Nod Ghosh

Fun with Free Writing

Nod Ghosh, Saturday 28.3.26, Linwood Arts

ACTIVITY ONE: Who are you?

Give your name, and no more than five words that convey who you are. Tell us the first aspects that spring to mind, not necessarily the most important.

Concepts related to freewriting:

Catching Words

Poet Paul Muldoon suggests we shouldn’t initially think of ourselves as writers, but as receivers. He says, “The writer acts as a kind of medium or channel, catching words and organising them . . . stay alert and listen . . . cultivate an attitude of curiosity, trust and receptivity . . . writing will flow more easily.”

The Contradiction of Constraints

Ever noticed how much you can produce in a class like this, when someone sets you an exercise with a time limit? You are generally writing without stopping, without self-criticism. These techniques are used in freewriting too.

Likewise, producing a piece for a deadline can encourage rapid progression. Some people find writing prompts liberating through a similar mechanism.

The Unconscious Mind

Many techniques can help the “flowing” process. They are sometimes referred to as methods for “harnessing the unconscious mind”. The implication is that our unconscious or subconscious minds are a reservoir of useful images, emotions and memories. We access them by bypassing the intellect or “censor” by using techniques where we write fast without premeditation.

ACTIVITY TWO: Shitty First Draft, four minutes

Write about anything at all for three minutes. You’re not aiming to produce a piece with structure or form. Simply get the words out. Don’t stop writing. If you’re stuck, write words associated with what came earlier, or write about what is stopping you from writing. Keep your pen (or fingers on keyboard) moving.

Keep this. We will use it later.

Freewriting Techniques:

Origins

Ideas about this type of writing have been documented by various writers including Dorothea Brande in the 1930s. Academic Peter Elbow invented the term freewriting in the 1970s. Julia Cameron promoted the process in her book “The Artist’s Way” in 1992, encouraging the writing of “morning pages”, i.e.: three pages of whatever comes into your head, first thing in the morning. (She suggested setting your alarm earlier, so normal routines weren’t compromised.) Cameron’s process is also described as “stream-of-consciousness journaling”, and typically includes writing about situations in your own life.

How to Freewrite

·      Write for a set time without stopping.

·      Don’t worry about whether your grammar or spelling is accurate

·      Neatness is irrelevant.

·      Allow yourself to associate freely, to write down the first words that occur to you, and then whatever they make you think of. Continue that train of thought.

·      If writing to a theme or prompt, it’s okay if you stray off topic. Writing freely may help you view the subject in a different, more abstract way.

·      Ignore the urge to stop and control what is coming out, or to make corrections, even if what you write seems silly.

·      Keep going until you reach the end of the allocated time period.

Starting Triggers

You may use starting words to trigger this sort of writing. Here are some examples:

·      I wish I had said . . .

·      I went outside and . . .

·      It was no use pretending . . .

·      That smell reminds me of . . .

·      The first time I ever . . .

·      Lifting the stone, I . . .

·      Only people who believe in . . .

·      When we first met . . .

This quote comes from the book edited by Linda Anderson: “Freewriting will often take you into your deepest ideas, feelings and memories. It enables you to amass material, some of which can be used and developed in your work . . . it trains you to write with confidence.”

The hope is that you are free from self-criticism or external censure. The technique emphasises spontaneous, continuous expression, aiming to liberate thoughts. This can be useful for those experiencing writers’ block or a fear of starting work on a blank page. Freewriting is a loosening of the thought process. The final product is not important. It is not a measure of performance.

You don’t need to show the writing to anyone. This is for you.

ACTIVITY THREE: Your Starting Triggers, three minutes

The “starting triggers” in the list above came from Anderson’s book, or were ones I made up. Compile your own list of starting triggers. Don’t think too hard. Try to make at least ten.

We will use these later.

Other “Loose” Writing Methods, and Freewriting for Other Reasons:

When you freewrite, the process may flow so readily as to seem automatic. However the term “automatic writing”, as embraced by the surrealist movement in the 1930s, refers to a psychic phenomenon where the physical process of writing is supposedly detached from ANY conscious influence. Alleged spirits or deities apparently inform the content. Practitioners may use writing instruments or Ouija boards.

The surrealism movement also produced literature. Their writing didn’t adhere to organised structures, making it less accessible than conventional forms. Surrealist writing included accounts of dreams. (See “dreaming” below.)

Brainstorming is another way of collating ideas individually, or in a group. However, these ideas are listed or structured, whereas freewriting is formless. (Also see “clustering” below.)

The idea of “harnessing the unconscious mind”, or producing a “narrative stream of consciousness” lends itself to other applications beyond creative writing.

The cognitive processes applied apparently aid critical thinking and strategic planning, as well as stimulating creativity (see references).

