Writing Spaces: Editorial Practice

Greetings! As of earlier today, I have completed all of the classes, assessments, and the exam of my very first year of university. Now I'm considering participating in NaNoWriMo seeing as I'm free for November, though I'm not committed to it yet because I'm in the middle of writing WALLS and I'm not sure if it has a whole 50k words left to it or if I want to start something else before I've finished it.

Anyway, I thought that seeing as I'd finished university for the year, I should probably get the re-cap of the final Writing Spaces lecture out here. In our final lecture, we were visited by some of this year's editors of Verandah, Deakin's annual student-run literature and art journal. They shared some of their experiences with us and gave us some advice on editing not just our own work, but also editing the work of others.

Editing is an intervention on behalf of the reader, but editors also have a duty of care to the writer. This can sometimes be conflicting, especially within the context of being employed as an editor and having to apply what the publishers want to the situation. Because of this, editors have to be sensitive, tactful, and brave when identifying what the piece is, what is might be and what it could be. Another place editors have to practice extra sensitivity is when they undertake the task cross-cultural editing. This is for various reasons including making critical, aesthetic, and technical decisions, especially when translating from another language. Knowledge of the other culture is vital for cross-cultural editing to work smoothly, because you cannot edit in ignorance. The guest speakers used the example of an Australian children's book written by an indigenous author from the point of view of an Aboriginal child, which editors then tried to make 'white' because they didn't understand and couldn't accept the cultural differences that the piece presented.

There are a few different stages of editing, including structural/content editing, copyediting, and proofreading. The last two are checking for consistency, especially of spelling and punctuation. Editors need to be well-read and have good literary and writing etiquette skills.

The Verandah editors shared a few of their own experiences from their year on the journal's editing team. Being a part of the editing team wasn't just about editing for them, because they also had to take care of the business side of things. The Verandah team had to handle financing, distribution, production, design, and marketing. This is where I should mention that the Verandah editing team consists of a bunch of students in the third year of the same course that I am currently undertaking, which generally doesn't focus on such business skills, presenting them with a new challenging experience. Verandah is run by third year students of the Professional and Creative Writing major every year, so I will most definitely be applying for a position for the 2015 edition.

Of course, there was editing to be done. The team at Verandah followed the Australian Style Manual when editing and had to learn to work with the writers of accepted submissions to negotiate edits and get pieces to fit into the overall style of the journal.

The guest speakers also gave a word of advice for writers. Writers need to be able to separate themselves from their writing in order to edit. I think a good way of doing this is to have some time between completing the draft and starting to edit. There are two reasons for this. 1) A break from the piece will allow you to read with fresh eyes that don't automatically correct mistakes without acknowledging their incorrectness. 2) You won't take criticism from yourself and other people so personally and you'll find it easier to listen to, accept, and consider criticism.

I could go on about editing and my editing processes, but I will save it for a later post.

How do you feel about editing? Do you have any tips or tricks to share? Also, who else is doing NaNoWriMo? Tell me about your plans for the month of writing. 

- Bonnee.

Reading Aloud

Photo: 'Microphone' by ~Elenchos on DeviantART.

Tomorrow night, I will be participating in the reading a lecturer from Deakin Uni is running at a pub in Melbourne. I get two minutes in front of the mic to read something of my own creation. I had to specify time length (no more than four minutes allowed) and tone when I applied, so I said I'd write and read something of two minutes in length with a light/cheerful tone. Tonight, I'll be giving that piece a final bout of editing and then print it off, so I can keep looking at it all day tomorrow.

I've never been particularly good at reading things out loud. My eyes go ahead of where my mouth is and I end up stuttering and stumbling and accidentally combining words in my head and then pausing to try and separate them because I know that if I say it, I'll sound all kinds of stupid. But then I end up pausing for far too long and looking like an idiot anyway. Generally, I've always tried to avoid having to read out loud, especially if I'm not already a little bit familiar with the passage. I also find that my tongue suddenly seems a lot heavier and fatter than I remember, which makes speaking very difficult.

Up until this year, I'd never really read any of my own work out loud, especially not in front of anybody. I'd read out loud to check that everything sounded right and to make sure I have appropriate punctuation. When I started my Writing Craft tutorials at uni last semester, I was the first one to volunteer to read in our group, because the teacher asked for a volunteer and no one else put their hand up for a very long time. I thought to myself, What the hell? and just went for it. It broke the ice a little, which was good, but it was terrifying, reading something of my own creation to people - at the time, all complete strangers - for the first time. Even more terrifying was when later in the semester, it was my turn to workshop my assessment piece, which meant reading out something much longer and letting others critique it. But having been among reading volunteers several times and having workshopped twice in that tutorial, I think I've gotten a lot better at reading out loud, at least when I'm familiar with what is on the page.

Hopefully, the practice from last semester will keep me from shaking too much tomorrow night. It's only two minutes, it's less than 400 words and I know what is written on that page.

How do you feel about reading out loud? 

- Bonnee.

Writing Craft: Choosing to Write

It is a sad, sad day, for this day concludes my Writing Craft classes. It is the end of semester and as of just over three hours ago, I completed the unit (minus handing in the final assignment). I've really enjoyed this semester and I'm so sad to see classes over. Twelve weeks with like-minded and creative people and a fun and inspirational lecturer and tutor has been fun and I feel like I've learned so much, but that I'm not ready to stop. Of course, there will be more creative writing related classes next semester and I'm sure I'll find myself with some of the same people in classes and meet more and more new people too. 

Why? Choosing to Write

Readings for this week were Solutions by Janet Frame (pages 78-87) and The Glass Essay by Anne Carson (pages 1-38). 

