RNA Conference 2011 - Day Two and the Gala

I wasn't supposed to be at the conference during the day on Saturday but fate intervened...It was an amazing day. It was also exactly what I needed as I tackle these edits. The day began with Linda Gillard's 'Set the scene, create the characters...painting with words'. There was so much from this session but here's a few highlights...

Linda Gillard

-readers co-create with the author
-just enough description to make the reader feel they are there otherwise it slows down the action
-when drafting don't do the action first then add the description. EMBED the description in the action from the start
-write concrete, specific detail. It works harder
-watch for your own boredom threshold
-character description can be where writing sags a bit
-be specific but not comprehensive
-framing...be aware of who is doing the describing...it can be a 2 way street

Jane Wenham Jones

Next up was the a funny, perfectly pitched session by Jane Wenham-Jones on 'Where's the hook? What's my angle?' The most important things she said for me was...'it's never too soon to think about how to sell or market you and the book.'

Tamsyn Murray

Then I sat in Tamsyn Murray's session 'Reader, he dumped me!'...the rise of the bad boy in YA lit more because of DD who is and will be reader these books. It was a fabulous session looking at bad boys in literature old and new. What is their attraction? How they have changed? And what are we teaching with the new bad boy/toxic boy? A heated debate ensued and I will be looking more closely at what DD picks up...

Post lunch it was a wonderful session with Alison King...'What Stops You? strategies to keep you writing.' As I mentioned perfect to help keep the focus on editing...

Miranda Dickinson and Ruth Saberton

Tamsyn Murray and Brigid Coady

Jill  Mansell and guess who

I then took a break. So many things were connecting in my head I needed to be somewhat still. Didn't succeed though as I spent time chatting with friends.

Emma Darwin

My final session for the day was Emma Darwin's 'The literary-commercial divide'. This was always going to be controversial and it didn't disappoint. She took us through what each offers readers and where they can fail readers before jumping into the area of books that fall between the two. She felt that in literary readers have to read into the spaces left by the writer and that readers have to work harder so they 'own' it more....She said if you fall in between the two you have to do everything better - deliver the page turning quality of commercial with the complexity of literary. It was a lively discussion and great fun.

Anna Louise Lucia, Fiona Harper, Julie Cohen, Brigid Coady

The flat mates all glam

Then off to prepare for the Gala Evening. In our flat we gathered in the kitchen to drink a bit of champagne before setting out to the bar...which turned out to be closed! We about faced and found a naughty kitchen to drink more champagne....

Judy Astley, Julie Cohen and Roger Sanderson

Me and my agent - Carole Blake

Anne Ashursy and Jane Wenham-Jones

Then the dinner and the announcement of the winner of the Elizabeth Goudge Award. As I mentioned on Monday I was the runner up with THE HOUSE OF GHOSTS (here) and Cally Taylor won with here entry THE SOMNAMBULIST'S DAUGHTER which is here. It is fabulous. But our flat and table had the wonderful Anna Louise Lucia who was also in the final six! I hope she will post her entry soon.

Anna Louise Lucia and Moi

The Heroine Addicts sans Susanna Kearsley...Anna Louise Lucia, Julie Cohen, Moi, Pia Courtenay, Brigid Coady

Moi and the fab Cally Taylor

Of course post dinner their had to be a naughty kitchen and it turned out to be ours!

In the fug of the naughty kitchen...Anna Louise Lucia, Carole Blake and Biddy Coady

A wonderful day....

RNA Conference 4 (part 3) - Linda Gillard

Below is the final section of Linda Gillard's Sense and Sensitivity session.

