LIFE-WRITES EXTRACT

Character Building

It’s been said that ‘we are what we eat’, and food can also play an important part in fiction writing as a device to give insight into a character’s background and personality. How and what we eat can speak volumes about a person and their lifestyle. If we wish to convey wealth then our characters will consume copious amount of champagne; poverty can be summed up with bread and dripping. Lavish banquets can set the scene in historical fiction, while wartime rationing gives a sense of camaraderie in coupon sharing. Food fads are also a sign of the times and our characters will need to reflect what is ‘in’ and what is ‘out’, especially if the fiction is a period piece.

Consider that every part of the world has its own instantly recognisable style of preparing and offering food, and can help set the scene for readers; to jog memories and draw them into your story. How many of these scenes can you ‘see’ just from a brief mention of the food?

• Freshly baked bagels from a Jewish Sunday morning bakery;

• Traditional fish ‘n chips in an English seaside resort;

• Christmas cake baking in grandma’s kitchen;

• A trucker’s breakfast from an old fashioned ‘greasy spoon’;

• Roast lamb in a Greek taverna;

• The distinctive aroma of a Parisian street café;

• The spice market in Istanbul;

• Toffee apples from a visiting fair;

To make them come alive, our characters need these evocative settings and what better device than using food as a backdrop. But don’t do as one budding novelist did. Her male lead was a bit of a ‘foodie’ and whenever he and the heroine got together there was a complete menu offered up at every encounter, complete with a vintage wine! By chapter six I was feeling distinctly queasy and by the end of the book both characters would have weighed in at least 20 stone! Not ‘over-egging the pudding’ is a culinary hint worth remembering in fiction writing.

When writing period pieces, it’s also worth studying books of etiquette for the period, which can provide hours of entertainment and offer all sorts of ideas for domestic incidents that will make the characters more convincing. The newly-wed wife who entertains her in-laws for the first time; a young man’s first formal ball; covering up a servant’s mistake; the ordeal of the ballroom. There are still old books on etiquette to be found through second-hand booksellers that give advice on such

matters. Such as: The Book of Etiquette by Lady Troubridge. First published in 1926 and remained in print until the 6th impression in 1976. Etiquette for Gentlemen and Etiquette for Ladies from Ward

Lock. Not dated so probably a much earlier version than the above. The Gentlemen warns that ‘a man may forgive you for breaking his daughter’s heart, but never for breaking his hunter’s neck!’

Etiquette by Emily Post (1922) for the American version of acceptable manners, which vary slightly from the English and often more draconian. The books also contain valuable information on what to serve and when … ‘Second helpings are not offered at dinner-parties’ … as well as suggested menus for afternoon tea, informal luncheons, batchelor dinners, etc., and more importantly how to eat them.

Food can add splashes of colour to a story. Did you know, for example that although bread, ale, meat and fish were the staple diet of medieval England, fish often came from as far away as

Iceland, and as early as 1480 over 100,000 oranges were being imported? Where did this snippet come from? Food & Feast in Medieval England by Peter Hammond, who is author on several

academic books of the period. Imagine a romantic interlude whereby the heroine tastes her first orange; or meets the stranger who accompanies the Icelandic catch …

Another Sutton title, Memory, Wisdom & Healing: The History of Domestic Plant Medicine by Gabrielle Hatfield, chronicles the historic use of plants by ordinary people for coughs and colds,

cuts and bruises, burns and other everyday ills. The author is an Honorary Research Associate at the Royal Botanic Gardens whose research on domestic plant remedies won her the Michaelis-Jena Ratcliff Prize for Folklore. Imagine how this sort of information on domestic plant medicine could enrich a story – past or present.

Similarly, Dutch Egyptologist Lise Manniche gives us An Ancient Egyptian Herbal and Sacred Luxuries: Fragrance, Aromatherapy and Cosmetics in Ancient Egypt. The first title includes the use of plants in the garden, home and kitchen, as well as those used in medicine; the second focuses on the importance of perfumes and cosmetics. Imagine your ancient Egyptian heroine experimenting with a new cosmetic … in just the same way as a 2012 teenager trying out a new Boots’ eye shadow.

While kicking all these ideas around in our head, let’s think for a moment about the run-away foodie success of Joanne Harris’s novel, Chocolat, that reflected the not so subtle conflict between the ‘solemnity of the church’ in provincial France, and a pagan hedonistic delight of chocolate. A whole novel woven around the wicked little cocoa bean!  A writer’s characters can’t live by bread alone!

Handy Hint:

Don’t be afraid of using academic books for source material. You’ll often come across information not generally available to add zest to your story. You’ll also find that academics are more generous with their time and less precious about their copyright than commercial authors. If you require further information or clarification of a particular point, an emeritus professor of history will generally be more than happy to provide the material you require.