Some practitioners embrace freewriting for its therapeutic value, which is said to lead to improvements in physical and mental health. “Morning pages”, as promoted by Julia Cameron encourages writing about aspects of your own life. This is thought to help the writer “. . . naturally feel calmer and disentangle any complicated thoughts and feelings.” Studies by social psychologist James Pennebaker are said to have shown daily freewriting about past events can help people healing from trauma or emotional disturbances.

Pennebaker is a pioneer of therapeutic writing, where people write for healing and personal growth in clinical interventions. Typically, they are instructed to write for a set time, without worrying about spelling, grammar or sentence structure – essentially the same approach as freewriting. However, they are provided with professional guidance, and the writing has a different objective.

ACTIVITY FOUR: Therapeutic Exercise, five minutes

Think of a difficult time in your life, a relationship that has soured or an unresolved situation.

Write a letter to someone associated with your choice. That “someone” could be you.

Freewriting in Academia:

Freewriting perhaps takes a less formal approach than that expected in some academic situations, although teachers have used it in educational institutions, including at schools.

Some academics dispute the effectiveness of freewriting as an aid to creative writing. They regard it as being unsuitable for use in academic setting, arguing that it discourages students from developing their work by re-drafting and may lead to production of insincere writing.

ACTIVITY FIVE: Harvesting the Goodness from the Shitty First Draft, five minutes

Freewriting doesn’t result in a refined final draft. It provides a source of ideas.

Circle or highlight parts from “Activity Two” (Shitty First Draft) that appeal to you. Do it quickly without overthinking. Aim for four or five words or groups of words.

Now write a more structured piece using as many of your selections as you can.

Dreaming:

This quote comes from the book edited by Linda Anderson: “Most persons who are attracted to the idea of fiction at all are, or were in childhood, great dreamers.” They go on to describe the process of day-dreaming.

Can daydreams or actual dreams inform our writing?

The surrealists of the early nineteenth century documented dreams. While unrefined accounts of dreams may not make good reading, writing them down can help harvest ideas. As with “morning pages”, writing upon waking, or waking earlier than normal, possibly interrupting R.E.M. (dream) sleep, can help you access details you might otherwise forget.

In her 1930s publication, Dorothea Brande advocated writing as soon as you wake up. Her reasoning was that we are still in touch with our dreams and our subconscious minds and can write in a half-reverie, before routine tasks interrupt the process.

ACTIVITY SIX: Something that Comes from Dreaming, five minutes

We’re going to write something that comes from dreaming.

Can you remember a dream? It doesn’t have to be recent. If so, start by writing that.

You can then deviate and make things up as you progress, since you may not remember enough actual details. However, maintain dreamlike qualities in the writing.

If you are struggling to recall anything, write using the characteristics of dreaming.

Your source material can either be real dreams you had when asleep or day-dreams.

Think: illogical juxtapositions, comical situations, longing, fear.

Clustering:

This activity reminds me of “brainstorming”, because you can use similar pictorial images in either process. Clustering is a way of launching into a “focussed freewrite”, i.e.: one where you choose the subject. It provides a visual map of your thoughts, and helps you organise them organically rather than sequentially. Use it to trigger your writing. Once you start, you may find you only wish to use a few or even one of the “arms”.

·      Write the initial word/concept/trigger words in the centre of a page and circle it.

·      Draw an arrow from the centre, and write an associated word or idea. Circle it.

·      Draw another arrow from that one and add another word or idea. Circle it.

·      Continue until you reach the edge of the page.

·      Add more “arms” to the central hub.

The associations don’t have to make sense. They can be personal and obscure, possibly something only you understand. You may find yourself “day-dreaming” in the process.

Day-dreams and fantasy have long been recognised as contributors to creative writing.

Sigmund Freud regarded writing as related to childhood play, memory and fantasising.

ACTIVITY SEVEN: Use a Trigger to Make a Cluster, six minutes (two + four)

Select one of the “starting triggers” you created in activity three. Make a cluster of associated ideas. Do this rapidly. Don’t overthink it. Use the ideas to write freely for the remaining time. As in activity two, don’t stop writing, irrespective of what comes out.

***

References:

https://www.nodghosh.com/

Creative Writing, A Workbook with Readings, ed Linda Anderson, pub by Routledge in conjunction with the Open University, 2006.

https://positivepsychology.com/writing-therapy/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_writing

Handout

Writing from Life

 Linwood Arts

Nod Ghosh, Saturday 28.2.26

ACTIVITY ONE: Yes, No, Maybe

State your name. Have you written creative-non-fiction? To keep this short, give one of three possible answers: “Yes”, “no” or “I don’t know.” Don’t elaborate.