But before that I just wanted to update you on where things are with my own writing. I had to leave Penderrown at 71,000 words and plunge into A Cornish House as the New Writers' Scheme deadline is approaching fast. The good thing is that I haven't looked at the manuscript in about seven months. It is amazing what the fresh eye can see and what I have learned in the intervening time. I have read all the feedback from last year's NWS report, agents comments and publisher comments. I looked for any real consistency and there was none! So it is now down to me as the writer to see where this story needs to grow and shrink. I need to give myself clear page deadlines for each day which have to be met or surpassed - I may be a bit quiet on the blog if I start falling behind (Needless to say that this deadline falls as DH is on his three weeks hols, hence the rain in Cornwall, the kids are all here and we have guests!) So each day I need to revise 25 pages which will give me time for one last read through before submission. Fingers crossed.

CREATING DETAILED CHARACTERS – using photos

Beware: description of character can be where writing sags.

It’s much harder to describe beautiful people than ugly ones! Difficult to avoid cliché. Focusing on non-visual aspects some of the time will help avoid the pitfalls.
(I avoid describing my characters because I think it’s a pit you can fall into. I also think it’s a weakness in my writing, so I don’t draw attention to it.)
You don’t want lists of adjectives, back-story, clichés. You mustn’t let readers switch off. (Some skip description!) Keep your descriptions sensory and vivid, and readers won’t want to skip.
Make your characters vivid by using concrete detail (and not just things you can see.) Be specific.

I often work from photos of real people (sometimes amalgams of more than one) because it makes me step outside my comfort zone and my own limited memory bank.
[Resources: PEOPLE photo packs Note: Here pick a few of your own]

WRITING TASK 5 Sensory Gymnastics!

1. Choose a photo and study it.
Imagine this is one of your characters.

2. Think of a smell associated with that character - their perfume or their natural body smell; the smell of the job they do; perhaps the smell of fear or blood.

3. Think of a sound associated with your character – the sound of their voice, an instrument they play, the music they listen to, a sound their body makes (eg asthmatic wheeze.)

4. Think of a texture associated with your character – the feel of their hair, skin, clothes, or something they touch in the course of their work, something they make as a hobby.

5. Can you think of a taste associated with your character? A food or drink they like? Or if your character lends himself/herself to the sensuous and erotic, something s/he tastes of?…

I want to thank Linda for sharing all of this. It is a fantastic set of exercises and I can already see the benefit.... So to find out more about Linda drop by her website. There is a great section on writing.

RNA Conference 4 (part 2) - Linda Gillard

Yesterday I posted part one of Linda Gillard's session on Sense and Sensitivity. Today brings you part two and tomorrow the final part. Enjoy.

You’ve been recording “TELLING” DETAIL - detail which tells the story




Look at the pictures of settings (note -these are just random ones off of my 'puter) and choose one that appeals - a picture that interests you, or that you might like to “walk into” if you could.

WRITING TASK 2 Settings 10 mins
1. Study the picture and make notes – sounds, smells, textures & tastes.

Try to imagine a full sensory picture of your scene.
Think about air quality, temperature… What would the textures feel like? What sounds could be going on in the background? Or is it silent? What is the quality of that silence?
Can you smell anything?… (Make things up!)

(Is there a detail that encapsulates the scene as a sort of sensory postcard?)

2. Try to develop your notes into a few sentences to capture the scene. Write about the visuals if you like but don’t let them dominate. Try to let the reader know what it was like to be there, not what it looked like.


Telling detail doesn’t have to be visual. (What things looked like wasn’t necessarily the most important thing.)

For the purposes of romantic writing, the other senses might do a better and less clichéd job.

In STAR GAZING I wrote love scenes (and indeed sex scenes) that had no visual element at all because they were written in the first person and the narrator-heroine was blind…

When writing my 1st novel EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY I’d made the discovery about “the spaces in-between” which readers fill in for you

Back story…
Post-illness, conserving mental and physical energy, I wrote short sections and I wrote about detail - the little picture, not the big picture.

When I got feedback from readers I found that focusing on detail had nevertheless painted a big picture because of the wonderful magic whereby readers fill in, as “co-creator”.

In EG I described rocks. People saw landscape.
I described colours and threads and people saw quilts.

In SG I described what rocks, trees, snow felt and smelled like and readers experienced the Isle of Skye.