Try This Exercise:

In Chapter One we casually mentioned the idea of creating a ‘sports luncheon’ for the ladies while the men are glued to the television, participating in, or off watching the event. Try creating an article or short story featuring a lunch to coincide with a major sporting event – Ryder Cup (golf); Cheltenham Gold Cup (racing); Grand Prix (motor racing); Test Match (cricket); Cup Final (football); Twickenham (rugby) – that you might offer to a women’s magazine or a sporting publication.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

The next extract form Life-Writes: Where do writers get their ideas from …

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

I have an impressive collection of cookery books – some belonged to my mother and grandmother, others collected by myself over the years. There are regional and foreign cook books; several Mrs Beeton’s from the early and mid 1900s; an ancient copy of the French classic Larousse Gastronomique; farmhouse cookery and wild food from the hedgerows … not to mention a dozen of the basic how-to variety including a complete set of the collectable week-by-week magazine, Supercook, from the early 1970s.

For a long time now, cookery books have been regularly listed high on the bestseller lists. We have recipes from Victorian kitchens, cottage kitchens, summer picnics, afternoon teas, Christmas feasts, seasonal and regional suggestions, foreign food ... cooking for students and singles, catering on a budget ... in fact, you name it and there’s probably a cookery book in print to cater for it. Not to mention the ‘how to write about food’ guides.

And you don’t have to have a cordon bleu diploma or be a ‘kitchen goddess’ to write about food or cookery. There is an extremely large and lucrative market place for the cookery writer and whether you are a blossoming master chef, or simply wanted to share the recipes from your great-grandmother’s handwritten note book, there are lots of opportunities for entering the world of food publishing in the form of books and articles.

The next time you visit any large bookshop, take a look at the number and variety of the cookery books on sale - and make a note of the publishers. Next consider the large number of women’s magazines that feature a cookery page and study the depth of detail that goes into each article. But it doesn’t stop at the women’s magazines … there is often a seasonal recipe included in Home Farmer, Farmer’s Weekly, or game recipes in The Shooting Times. Any of the field sporting magazines would probably be interested in a simple recipe showing what to do with ‘it’ once you’ve caught it! Then there are hundreds of different local recipes for the multitude of regional magazines …

Without going any further for the moment, we can see the tremendous amount of potential outlets in this field of writing, not to mention restaurant and book reviews. If you can realise the potential and see yourself fitting in to this area of creative writing, invest in a couple of how-to books on the subject and add them to your reference shelf. Unfortunately most of the ‘food writing’ books listed on Amazon don’t include basic how-to advice but the following might help: Janet Lawrence was cookery correspondent for The Daily Telegraph and in The Craft of Food & Cookery Writing, she tackles that all-important question of how to identify a winning formula for a cookery book, and explores the possibilities for selling food. Drawing on her experience as an author of numerous cookery books, and an experienced writer of food and cookery articles for many different publications, the guide covers everything the aspiring food and cookery writer needs to know.

The Recipe Writer’s Handbook. Barbara Gibbs Ostmann and Janet Baker are experienced food editors who know that writing recipes is a tricky business. To achieve success a recipe must be written with impeccable accuracy and unambiguous clarity and this book offers a wide range of information for both the novice and seasoned cookery writer. Will Write For Food by Dianne Jacob is a complete guide to cook books, blogs and reviews for anyone wanting to be a food writer. It focuses on the American market rather than the UK but has a lot of sound information for those wishing to branch out in this direction.

Like Faust with his madeleines, food can be extremely evocative - as this extract from a nostalgic article from The Countryman shows:

The men have been out in the fields since dawn and will be looking forward to the supper spread out on the kitchen table. Although it’s school tomorrow, we have been allowed to stay up late to take part in the feast. No standing on ceremony here. The scrubbed boards provide the only backdrop for the huge ham waiting for carving, with its thick outer layer of white fat and breadcrumbs. It’s our father’s last job for the day and everyone is quickly served with a generous helping of the succulent, home-cooked meat. Bowls of crisp salad and juicy tomatoes straight from the garden, and buttered new potatoes lifted just that morning, sprinkled with parsley. Hard-boiled eggs from the hen house, and home-made pickles; fresh bread with rich butter and cheese complete the meal …

I can still taste that supper and when I sent a copy of the magazine in which the piece was published to a childhood friend, she immediately remembered those hay-making suppers, which took us both back to being about eight-years old again … We fidget from the hayseeds and dried grass that have crept under our clothes and into our shoes, but we don’t want to move and break the spell…

Articles don’t necessarily have to be about food to be enriched by the subject. I recently read a travel piece that offered some tantalising cameos of the cuisine served aboard a French river cruise ship. There, tucked away in the wealth of detail about people and places were some succulent morsels of the daily fare for the passengers – and resulted in the article being filed away for future reference when a holiday moment occurs! In fact, everywhere we go – both home and abroad – most of us will find a local culinary moment that is worth storing away to share with a readership at some later stage. Such as a wonderful (and colourful) buffet lunch at the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul; or the fabulous fresh sea-food platter served in a restaurant behind the ramparts at St Malo.  Remember that no one can access the same experiences and memories, and that offers you the opportunity to generate unique responses to those situations.

