before reading, there's no criticism without editorial suggestions and no idea is a bad idea - just one that needs work. I also feel that without even realising it my writing has changed hugely since I took the first course two years ago. My style is brasher, harsher and more confident. And, to use a phrase I despise the connotations of, more 'masculine.' A tutor of mine at university claimed to be able to tell the gender of a student through their essay style, with females using more phrases such as "possibly", "perhaps" and "this could be seen as..." and male students, as a rule, wrote more definitively and more authoritatively. At uni this was definitely true of my work - how could little old me possibly be suggesting that I know better than an expert, or that my work is even worth the time it takes to read at all? Such a shame, but hopefully am ironing out that issue now.

A couple of weeks ago the assignment was about Crowd Control; the aim being to have more than two characters entering into conversation.

Write a new story scene which features at least six characters, telling the tale from ONE participating character's perspective, building momentum through conflict to a climax...

Please be aware of: how gently/slowly you need to introduce characters into the scene; how much detail you need in order to distinguish characters clearly from each other; how you contrast the depth of detail about certain characters with minimal indication of others; how your narrative point of view will determine understanding of the other characters; how to balance revealing action with dialogue and unspoken emotional currents; how the reader may perceive the other characters differently from the main narrator; how often to mention the existence of minor characters who are 'needed for the numbers' but don't take centre stage just now...

Strangely this is something I don't think I've ever tried before. It was as the problems in Libya were just coming to the forefront in the news and must have been on my mind, as I wrote about a political hostage situation. Making the assignment a bit harder for myself than it has to be I also had all the characters in the dark, thus negating any opportunity to differentiate during the conversation through physical description. Doh. But I enjoyed the assignment nevertheless, and will publish my latest version in the next post.

In other news yet another rejection from Holby City. This time should have been extra disappointing as the job was pretty much perfect for my skills and experience (trainee script editor, Holby City) however when the email came through I barely batted an eyelid. I know what to expect from the BBC by now, and it's a big fat No Thanks. However I've been very busy with alternative opportunities, and here's hoping it will work out and I'll have a brand new blog to start on soon...