If you write about details (eg describe eyes) readers will still see the whole. (ie face) Reader will fill in. (Cheshire cat’s floating grin – hard to imagine.)

In SG I described what the hero sounded, felt like and smelled like. There’s very little visual description of him.

Concrete detail will do most of the work for you if you really focus on it and make it vivid. It’s the “active ingredient”. If the detail is real for you, it will be real for your readers. And if the detail is real for readers, they will fill in the background, and that will be real too.

Detail is the writer’s labour-saving device!


WRITING TASK 3 A memory in detail 5 mins

Think of a time when things were very good or very bad for you (or for someone else.)

Describe some small part of that experience - not the big picture (the content/the cause) but a detail (eg the weather at the time, the sounds and smells in the hospital waiting room.)

Might help to begin with “I remember…” Avoid visual description as far as possible.

RNA Conference 4 - Linda Gillard

I was unable to attend Linda Gillard's session on Sense and Sensitivity, but heard wonderful things about it. Here's what Biddy had to say when she blogged about the conference over on The Pink Heart Society Blog:

"One of the best for me was Linda Gillard about Sense and Sensibility, the use of senses in writing. We mostly concentrated on all the senses but the vision. We live in such a visual world that sometimes we neglect the other senses. We did some exercises that really helped. "

So Linda has very kindly offered me her notes and allowed me to share them with you! Today I'll post through to the first exercise and then continue on from there. Before that though let me tell you a bit about Linda. She now lives in a village outside Glasgow, but spent six years living on the Isle of Skye. Her first career was acting which led to journalism then onto teaching and finally to writing novels. Her last novel Star Gazing was short listed for the Romantic Novel of the Year Award 2009. Here's part one of her notes:

"It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision." Helen Keller

Intro
How I came to write STAR GAZING’s blind heroine…
1. “Playing with my imaginary friends” led to imaginary hero
2. Non-visual representation of Isle of Skye to avoid cliché.

I thought the blind “pov” would be limiting and readers would get bored. Reverse was true.
It extended my writing.

Qualifications for a writer:
To be curious
To be observant
You need a good memory
To be sensual (esp. writers of romance!)

When you’re writing, you’re trying to see the picture, to watch the movie of your story unfold. You will eventually be trying to hear what the characters are saying. You’re “eavesdropping”.

But do you tend to stop there?
Do you ever wonder if your readers feel as if they are actually there, in the middle of your story? As if it’s happening to them?

We tend to confine our observations to what we see and hear, but experiences and memories are very much related to all the 5 senses: sight, sound, touch, smell & taste.

Memories aren’t just visual.
eg “They’re playing our song”. The power of familiar music to evoke whole scenes.
Looking at holiday photos will show you only what you saw. They don’t convey the heat, the sound of the sea, the noise of children playing, the delicious smells coming from the taverna.

A visual record is incomplete but we tend to think a visual record is a good record simply because sight dominates our other senses. And we live in a visual age. (Elizabethans invariably talked about going to “hear a play”.)


Examples of my childhood memories that couldn’t be captured just visually:

Smell of blackcurrant leaves and the buzzing of bees in the hollyhocks when I played as a child in my garden.

Basil’s Italian ice cream (taste of vanilla, crystals in and coldness of ice cream; the sound of his bell which triggered excitement and salivation!)

The two abiding memories of my first teddy - damp patches on his paws where I chewed and the sound of sawdust moving when I squeezed him. (But I can’t remember what he looked like.

WRITING TASK 1 A Childhood Memory 5 mins 10.25 – 10.30

1. Record an intense memory, perhaps from childhood. Try to recall the event in more than just a visual way. (Your oldest memories are unlikely to be just visual, that’s why they’ve stayed with you.) Use all your senses. Jot down your impressions in note form.

2. Select most powerful aspect of that memory, the thing that brings it to life for you. Note whether it’s a visual memory.

Tomorrow part two........ and let me know how your exercise went and I'll share mine!