Definitions:

The current Wikipedia entry states creative non-fiction is “a genre of writing that uses literary styles and techniques to create factually accurate narratives.” It goes on to say: “Forms within this genre include memoir, diary, travel writing, food writing, narrative journalism, personal essays . . . as well as some biography and autobiography.”

They quote c.n.f. editor Lee Gutkind, in saying the aim is “to communicate information, just like a reporter, but to shape it in a way that reads like fiction . . .”

I would argue that for some forms of c.n.f., you might bend the truth a little to make your piece more compelling. (It was Frankie that first suggested this to me.) 

In fact the Wiki page goes on to discuss the ethics of the form to show how writers may deviate from factual accuracy: “Writers of creative or narrative non-fiction often discuss the level, and limits, of creative invention in their works and the limitations of memory to justify the approaches they have taken to relating true events.”

They mention author Melanie McGrath, who writes about people’s lives. She says the known facts of her stories are “the canvas on to which I have embroidered. Some of the facts have slipped through the holes – we no longer know them nor have any means of verifying them – and in these cases I have reimagined scenes or reconstructed events in a way I believe reflects the essence of the scene or the event in the minds and hearts of the people who lived through it . . . To my mind this literary tinkering does not alter the more profound truth of the story.”

The page goes on to quote cases where writers have gone too far into the murky depths of passing fictitious events as real, and ended up having their publications cancelled.

ACTIVITY TWO: When we were young, five minutes

Immerse yourself in a memory, perhaps an early event or feeling from childhood.

·      Write a piece based on the memory from a childlike perspective. You can write in first, second or third person, (I/you/he/she/they).

·      Evoke the senses. Can you remember any smells from that time, for example. Are you able to describe them?

·      Think about who else is there? What emotions are associated with the relationship with the other person/people? Can you show rather than tell how those emotions manifest in the child?

·      Use language that would be consistent with the voice of someone of that age.

Who should have their lives recorded? Are extraordinary lives more interesting than ordinary ones?

This quote is from the book edited by Linda Anderson (see references). It isn’t specifically about memoir, but is relevant to the form:

“You don’t have to have led an unusual or exotic life in order to write. You do, however, need to raise your level of perception above the ordinary. . . by looking at commonplace details of your life in a different way. . .”

In a review I wrote of one of Fiona Kidman’s memoirs, I stated: “. . . a memoir has to be remarkable to make it worth reading. It either needs to showcase an extraordinary life or requires a fresh yet authentic look at an ordinary one. . .”

We’ll come back to the “worthiness” or “value” of whether we should write about our lives in Truth and Lies below.

ACTIVITY THREE: Fill in the gaps using your imagination, seven minutes.

Remember Melanie McGrath’s quote: “literary tinkering does not alter the more profound truth of the story”?

Someone recently sent me a memoir-based piece for critique. She’s given me permission to share her story. (It’s at the end of the handout, if you want to read it later.) Here’s a synopsis:

Lost and Found

The author describes a two-week voyage from the U.K., when she is nine-years-old in 1963. The family is migrating to the parents’ native India.

The girl is upset, and describes what she’ll miss. She soon comes around, exploring the ship, making friends, and enjoying the facilities on the luxury liner, which includes an open-air swimming pool. She describes the route and places they dock.

Having been an only child until recently, she relishes other children’s company. Her longed-for sister is a disappointment; too young to play with and occasionally needing to be looked after.

Her parents ask the girl to mind the toddler one day. In the ship’s playroom, she focusses on her friends. They like making up stories. One child starts, another continues,. They take turns, making the story funny and exciting. ***

When the parents come to collect the girls, the toddler has disappeared.

The narrator wonders where her sister may be, and imagines scenarios such as the child being taken or having fallen overboard. She feels guilty and remorseful.

The child is discovered unhurt. ***

The parents are too relieved to be cross.

They face their new future together.

Because the author had wanted to stay true to actual events, she’d skipped over parts she couldn’t remember. I suggested she might use her imagination to fill in the gaps, as it would add interest, and improve the story arc, balancing tension and calm periods more effectively. The parts I’ve asked her to elaborate on are marked thus: ***

·  Write a story the children make up in detail.

·  Write about the time between discovering the toddler is lost and when she is found.

The author would be interested to know what you have come up with, so if you didn’t mind, please send me your suggestions via the contact page on my website (see references below).

Approaches to writing about a life.

If you are writing memoir, how do you choose what to include? Just as in fiction, every character carries a multitude of stories. Which one are you telling?

You need to select what to include. This is more relevant for memoir than auto-biography. Memoir reflects a certain period of life, or series of events linked by a theme. They may have a fragmented structure and use non-linear timelines. Biographies are comprehensive accounts of the important parts of a whole life. In reality, it is impossible to document everything.