Regional food can also be dove-tailed to provide endless topics for articles, both regionally and nationally, and in a wide variety of publications. Here we can draw on family background, nostalgia, memories (and not necessarily our own), as I did when writing another Countryman piece on my partner’s memory of cherry picking in the Kent orchards:

We break for a hasty lunch of thick salad sandwiches of fresh-picked tomatoes, crisp lettuce and the sharp tang of spring onions, all pulled straight from the garden earlier that morning. There’s homemade lemonade and ginger beer for us children, while our mother pours a thick brew of tea from her battered cream thermos flask …

Bringing it up to date with my own ‘four penny worth’ …  A quick and economical supper that his mother often made from any leftover fruit was a cherry batter served with ice cream or custard. I recently found a similar recipe in a 1930s edition of The Woman’s Treasury for Home & Garden, discovered at a local car boot sale. “The cherries were placed in a greased baking dish and sprinkled with caster sugar. They were then covered with batter (the kind used for Yorkshire pudding, but sweetened) and baked in the oven for 40 mins.” Just add the ice cream and step back in time …

Here are a few more possibilities to consider that could earn a few bob as mini-features, readers’ letters or handy kitchen hints:

• Local magazines and newspapers are always interested in the wide range of produce on offer at farmer’s markets, particularly when this involves a local family. Include a seasonal recipe featuring an item of produce.

• Recommended mart breakfasts can often find a place in farming publications such as Farmer’s Weekly. There are some amazing little places tucked away in the corners of some of our traditional market halls. Make sure your ‘menu’ is mouth-watering, not swimming in grease!

• Home Farmer magazine ran a series featuring recipes from around the UK – ‘North West Nosebag’ included simple ones from the Lake District and Liverpool; while ‘Emerald Isle Cuisine’ included farm house kitchen ideas not forgetting the Saturday morning must-have – the Irish breakfast or Ulster Fry!

• Simple snacks and inexpensive ideas are always popular – for example: ‘Warming Toast Toppers’ – but do make sure that you include something for everybody. I get quite excited about new ideas but this enthusiasm quickly evaporates because nearly all the recipes contain cheese and I have a serious cheese allergy.

• Growing food with no garden – you would be surprised exactly how much food you can produce on an average sized patio and these ideas could earn prizes from the readers’ letters pages in a wide variety of publications.

And what about those wonderful 1950s home-from-school treats of cheese and potato pie made with butter and half a pint of cream (or full milk); bubble and squeak (or bubble and squelch as it’s called in some areas) and ‘eggy bread’. The ideas might give the food police heart failure but on a cold winter’s day an editor might just think it’s a tastier alternative to beans on toast.

Old fashioned remedies and household hints are also popular but these need to have an unusual or unexpected spin to bring them up to date. For example, it’s a well-known fact that onions are a magnet for bacteria and that they’ve been used in sick rooms to ‘draw’ the germs for generations. We’ve known of cut onions being used in racing kennels to prevent kennel sickness. This was normal operating procedure in 150-dog kennel when there was sickness about and none of the greyhounds ever came down with it.

Remember:  For the writer, everything is food for thought.

NEXT EXTRACT FROM LIFE-WRITES:

STUCK IN THE MUD

Whenever a group of writers get together, sooner or later the subject of writer’s block will be introduced into the equation. In most cases this is an over-milked excuse for not starting or completing a typescript. As I’ve said before, a professional writer can’t afford to employ such a plea for sympathy, although they do recognise the need for regular stimulation to generate ideas.

If an idea isn’t working and there isn’t a dead-line to meet, the professional will leave it alone and do something else – read a book, do some gardening, take the dog for a walk, or attend to the pile of research material that needs filing. Even the most seasoned writer will ‘dry up’ from time to time but they don’t stop working, they turn their attention to something else for a while. Dead-lines are probably the most effective means of beating the dreaded blockage since they ‘concentrate the mind wonderfully’, wrote the late Nancy Smith when she was asked for a comment when I was compiling From An Editor’s Desk.

“If a professional writer is commissioned to write a piece by a specific date, it’s rare for them not to finish it by then. Writer’s block does exist but the main cause is probably due to lack of planning, so far as the novel is concerned, at least. It may be that the story-line isn’t strong enough and needs to be abandoned, or it may be that they should leave it for a while, and start on something else until their enthusiasm is re-kindled.”