This lecture didn't focus on a certain aspect of how to write or writing techniques like the previous classes did, but rather focused on asking students why they write and why they write the way they do. 

I write because...

The lecturer gave us a few minutes and asked us to individually write down how we would end that sentence.

I write because... I love to and I need to. Because if I don't, I'll go crazy. Because if I don't, how will I share everything wonderful and terrifying that happens inside my head? 

There were heaps of different answers and some people read theirs out to everybody. What our lecturer wanted to stress was that there is no wrong answer to this question. Everybody write's for their own reasons, and some people write for many different reasons. Answers may change over time or in different situations, but there is no such thing as a wrong answer here.

There are different ways to look at writing. The first way we discussed was writing as a form of art. I think this is the form I am most inclined to associate with my own writing. You can do the same thing with words that you can do with paint or film or another medium, if you do it right, and if you really put your heart into it. You can collaborate with people from other fields of art: thespians and film-makers need someone to write their scripts, photographers and painters need someone to write up a bio for them or write a poem to accompany a one of their pictures. This isn't to say that writer's can't be multi-disciplinary or that people in other professions aren't capable of writing for themselves, but it's still an option; writing alongside other forms of art. Like any form of art, writing is easily used as a form of expression for ideas and thoughts.

With the ability to express through writing, as with any form of art, might also come the fear of writing. Our lecturer showed us this video of Jacques Derrida talking about how he feels fear when writing... please excuse his French:

Aside from as an artistic medium, writing can me seen as a skill and as a profession, though the class agreed that this should be seen as more of a parallel to seeing it artistically rather than opposing it. Writing is a craft or a skill and this means it's something that you can DO. It involves practicing and progressively getting better at it. And practice here means that we continue doing it, even if our ideas aren't very good, so that when a really good idea does spring up, we can catch it and write it down the best we can straight away instead of waiting for a good idea to practice on.

As a practice, writing becomes a stable framework within which wild and unpredictable explorations and discoveries can be welcomed, or as my lecturer put it "A stable framework for craziness." As a practice, it could either be defined as something you actively do, or as a part of your identity because you do it.

Writing - and I'm sure that a lot of people start out this way, I definitely venture into this area at times - find writing to be a therapeutic and that writing well is even more so, or as a way of helping you think.

There are probably countless reasons for writing and of course there is no wrong answer. But our lecturer left us with something to think about: what is the difference between being a writer and just writing? If there is one. Personally, I think that if you consider you writing as a part of your identity, you can then identify as being a writer, but if you just write and don't really consider it a huge part of yourself, perhaps you're only writing. Of course, that's just my own opinion and I'm sure people will disagree, so please don't hate.

Nonetheless, I will pose the question to you: is there a difference between being a writer and just writing? 

And why do YOU write? 

And that concludes Writing Craft! I hope these posts have been informative and helpful to at least one person. Have a nice day.

- Bonnee.

Writer's Update/Writing Craft: Place and Setting

Best thing about winter:
I get to wear my scarves! 

Wow! So it's been a pretty full-on week for me. Though I can't complain; the girl next door is studying bio-medical science... now THAT'S rough. This week I finished my final Writing Craft assignment, which consisted of a 1,500 word creative piece on 'place as encounter'; my Writing for Professional Practice Assignment, which consisted of a 250 word media release, a 500 word newsletter interview profile and a 500 word opinion piece; and I attended a poetry reading in Melbourne, hosted by the Emerging Writer's Festival, which I plan on basing my final Journalism assignment on. I'm feeling pretty run-down and the winter blues are starting to creep in on me, but I've got one more week of classes before the semester is over and it's going to be great!

So let's get this blog up-to-date with my Writing Craft lecture notes!

Where? Place and Setting

Readings for this week were The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schultz (pages 25-35), The Deadman Dance by Kim Scott (pages 1-5, 7, 9-14), The Easter Hare by Leah Swann (pages 164-176) and The Line by David Brooks (pages 319-321).

For something to happen, it has to happen SOMEWHERE. It isn't possible for something to happen nowhere. Setting can be established by combining the where and the when of the story, and I say 'when' as well here because you could be standing somewhere and then a hundred years later that somewhere is going to be very different. Readers want to be grounded and given a setting; a place for the action in the story to occur. The setting or place in and of itself becomes a type of character and can change what a reader expect to happen next, what mood the piece will have, etc.

Our lecturer went on to explain that a story consists of character and setting (who, where and when?). Eliminating one of this elements could make a story hard or impossible to write or be engaging. So from this, we have a checklist:
- Stories need to have a temporal 'location'. You need to know 'when?'
- Stories need to be 'placed' somewhere in the world or in other worlds. 'Where?'
- Stories need to be populated with 'beings' that the reader can invest in. To be engaging, they probably need to want something.
- Characters need to want something in a specific place and at a particular time.
- The time and place will impact on the things the character wants and the things they'll do to try to get them.

When we're establishing a place, we have to remember that in real life, a setting stimulates all of the senses: sight, smell, sound, touch and taste. Think about what you could bring in from different aspects of your senses to really enrich the scene.

Think of your favourite book or movie. What kind of a setting does it have? Imagine removing the setting from this work or making it only vague and sketchy. What is the effect? 

My immediate thought was Harry Potter without Hogwarts. The story would be so different without Hogwarts. Share yours below.

- Bonnee.

Writing Craft: Character and Dialogue

I am a week behind in telling you what I've been learning in my Writing Craft classes, so you can expect two posts again this week, hopefully, if I can keep on top of things. So here is a recap of my lesson from last week.

