Thursday, July 19, 2007

RNA Part 3 - Jan Etherington


Next up after coffee was Jan Etherington of radio and script wrting fame. She has written Second Thoughts, Faith in the Future and Next of Kin with her husband Gavin Petrie. First off I have to say that Jan just made me laugh. I first took one photo and she wasn't paying attention and then she this will be better. You see the results above. The subject of her talk was 'Drunks, Wimps or Idiots -Is this the role of men in romantic comedy?'

Fellow Novel Racer, Jane Henry has blogged about the conference over on bookarazzi so I won't redo the great write up that she is done but add in a few of the other brilliant points she mentioned:

1. if they make you laugh you can forgive them anything
2. the rhythm of speech is very important to define your characters; use vocabulary, tec. speech, unfinished sentences
3. be very flexible and have several balls in the air; move on and keep going
4. good hero makes a better story
The comment on the rhythm of speech had me go back and review my dialogue sections I can tell you!
I am making slow progress on the read through and tweak of August Rock. I grab a few hours in the morning and then Mummy duty takes over full time. Fortunately this week it hasn't been too much a of a hard ship as the weather has felt like summer and the beach has been lovely. I am slowly developing my Cornish mahogany tan.

5 comments:

Jan Jones said...

Jan E says thanks for the great write-up, Liz.

I too thought it was a wonderful talk and it had me in stitches. One of my truly inspired 'signings'

Love Jan (J)

Unknown said...

Jan you did arranged a wonderful conference :-) Jan E. was brilliant along with all the speaKkers along with everything else!

Fiona Mackenzie. Writer said...

This sounds such fine and how wonderful to be with other writers in the flesh. I have some good friends but none of them are interested in writing...lonely old game sometimes innit?

Fiona Mackenzie. Writer said...

Fun not fine - although that as well. Apologies should be half asleep on sofa watching taped East Enders as A N Other is.

Fiona

Jan said...

Lucky you developing a tan!
Here in the frozen north, Im merely developing blue toes!