Many of the techniques discussed in Life-Writes are designed to push both our conscious and subconscious minds to extremes, even when we’re relaxing. We soon come to realise that some of our best ideas have occurred when we’re away from the computer and not thinking about anything remotely connected with writing. An author of my acquaintance recently admitted that she had an astounding flash of creative insight while she was in the middle of cleaning out the cat’s litter tray!

Hopefully Life-Writes will provide more pleasant ways of clearing any blockage because it illustrates that there are more facets to creative writing than sitting at the key board for hours on end, churning out mere words. By taking a break from writing, and under the right conditions/atmosphere/exercises, we can often achieve far more with an hour’s relaxation than by forcing ourselves to carry on typing.

Although we need to remain focused on the job in hand, there should be plenty of time allowed for the unconscious mind to put in its own four-penny worth. Thinking side-ways means allowing those right-brain influences to come through even if we happen to be in the middle of writing something else, because those new ideas might make the piece even better.

Who said you could only have one good idea at a time?

Next extract from Life-Writes: Life’s like that!

For our next mental exercise we will choose another simple subject that can have many meanings. It would be tempting to go for ‘Love’ because Roget’s Thesaurus has something like 33 entries, while the opposite, ‘Hate’ only has nine! This means we’re going to have to work harder and delve deeper.

Firstly, we need to define what we mean by ‘hate’ because it is a word that is over-used today. We may say we ‘hate spiders’ but do we really? We may feel frightened, repulsed or nauseated by them – but hate? The dictionary definition of hate is: “Extreme dislike or aversion; detestation; to abhor or detest; enmity or ill-will; loathing”, while the on-line Wikipedia has hatred (or hate) as an intense feeling of dislike. “It may occur in a wide variety of contexts, from hatred of inanimate objects or animals, to hatred of oneself or other people, entire groups of people, people in general, existence, or everything.”

The depth of expression is largely dependant on the person making the declaration, or the circumstances under which the declaration is made. A trivial person will ‘hate’ anything and everything that they don’t like, from cabbage to an unimaginative wedding present. Someone else may actively hate racial inequality or social injustice, but on the other side of the coin in living memory we have had Holocaust that resulted from Nazi hatred of the Jews. Of the fictional variety, the character of

Edmond Dantes in The Count of Monte Cristo gives us an epic tale of hatred and revenge. Very few of us would, if we were completely honest, have ever really experienced the true emotion of hatred but there are nine category listed in the Polti Theory that could be fuelled by hatred:

·         Crime pursued by vengeance

·         Vengeance taken for kindred upon kindred

·         Revolt

·         Enmity of kinsmen

·         Murderous adultery

·         Madness

·         Discovery of the dishonour of a loved one

·         Mistaken jealousy

·         Erroneous judgement

Using the same lateral thinking, what, for example, would you consider to be the greatest love story ever written? After careful consideration, my choices (and for totally different reasons) would be a toss-up between Wuthering Heights and The Lord of the Rings. In terms of romantic love, the destructive tide of passion that drives both Catherine and Heathcliffe, renders all other fictional lovers superfluous. The type of love contained within The Lord of the Rings is the bond or spark that exists between the ‘Fellowship’ and is expressed in terms of loyalty and comradeship against over-whelming odds. The actual romantic interlude pales into insignificance beside the heroic deeds of those fighting together against Mordor. On a purely personal level, both novels can still produce that gut-churning, throat-tightening feeling no matter how many times I read them, and yet neither would qualify as ‘love stories’ in the traditional sense of the word.

When we refer to ‘love’ in our own writing, we are going to use it in the context of the storyline to give the work ‘reader appeal’. We can use it in the bitter, destructive context of the television series, Mother Love, which starred Diana Rigg in the title role. Or the desperate variety of Bridget Jones’ Diary. Or the escapism of Shirley Valentine. Love does not necessarily mean ‘romance’ in Mills & Boon mould and although we might couch it in different terms, it still makes the world go round. Love and hate are highly emotive subjects, so handle with care!

Secret Step Three reveals that no matter how mundane and/or familiar a scene, there are countless different angles from which to view it. Emotions are the very life-blood of creative writing whether we are utilising them in fiction, non-fiction or poetry. Described as ‘the various phenomena of the mind’

(including anger, joy, fear, sorrow, etc), we also use them to arouse those emotions in our readers – to make them care about what they read. Emotions are also extremely complex and we can weave a tangled web of intense feeling within our writing to force our readers to suffer along with our characters, article content or poem.