Who? Character and Dialogue

Readings for week 9 were The Shipping News by E Annie Proulx (pages 1-11), The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (pages 5-10) and People Like That are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk by Lorrie Moore (pages 212-250). 

The first thing my lecturer wanted to stress was that dialogue is NOT the same as conversation; it is more structured and less random. Dialogue is action and should either move the story forward or develop a character. The thing is, dialogue is not supposed to be perfectly realistic, because that's boring. So the lecturer gave us some tips: 

- Think of dialogue as a summary of dialogue; capture the essence of what is being communicated and don't fluff around with it. 

- "Attribution is part of the sentence," he said. "Keep attribution simple!"

- Each new speaker should start speaking on a new paragraph. 

- Vary the speech lengths. 

- It's not how people speak in real life; it has the boring bits edited out. 

That was all pretty straight-forward, though it shocks me to realise how many people DON'T know to put a new speaker on a new line. I can sort of understand people who get a little... carried away with the attributions. That was me, once. I have been very guilty of not-so-simple attributions. But I found it almost interesting to consider how unrealistic dialogue could be. It makes perfect sense though, otherwise, every time two characters encountered each other, you'd have a conversation that would run: 

"Hey, how are you?"

"Hi there, I'm good thanks, and yourself?"

"Yeah, pretty great. What's been happening?" 

"Oh you know, just the usual..." 

EVERY TIME. 

Moving on, our lecturer discussed 'character' with us. For the more experienced writers out there, I think it's common knowledge that the reader should be able to identify with the characters, especially you protagonist, whether they are the hero or the villain, and with all flaws accounted for. Something that I definitely agree with is that there is - at least, at times - an artificiality to naming character, because they are already fully realised 'beings', which is what can make the task so difficult. I don't know about you guys, but I RARELY know what my characters names are going to be when I think of a story, unless I think of the character before I think of the story, and even then... 

When we create a character, we should try to create a fresh image to describe them, and avoid cliches. Take into consideration how many other people might have already written about the same basic character that you're about to throw into a story of your own. How can you make YOUR character stand out against other similar characters? Find those finer, fresher details. 

Why do we need characters and what do characters do in a story? Basically, you can't write a story without characters. The reader observes characters and observes the rest of the story THROUGH characters (focalisation). Similar to dialogue, we cut out all the parts of what real people do in order to make characters; Shakespeare never writes about Hamlet going to the toilet, and no author would unless it was somehow relevant to the rest of the story. 

Something that we might want to consider when creating our characters is whether, like real people, we speak in different voices depending on who is with us and what the circumstances are. I would NOT speak to my mother the same way I speak to my best friend. Like people, characters are not a fixed point in time; they can be influenced and changed by what happens around them, and should be. Character development, right there. The central character of a story needs to be an agent struggling for his or her own goals, not just a victim, subject to the will of others. Our lecturer said that failure to see that the central character must act, not just be acted upon, is a common mistake, especially in beginners. 

Where do characters come from? The answer has nothing to do with what happens when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much. We discussed this question both in the lecture and in the tutorial, and some of the things we came up with were: 

- Real life (though this can make them hard to manipulate if we try and stay true to the original person)

- What we WISH real life to be like

- Imagination

- Through observing and adding up pieces you notice in people

- Within ourselves

- All of the above.

Our lecturer also explained that a lot of characters we see in writing, including our own though we may not realise it, come from archetypes. Someone else in the lecture theatre used the word 'prototype' to help define what this means. The lecturer described it as an imprint of a pattern of human behaviour; they are characters who are up-front, with no subtext. We give them subtext and make them unique when we take them and built on their original base-form of an archetype. The example we were given was from medieval theatre, where there'd be the rogue, the clown and the fool. 

How do you use dialogue? What's your favourite quote from a book? 

Where do your characters come from? Who is your all-time favourite character, either from something you've read or from your own writing? 

- Bonnee. 

Writer's Update/Writing Craft: Focalisation

A quick little writer's update before I get stuck into the second half of what we learned in our lecture last week; I was happy with the mark I received for my second Writing Craft assignment, in which students had to use a memory as a basis for a 1,500 word piece. I got a High Distinction and good feedback. Yesterday, I started writing my piece for the third and final assignment of the semester, in which we have to pick a place (real or imaginary) as the setting for an encounter, again, to make a 1,500 word piece. I've decided to challenge myself and write in second-person point of view and present tense, while my default is usually third-person and past tense. So far, I am really happy with it. It's my turn to workshop again next week, I believe, so I'm looking forward to some criticism and feedback from my writing group.

As of last week, I have also become a sort of unofficial active representative of the Deakin Writer's club. I have volunteered to spread the word about the Deakin Writer's Club to people in my Writing Craft tutorial, including to my tutor. While I haven't had anything published in it myself (mostly because I haven't really submitted anything), I am looking forward to introducing more writers to the circle.

The Gardiner's Creek track between res and the campus.
You honestly wouldn't know that I live near the city...
I love going for walks along the creek. Very relaxing.

Who? Focalisation

First of all, on Australianisms: our lecturer and tutors etc. are trying to encourage us to not use American spelling, because, well, we're not American. That means they are actually taking marks off us if they find 'colour' spelled 'color' or 'realise' spelled 'realize' in our work. Because that's just the Australian way, so there. I actually didn't realise that the 'z' instead of an 's' was a thing until they started pointing it out. Doesn't that just go to show how infected by American culture Australia is becoming? So I spell it 'focalisation' with an 's' and those of you who aren't in Australia can spell it 'focalization' with a 'z'.

