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!