Tag: shortstory

Julian Gough’s Short Story Workshop‏ – part three

Parts one and two can be found here and here.

After the Saturday ended at 4pm,  I went home knackered but invigorated. I was fast asleep by 9:30pm.

I was raring to go the next morning, even though it meant another 06:30 wake-up. Julian was his energetic self and once again gave us some great things to think on:

  • On the nose dialogue – I think we’re all guilty of this with first drafts.
  • Adverbs – An endangered species these days, but he says not all of them should be wiped off the face of your story (e.g., “You’re a fucking idiot,” she said fondly.)
  • Dramatic Irony – He often mentioned that you want your reader to ‘lean in’ when they read your story. This is one way to help that.
  • Comedy/Tragedy – Basically, just a matter of Point of View. If the reader is inside the head of the character, and they slip on a banana skin, then it’s terrible. But if it’s from an outside observer’s POV, then it’s hilarious.
  • Voice/Prose – I’m editing a multi-protagonist story right now. I’ll have to go through and make sure they all have their own, unique voice and not sound like clones.

Towards the end of the day, Julian went on to talk about Dan Harmon‘s fascinating, eight-step, modern take of Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces theory. Julian followed this up by saying how he also likes to look at Amazon reviews by some random person. He then looks through their Amazon review history and he often spots a timeline/life thread that could make an interesting story.

It was at this moment he wanted us all to do another twenty-minute writing exercise. We had to create a number of Amazon reviews from an imaginary person that kind of mirrored, as much as we could, the eight points of the Hero’s Journey. Some of the writers in our group struggled with the concept of this exercise, but good old Mr Subconscious was on it in a flash. So below is the five Amazon reviews from one imaginary person that I read out to the group.

All the characters in these fake Amazon reviews are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Please don’t sue me!

Item 1 – Condenser Microphone
Rating = 5 stars out of 5.
Review:
I recently bought this microphone with the winnings from coming first in my local pub’s Karaoke contest. It’s AWESOME! Makes you sound even better.

Item 2 – How to become a better singer DVD by Britley Spearing
Rating = 4 stars out of 5.
Review:
A very good instructional video, but I noticed some of her singing was off-key, so I’m only giving her a four out of five.

Item 3 – One-piece sequined jumpsuit
Rating = 3 stars out of 5.
Review:
This looked amazing in the picture, and even though I ordered the right size, it’s WAY too tight around my stomach.

Item 4 – My Life, an autobiography by Simon Cowbell
Rating = 0 stars out of 5.
Review:
Stupid, useless, high-waisted arsehole! Writes a boring book about his fake tan. I didn’t even buy it either, I nicked it from Tesco.

Item 2 – Dummies guide to Flipping Burgers
Rating = 5 stars out of 5.
Review:
I don’t care what the haters think. This book will kick-start my career to greatness.

That brought out quite a few laughs around the room.

With the end of the course soon approaching, Julian talked at length about the publishing business and his experiences with it. I gained more valuable knowledge about traditional publishers. Mainly the aspect that your work needs to go through a filter, in order to stand out. Whether that filter is winning or getting short-listed in a contest or being published in a magazine.

I’ve always been dead set on self-publishing my full-length novel; I was ninety-nine percent certain I’d do it myself. I’ve researched all the topics on doing this, and I’ve already commissioned a talented artist to create my cover. But after listening to Julian, I might just try approaching agents with my manuscript first. If no-one bites, no problem; I’ll do it myself.

Once the course ended, I thanked Julian for all the valuable information he passed on to us and for inspiring me so much. He’s helped me put a name and a face to my subconscious, and he’s energized me to write more. I’ll definitely try and enter a short story contest in the near future.

Now back to the painful editing of my novel.

p.s. Have a look at Julian’s work; I really enjoyed CRASH!

Julian Gough’s Short Story Workshop‏ – part two

Part one can be found here.

So… after the fifteen minutes of writing were up, Julian went around each one of us to ask what we had written. Like I said previously, most writers had described (in great detail) the entire life of one of their characters. When he looked to me, I had to let my slightly embarrassed Mr Conscious do the talking. My subconscious was now sat back in his cave, feet up on a desk, with a smug look on his face.

23:59:57 –
23:59:58 –
23:59:59 –
00:00:00 – Program started.
00:00:01 – Send mail: “Dear [insert customer name], we at the Unprosecutable Bank, wish you a Happy New Year! For your first New Year’s resolution, why not take out another loan at a special low-interest rate of only 24.5%?”
00:00:02 – Mail server confirmed message sent.
00:00:03 – Program ends.
00:00:04 – Run generic_new_year_message in three-hundred and sixty-four days, twenty-three hours, fifty-nine minutes, fifty-six seconds.

It got a few laughs – alongside a few puzzled looks – but Julian also laughed and said that there’s always one person who has to… to mess about with the rules (or words to that effect). I guess my subconscious got away with it this time?