What you chose to showcase and what you exclude will affect how the reader perceives the person being written about.

ACTIVITY FOUR: Life map, eight minutes (two + six).

·      Take two minutes to write a list of key points you’d include if you were writing a memoir or your autobiography. Don’t overthink this, or it will take too long. Simply jot points down in a manner others can decipher.

·      Pass your list to the person on your left.

·      Flesh out the key points on the list you’ve received to create an imaginary account of the person’s life. Write for six minutes.

The Power of observation

In the book edited by Linda Anderson, they encourage detailed observation of the environment, and to use what you perceive to enliven your writing. This is particularly important when writing from life, though also useful when to inject authenticity into fiction.

They point out perception is a selective faculty, and encourage writers to look at things in different ways (for example by walking to a familiar destination by a different route) and to discover aspects you might include when writing. Use all senses, not just the visual.

ACTIVITY FIVE The room we are in, 30 seconds

·      Close your eyes while I read out what to do next.

·      Visualise this room. Think about the position of the windows, the height of the ceiling and what kind of lighting it has. What is behind the seat at the head of the table? Where is the rubbish tin? Are there pictures to the wall?

·      Open your eyes. Did you surprise yourself?

Repeat this exercise later, attempting to visualise something that is no longer there. For example, the location and appearance of buildings that were demolished post-earthquake.

Truth and lies

What is reproduced faithfully? What do we make up and why?

I include extracts from pieces I’ve written, not because they are exemplary work, but because I know what’s real and what is not.

Harborne High Street

My mother’s blood types as B positive, and she lives up to her group. I rub her shoulders ever so gently. I am scared of breaking her fragile body.

I don’t want to leave you, I say. I try not to make my voice small, like a child’s.

Be positive. She smiles as she says it. I hesitate at her bedside. I’ll be up and about before you know it. Her movements are slow and mechanical after surgery. Her hair is matted around the incision point. The bag of fluid on a stand refracts window-light like a jewel.

(I don’t use her authentic voice. She spoke English as a second language. I don’t show that, as it’s irrelevant to the story. Plus I needed her words to resonate with the blood group.)

(The middle of the story is true to life, so I haven’t included it here.)

We have a plan, I say. Remember you asked me to take you to the second-hand shops on Harborne High Street?

(The events didn’t happen exactly this way. We’d already been on a memorable trip to the second-hand shops. But the concept of something unfinished is strengthened if it’s an event both characters look forward to.)

(I’ve removed another “true” part here.)

I plan my next visit to the rhythm of windscreen wipers. Somewhere between an overdue report and next Tuesday, I’ll come again.

(The overdue report was invented but summarises the concept of unfinished work more succinctly than details of my actual job.)

I’m putting my youngest to bed when the phone rings. Mother has bled into her brain. She is not expected to live. A thought reverberates as I fill the dishwasher. The second-hand shops on Harborne High Street. It was the last thing I said to her. My fingers knit around the cutlery like hungry snakes. A plate slips and breaks in two.

(This didn’t happen. We didn’t own a dishwasher. The broken plate is there for symbolism. The visual image of dropping a plate into a dishwasher and it breaking is more dramatic than it falling in a sink.)

The hospital tang hits me like an over-ripe blanket. I meet the others in the relatives’ room. We approach her bedside, a ring of semi-orphaned siblings. I touch the shadow of a tear that seeps from her unseeing eye, and place a second-hand book from Harborne High Street on her bedside.

(In reality, I’d brought in functional items my mother needed, but the emotions come together more effectively when I tie in the item(s) with the visit the second-hand book shop we’d enjoyed. It strengthens the concept of futility, of giving her something when it’s too late.)

In the section about extraordinary versus ordinary lives, I mentioned we’d return to the “worthiness” or “value” of writing about our own lives. This extract comes from “The Crazed Wind”, which is part-memoir disguised as fiction. It is not about someone who has led a meaningful life or contributed to society in any major way, but deals with being ostracised and cut off from family for over a decade, thus providing a source of conflict.

When She-Birds Leave the Nest

They fly with enthusiastic caution, jumping over the edge to leave the safe haven they have called home most of their lives. They launch one at a time and don’t look back. They haven’t been pushed, but it is clear when it’s time for the she-birds to go.

They skirt around the vicinity, preening their dull brown plumage, scratching in the earth to capture an unlikely meal; a worm, a beetle, the occasional itinerant who’s hard on his luck and is looking for a good time.

A squawk from the resident fledgling becomes quieter and quieter still, the farther the girls move from the nest they once called home.

