Class work example 3

We were thrown into the blackness and landed in piles. I felt something scrunched up by my shoulder that didn’t move when I shrugged. I prayed it stayed still because it was never alive, not because it had ceased to be. There were grunts, staccato demands barked as the men dragged us around like sacks of spuds. ‘Mover, perra,’ and ‘callate, puta Americana.’ One grabbed me round my chest, pinching and pulling at the flesh of my armpits with his stubby fingers. His hands left a sluggy trail where they brushed over my face, and his rotten odour filled my mouth. I could hear my own constant wheezing breaths and the pump-pump of my heartbeat like white noise. I half expected one beat to be too much, to push my insides out of my chest like a scene from Alien. Finally the turn of phrase ‘heart in my throat’ made sense; it sat engorged at the base of my neck, threatening to choke me.

Once the Men left us alone we were silent for a long while. Or at least it felt like it. Time isn’t quite so measurable in the dark, when it expands and contracts into gaping holes or flurries of panic. The first voice to speak out wasn’t mine. I was waiting, willing someone else to go first, frightened that if I spoke no-one would answer back. I didn’t want the answer to be finite, and in the dark there are always possibilities. ‘H-hello?’ came the first voice, female and stuttering. There was a pause and I felt us hold our collective breaths. A man responded ‘I’m here’ he said. His voice came from behind me, her voice from in front. Surrounded I spoke out ‘How many?’ At the same time another voice spoke, posing the same question. ‘Are there more of you?’ she asked, a distorted echo.

Again nobody spoke. The pause was too long and so two more people started at once, like a conversation with satellite delay. Again I asked my little question: how many. The number was most important, providing substance where nothing else was tangible. Concentrating I could feel very little. My arms were tied and numb behind my back. My face was pressed against the floor, gritty against my cheek. I lay on my side in a position like the result of a suicide leap, spine twisted and legs bent awkwardly. I pictured the chalk outline from cop shows, and in my mind I was already dead. ‘I’m here’ it was the woman who first spoke up ‘my name is Geneveive’ her English was perfect, but she spoke with a thick French accent. ‘I’m thirty-four years old, from Lyon. I’m a journalist.’ ‘Hello Geneveive’ another woman spoke out encouragingly. ‘I’m Annik. Dutch. Also a journalist.’ ‘Thank you.’ Courtesy, rather than a hand to hold, was all we could offer.

Taking a ragged breath I decided it was my turn ‘Hi…everybody. I’m Bethan, I’m British, from Leeds.’ I paused before the final push. ‘And I’m looking for my husband.’
Then they came thick and fast.
‘Paul. From Boston.’
‘Tina, Paul’s wife.’
The two voices came from very near each other, maybe within touching distance. I tried to stretch a foot, to make contact, jealous of theirs.
‘My name is Diana. Travelling from Cambridge, England.’
‘Diana! I’m here – over here!’
‘Stephanie!’
‘That’s my friend, Stephanie.’ There was rustling in the dark, perhaps Diana reaching out her foot.
‘And Dan, Daniel. I’m with them. Girls, where are you?’
‘Over here’ ‘Here’ The words came at once, a confused echo from opposite sides in the darkness.
‘I don’t know where that is’ Dan’s words were met with another confused silence. The connection between us was tenuous, and I didn’t want to break it.
‘Is that everybody?’ I asked, to which there were murmurs in reply.

With no visual clues I couldn’t see if I should talk. Nobody had instructed not to but it seemed unwise to anger the Men.
Out of the darkness we heard Geneveive ‘Who are you?’
Confused, I responded. ‘We already said. I think that’s everyone.’
‘No, I mean who are you. Like I’m a news journalist from the Netherlands, out here with only a small crew. My cameraman is missing, and I think the others escaped. I am lucky, I have no one at home waiting for me.’
‘No-one? There must be someone.’ Tina spoke up from across the room, and I felt an almost physical pain as I imagined she would be squeezing Paul’s hand, grateful.
‘My parents are gone, that’s ok, and I have no other family.’
‘Someone will care though.’ I couldn’t help myself. Being alone there was bad enough for me.
‘I have friends, but they will be fine – they have each other. Somebody said before their husband is missing.’
I swallowed, but shielded by the dark decided to tell them.

