Stealing?

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Vikki Thompson

I was reading on Saturday about the idea of stealing from other writers…..noooo, I don’t mean plagiarism I mean, stealing an idea, stealing a character.

Take Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, which is most probably the most famous example.

The novel is a prequel to Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. The story of Mrs Rochester, before she became the mad woman in the attic.

My favourite example though is Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin. It’s tells the Jekyll & Hyde story from the viewpoint of Dr Jekyll’s maid, Mary. A wonderful book (and film btw) that I found fascinating, after having read the original Stevensen book.

I would love to use a character that another writer created, and tell their story successfully. But who? Where do I start?

How about Miss Haversham, the story of her ending up in that big old house in her wedding dress. Or Mrs Dalloway’s wild teenage years? And what actually happened to Holly Golightly, now that would be fun! 🙂

What famous character would you like to steal?

How many times do you come across a minor character in a book who intrigues you? Who you’d like to know more about?

Today’s prompt about a diner turned into a story about a waitress who bumps into her male childhood playmate 😉 Tomorrow’s prompt is on the eve of the wedding which I kinda already did a few weeks ago….. Hmmm, will need to think about that one

Reading

Posted on March 18, 2012 by Vikki Thompson

Philip Roth said that reading was a way to keep the circuits open and to think about the piece he’s working on while getting a little rest from the actual work in hand.

Sooooo, the question is….should I join a book club? I’ve been thinking about this for over a year now, but never actually done anything about it. “Mount Toobie” (sorry, slipping into BookCrosser mode there), my to be read pile is huge, verging on thousands, which is what has always put me off….but.

My writing style is very similar to my reading preferences. I tend to read what I call “real life stuff”. No fantasy or sci-fi. I’m not even keen on crime either. I like emotional character driven stories, about people, their lives, and how they overcome obstacles. Which, is kinda what I write about.

But does that allow me to grow as a writer? Am I missing out on the opportunity to “broaden my horizons” so to speak? Also, would joining a book club/reading group give me an insight to what readers want from their books?

Jack Heffron says “Don’t try to write a short story until you’ve read fifty of them, preferably a hundred. Don’t try to write a novel until you’ve read fifty of them, preferably a hundred. The same is true for scripts, essays, poems and so on.”

I do copy writing I like into my note book. I collect pieces that I think are powerful. I did at one stage start doing book reviews, but now I just use Goodreads.

Are you a member of a reading group/book club? Do you feel your writing benefits from it?

Whilst compiling this post an update email hit my inbox from Kitty Hietala’s blog which I found very interesting.

Here’s a pic of just one of my book shelves lol.

I wasn’t really inspired by today’s prompt, the emergency exit. I ended up writing a story about 2 young girls running out of the ice rink because the boy one of them fancies comes in. Today’s prompt is eating at a diner so I’m hoping I’ll be a bit more inspired today 😉

Generating Titles

Posted on March 17, 2012 by Vikki Thompson

As I said a couple of days ago, I love finding names for my characters, but, what I love even more is finding Title Ideas 🙂 A good title idea can prompt a story in itself, and often does for me. An interesting title will intrigue a reader, I know it does me. One of my 2 favourite examples from successful books are:

If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things
and
The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nightime

Both, fantastic examples of how a title can sell a book. Imagine if Mark Haddon had just called it “The Dog” *yawns*

I’m sitting here at the moment, in front of my sons birthday cards. It was his birthday on Wednesday. I found one of his cards very inspiring.

Bam! “Dressing Like Dad” what a great title for a story. I’m conjuring up the scenes in my head as I type lol

I find title ideas absolutely every where and I allocate a page in my note book where I write them all down, the minute I spot one. So here are a few tips on finding those titles…..And the stories to go with them 😉

1. Lines from poetry.

2. Quotes.

3. The Titles given to pieces of art, especially modern art.

4. Writing prompts. I often use words from the actual prompt I’m using as a title.

5. Flick through a non fiction book, the titles of the chapters (even self help type books can be good for that!) or go to the library and look at all the titles of non fiction books.