When we think of focalisation, my lecturer says we should think of who is seeing (similar to point of view), but also, that we should think of who knows. Our lecturer told us about this guy called Genette who described focalisation as "a selection or restriction of narrative information in relation to experience and knowledge of the narrator, character or other, more hypothetical entities in the story world." Genette distinguishes between three different degrees of focalisation:
- Zero focalisation: a narrative with an omniscient narrator, who knows more than the characters do. This is also described by some narratologists as 'vision from behind'. It's really only relevant if you're writing in third person.
- Internal focalisation: when the main character(s) and the narrator know the same amount. This is also called 'vision within', 'narrative with point of view', or with 'restricted field' because we are restricted to what the character knows. This can be relevant for both third person and first person, because in first person, the main character is the narrator.
- External focalisation: when the narrator knows less than the character, also known as 'vision from without'. This style is more objective and behaviourist. It works well if you want an unreliable narrator, who cannot clue the reader in on what a character's silent motivations are, etc. Relevant for first and third person.

But is this really an definite definition of what focalisation is? Nope! Congratulations, my dear readers; you have fallen into the same trap as me, thinking that education will answer questions, when it really has an awful tendency of creating more. According to our lecturer, the definition and explanation of focalisation is one that is often debated and lots of modifications, counter-theories and extensions have been made to what Genette originally proposed as a framing. It's a confusing area of writing and now a whole lecture theatre full of students have joined in the chaos, and so have you!

Personally, I am happy to stick with Genette's framing of it.

What would you consider focalisation to be? 

- Bonnee.

Writing Craft: Point of View

I big apology to all my fellow bloggers who haven't seen much of me lately, but I guess this is what happens when I study. Also: I forgot to bring a pen to my lecture last week and only just watched it online to get some notes. I love taking notes! So this post, I'll share some of what I learned in our eighth lecture. We looked in to point of view and focalisation this lesson, but I'll put the two topics into separate posts, because there was a lot to take in.

Who? Point of View

Readings for week 8 were On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning by Haruki Murakami (pages 68-72) and Revisions: A Found Story by Frank Moorhouse (pages 250-258).

My older followers will know how much I love Haruki Murakami. I got way too excited when I saw that he was in the readings for the week. I was not disappointed.

Our lecturer started off by stating that writers, especially beginners, often don't realise how much they can play with and move around in point of view. The point of view is the position or vantage point from which a story is given. It's the WHO that is speaking and it can often be defined in grammatical categories. I think those of us who have been writing for a while already know the basics, but for those who don't:
- 1st person: the 'I'.
- 2nd person: the 'you'.
- 3rd person: the 'he'/'she'/'it'.
- The plurals: 'we'/'they'/'yous'

As writers, point of view is a tool we use to transform the same plot, narrative arc, characters, or setting. The point of view we choose to write in will contribute to the style or the 'feel' of the piece and can be related to the ratio of telling:showing that is acceptable.

One guy our lecturer told us about by the name of Lubbock made two categories for point of view in terms of having a narrator:
- The traditional method of relating a story, in which the narrator is prominent, called Plato's diegesis. Here, the narrator outright tells the story.
OR
- A newer method in which the narrator retreats into to the background, called Plato's mimesis. Here, the story and characters and what the reader is shown is a copy or reflection of life.

Lubbock continued to list his four points of view in order of most telling to least telling.
- 3rd person narration with prominent or authorial narrator;
- 1st person narration;
- 3rd person narration from the point of view of a character;
- 3rd person narration without comment or inside views ("the dramatic method").

Lubbock also wants people to differentiate between telling int he voice of the authorial narrator and telling in the voices of the characters, suggesting that mimesis is a form of diegesis, rather than opposed to it.

The lecturer went on to discuss the different points of view. 1st person is potentially the most intimate point of view, using 'I' as the narrator and as a character at the same time. However, the 'I' narrator should not be confused with the writer themselves, unless it's an autobiographical piece. Within the 1st person, the 'I' narrator can call another character 'you' and speak of 'you' and 'I' as 'we'. Does this constitute a separate point of view? It is debatable. This use of 'you' and 'we' in 1st person is common in song lyrics. The 2nd person also uses 'you' and can use 'we', but more than in 1st person. The reader seems to be addressed by the writer and this implicates the reader, forcing them to participate in the text. However, this can be risky, because the reader might not want to be so directly involved with the text. The 3rd person uses 'he'/'she'/'it' and there is an absence of 'I' except in dialogue. This can distance us from the characters to an extent, and can allow for an omniscient narrator who can see deeply into the thoughts of many different characters.

Our lecturer advised us to take note of what point of view we use in our writing and what point of view is being used in the things we read. An interesting exercise could be to re-write a passage from a book in a different point of view and see how it turns out.

Which point of view do you normally write in? Which point of view are you reading at the moment? 

- Bonnee.

Writing Craft: Audience and Voice

Getting out of bed this morning was hard for a reason... 

Anybody else just love Game of Thrones?

Our lecturer has decided to push all the weeks back one seeing as we missed out on the lecture last week and had an extra week at the end of the semester. So while it is the 8th week of classes, today we completed week 7's lecture and tutorial.

Who: Audience and Voice

Readings for week 7 were Rich chocolate cake á la Irvine Welsh by Mark Crick (pages 20-28), Everything is illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer (pages 1-7), Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates (pages 1, 3-5, 7, 9-25) and The white tiger by Aravind Adiga (pages 3-42).

When we talk about 'voice' in writing, we're talking about that thing about a piece that makes it seem alive; the thing that seduces us to keep reading and/or writing it. Having a good voice is what will stop the reader from putting the book down and never giving it a second glance, and it is what stops the writer from getting bored of a project they've started.

