Writer’s on Writing…
“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy
you.” ~Ray Bradbury
“The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say,
but what we are unable to say.” ~Anaïs Nin
“I try to leave out the parts that people skip.” ~Elmore
Leonard
“Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that
come unsought for are commonly the most
valuable.” ~Francis Bacon
“The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts
and reason writes.” ~André Gide, Journals, 1894
Read the following extracts, which describe
various characters. For each, try to determine
what is and what is not described. You may wish
to think about clothes, thoughts, face, speech,
setting, etc.
Then, try to establish what you think about these
characters: what can we tell about them?
2
Kasia’s Mother’s Mother’s Story by Ali Smith
The woman is making the sign of the cross. Forehead, chest, left shoulder, right
shoulder. She does it again, faster, several times. Her right hand flaps in front of her
face like a small wing or the head of a snake. Anyone watching will think she is
making the sign of the cross.
She is standing in the doorway in the early morning dark. Someone passes
and she looks down. A bicycle rattles past without slowing. The noise of it dies away.
Her shoes are still covered in mud. She will never be able to clean it off them. At
some point she will need a new pair.
Thou Shalt Not Suffer A Witch by Dorothy K. Haynes
The child sat alone in her bedroom, weaving the fringe of the counterpane in and out
of her fingers. It was a horrible room, the most neglected one of the house. The grate
was narrow and rusty, cluttered up with dust and hair combings, and the floorboards
creaked at every step. When the wind blew, the door rattled and banged, but the
window was sealed tight, webbed, fly-spotted, a haven for everything black and
creeping.
In and out went her fingers, the fringe pulled tight between nail and knuckle.
Outside, the larches tossed and flurried, brilliant green under a blue sky. Sometimes
the sun would go in, and rain would hit the windows like a handful of nails thrown at
the glass; then the world would lighten suddenly, the clouds would drift past in silver
and white, and the larches would once more toss in sunshine.
3
More on description
This is a brief exercise to develop your descriptive skills.
Imagine a middle-aged woman standing at a bus stop. Working in
pairs, write a description of her waiting in four sentences only. You
must not describe her face, although you can describe her clothes. You
cannot describe her thoughts – only the physical description as if you
are watching her from the other side of the road.
She is:
 going to see her son in prison or
 starting a course at college for the first time or
 going to buy a new dress for her son’s wedding or
 looking for her husband in a local pub or
 going to see her sister in hospital.
In your description, try to indicate how she feels, through her
posture, what she does as she waits, what she’s wearing and how
she’s wearing it, etc.
4
Planning
You are READY to start writing.
 You should have a character from
yesterday, or you can make a new one up.
Remember the tips about distancing
yourself from the character.
 Think of a situation which this character
might find themselves in difficulty/come to
a realisation etc...

IDEAS TO HELP
The Rule
 Dreams are for
Living
 Family Dramas
 A Word to the Wise
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PLOT

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
Beginning
 This is where you introduce character, set the scene,
start your story in an interesting way which will
captivate your reader.
Middle
 This is the main action. You should only have one
major event in your story – so you can focus on this,
explore the emotions experienced.
End
 This is the resolution/the final statements/the
rounding up. It should be happy/sad/intriguing but in
someway signifies the end of the story.
“My own experience is that once a story has been written,
one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there
that we authors do most of our lying.”
- Anton Chekhov
From Embroidery by Ray Bradbury
“The dark porch air in the late afternoon was full of
needle flashes, like a movement of gathered
silver insects in the light. The three women’s
mouths twitched over their work. Their bodies
lay back and then imperceptibly forward, so that
the rocking chairs titled and murmured, Each
woman looked to her own hands, as if quite
suddenly she has found her heart beating there.”
Setting
From ‘The Man who Put Up at
Gadsby’s – Mark Twain
When my old friend Riley and I were
newspaper correspondents in Washington,
in the winter of ’67, we were coming down
Pennsylvania Avenue one night, near
midnight, in a driving storm of snow, when
the flash of a street-lamp fell upon a man
who was eagerly tearing along in the
opposite direction. This man instantly
stopped, and exclaimed:
SETTING AND PLOT
From The Blot by Iain Crichton
Smith
Miss Maclean said, “And pray tell me how
did you get the blot on your book?”
From The Red Coral Bracelet
byJudith Hermann
“My first and only visit to a therapist cost me
my red coral bracelet and my lover.”
CONVERSATION
PLOT
From The Ploughing of Leaca-naNaomh by Daniel Corkery
With which I shall begin – Man or place?
Perhaps I had better first tell of the man; of
him the incident left so withered that no
sooner had I laid eyes on him than I said:
Here is one whose blood at some terrible
moment of his life stood still, stood still and
never afterwards regained its quiet, old
time ebb and flow.
CONVERSATION? PLOT? CHARACTER?
Starting stories with dialogue
Here is the opening dialogue from Ernest Hemingway’s
The Snows of Kilimanjaro.
'The marvellous thing is that it’s painless,' he said.
'That’s how you know when it really starts.'
'Is it really?'
'Absolutely. I’m awfully sorry about the odour though.
That must bother you.'
'Don’t. Please don’t.'
16
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What do you think is happening here? What
is the relationship between the two
characters? What are the advantages of
beginning a story in this way?

Choose a number between 1 and 6. These
numbers correspond to pictures of
characters.

Open a story with a dialogue in which it is
unclear who the characters are and what is
happening between them.
17
1
2
18
3
4
19
Opening Paragraphs
Have an effective first line which draws the reader in!
To do this they use:
 Character introduction (with some form of description –
obvious or not)
 Setting the scene (and doing this from a different
perspective from the normal.
 Addressing the main issue/plot to be dealt with in the
story.
 They do not start with: Once there was… or The place…
- think outside the box!
 Which sounds better? “The first time I killed a man I was
fourteen.” OR
“The weather was cold and icy, as Tom walked down the
street.”

Write your own Effective Beginning
Think about:
 Who is narrating? Is it a character? How do they talk?
Where are they seeing these events? Through a keyhole? From the perspective of a fly on the wall? Consider
all the different ways to perceive events!

Are you going to start with a description of
Setting/Character or a conversation? Are you going to let
us know a shocking event in the plot?

Consider your language as you write, explore vocabulary
– you may use a dictionary/thesaurus!
Techniques to use
Onomatopoeia
Dialogue
Similes
Metaphors
Personification
Verbs
Adjectives
Superlatives
exaggeration puns
sentence structure
Irony
Tone