6. A Theasaurus is brilliant. Think of your title, then look up the words to see if you can make it better, a different word can add so much more meaning to the title.

7. Newspaper headlines and magazine article titles.

8. Subjects of e mails….I know, you’re looking at me strangely lol…. Try it! I had an e mail yesterday from a web site I subscribe to and the title was “Hire a Hooker for Your Husband” *snigger* Now you’re looking at me like I’m a real weirdo lol.

9. Song lyrics and titles….the song itself could inspire a story.

10. Eavesdrop on people’s conversations, in cafe’s, shops, sometimes, someone will come out with a gem. If you don’t get out much TV and films are good too, even the news programmes. I wonder if Lionel Shriver overheard someone say We Need To Talk About Kevin ?

So that’s where I get my ideas from….I could sit here and type out my current list, which stands at about 30, but hey, you might steal one 😉

Today’s prompt about sinking turned into a tory about a guy, in sales, who’s wife has left him and he’s been called to the bosses office as his figures are going down. Lots of options on how to end that depending on how nasty I’m feeling 😉 Tomorrow’s prompt is an emergency exit which sounds good 🙂

Fishing…For Ideas

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Vikki Thompson

You can’t force an idea can you. William Stafford once said that the creative process is like fishing. You cast a line and then sit patiently, waiting for a nibble. You have to be still and quiet because if you make too much noise the fish won’t bite. With time and experience, you learn the right moment to land that baby.

That kinda goes against what we want as writers. We want results and now. We want proof we are making progress and being productive. We want finished pieces and strive for each one to be better than the last.

So what if, we took one day…..Just one day a month as an Ideas Day? To go fishing, metaphorically rather than actual in my case 😉 No actual writing, but you’re allowed to write ideas in a note book.

If you could have one day a month as an ideas day, what would you do?

Me? I’d spend the day at an art gallery or sit on the sofa watching old black and white films all day 🙂

Ahhhhh….. Peter Jones would be so proud of me!

I don’t often suffer from writers block, I have too much whizzing round in my head, what with the daily prompts 😉

But…..if you ever find yourself staring at a blank page, try the 7 Minute Story technique by the Limebird Writers Blog. Brilliant 🙂

I spent most of yesterday editing 2 stories. I want to send one off to a competition and the other to a magazine. I also spent an hour or so on Title Ideas (post on that tomorrow).

Yesterday’s prompt was about being lonely, so I came up with a story about a woman who has everything apart from one thing…..love…..sounds like that Beatles song lol. Today’s prompt is write about sinking. Gawd, this is all very depressing isn’t it lol.

The Naming Game

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Vikki Thompson

I’ve had this post in my draft folder for a couple of days, and yesterday morning, I sat, with my cup of tea (every morning I read other peoples blog posts while I drink my first tea of the day lol) and discovered that a fellow blogger was talking about exactly the same thing…. spooky!

Check out journeyofjordannaeast where she talks about the struggles of naming characters 🙂

Anyway, as most of my regular readers will know, I do a prompt a day, a short story or the start of one. So everyday I’m trying to come up with names for characters. Every couple of weeks I sit and dedicate a whole page in my notebook to ‘Name Ideas’ so I’m always on the look out for methods, tips and resources 🙂

So here are some ways/places I get my character names from:

1. The credits on a film I’ve just watched. (I’ve been known to play the end credits frame by frame before now lol).

2. Books on quotations. I’m currently using a battered old copy of The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations that I picked up in a charity shop for a quid 🙂

3. Wikipedia which is a great source. Say I needed the name for a male character of a certain age who comes from Brazil. Search for the Brazilian football team and bobs your uncle! (English version of hey presto lol) You have a list of all the players 🙂

4. One of my absolute favourites…..any excuse obviously lol…..FaceBook! If you’re the member of any groups, check out the members list, you can usually see how old people are from their photo’s. Or if you have a friend (or family member) who has millions of friends (like my daughter who I think has about 800), check out their friends list.