(This micro is obviously not really about birds, but an allegorical reflection on gender inequality, since it is only the females who are being constructively dismissed from the family home. It uses lies for poetic effect.)

ACTIVITY SIX: Lying, five minutes

Write about an incident in your past associated with difficult emotions. For example a relationship break-up, trouble at work, family conflict etc., but make some of it up, to either re-write history, add humour or emphasise a point. Include some dialogue. Have fun.

Travel writing.

Your travel diaries can provide source material for fiction and non-fiction.

I mentioned earlier that travel logs should accurately reflect a location, and that they may include a writer’s personal response. Here’s an example from blogger Erin Boshier, writing about Tasmania:

“The first stop we made was at a church built by convicts with a stained-glass window dating back to the 14th century (supposedly). I know what you are thinking, English convicts weren’t in Tasmania at that time, so how can the window be that old? The answer is that it was shipped over from England in pieces, and the sad thing is that the convicts who built the church were probably never allowed to worship there and enjoy the window.”

ACTIVITY SEVEN: Holiday, three minutes

Write about a past holiday in the (informal) style of a travel writer. Although you should normally be truthful, in this case, you have permission to make parts up if you can’t remember them, since it’s only an exercise

What are your Sources?

Have you kept diaries (including travel diaries)? Do you hold onto “relics?” Do you keep letters, cards, concert tickets, cat collars and the odd furry toy? Do you have photo albums? What about music you haven’t listened to for a long time? These can be great starting points to write from life. It’s one of the few upsides of being a hoarder.

Have a fossick when you get home. Find something that can transport you to a time you haven’t thought about recently. Write about it for homework.

Nomad

What happens to those who live a nomadic existence? Frankie used a story in your class last year: “Mirror” by Dutch author Claire Polders (see story at end of handout), which Frankie describes as a “wonderfully layered micro”.

Claire is currently on a residency at the Arts Centre. She lives a nomadic lifestyle, so I’m interested to know whether she holds onto any relics.

There’s a free event on next Tuesday from 5.30pm - 6.30pm at the Cloisters Studio. She’ll be reading from her new flash collection.

A group of us are hosting a welcome potluck for Claire and her husband tonight at 6.30pm in Cashmere. Ask for details after class if you’d like to come, or send a message via the contact page of my website before 16.00.

Points that relate to writing from life in “How to Bake a Book, A textbook on Creative Writing”, Nod Ghosh, Everytime Press

Chap 7, p80-1

Is pinching content from other people’s lives disrespectful? As writers, we’re constantly observing humans in the wild to spark ideas

for character traits, sources of conflict, mannerisms and physical appearance, etc.

In the mainstream media there have been several “biopic” films and television series based on real people’s lives, where part of the

storyline is fictionalised. While that makes for a far more interesting viewing experience, it’s not without risk. The same applies to writing at any level.

Unless you have the person’s express permission to write in a biographic or semi-biographic manner, or you’re deliberately being

a grade one prick (this is a particular genre), only use excerpts from people’s lives in fiction, and even then, “process” the information. I mean process in the way a kitchen gadget would process something: chop it into tiny fragments, mix it up, and make it into something it wasn’t before.

This is imperative when writing about the sensitive stuff: how someone wet the bed in their boyfriend’s parents’ house, were cuckolded by their brother, stole from their mother’s purse or is sexually aroused by marmosets.

But if someone has given you permission to write about what they did with their penis last summer, go for it. . . Stealing someone’s sensitive story without permission is rude. Consider how you would feel if it happened to you. It’s not enough to change the names. I learned this the hard way. . . And don’t assume your old friends will never read your stuff. I learned that the hard way, too.

References:

https://www.nodghosh.com/

How to Bake a Book, A textbook on Creative Writing, Nod Ghosh, Everytime Press, 2025

The Crazed Wind, Nod Ghosh, Truth Serum Press, 2018

https://citronreview.com/2015/12/01/harborne-high-street/

https://landfallreview.com/extraordinary-lives/

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45319/the-charge-of-the-light-brigade

https://erin2017blog.wordpress.com/page/2/

https://www.cincinnatireview.com/micros/micro-mirror-by-claire-polders/

Creative Writing, A Workbook with Readings, ed Linda Anderson, Routledge in conjunction with the Open University, 2006

Lost and Found

by Arpita Banerjee

We are sailing to India, leaving behind the life I know….my friends, school, Brownies, the Judy comic I looked forward to every week.

The night before we boarded the huge ship that was to carry us to an unknown world, I cried so much that I was sick. I clung on to Jethu, my father’s friend who had been so much a part of the family that I couldn’t imagine life without him.

A few days into the two-week voyage, I had begun to feel a little better. It was exciting to explore the ship and get to know our fellow passengers.