Julian then talked some more on numerous topics. One topic that stood out was his metaphor for your unconsciousness being home to a giant compost heap. Everything in your life that you’ve seen/done/said or experienced, gets thrown onto this compost heap. You can then use this compost to grow a seed for a new story, or character, or anything you wish. Some great ideas can come from this compost heap that will keep building up, year on year.

He also mentioned how useful Eustress can be to you as a writer. A beneficial form of light stress that can help light a fire under your backside and get you writing. One example, deadlines! Check out the link to read more on it.

As the Saturday session was coming to a close, Julian mentioned another topic that has greatly improved my writing: The Genius of Scene. In that some of the best writers (he mentioned Mary Shelley) were often in a group with other talented writers. The whole group read and critiqued each other’s work and so further elevated their writing.

I can appreciate how well this works. Over the last year, I’ve attended every monthly meeting that the fantastic writenow.at group has held. One of the best things to happen whilst going to these meetings was to join up with three other writers and create our own little critique group. We now call ourselves the Baked Potatoes™. We meet up once a fortnight and take turns to critique each other’s work.

My writing has improved so much since this group has started. Huge plot holes have been found by my fellow writers that I, as a writer, were too close to the story to spot. One character that I thought was unimportant was in fact loved by one writer, and she wanted to read more about this character.

If you are a writer and you haven’t yet found a group to meet up with, I’d suggest you go and start one right now! Try meetup.com, this is a good place to start. At the minimum, it’ll thicken your skin when it comes to receiving criticism. I’ve perfected how to keep smiling when someone rips your writing to shreds.

In part three I’ll finish up with some more great insights from Julian, and of course more shenanigans from my subconscious.

Julian Gough’s Short Story Workshop‏ – part one

I recently took part in a very enjoyable short story workshop led by the utterly inspiring, and incredibly talented, Julian Gough. It was run over a weekend, starting at 9am!? (Who the hell thought a 9am start on a Saturday and Sunday was a great idea?) It wasn’t Julian’s fault, nor the organisers, it was the only time available for this intriguing venue (WUK Vienna). Looking back over those two days it was well worth it, although I need another weekend off to recover from this weekend.

After introducing himself, Julian started with some fascinating insights into the mind of the writer. He talked about Freud and the effect of Mesmer two centuries ago. But what he was about to say next caused a Eureka moment in my fledgeling writer’s mind.

He began to explain the differences between the conscious part of your mind and the subconscious part. He said the conscious part does most of the day-to-day stuff, but when you write, you need the subconscious part to take over. He mentioned that you have to unlock a number of ‘fire-doors’ that separate the two parts of the mind, so that the subconscious can take over for a while and do the writing for you. Also, he said that early psychologists thought of this relationship between the two parts as though a master and slave arrangement.

This struck a chord with me. I started to visualize these two imaginary figures in my mind as he continued talking. Then he came out with those dreaded words – writing exercises. Urghhh, I’m not a fan of writing groups that get together and go, “…let’s write something? See what you can come up in fifteen minutes?”

But Julian had a great way to help us write: constraints. Trying to write something, with no constraints set, is tough – try it yourself. Instead, Julian gave us a constraint to work with: write for only ten or fifteen minutes about the entire life of something or someone.

Now… almost other the other writers in the group wrote a good page or two on a character from one of their stories. MY subconscious thought ‘bugger that’ and had this conversation with my conscious self as I stared at the wall.

 

Mr Conscious kicks in the last fire-door that leads to the room containing the mischievous trickster, Subconscious, and shouts into the darkness below. “Oi, you! Write something, you’ve got fifteen minutes.”

The sudden blinding light pouring through the door makes Subconscious squint. “Sod off! I hate writing exercises.”

Mr Conscious grabs a book from one of the many shelves that line the wall and throws it at Subconscious. “Don’t you start acting like a prima donna now! I don’t want to be embarrassed when I go back up there and tell them we haven’t come up with something.”

Subconscious rubs his head where the book hit him. “Look, I’m an artist. I can’t just crap out something from thin air, I need to be INSPIRED.”

“Well, how about this, we need to write a quick ditty about the life of something,” said Mr Conscious, fixing his tie and straightening the pens in the chest pocket of his shirt.

DING! LIGHT-BULB! A big grin breaks out on Subconscious’ face.

Being telepathic, Mr Conscious yells, “HELL NO! We’re not writing about THAT! Write something routine for pity’s sake.”

Subconscious leaps to his feet and performs cart-wheels around the room. “Tough shit, I do the writing, you do the steering. The only writing you’re capable of is the filling out of application forms.”

Mr.Conscious squats down and holds his head in his hands. “Please! For once in our lives could you just write something normal like everyone else? You’re so embarrassing.”

“Nope! Out of my way dummkopf, I have art to create,” replied Subconscious, as he bounds up the stairs and out of the door that leads up to the ‘control room’.

In part two I’ll treat you to what my little trickster of a subconscious came up with.