5. Here in the UK a lot of our local papers have a Births, Deaths & Marriages section. Can be quite useful as you will know exact ages (as too can be the reporters names in the same paper).

6. Stuck for a surname? Google Maps 🙂 Pick a town, city, place…..road/street names are excellent for surnames. Or even a paper map (they do still exist you know lol)

My favourites from this one: Green – Ridley – Addington – Hartley – Cliffe – Halling and of course Rochester (hasn’t that one already been used? Lol)

7. And finally, name generators online. I don’t often need to use these sites, but if I do, my favourite is Seventh Sanctum which has loads of links to creativity generators.

Obviously you can use baby name books, but I find the modern ones hard because a name that is listed may have only been in existence for a few years. No good if trying to name a 45 year old.

One final thing about using real peoples names>;;>;;>;;>;;>;;>;; When I use FaceBook for name ideas I’m very careful to mix up surnames with first names. I don’t ever use their first name and surname combined. That could get you in a lot of hot water. But, if you think about it, whatever name you choose there is bound to be someone out there who has that exact combination of first and second name.

One last tip…..make sure all your characters names all start with different letters and don’t sound the same. Your reader will be way confused. I recently read a story where a dog was called Taylor and the baby was Tyler. I had to re-read a whole section as I thought it was still talking about the dog, and wondered what it was doing in a cot 😉

So how do you come up with your characters names? I would love to hear yor ideas/tips and resources.

Yesterday’s prompt was write about fruit flesh. Yuk, that just sounds wrong! lol. I know it is flesh, but….. Lol. Anyway, I came up with a sweet little story about a girl on a bench eating a pear. An old man sits down and chats and it turns out he’s a retired market stall holder (his son has taken over the business) who use to sell fruit and vege. That’s as far as I got, but I’m thinking there’s a romance there, especially as the son is a hunky barrow boy *sniggers*
Today’s prompt is this is how lonesome feels which is already depressing me and I haven’t even started writing yet lol

The “Place” Experiment Part 2

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Vikki Thompson

The second place in my experiment 🙂

Location: One of the piers at Chatham.
Time: 11am
Date: Monday 12th March

I listened to the seagulls sqwarking (sp? Lol) overhead and watched the small group of swans on the edge of the mud banks stretching their wings. They eyed the passing tug boat with suspicion. In the distance, the silent cranes rise up through the mist, waiting for the next cargo ship to arrive. There’s an eeriness to this place. I could imagine sitting here, developing the plot for an intricate thriller. A body, washed up on the mud, it’s bare white limbs a stark contrast against all the shades of grey. The whole area seems frozen in time. It could be 2012 or 1912, I don’t think the scene would have changed. Embedded in the mud, an old shopping trolley, the only trace of modern life. I was intrigued by the wreck of a small fishing boat, it’s mast and a small part of its hull poking out through the mud. I wonder what happened to it. Did it set adrift on a stormy night? Or a more sinister explanation. Regardless of the reasons it’s fated to stay embedded, a reminder to all of the dangers of the river and mud banks.

WOW….. This was a great place to write 🙂 I’m not sure it would have the same eery feeling on a warm summers day, so I’m really glad i went when it was misty. It was freezing though, so I didn’t stay long. Definitely inspiring, not for a romance, but if I was writing something that needed lots of atmosphere, this is the place to come…. I will be returning 🙂

I managed to get both of the prompts done yesterday. The one about the voices in the night prompted the start of a sorry tale about an overweight woman who’s husband leaves her. My hubby gave me that idea as he said about food calling you from the fridge in the night he he he 😉 The one about a ceremony was fun (as I expected), I now have the start of a story where a woman is attending the wedding of her ex, the one that got away if you know what I mean 😉

I spent yesterday afternoon editing and rewriting a couple of stories, and then submitted them for comps. So my “out there’s” now stand at 17 *squeals* Today, I’ll be trying to make that 20 😉

Sentences

Posted on March 12, 2012 by Vikki Thompson

I was reading yesterday about sentences. Have you ever read The Sentence by John Barthelme ?? No? Me neither lol…. Brilliant 😉

So, the sentence (can I just say at this point that for some reason I keep trying to spell it with an “A” ie sentance lol….weird!). Here are some tips on writing sentences (yay, I did it and didn’t even need the spell check kicking in…..I’m hoping that if I keep writing it during this post that it’ll sink in lol) from the lovely Judy Reeves 🙂

Every sentence needs a subject and a verb.