I had been scared when I first heard that we were to sail to India instead of taking a plane. What if we drowned? Don’t be silly, it’ll be an adventure, my father tried to reassure me. He had arrived in Europe on a French cargo ship seven years before. There were a few passengers on board but the conditions were basic. Having to sleep in hammocks, dormitory style might have been an exaggeration but this time the experience would be very different. We were travelling on HMS Orcades, a star of the P&O Orient line – a huge vessel transporting passengers from Tilbury Docks in London to Sydney, Australia, calling at Naples, Aden and Bombay where our family would disembark en route to Calcutta.

It was a thrilling time with so many exciting experiences. Deck games, an open air swimming pool, fancy dress competitions, the Gulli-Gulli Man who rowed up to the side of the liner when we were docked in Aden and did magic tricks sitting in his little boat. Turbulence in the Bay of Biscay which tilted the long dining tables and caused the plates to slide off and crash to the floor one by one. A visit to Vesuvius from Naples and the purchase of a huge doll that took up a lot of space in our tiny cabin. Best of all was the stately procession through the Suez Canal, the edge of which almost touched the sides of our massive liner.

On board were many families with children of my age (9 years) sailing to a new life Down Under. I was so happy to be in the company of other children. Having been an only child for nearly eight years I was always looking for playmates and used to be jealous of friends who had siblings. It must be so wonderful to have company all the time I thought wistfully. However, when the longed for sister did arrive, she was too little to be played with. A baby was sweet to cuddle and sing nursery rhymes to but a toddler had to be looked after and that was not fun. After a time it became a chore.

That day my parents had tasked me with minding my two-year-old sister while they had some child-free time. There was a children’s playroom on the ship. It contained toys and books but all I wanted to do was to play games with my new friends. Our favourite was to make up stories. Someone would start and the next person would have to continue and spin out the yarn trying to make it as funny and as exciting as possible. I got completely carried away and totally forgot about my little sister.

When my parents came to pick her up I realised with a sinking feeling that I had not seen her for some time. I couldn’t remember how long. She was not in the playroom. Where could she have gone? The ship was enormous and it had many levels. Could she have climbed the stairs to the upper decks? She was small enough to fall through the treads. The corridors were long and narrow with doors along them leading to cabins or staff quarters. So many doors. Could someone have taken her into their cabin and be holding her hostage? Why hadn’t anyone reported a lost toddler wandering about on her own to a member of staff?

Could she have….oh horror….have got out onto an open deck and fallen overboard? If so, I would have to jump into the sea too for my parents would never forgive me. I was finding it difficult to breathe….overcome by remorse and guilt.

I don’t remember how or where we found her, just that she was fine. Not hurt or scared and definitely not overboard! My parents were so relieved they forgot to be angry with me. We were together again – a family of four, facing a new future and leaving the past behind.

Mirror

by Claire Polders

The girl who yanks the yellow Hermès bag with my phone, keys, and cards off my shoulder on a quiet cobblestone street along an Amsterdam canal doesn’t appear as innocent as the children stealing wallets on the café terraces near the old church, not as choreographed as the teenagers picking pockets on the squeaky tram, not as revengeful as my ill-chosen target five decades ago, but she’s just as feisty as I was at her age, thirteen at most, and fierce like a seagull while she tugs and tugs, avoiding my eyes at first because it’s better not to know the victim, better not to give remorse the chance to weaken your will, yet soon staring at me through the morning mist with amazement over how I keep the leather strap in my fist long enough to become a contender, someone who arouses her anger or perhaps admiration, because so few gray-haired women resist, and who catches her off guard by grasping her wrist and twisting it just so she winces and feels forced to let go of the yellow bag, and who tells her in a surprisingly gentle voice that the path she’s on is not worth it, that it will lead to scars like the one my revengeful target carved on my cheek, which isn’t as ugly as it was in my youth, not as deterring a mark as I now need it to be, but which causes a sense of horror in the girl that pushes her beyond pity and into reflection, and when I release her fine wrist and she backs away from me slowly instead of running off, I dare to believe that our day is off to a good start.   

Handout for “Building Characters” 21.2.26:

Building Characters

Nod Ghosh Saturday 21.2.26, Linwood Arts.

ACTIVITY ONE: Hello

Tell us your name and, if you wish, share a single sentence about your experience of creating characters.

Character and plot:

People speak of character driven and plot driven stories. But it could be said that the two are inextricably linked. Through character, you develop plot.

Memories of strong characters in books and films may stay with the reader long after they forget plot details.

Where do you find interesting characters? Author Jenny Howarth suggests we find them through:

•       Observation.

•       Conversation.

•       Imagination.

•       Relationships.

•       Reading.