The difference between voice and style can be hard to distinguish, mostly because they reflect on and feed off each other. My lecturer believes that style can be imitated, but voice can not. My tutorial group discussed the difference after the lecture and my tutor asked us to consider a few things: Does the writer's style change or stay the same over different pieces they write? Does each separate piece have it's own unique voice? Is it possible for writer's to have more than one voice? My tutor agreed that style could be mimicked, but questioned whether or not the same could be said for voice. Personally, I think that each piece has a unique voice that can't be replicated, and that writers might have multiple styles and voices.

An audience for writers are their readers, but each writer has a different set of readers or person they are aiming to please when they write. With a little bit of practice, it can become quite easy to automatically adjust our language or our 'voice' for whoever our readers are. After all, audience has a crucial effect on how we write. While we all automatically write for an audience, it is not always clear in the first instance who that audience is. Although some writers are super-ultra-organized and plan out everything about their next project to a T, many do not and when the urge to start writing strikes, a lot of people will go for it without considering who we are writing for.

Who do you write for? 

We brainstormed some possible answers in the lecture and tutorial. While the obvious answers of "teenagers", "young adults", "my best friend", "my mother" or "myself" came up, there were some more interesting contributions. Our lecturer suggested that sometimes we write for someone who once strongly praised us or someone who once harshly criticized us. Or in the case of 'anxiety of influence', some of us feel that we are writing for the whole of literary history, with the weight of all the other awesome authors who came before us resting on our shoulders as they peer at the pages before us and tut quietly under their breaths, shaking their heads... or whispering encouragement to us from beyond the grave. They can't ALL be mean and filled with superiority.

The final thing we touched on in the lecture was 'Audience as the addressee of your narrative'; a technique in which we mobilize the notion of an audience to produce a particular effect in terms of voice, by letting your narrator talk to/write to/complain to/fantasize to etc... a particular person.

My tutor left us on a note of caution: Don't try to please EVERYBODY when you write. You can't write for EVERYBODY at the same time. Pick your age group, gender, or whatever demographic makes up your target audience and aim to please them before anybody else. Otherwise you'll just turn into a hopeless too-far-stretched mess trying to please too many people and most likely not succeeding.

Who do you write for? Do you think you have a style of your own yet, or are you still finding it? Do you think each of your individual pieces of writing has its own voice? 

- Bonnee.

ANZAC Day/Pace Workshop Exercise

Today (25th of April), people of Australia and New Zealand have a public holiday known as ANZAC Day. This is a day where we remember those in the Australian New Zealand Army Corps who served, and especially those who lost their lives, in World War I and especially in Gallipoli. Since the day was first established, it has extended to ANZACs in general, no matter when they served.

In WWI, the ANZAC's objective of capturing the Gallipoli Peninsula was met by strong resistance by the Ottoman Empire, one of Germany's allies during the war. Instead of the successful capture of Constantinople that was aimed for, troops from both sides suffered eight months of combat and high numbers of fatalities. While the ANZACs were unsuccessful, the day is remembered and celebrated because of the strength, courage and mateship shown on the battlefields.

I have never been to one of the dawn services until today. Not a fan of the 4:00AM wake-up, but it was well worth it. There was quite a sizable group of res kids going to the early session. This is also the first ANZAC Day service I've been to in the of Melbourne itself, and the service was held at the Shrine of Remembrance. It was inspiring to be there with so many others before the sun had even risen.

On a coincidentally related note, the pieces I wrote during my tutorial/workshop for Writing Craft when we were exercising our use of pace was set in a battlefield. Our tutor played music to set a fast or slow pace for us and this is what I came out with:

Fast-Pace, including all of my crossing out where I decided that it slowed the pace down. Just read the part that aren't crossed out. We were only given 10 minutes, so I was stopped mid-sentence too:

“Get down!”
Not even a second passed after the words left the commander’s lips before  The deafening screech of a bomb whistlinged down on us, the screech deafening. I lay pressed myself into the soil as. The earth around me rose and fell. I stood again with the others. Heads down, guns raised, we crawled forwards.
The blood-coated red-zone was a death-trap sprawled with disembodied limbs. We shuffled forward an inch, ducked as gun-fire rained down on us (from) above us, rose again, pressed forward.
“Get down!”
The deafening whistle sounded again, closer. The ground to my right exploded in a spray of spraying dirt. I waited. Someone pulled me to my feet as the rescue van came into view. We dashed forward, half-hopeful, terror-filled, but alive.
“Get down!”
I didn’t listen. My hands made contact with the metal ladder and. I threw myself up against the… 

Slow-Pace. I thought of a battlefield in slow-motion. Again, this contains all the crossing out I did, so the most important stuff is what isn't crossed out:

Not even a second A moment passed after the commander ordered us to get down. My body met the soft soil of the battlefield red-zone with a gentle thud and I saw the dirt around me rise in a graceful arch and patter back down. I lay for a moment, inhaling, and felt the pulse of the earth beneath my palms as I lay them flat. Someone’s voice called out, but it sounded muted, distant and ethereal. My cheek felt the tickling of blood form a nick somewhere above my eyebrow and I pressed it into the ground, closing my eyes as I exhaled. When I lifted my eyelids again, I could see Corey’s face, watching me from the his place in front to my right. Behind him, I saw the dirt flying up in another graceful arch, and felt the pulse of the earth beneath my fingertips again. That distant voice sounded again, but remained unheard as I watched Corey flash pass me as mall smile; something reassuring. 

I think slow-pace comes to me easier, but fast-pace is definitely useful. While slow-motion battle scenes are pretty cool in my humble opinion, we can't going into slow-motion EVERY time there is gunfire and explosions in our stories. I think that paces that contrast what is actually happening should only be used when necessary; if there is some important detail that NEEDS to be brought to attention during the scene through the pace.