Oh dear, black to school for me again then lol

Put things in a logical order so that the reader can understand. Don’t show images before the reader can see the action.

Emphasis flows towards the end, so if there’s a word or phrase you want to stand out, put it at the end.

Put your most powerful sentence at the end of a paragraph.

I do tend to do that at the end of chapters when I’m doing Nano….always end dramatically I say 😉

Vary the length. Word count sentences in a paragraph (to check they’re not all the same length). Remember, long sentences slow a piece down, short ones speed it up. A paragraph full of long sentences will be boring for the reader.

And that’s why I LOVE dialogue, to break it all up.

Use punctuation to create breaks and pauses. Rhythm in a sentence is important.

Aim for one sentence (i guess, depending on how talented you are will decide on whether that will be in every paragraph or on every page) that is so beautiful and stunning that it stops the reader in their tracks.

I wrote a sentence for my Nano novel in 2010 which was about a woman who’s husband died and the fact that she couldn’t wash the sheets because she could smell him on his pillow. Emma Darwin thought it was fantastic when she did a critique of the first 3 chapters…..I’ll have to dig that out lol.

In my very humble opinion….. The best sentences are the ones that conjure up instant imagery. I want to be able to see in my mind what the writer is telling me 🙂

And that folks, is why writers should also be readers 🙂

I’ll end on a quote from Ernest Hemingway “All you have to do is write one true sentence.” Good old Ernie 😉

Do you keep an eye on your sentence structure when you write?

By the way….I’m reading this at the moment…. Will it improve my writing d’ya think?

Today’s prompt about before you were born inspired the fictional story (based on the true events, or what I’ve been told) about the moment my mum told my dad she was pregnant. Not a happy tale as she was 16 and he was 17…..and there was no happy ending. Today’s prompt is these are seductive voices of the night after Franz Kafka Hmmmmm, interesting 🙂

Show, Don’t Tell

Posted on March 11, 2012 by Vikki Thompson

*sighs deeply and raises hand* Ok, I admit it, I’m a teller, there, I said it 😦

There are lots of things I need to improve with my writing, but, unfortunately the Show Don’t Tell thingy is really taking a while to sink in. It’s especially annoying when you read successful authors work and you think, ‘ere, ‘ang on….. How comes Anne Tyler gets away with it? (sorry Anne, if you’re reading this, which i know you’re probably not, but you were the only example that sprung to mind as I recently read one of your books and annoyed the hell out of my husband for constantly complaining about your ‘telling’ lol).

I’m sure Ms Tyler wouldn’t really mind me using her for an example…..how many books has she had published now?

Anyway, I know what I should be doing, it’s just that when I write I completely forget. I get so carried away in the story that I end up tell tell tell tell tell 🙂

Was good to see a Show Don’t Tell article on the Writing Forward site a few days ago. I loved the examples. It’s easy enough isn’t it?

Before I started writing I didn’t even notice the difference between Showing and Telling when I read a book. A good story is a good story isn’t it?

Do you naturally ‘Show’ or do you battle with ‘Telling’ too?

