Summer holidays and illness prevented some of our regular members from coming this month, but, thanks to Artemis Writers’ workshop a couple of weeks ago and the Ely Writers Facebook group, we had three new members this month.
Introductions and progress reports
Caity has been writing more than usual since the last meeting. She went to Prosper once or twice for a scribble chat with one of her characters. There was, of course, the character work at Artemis Writers’ character-building workshop. Perhaps best of all, she and her writing buddies have reconvened their meetings on selected Sunday mornings, during which they spend 20–40 minutes writing along with some writing chat.
Greg is preparing the first book of his zombie apocalypse series for self-publication – very exciting!
One of our new members spends the summers here and the winters elsewhere, so she’ll be moving on soon – we hope to see her next month, though. She’s diving into the middle of a novel at the moment. It will be fun to see how much progress she makes while she meets her winter writing group.
Another new member is writing something that is right up Caity’s street: an end-of-days crime thriller, inspired by the way Dean Koontz writes.
Finally, we have our own winner of Ely Writers’ Day (no affiliation with us), who has abandoned her forays into fantasy in favour of women’s fiction.
Free writing
Building on what we did with Artemis Writers at their workshop, we looked at our characters again. After Caity explained what a scribble chat entails, we each picked a character from what we’re working on, and asked them the following questions:
- What’s your favourite weather and why?
- What’s your least favourite weather and why?
- What’s your worst fear?
- No, really. What’s your worst fear that you haven’t even admitted to yourself?
This time, we thought we’d snap from something trivial to deep to keep the characters on their toes. Asking them about their worst fear prompts them to tell you what they’re afraid of, but asking them what fears they can’t admit to digs down even deeper into their psyche. Of course, there’s always the chance that they refuse to answer!
We strongly recommend you give this technique a go if you haven’t already.
Discussion
This month, we discussed writing in terms of what we don’t like, such as using verbs other than said as dialogue tags. Sometimes, even said isn’t necessary if you use a snippet of narrative on the same line as a character’s speech. One member said how they groaned at primary school teachers for encouraging children to use anything other than said, which instills said-avoidance from a young age. Another member said they like to use all the different words and that it works for them.
For another member, the trouble with these verbs is that they can detract or distract from the dialogue; what the characters are saying is the important thing. Said is skimmed over and doesn’t intrude.
We talked about adverbs, too. One member said that she’d been told during her MA in creative writing that if you’re using an adverb, it’s because you’re using a weak verb; you need to swap the verb and its adverb for a strong verb that describes what you mean. Unnecessary words are wasted words, after all, which is ever important in a world of deadlines and word limits.
Editing advice was shared: to remove bloat, break a completed draft into its constituent scenes, and go through each scene to determine its purpose; if it has no purpose, bin it. This, we think, comes from a book called First You Write a Sentence by 1.
We also touched on the use of description. An information dump describing the setting could be be intensely dull, but if you weave the description in with the action and the dialogue, not only do you ground the action in the environment and eliminate talking heads, but the setting becomes another character adding their two penn’orth – and extra obstacles for the protagonist to climb over, which all adds to the suspense.
Readings
Even though members at their first meeting aren’t expected to bring anything to read, all three of our new members did bring something. And didn’t they just bring something?!
The first piece said a lot about the characters with few words. The second had been rejected for publication, so advice was sought. It was a solid piece of work that a few tweaks would sort out. Hopefully, we’ll hear some good news about it soon. The third reading was evocative and emotional. There were some excellent turns of phrase, with a unique and brilliant way of describing memories.
We were blown away by the talent this month! Well done to all three readers.
Any other business
We did have some other business today: we showed off the new events page on this very website. One member remarked that they’d looked at the website the day before, but it wasn’t working. Ah, yes; that’s because it was undergoing essential work to get the events page working!
Next meeting
We next meet on 6 September. Hopefully, everyone will have returned from their jaunts and recovered from their illnesses by then, and will be raring to come. Will you?
In the meantime, if you can’t get enough poetry, Prosper are hosting a poetry night, which should be fun.