If anybody else would like to try this exercise writing a piece in fast-pace and slow-pace and post in the comments (give it about 100-150 words for each piece?), my song suggestions for those wanting musical assistance are 'Kiss the Rain' by Yiruma (for slow-pace, lovely piano music), and 'Before I Forget' by Slipknot... or you know, pick your own songs, that works too! :)

I ask again, what do you think about using pace in your writing? 

- Bonnee.

Writing Craft: Pace / Writer's Update.

My list of assignments, because I'm organized!

Oh Mondays... 9am lectures when I haven't eaten red meat in over a month are not nice. A word of advice to anybody out there who has recently started doing their shopping/cooking for themselves: don't put off getting the red meat!!! Lack of iron makes you SLEEPY and DYSFUNCTIONAL! Luckily, I stocked up on iron-y goodness this afternoon...

In other news, I am glad to say that I am HAPPY with the mark I received for my first Writing Craft assessment, 'Sketching with Words' and hope to get even better on the assessment I just handed in today, 'Memory as Seed'.  My third and final assessment for the semester isn't due until June, so perhaps I'll find time to write something else between now and then. 

You know you haven't been utilizing your creative outlet often enough when you notice an increase in how often you zone out, daydream and talk to yourself when you're alone... Yes, I have noticed an increase. 

Have I mentioned how crappy the internet connection on campus is? It's really crappy. 

Also: I found the notes I lost from my tutorial last week. Yay! Moving on! 

When: Pace

Readings for week 6 were Trouble is my Business by Raymond Chandler (pages 7-23), The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker (pages 1-17) and Astronauts by Tim Richards (pages 239-251). 

The first thing the lecturer wanted to stress was that pace was mostly about variation. It is a composition of speeds and slownesses. In writing, pace is the effect or effects of how time passes for the reader. How do we experience time in our bodies and minds when we read? Pace could also be described as imitating or upsetting the rhythm of things. Our lecturer had us listen to some different musical compositions when she told us this. One of them had a beat that was like an imitation heartbeat and it infected everybody in the lecture theatre. But something that all of the pieces of music she shared with us had in common was that the pace varied. There would be lulls in the fast-paced pieces and then it would pick up again. The slow-paced pieces would speed up suddenly and then slow down again. It was interesting to take note of. 

Some tools for manipulating pace are:

- Sentence length (Longer sentences can be good for slow-pace scenes, using lots of clauses separated by commas, making it hard for the reader to catch a breath, but perhaps making a more detailed image, especially when describing something. Short sentences work better in fast-pace scenes, forcing us to pause more often and breathe, making the clauses feel more fragmented or simplified.)

- Word length and word choice

- Paragraph length 

- Register of vocabulary (whether it is posh, jargony, rigorous, vague...)

- Punctuation (This can give the writing a certain personality.) 

- The white space on a page

- Strategy in description 

Our lecturer described somebody who constantly keeps up a fast pace in their writing as similar to a teenage rock band who never plays slower music, because mistakes are more likely to be recognized, but eventually it gets boring and monotonous. Faster is not always more desirable and variation in pace is important. Important details can be caught more easily between the fast-pace scenes of a story, but you need something slow-to-medium-paced to put between them. 

Pace can also be set by dialogue. We can get a feel of whether the character is a fast-pace character or a slow-pace character by their dialogue. Dialogue should always be deliberate and purposeful and it is important to remember that readers don't want the typical conversation full of ums and ahs you'd have in real life; dialogue in good fiction is often unrealistic. Of course, that doesn't mean disregard realistic dialogue all together, but you should try and aim for the more witty, meaningful, influential words when your character says something; not necessarily something that you'd be able to think of on the spot in real life... unless you happen to be one of those unrelentingly witty, meaningful and influential people. 

Something that can catch us out and slow our pace in a bad way is when we overload the detail. So if you read over a scene that you feel should be fast-pace, but you find it's dragging, remember that you don't need to tell your reader EVERY linking detail between Point A and Point B, because our own brains will fill in the obvious details for us. Always be aware of your pace and whether it is working or not. 

Useful links: 

Kurt Vonnegut's 8 Rules of Writing 

Measuring the Pace in Writing (Andy Shack) 

Have you noticed different paces in your writing? Try writing a scene while listening to fast-paced music, and then try writing it again while listening to slow-paced music. Try to match the pace of your writing to that of the music. I did this in my tutorial and I'll share it later in the week.  

- Bonnee. 

Writing Craft: Structure: Sentence, Paragraph, Story... and Tense!

Greeting all! As well as being inundated with university assignments and being forced to further neglect my blog, the blogs I follow and my own creative writing and reading goals, it appears the beautiful Australian summer weather has all but vanished as winter reaches out to us down in the Southern Hemisphere. I am wrapped up in a giant blanket with cold feet and a half-eaten packet of chocolate ripple biscuits while I try and motivate myself to get an essay on the power of social media underway...

Moving on! Something I've been meaning to do for a while is give a shout-out to Victoria Simox, who recently had a give-away of her middle-grade book The Magic Warble, which I won an ebook copy of a about month ago (yes, I am very behind schedule here, I know!). You can find Victoria on her blog at www.victoriasimox.blogspot.com. 

Victoria was born in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada, to an Austrian immigrant mother, and a Dutch immigrant father. She now lives in Western Washington with her husband, Russ and their three children, Toby, Kristina, and William. Her other family members are a Chihuahua, named Pipsy and two cats, named Frodo and Fritz. Besides being an author, Victoria is a home-schooling mother of twelve years and an elementary school art teacher of eleven years. In her spare time, Victoria enjoys managing her two older children's Celtic band. She also loves writing, reading, painting watercolors, hiking, good movies, and just simply hanging out with her family and friends. 