•       Discussions.

•       No fictional character will be someone you know in real life – they can’t be.

Novelist Elizabeth Bowen thought the term creation of character could be misleading.

“Characters pre-exist. They are found. They reveal themselves slowly – as might fellow-travellers seated opposite one in a very dimly lit railway carriage.” This is an acknowledgement of all the source material we might use to find our characters.

ACTIVITY TWO: Talking Heads 12 mins total (Approx: 3 minutes prep time, 9 minutes witing time)

Look at the examples of how a character may be suggested by an image. (Journaling.)

·      Cut or tear out an image that appeals to you from the old magazines on the table. You can use a person’s head, a machine, animal, landscape or a bit of colour/texture that suggests a mood.

·      Stick the image onto a piece of paper or notebook/journal, if you have one.

·      Add to the image. For example, draw a stick figure body to the head. Be inventive. You could have human hands coming out of the side of a fish’s head, or put feet underneath a car. Don’t spend too long on this. It’s just an exercise to free up your mind and get ideas flowing. You may use the coloured acrylic ink pens provided. Take care. They can drip ink!

·      Write a story about the character, creature you have created or about a character(s) placed in the mood you have made.

What happens to characters in stories?

For readers to care about characters, they need to be interesting/intriguing. To drive the story forward, it is said that a character must want something. When internal or external factors prevent them from acquiring what they want, a conflict situation arises and this forms the basis of the story arc. (Typically, in commercial fiction the factor is extrinsic, and in literary fiction, it may be intrinsic, relating to the character’s self-belief etc.)

How do characters develop?

In shorter fiction such as flash, a character may appear fully formed. In novels, they may transform as the story develops, and this in turn may help the story move forward.

To know what motivates a character, and why they want what they want, it is helpful for the author to know more about them. Give this some thought and be inventive, otherwise there might be a tendency for most of your characters to end up like yourself, and therefore each other.

This comes from my textbook “How to Bake a Book, A textbook on Creative Writing”, (2025) Everytime Press:

“It took years for me to realise all my characters were atheists, like me. Even the ones labelled as religious. I gave them churches, synagogues, mosques or temples to attend, but I didn’t leave my mind and enter theirs to perceive and then show how they saw the world with a god(s) in it.”

Goodies and baddies

Also from “How to Bake a Book”:

Perfect characters don’t make for good stories. Readers are drawn to flaws, whether in the primary character or supporting cast. People are boring if they lack any foibles. Possessing faults also allows for redemption when characters reach turning points.

Making your characters likeable in spite of their defects is effective. The reader is more likely to invest emotion in the person and will want to discover what happens to them if they care about them.

As you make your goodies a little bit bad, take care to make your baddies a little bit good too. They will be far more compelling and memorable.

Character Studies

It’s a good idea from the outset to determine key features about a character. Particularly for longer work, it is helpful to keep a file listing all the characters as you create them. Add notes about different aspects of the person. Interrogate them in your imagination and find things out about them you may not initially have thought of, which may appear irrelevant for their role in the story, but will help you know them better. Here are some examples:

Do they have siblings?

What is their birth order?

How old are they?

Were they born in a different place from the setting they initially appear in?

Do they speak more than one language?

What internal conflict might have affected them since earlier in life?

Is their self-esteem affected by past events?

What is their socioeconomic status?

How do they behave in new situations?

How much free time/availability to feature in the story do they have?

Can they drive?

Did they grow up with two parents? Were those their birth parents?

What education have they received? Did they have single-sex schooling?

What are their ambitions?

Are they dishonest? If so, how often?

Do they have religion?

How do they react in crowds?

Are they a night person or morning person?

Are they physically fit? Whatever the answer, why is this the case?

Are they a fussy eater?

ACTIVITY THREE: Asking the questions. Six minutes

I jotted down the above interrogation list off the top of my head.

Obviously the type of question you ask is determined by the kind of story you are writing.

·      Think of a story genre, e.g.: fantasy novel, science fiction story series, surreal short story, horror story, historical fiction – specify the era.

·      Devise a list of things you want to know about the main character.

·      Draw a list up for a minor character, stating what their relationship is to the protagonist.

Character study by creating scene:

A good way of getting to know your character better is to write a scene or scenes that you don’t intend to use in the final work. For example, focus on something from earlier in their life that may have shaped them.

The divorce.

The earthquake.

Redundancy.

Parents breaking up.

Surgery.

Write the scene(s) as if they are the first draft of an actual piece of writing, where things happen. Include dialogue, particularly from the character in question. You want to know how they speak.

The idea is that you get to know the characters as intimately as if they are real people. Then you will intuitively know how they react in certain situations.

This in-depth knowledge may even direct the plot.