Neither can emotion (or the reason behind it) be cast in stone. We can be angry – but anger is rarely generated by one single action. It has usually been compounded by numerous smaller, insignificant happenings. We need to create these multi-layers in our writing, especially when creating characters for a novel, because without them the finished piece will lack depth. There was a popular method of encouraging lateral thinking in business management training back in the 1970s called ‘mind mapping’. It was an idea-generating technique that breaks down linear thinking – thinking in straight lines – and encourages the mind to work laterally by accessing our ‘zip-files’ in the right-brain. Instead of running ideas in a straightforward top-to-bottom list, start by placing the key word in the centre of the page and circle it. As word-association triggers off other ideas, write them down and circle them, linking them to the key word and each other with connecting lines.

For this exercise we start with the key-word = fear. As the circles move outwards, we can travel a long way from that original key-word. We may find we’ve thrown in things that would never have occurred to us when using lists to flesh out a story or article. Mapping is also a useful technique for developing plots and characters and can be included in your Ideas Book when you are stuck for ideas, or don’t know where to go next.

Whenever you feel the urge to make a list of ideas, use this mapping technique instead. You may find that it can even replace doodling when you’re on the telephone.

Extract from Life-Writes:

Innermost Thoughts

“Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does or music.  If you are born knowing them, fine.  If not, learn them.  Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.”  

                                                                                                                                  Truman Capote.

It was Marcel Proust who said that the voyage of discovery lies not in finding new landscapes, but in having new eyes with which to view them.  It was a former tutor of mine, Bob Clay-Egerton, who introduced the concept of the ‘mystical mug’ into his teachings to demonstrate how we ‘see’ things:

Pick up an ordinary drinking mug.  Imagine that the mug is floating in front of you at eye level, the handle standing out to the left.  Imagine now that you are describing exactly what you see to a blind person. What do you actually see?   Assume you have never seen a mug before; it is a strange and wonderful phenomena.  You would have to say you saw a roughly square or rectangular object but perhaps tapering slightly towards the base.  It appears to be convex towards you.  Standing out to the left is a curved projection, joining the main body just below the top and about two thirds of the way down the body.  You describe the colour and decorative pattern if any. Sex?  If it has any it must be male, because of the projection.

The blind person then has the mug described to him by someone seeing it from 90 degrees to the right of the first observer.  Same general shape, colour, texture and pattern but no projection.  It must be similar but not the same.  Sex?  No projection, so it can’t be male.  No hollows, so it can’t be female.  It might, therefore, be neuter. The next description comes from someone viewing the mug directly from above.  The basic shape is now circular, either tubular or cylindrical, and flat at the end.  A single stem projection juts out from the main body as the top of the handle covers the rest from view.  Same colour but no decorative pattern.  It cannot be related to the first or second object at all.  Sex? Projection indicates male, hollow cylinder indicates female; might be hermaphroditic. 

If several people viewing the mug from the top, bottom and four sides (let alone at oblique angles) gave a description, the blind person would assume they were all seeing different objects, some of which may, or may not be related.  If each viewer described what he saw to an outsider who had not seen the mug, none of them would believe the others had only described a different view of the same object.  Someone familiar with a mug might realise what it was, but even then, the description, if it could be evaluated by those who had never seen one, would not convey what it was made from, how it was constructed, fired, decorated, glazed — or even what its purpose was.

We use for this example of selective angles of viewpoint - a simple mug.   Imagine how complicated it would have been to describe, from different angles, an old-fashioned typewriter!   The more complex the subject, the harder it is to imagine its nature and purpose.  Yet many writers (and some tutors) approach writing from a limited standpoint … that black is black, and white is white. Never stopping to think that there might be forty shades of grey in between the various different ways a subject might be viewed or written about.  There are innumerable planes of existence on different levels, in many dimensions of time and space.   Mankind exists, physically, in one dimension … mentally he can penetrate other levels … spiritually he can reach even more … it’s all a matter of perspective.

So … in all aspects of our writing we need to develop the ability to see things from all angles.  The successful writer ‘sees’ everything from every angle and viewpoint, and weighs this in the balance before committing themselves to action.  For the purpose of Life-Writes, we will substitute our readers for the blind person of the exercise.   They can only ‘see’ from our writing what we want them to see.  If our characterisation (in terms of empathy and/or human interest) gives the opposite impression to what we originally intended, then the picture has become distorted and the creative dynamic of the plot or narrative is lost.  And if a writer complains that an editor or competition judges has ‘missed the point’ of a story, then it’s probably because it wasn’t made clear in the first place. 

Ø  Always keep the lesson of the ‘mystical mug’ in mind!

The latest extract from Life-Writes …

People Watching

Nothing we take on board during our daily routine is ever wasted if we are writers, although this doesn’t always mean things that happen to us personally, because few of us live life in the fast lane. Quite a large number of those ‘happenings’ that are of use to us will have involved other people and so we have to learn to become an avid people-watcher – in other words, a snoop! We watch, listen, spy and eavesdrop in order to collect ideas to convert into the written word. Just as we learnt to take notice of everything that happens on our patch, so we extend our awareness to people, what they do, how they react, body language, etc. Whenever we leave the house and travel to work each day, we have plenty of opportunity for people watching but what happens if we happen to be house-bound, or work from home? In that case we watch life by proxy.