Today I'll summarize what we were taught in weeks 4 (When? Structure: Sentence, Paragraph and Story) and week 5 (When? Tense) of my Writing Craft classes.

Structure: Sentence, Paragraph and Story

Readings for week 4 were Triptych by Merlinda Bobis (pages 119-121), The Book of Sand by Jorge Luis Borges (pages 117-122), and Flying to Belfast by Dermot Healy (pages 319-331). 

Our lecturer explained the difference between 'story' and 'plot', which is that 'story' is anything between the first and last event of a narrative; events unfolding in chronological order, without links, the the dot-point or 'and then... and then... and then...' feeling, whereas 'plot' is how these events are put together and linked and how their arrangement emphasizes the relationships between them (cause and effect), which creates a reader's reaction of surprise or suspense, etc. 

Our lecturer talked a lot about 'time' and how it is hard to talk about; how we can't access human incidents in time without narrative. We humanize time when we write so that we can structure it for ourselves; although time is a constant thing, we talk about time freezing, stretching, disappearing etc. So how does our practice as writers raise questions of what it is like to exist in various kinds of time? We describe someone sitting in a boring lecture feeling as if time is dragging on and on and on. How might a practice of writing and reading influence our own and our readers' experience of time? We, as writers, have the power to control or at least influence the way our readers feel 'time' when they read our stories. 

Tense

Readings for week 5 were The Lover by Marguerite Duras (pages 3-16), and The Little Friend by Donna Tartt (Pages 3-13). 

This lecture focused a lot on verbs, their function and their importance. Verbs are doing words and any full sentence or independent clause needs one. When using verbs, writers also need to consider their place in time. The base form of a verb - or the 'infinitive' - can be found by putting the word 'to' first, eg: to bring, to run, to jump etc... however, the infinitive does not tell us details such as who, when and whether the action is possible, wished, completed etc; it is the pure notion of an event before detail is added. Who or what is the subject of the sentence? Who is completing the action of your verb? What tense are you writing in? These all come into consideration when giving the verb details. Writers should also consider the subjects gender and whether they are a singular or plural form. 

Correct and consistent use of tense is important to stop your reader from becoming distracted and ensuring that you writing flows as smoothly as possible. The two most basic and commonly used tenses are 'past simple' and 'present tense'. The 'past simple' is usually used to signify the story's present and is considered the simplest and often most suitable way to write. Present tense is less common in prose and often has interesting effects on the feeling of literary prose. 

A third type of tense our lecturer wanted us to look at was 'past perfect'. When 'past simple' relates to the now of the story, 'past perfect' is used to describe the story's past, as in memories and events that are being referred to which have already happened. We use this tense when we are describing something a layer further back in time. We can identify this tense when the word 'had' is used before the verb. Eg: 'I jumped' becomes 'I had jumped' or 'I'd jumped'. Slabs of text written in 'past perfect' tense can often sound clunky, but when referring to the story's past and the story's present, it is important that both the writer and the reader can differentiate between periods of time.  

I appear to have lost the notes I took in my tutorial. This is both worrying and disappointing, because there was a really cool quote I wanted to share with you all and some more cool examples... 

Does anybody have any interesting or useful tips to share on sentence, paragraph and story structure or tense? 

- Bonnee. 

Writer's Update / Writing Craft: Memory and Incident

On the left are the two original stories
that I should be giving more attention to,
while on the right are two fanfiction I wasted
precious time on this week.

Don't you hate it when one day you have a great idea for a story, but you just can't seem to get it out sounding the way you want it and it takes you a whole day with lots of interruption to write a measly couple of thousand words? And then the next day you come up with a not-as-great idea, but still okay, and you manage to pump out almost 6000 words in little more than four uninterrupted hours... Yeah, that happened to me. To put the cherry on top of my disappointment, they were both only fanfictions. Why couldn't it have been some good original work instead?! In other writerly news, no progress has been made to the revisions of KATHERINE in over a month now, I haven't touched my W.I.P WALLS in even longer and I am two books behind on my Goodreads challenges of 24 books read in the year. How are all your goals and revisions and W.I.Ps going?

I'm just about up-to-date as far as sharing my lecture-notes with you all goes. This is what we covered in Writing Craft, week 3:

Memory and Incident

Readings for this week were The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (pages 288-314), The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (pages 13-26) and The Sea by John Banville (pages 3-17).

How do we incorporate isolated examples of observation into what we write? This leads on from the previous lesson about observation and accuracy. The thing is, once something is no longer before us, it is a memory. A common problem with writing about something after-the-fact is that we might write about it too generally.

But imagination is possible because we have a wealth of memories to draw upon and to transform. Just because we are writing from a memory, does not mean we have to be 100% true to that memory. Unless we are being asked to write an autobiography, a memory can be nothing more than the seed of something much, much bigger. Telling a story is a creative process and this is also true when the story we are telling is a memory. Like a game of Chinese whispers: you see something happen and you tell somebody about it later. To make the story seem worth telling, you might unintentionally talk it up or exaggerate, or maybe you really do think it was more story-worthy than what it really was. Either way, say your audience decides to tell somebody else; they're going to tell it differently, using their own interpretation of the event, which might not be 100% accurate to the story you told them, but it is what they remember and it is what comes out through the creative process of retelling a story.

So how do we use memories when we write? We discussed three different ways in our lecture:

1. Using our memories as part of the writer's craft, to add a certain detail to our story: our protagonist is wearing the same sweater as the girl we saw getting off the tram earlier the same day, because that sweater really caught your eye and you remember it and you want your character to have it too.