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...

Writer's group

A large number of the problems a writer faces can be solved by just one thing: a writer’s group. Last week I met up with a few people from my writing course at St Martins. I took the beginners Creative Writing: Fact or Fiction with Elise Valmorbida last year. The course was excellent and I would recommend it to anyone who fancies themselves as a bit of a writer, or just enjoys doodling a few stories every now and again.

The best part of the course for me was gaining confidence in sharing my work. Before the course I hadn’t shown anyone my writing for years. Not since age nine, when I was the proud recipient of the primary school creative writing shield, had my writing had the opportunity to be mocked and sniggered at by my peers. Or at least that’s what I had imagined would happen. The first class was a nerve-wracking affair, as I pictured a room full of artistic geniuses chain-smoking and making droll comments about literature. Which actually wasn’t far off – the room looked like Topshop and a vintage stall got in a fight (I couldn’t quite say who won). However there was no mockery of any kind. In fact the feedback was overwhelmingly positive, and even negative comments were given with a positive spin. Although the skill level in the class was high the assignments took us all out of our comfort zones and some weeks even the most talent writer struggled and the tadpoles excelled.

Several of the girls I took the course with went on to take the intermediate course, but I opted for screenwriting (which turned out to be film studies. Not what I was after at all). I definitely intend to take the intermediate course this autumn, and some students take it over and over as a way of pushing them to produce new work. At £200+ a course doing it every year seems a bit pricey, so the next best thing is taking the class into a bar. Six of us met up in a bar-cum-coffee shop on the top floor of a London bookshop (which we thought apt) and read aloud our most recent pieces. I took the piece of prose I mentioned in my 31st March post, and I have to say it didn’t receive quite the reception I was hoping for. Re-reading the piece now I think all the feedback and advice is actually terribly accurate*. It’s sometimes hard to hear criticism not just because it knocks your confidence, but sometimes because you’ve gotten so attached to a word or phrase that it’s difficult to acknowledge it isn’t suitable. There’s several wordy sentences in the piece that I adore; I love their poetic, polysyllabic nature and the way they languidly roll off my tongue. But they don’t fit. They don’t suit the character, the nature of the story and the rhythm of the piece. So out they come. Next week, when we meet again, I’m going to take a completely edited piece written from the first person instead of the third to make sure I don’t slip into language that speaks from me rather than from the character. And on top of all this you get to have a few glasses of wine with some friendly, interesting people who like what you like.

*I will put the piece into a separate blog entry and tag it as 'writing example'

Throwing myself into cyber space

I’m not really the blogging type. I’m a technophobe with a fear of my personal information being out in the ether. I tut and shake my head sagely when a teenager’s party gets ruined by inviting everyone on their myspace network, or some fool’s house gets broken into after they announce holidays on their facebook status. However people always say if you want to succeed you have to put yourself out there. This is me, putting myself out there.

There seems to be so many pathways into being a writer that I’ve spent ages paralysed over which one to take. Every writer I read interviews with suggests a different route. Some worked their way up from tea-boy, where others find their first script pounced upon. I tried the Foot-in-the-Door technique by applying to be a script editor’s PA on a well-known British soap, only to receive an email doubting my desire to be a team assistant. “Oh, no” I protested “being a PA is my dream!” So it was back to the drawing board. Now it’s been only six months since I really started trying in earnest. Before that I knew what I wanted to do, but just….waited. Was I waiting to be discovered? Hoping that some BBC top-dog would hear through the grapevine that an Oxford English graduate (quelle surprise) wanted to be a writer?! I was the embodiment of the exchange “I’m writing a novel” “Yeah, me neither.”

I want to be a scriptwriter and my aim at the moment is to get some experience. I took a night course at Central Saint Martins to get used to writing on a regular basis again, to deal with showing people my work and hearing them criticise it -at the moment my skin is a little too thin! I took Creative Writing – Fact of Fiction – Beginners, taught by the novelist Elise Valmorbida. In January I’m due to start Screenwriting for Beginners with Josh Golding. After plenty of rejection letters I have managed to secure myself a work placement at the BBC, in the scriptwriting department of Holby City. This starts on Monday, and I’m incredibly excited but have no idea what to expect.