All serious writers should take a daily newspaper because this, more often than not, will stimulate the creative processes on a mundane level. Newspaper stories and articles will give you the true human angle, because these are the real-life dramas that sell newspapers. And what better gauge of public interest than the daily scandal-rags or broadsheets?

Listen to conversations going on in public places and jot down what you hear. This is a great source of one-liners, even if the rest of the conversation is missed, or contains nothing of interest. Just as importantly, listen to how people say things and express themselves, because this can provide added depth to your character without resorting to long, wordy descriptions. Colloquialisms and similes, especially those of a regional or localised nature can convey volumes if used in the correct context and dispense with the urge to attempt to write in dialect.

 People watching is the writer’s fuel for good ideas.

Body Language & Gestures

What we generally refer to as ‘body language’ is someone’s unconscious reaction to a situation or person. People watching adds a whole new dimension to the way individuals react to one another and, like a picture, can easily convert into 1,000 words of narrative. The married couple who do and say all the right things, and yet their body language may give off conflicting signals at variance with the outward show of domestic bliss. Or the pretty, well-turned out child that does not appear relaxed in the company of a step-parent. Or the dog that refuses to respond to a particular visitor’s overtures. Each reaction can be detected in body language.

Gestures also tend to be an unconscious reaction to situations or people, and usually involve making some symbolic movement of the hand. Some are comparatively modern, while others can be traced back hundreds of years, but as Desmond Morris points out in his book, Gestures, this is a form of visual slang and just as slang words go out of fashion, so can gestures. Body language and gestures can be used as a ‘conflict’ device so essential to fiction writing, as a cause of misunderstanding, or the give-away in a thriller.

The observation that too many people go through life never looking around at what’s actually going on in their immediately vicinity. A writer needs to realise the importance of taking the ‘time to stand and stare’ because this is the only way to add to the inner retrieval system of our cerebral ‘zip file’. We must learn to observe in order to be able to record what we see and to be able to retrieve this information when we sit down to write. Because there really is a story, article or poem behind everything we encounter during our daily routine.

·         Accept the fact that writers are, without a doubt, vampiric creatures, in that they can only exist by sucking the life out of any situation or encounter, and it using to further their own writing careers.

Handy Hint:

People-watching provides us with additional material to use to develop characterisation and the obvious expert on the subject is undoubtedly Desmond Morris. His books, The Human Zoo, The Naked Ape, Manwatching, Intimate Behaviour and Gestures not only provide hours of entertainment but also plenty of background information about human body language. At least one of these titles should be among a writer’s reference collection but they should not be used as substitutes for the real thing, i.e. personal observation. Second hand copies are usually readily available on www.ABE-Books.com

Try This Exercise:

Take a copy of your regular daily national newspaper and mark each of the items that arouse your interest. Cut them out and keep them in files, together with any comments/ideas you might have for future writing projects. As the collection builds you will find that certain subjects occur more and more frequently; others were just a passing whim. Go through this collection every couple of months to stimulate ideas if you’re feeling uninspired. Throw away any clippings that no longer interest you. Use this opportunity to jot down ideas for:

• A short story

• An article

• A poem

"The antiques trade hasn't been this much fun since Lovejoy left"
Carys Llewellyn - author and reviewer

The Hugo Braithwaite Mysteries are set in the shadowy world of antiques and fine art, where villains rub shoulders with millionaires in grand country houses and seedy back streets.  Hugo Braithwaite is an antiques dealer and acknowledged authority on British watercolours, a talent which often throws him into the limelight of popular television to help sate the public’s thirst for discovering valuable family heirlooms and treasures in the attic.  On the down side, it is also a murky realm of fakes, forgeries, felony ... and the occasional murder.

Looking From All Angles

“Research, like writing, is an individual, creative process. It cannot be ‘taught’. In his quest for original material – and who does not dream of stumbling upon a cache of hitherto unknown, unpublished papers or the answer to a problem that has baffled scholars for generations? – the writer never ceases to learn.”

Ann Hoffman, Research for Writers

Many budding writers lack the confidence to take the first step into the commercial market place because they feel it is impossible to produce something completely new that no one else has ever thought of before. But as we’ve already observed : there is no such thing as a new idea. Most creative ideas have been used before, over and over again. What we are looking for are innovative ideas, so let us return to the dictionary definition to find that innovation means: To introduce alterations; to put forward novelties. To alter or change by the introduction of something new.