2. Writers can draw on memory in a broader way, using episodes, settings, atmospheres and situations that can be reworked into our writing. You saw the girl with the sweater trying not to drop her bags while she extracted her mobile phone from her pocket and you decided to get your protagonist to have a similar moment walking home with the groceries.

3. The most direct way of using memory in our writing is to use a memory as a 'performance' in the text, as in when the protagonist retells an event that happened in their childhood.

My second assignment for Writing Craft is using memory as the seed for a fictional story. I've already written a first-draft of this and my tutorial group workshopped it (everyone has to workshop one of their assignments in a tutorial). I'm glad to say I received a lot of positive feedback and my tutor was happy with the way the group as a whole handled the workshop setting.

Have you used memory in one of these ways when writing a story? 

- Bonnee.

Writing Craft - Research: Observation and Accuracy

Greetings all, and a Happy Easter to those who celebrate it! I'm off uni for the week for the trimester break and now have a little bit of time to catch up on sharing what I learned in my Writing Craft lectures, which I've found is a good way to study and blog at the same time. Last post, I discussed what I learned in the first week of classes with 'Beginning to Write'. 'Research: Observation and Accuracy' was the topic for the second week of classes, so here's a recap of what I learned. 

Research: Observation and Accuracy

Readings for this week were The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (pages 3-8), Underworld by Don DeLillo (pages 11-24) and Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima (pages 3-27). 

During these sessions, we discussed a writer's attention to detail, and how we must always be paying attention to detail, even when we are not writing. This is an exercise that all writers can part-take in. Our lecturer and my tutor, like any good writing teachers, stressed that we should not generalize because it's boring, as are cliches. When we write, we need to find something fresh. 

This is why it is important for us to pay attention to details in our every day lives and then pick the things that you notice, but that no one else is paying enough attention to. When we write, we should be creating or describing a clear and specific world, filtered through our own minds. This also means writing about the bad, not just the good, and writing about things that might not be appealing, but are interesting. 

When it comes to attention to detail, we also need to decide how much is too much and how much is not enough. Of course, not everyone will be in agreement, but we should consider that not all detail is purely visual. The use of all perceptions - sight, taste, touch, smell, sound - adds to a more accurate and well-rounded description. Then we need to consider what details are relevant to the story and find a balance between crisp and vivid detail vs pedantic and cumbersome detail, which are sometimes necessary. 

After this lecture and tutorial, I had a lot to think about. I began to notice how much I payed attention to and was happy that I'd already been doing this in my everyday life. But putting those things on paper is something I always think in the moment I could write about this and then forget about it. So it's something I can now aim to do more of. Maybe you'll see some random flash-fiction a little more often from me.

My first assignment for Writing Craft was about sketching a picture using words, which I mentioned in an earlier post. I've already handed this assignment in and I was comfortable with the product. The point was not to create any story or plot or character development, but simply to describe something. I described the pin-board in my room and I'm hoping I managed to delete all of the cliches. 

How much detail do you pay attention to? 

- Bonnee. 

Balance/Writing Craft: Beginning to Write

Look at me! I'm organized! Sort of...

So I must apologize to those I usually follow with a little more dedication here on Blogger, as I have not been very active lately. University is my main priority at the moment and unfortunately that means neglecting my blog and fellows bloggers is sometimes going to be necessary. I'm hoping to soon be able to find a sort of balance that will allow me to keep up with everything happening here without falling behind in homework. But just for future reference, if I disappear for a bit, I'm probably studying, so please forgive me.

On a related note, I'd like to say that I am still absolutely loving university life! In this post, I would particularly like to focus on what has been going on in my Writing Craft lecture and tutorial. We just wrapped up the study of 'How?' and over the past three weeks the topics has been 'Beginning to Write', 'Research: Observation and Accuracy' and 'Memory and Incident'. I thought it would be nice if I could share some things that were covered... but for the sake of not overloading you, I'll put them in separate posts.

Beginning to Write

The readings for this week were The Sopranos by Alan Warner (pages 1-18) and First Love by Vladimir Nabakov (pages 39-47 in Spring in Fialta).

We started this lecture with an interview of Jerry Seinfeld. While he talks mostly about comedy writing, the things he's saying can be applied to any genre of writing. Anyway, you KNOW your lectures are going to be awesome when they start off with Jerry Seinfeld.

Another tip we were given was that we will learn to write better through reading. That sounds obvious, but it was nice to just hear someone say it and to tell us HOW we will learn to write better:

- When we read differently, we learn to write differently. I like to write YA and fantasy, but if I start reading crime novels, I will learn how to write crime novels. 

- If I read more attentively, I will learn to write more attentively. This is something most of us should already be doing, but the more we practice it, the better we will continue to get at it. 

- If I read with more discernment, I will learn to write with more discernment. I can read something and think, I really don't like what the author has done there, or, I really love what the writer is doing here, and then keep it in mind when I then go and write something.

- If I read more widely, I will write more widely. Again, I write YA and fantasy, because that's what I read. If I start reading crime, I might start writing crime. 

- If I read in conversation with other text (that is, with the ability to draw links and references from another text) then I will learn to write in conversation with other texts. 

Some basic information and a lot of encouragement from Jerry Seinfeld, but still something I find writers find reassurance in when it's reiterated. Can you relate yourselves to any of these tips? 

I had to look over my lecture and tutorial notes to write this, so it totally counts as studying! What was I saying earlier about finding a balance? I'll be posting about the other two lectures over the next week, so stay tuned!

- Bonnee.