Came across this photo on FaceBook….. exactly! 😉

I’ve spent the last 2 days editing a 2500 word romance short story which will be my final assignment for my course. It will be going off tomorrow!!!!!!! I’ve submitted it to a competition , so that brings my ‘Out There’s’ up to 15 *grins stupidly* It’s so addictive! It’s like just after getting your first tattoo and then wanting another one lol 😉

Yesterday’s prompt, about the eve of a funeral….was upsetting 😦 I actually cried whilst I was writing it lol. The thought of people I love dying scares the hell out of me, it’s my Achilles heel if you know what I mean. I wrote a story about a woman’s husband dying of a heart attack and the fact that she placed his mobile phone in his coffin so that she could always hear his voice on his voice mail and be able to text him. God…even just writing that has set me off blabbing again *and breath* lol

*pulls herself together*

Tomorrows prompt is the world before you were born and I’m thinking of writing a piece that’s sort of memoir, well, I wasn’t actually there, but, you know what I mean, a true story, about my parents 🙂

Having a writing session with a friend today, to work on our Horoscope home work…should be good! 🙂

Following On….

Posted on March 9, 2012 by Vikki Thompson

….from yesterday’s post about an ideal writing space, The Literary Mom asked the question… “What do you need to write?”

Well, we’ve already talked about noise vs silence, so you know my views on that 😉 But what about the material side of things?

I discovered very early on, when I started my first Writers Notebook that, although I love words, and can be inspired by them, I’m also a very visual person. I love art, spent a couple of years doing collages (you’ll have to look at my Flickr page to see the kind of stuff I did) and enjoy being surrounded by colours.

Soooo, what do I need to write? Different coloured pens lol. I’m not fussy with my notebooks (although I do love a Moleskine!) but what I really hate is to have a whole notebook full of writing in the same pen, in the same colour. I like to flick back through my jottings and practice work and not only be gratified by the words, but be excited by the whole visual experience of it. My notebooks are a mixture of my writing, quotes, lists, cuttings, pieces of writing I have been in awe of and hints/tips. I get just as much joy out of compiling my notebooks as I do re-reading them and weeding out the great stuff.

I’ve just started a new notebook:

This little baby is affectionately known as No11 😉 It contains enough visual stimulation without me adding to it with a rainbow of coloured pens lol, but hey, it puts a smile on my face every morning 🙂

Is there anything specific that you NEED to write? A certain pen? A particular type of paper?

I spent most of yesterday evening going through an old stash of magazines, tearing out Horoscopes. Our homework for The Write Place this week is to come up with a 700 word story inspired by a horoscope….should be fun 😉

Today’s prompt about the empty street was a weird one lol. I managed to turn it into the start of a story about a woman leaving for work, only to be arrested at the bottom of her road by a large group of policemen dressed in riot gear….don’t ask me where that’s going 😉 Todays prompt is “the woman in the window” after Roger Aplon so I see a bit of research on the horizon 🙂

HUGE THANK YOU to those of you who went and voted for my story that’s up on the Flash Fiction World website. It is much appreciated 🙂

Second Campaigner Challenge

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Vikki Thompson

Today the 2nd challenge was set for the Writers Platform Builders (see tab above).

I chose to do:

Prompt 1 – Two people are sitting together under the remains of a concrete bridge. Their backs are against a rusted bridge support. One persons leg is cut, the other person has wet hair.

Option 2 – Write a short story/flash fiction piece of less than 200 words based on the chosen prompts.

Here’s my offering which came in at 197 words 🙂

As the sky rains fire they shelter from the falling debris at the remains of the old bridge.The smell of diesel and burning plastic stings their eyes and chokes their lungs.
“We’ve got to get out of here.” Tom pushes his wet fringe away from his eyes.
“I know Tom, but I don’t think I can….my leg.”
Tom looks down at the gaping wound in Zoe’s leg, the blood pooling on the concrete.
“If we stay here, we’ll die Zo.” He pleads.
In the distance they hear a piercing scream. Zoe’s heart beats in her throat as she notices the sound of dull thuds.
“Tom, what’s that noise?” She whispers, but before he can respond a body lands a few feet away, it’s limbs twisted and broken.
Zoe screams as Tom wraps his arms around her and shields her face from the horror.
He then grips her shoulders roughly.
“Listen to me Zoe, I don’t know what the fuck is happening here, but I think we need to leave…now! If something hits this bridge…”
Tom is unable to finish his sentence as a large object hits the bridge and Zoe is plunged into darkness.