This is what will give our work that spark of originality. In all honesty, even the most block-busting novel is only a variation on a familiar theme rather than ground-breakingly new. For an example: in an earlier creative writing book, From An Editor’s Desk, I threw in the Polti Theory, which maintained that there were only 36 dramatic situations on which the writer of fiction can draw. By using single situations or several combinations, the basic theme of every story (long or short) ever told, written or devised can be summed up in the following list:

Supplication

Deliverance

Crime pursued by vengeance

Vengeance taken for kindred upon kindred

Pursuit

Disaster

Falling prey to cruelty or misfortune

Revolt

Daring enterprise

Abduction

The enigma

Obtaining

Enmity of kinsmen

Rivalry of kinsmen

Murderous adultery

Madness

Fatal imprudence

Involuntary crimes of love

Slaying of a kinsman unrecognised

Self-sacrifice for an ideal

Self sacrifice for kindred

All sacrificed for passion

Necessity of sacrificing loved ones

Rivalry of superior and inferior

Adultery

Crimes of love

Discovery of the dishonour of a loved one

Obstacles to love

An enemy loved

Ambition

Conflict with God

Mistaken jealousy

Erroneous judgement

Remorse

Recovery of a lost one

Loss of a loved one

Twenty years later and retired from editing creative writing magazines, I would add that most non-fiction and poetry submissions probably  fall into those categories, too.  If you don’t believe me, check out the theme of the major features or stories in any selection of magazines or newspapers and you’ll find most of them are loosely based on one or more of the above. If we remove the smokescreen of exotic locations or glamorous lifestyle, we will find that most of the plots used by our favourite writers are telling the same old stories, over and over again. The basic theme of murder, intrigue, adultery and chivalry are all there – they just have an innovative backdrop.

Colin Dexter, the creator of Inspector Morse introduced us to the esoteric world of academe by casting his novels amongst the traditions and dreamy spires of Oxford University life; while

Simon Raven did the same for Cambridge. Dick Francis came up with his own original formula set amongst the racing fraternity where wealth frequently rubs shoulders with the lower echelons of society. Jilly Cooper moved from Wimbledon Common to the equestrian set, before turning her attentions on the international orchestral and art worlds, and has since moved on to horse racing. Ellis Peters went back to medieval Britain. While in the fantasy department, Tolkien created Middle Earth and J K Rowling, Hogwort’s … and more recently Maureen Carter solves her crimes in gritty Birmingham; David Hewson stages his Nic Costa series in Rome, while Andrea Camilleri utilises his knowledge of Sicily to great effect in his highly entertaining series of novels featuring Commissario Montalbano

Nevertheless, strip away the mystery, glitz and the glamour and you’ll find that nearly every single piece of writing, fiction or non-fiction, will be loosely based on those themes given in the Polti Theory.

Rather than waste time trying to buck the system by coming up with original thought – go for an innovative approach.

The next extract from Life-Writes: Where do writers get their ideas from?

On Your Own Patch

To become a truly creative writer we have to start to notice and register the world around us from different angles and perspectives. It may be that our own particular patch has become so familiar that we no longer register what is going on there on a day-to-day basis. Make time to walk a familiar route and take notice of:

• what is growing in front gardens;

• new building developments;

• people standing at the bus stop;

• trees in the park;

• changes in shop window displays

Make a conscious effort to register these gradual changes as flowers begin to bloom; the buildings near completion; different people stand at the bus stop at certain times of the day; the trees in the

park altering their appearance through the seasons; and window displays rarely remain the same for very long.

Think about where you live now. Is it the same place where you grew up? If so, how has it changed?  For better or worse? Did you move away from your childhood or teenage stomping ground? Try to define the differences. What we need to remember, of course, is that memory is deceitful and illusionary, so what we think we can recall, may be almost as fictional as the novel we’re trying to write. How many times have you argued with an old friend or sibling over the way you both remember things from the past.

Train yourself to become more observant about the common everyday things that go on around you. Recall to mind the words of William Henry Davies’s Leisure:

“What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare?”

As writers, we owe it to ourselves to make time to stand and stare; even if it’s only to study the dress code, mannerisms and body language of fellow travellers on the subway, train or bus to work.

REMEMBER:  Always be on the look-out for useable ideas

Handy Hint:

Always keep a small notepad handy for jotting ‘things’

down. Ideally have a couple on the go that fit easily into a

bag or pocket. Don’t delay in making a note of snippets of

conversation, ideas for future investigation or character

sketches – we think we can recall them later but we lose

that spontaneous reaction and the ‘thing’ becomes stale.

EXTRACT FROM

LIFE-WRITES: Start an Ideas Book

In order to begin searching for the key to accessing these new ideas, we need to start on a practical level by keeping an Ideas Book. As Secret Step One tells us, there are more ideas locked away in our unconscious minds than we could ever write about in a whole lifetime. What we must discover is how they can influence our short stories, novels, poetry or non-fiction to the very best of our ability.  Instead of relying on memory, the Ideas Book should be used to record snippets of conversation, great one-liners, quotations, reference books, locations and characters.

