In June we had our second Zoom workshop, with Keith in charge of pushing buttons again.
David started by getting us each to think of a favourite character from a book or film. There were a surprising number of Dickens characters: Uriah Heep, Miss Havisham and the Artful Dodger, but also a character from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series (Granny Weatherwax), a Peaky Blinders character and several detectives.
We discussed what makes these characters successful: we can identify with them and with their problems, we know them well enough to have an idea of what they might do in a given situation, we know what motivates them and we know their strengths and weaknesses.
Then it was time to create our own characters and David asked us to think of a real person we know and who we think would make good character in a story or play. We wrote down some one-word characteristics (age, appearance, personality, occupation, etc.) and then fleshed out those characteristics with some descriptions and behaviours. By now, most of us were making things up and moving away from the real person we had thought of. Once we had a good feel for our character, we put ourselves in their position and answered some interview questions. Things like: What paper/magazine do you read most often? Do you take part in sport? What is your main aim in life? What problems do you have at the moment? We split into pairs (using Zoom’s handy breakout rooms) to describe our characters to each other.
When we came back to the main meeting, David introduced us to five different techniques for showing characters (taken from an OU creative writing course book): interpretation, appearance, direct thought, action and speech. Then he gave us half an hour to write a paragraph about our characters using all five techniques. By the time we had finished, each of us had created a believable character and we split into groups of three to read out what we had written.
Now we just need a story or play to put them in! David suggest picking an incident (like an encounter, a car crash or the arrival of a letter) to set off a chain of reactions.
Ros Woolner
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