The aim of Life-Writes is to encourage you to open your ears and eyes, to view things differently with your mind and heart. In other words, to free the inner voice so that you’re not afraid to trust your imagination and take a few risks with your writing. Become an observer and develop a willingness to see people and the world around you in a completely different light. By expanding those powers of observation, you will continuously build on the entries in your Ideas Book, which in turn will help you re-explore existing plots and themes, and generate new ones. Try to be honest but above all, do not be afraid to push against any restrictions imposed by current thinking or political correctness. No one is going to see your Ideas Book – its contents are for your eyes only.

To set the ball rolling, the first entry will be to give five examples of what you consider to be ‘things that arouse a fond memory of the past’ and here we need to reflect on why we consider them to be ‘fond memories’. The items on my list will probably be far removed from those on yours, while you will probably be completely unmoved by those ‘things’ that are important to me. What we also need to consider is the way that language has been devalued and how some words can take on a completely different emphasis when used in contemporary conversation. We are talking about perspective or viewpoint, and this is where we begin to access those ideas that are locked away in our unconscious minds. So let’s begin with …

A collection of old family photographs

Images of a life-style that can never come again because the people from that time, and who made it worth remembering, are all dead. The family home, long since demolished to make

way for a ring road. Childhood recollections of summer holidays, and family mealtimes. Pet dogs. Days at the beach. Haymaking and harvest. A childhood friend with whom we still keep in contact.

Many of these ‘fond memories’ will re-surface throughout this book because we are writing from Life, and drawing on happenings that are unique to one person. Your first collection of ‘things’ will probably prompt some rather serious thoughts but even these can be extended and expanded to encourage you to plumb the depths of your own ‘ideas’ and explore their possibilities. Keeping a record of your own ‘things’ in your own Ideas Book should eventually lead to dozens of ideas for fiction, articles or poetry but first we need to explore ways of making them exciting before turning them into submissions. On a day-to- day basis, our conscious brain registers the ‘facts’ or the most obvious impressions about a situation; for creative writing it is necessary to dig deep into the subconscious to locate the ideas that have been compressed into the brain’s equivalent of a

computerised ‘zip-file’.

Remember:  Our past is a mine of good ideas for future use.

LIFE-WRITES: Freeing the writer’s inner voice

Because Life-Writes is about drawing on submerged inner resources, it means that I’ve chosen to share many of my own private thoughts and family memories to illustrate many of the points made in the text. As a result, this has become a very personal book, because the examples, stories and anecdotes are real-life revelations, not fictional ones. Drawing on our inner reserves means that we have to be honest with ourselves about how much we are actually willing to give, or reveal, to a general readership in order to further our writing career. Where, we must ask ourselves, does reality end and creative writing begin?

The original idea for my book, Creative Pathways: Freeing the Writer’s Inner Voice, came after reading The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, a sort of personal journal of a lady-in-waiting at the court of the Emperor of Japan towards the end of the 10th century AD. Today, a pillow book refers to an illustrated manual of erotic advice but Sei’s book was a mixture of diary, gossip column and ‘commonplace’ book that showcased her literary observations off to perfection. History tells us that both her father and great-grandfather were both noted poets and scholars and, were Sei Shonagon alive today, she would probably be one of our leading literary lights. In this capacity, she can quite easily fill the role of ancestral spirit, or kami, of creative inner thought.

Unlike Julie Andrews’ ‘Favourite Things’ from The Sound of Music, however, the ‘things’ that Sei Shonagon commented upon were not always pleasing. Nevertheless it is her wide-ranging observations that set the pattern for some of the exercises for my creative writing workshops, combining Zen-like word-pictures and contemporary commercial writing ambition in order to free
the writer’s inner voice. The age-old categories were Sei Shonagon’s own – the ‘things’ in Creative Pathways were mine.
For example:

The Pillow Book:
Things that arouse a fond memory of the past

Dried hollyhock. 
The objects used during the Display of Dolls. 
To find a piece of deep violet or grape-coloured material that has been pressed between the pages of a
notebook.
It is a rainy day and one is feeling bored. To pass the time, one starts looking through some old papers. And then comes across the letters of a man one used to love.
Last year’s paper fan. 
Night with a clear moon.

Creative Pathways:
Things that arouse a fond memory of the past

A collection of old family photographs
Old theatre programmes
A particular piece of music
Wood smoke
The smell of hawthorn or bluebells in blossom

Here we have two collections of memories (or, from the writer’s perspective ‘ideas’) that immediately spark very clear images in the mind’s eye despite the fact that eleven centuries separate
them.
 
Make a note of your ‘things that arouse a fond memory of the past' in your Ideas Book