. . . the characters begin to write their own story . . .

ACTIVITY FOUR: Two characters meet in a park or police station. Ten minutes

·      Each person takes three slips of paper. Write a character feature on each, fold it in half and place in the bucket.

·      Pick two slips at random and allocate one feature to each to two characters.

·      Write a short character study for each person. Name them and add further features.

·      Decide which is the main character.

·      Write a piece from the main character’s point of view.

·      The two characters meet in a park or police station in this story.

Get to know your characters:

Author and manuscript assessor Sue Reidy provides these tips to help familiarise you with your characters, and to help develop individuality:

Interview your characters. Get them to talk to you by asking them questions out loud. Record the resulting dialogue on your phone. Play it back. Listen for any jarring notes, for anything that is not true to your character.

Voice. Adopting an appropriate voice to differentiate each character will help you to reveal information about them, e.g. their circumstances and their perspective on life. A distinctive, engaging voice can help readers to empathise with a protagonist or narrator.

Deeply inhabit your characters’ emotional lives. This will help you to understand their emotional needs. Establish their world view, and the formative experiences that have shaped their attitudes, beliefs and values. Place yourself in your characters’ shoes. Feel their pain as they pick at an emotional scab, their trepidation as they face their fears, their anguish and uncertainty as they vacillate over a moral dilemma, their anger or resentment towards another character or to an unexpected life-changing event. Empathise with their confusion or apprehension, their deepest longings.

ACTIVITY FIVE Emotions and behaviour, five minutes (work in pairs):

Characters feel different emotions at different times, according to the situations they face. However, some emotions can be prevalent in certain characters

Discuss scenarios that might lead to a character experiencing or showing the following emotions or behaviours:

shame

regret

guilt

pride

the tendency to forgive

happiness

sadness

eagerness to please

shyness

timidity

Points relating to dialogue from “How to Bake a Book, A textbook on Creative Writing”, Nod Ghosh, Everytime Press

Chap 1, p9

“I wanted a fresh idea for a new piece of writing because the deadline for a competition was looming. (It’s tomorrow.) I had

a character X in mind who’d appeared in other stories, but I wanted to put them in a new situation. I needed to re-read the earlier pieces,

because it’s faster than developing a character from scratch when working to time constraints. I also wanted “triggers” that would act

as prompts to accelerate the plot and make it less predictable.”

Chap 3, p31

The temptation to use excessive description when introducing a new character, device or world is strong. Sometimes called an

“expository lump”, this can interfere with the flow of your writing.

Chap 3, p32 (on point of view)

You can change perspective, but do so in a considered manner that doesn’t suggest, for example, that the author was carried away

and forgot they were writing about a fictional character, not themselves.

Chap 4, p49 (a writing exercise relating to a work in progress)

Write a character study for one of the minor / new characters. How old are they? What is their relationship to the existing character(s)? Where were they born? Do they have siblings? What do they do for a living? Are they a morning or night person? Do they have any distinguishing physical characteristics or verbal tics? Is there anything they refuse to eat?

Chap 6, p65-7

Character creation isn’t confined to fiction. In non-fiction too, the author only shows aspects of the person they write about that they want the reader to know. They may choose to lie by omission.

How much thought do we need to put into making the characters we write? It can be fun to allow our pretend-people to grow naturally without contriving every feature. But it’s useful to check them early in their creation, to get to know who they are.

Make your characters memorable. Make them complicated. Take charge of their development. Typically a character arc,

particularly in a novel, will show a change of some sort in the person . . . all characters should want something. They may not know what they want, but they yearn for something. Achieving or gaining that thing may bring about the change, or the character might develop because they don’t find what they thought they wanted.

Perfect characters don’t make for good stories. Readers are drawn to flaws, whether in the primary character or supporting cast. People are boring if they lack any foibles. Possessing faults also allows for redemption when characters reach turning points.

Making your characters likeable in spite of their defects is effective. The reader is more likely to invest emotion in the person and will want to discover what happens to them if they care about them.

As you make your goodies a little bit bad, take care to make your baddies a little bit good too. They will be far more compelling and memorable.

Are all your characters similar to yourself? You might not think so, but even your villains can be replicas of you. It took years for me to

realise all my characters were atheists, like me. Even the ones labelled as religious. I gave them churches, synagogues, mosques or temples to attend, but I didn’t leave my mind and enter theirs to perceive and then show how they saw the world with a god(s) in it.

If you identify with a certain ethnic background, for example European, do you automatically create European characters as standard? Are the non-Europeans playing tokenistic roles? The same applies for any minority groups, such as gay characters, those with

disabilities or people who crochet. Do you make too much of their differences?

Look. Here’s someone in a wheelchair. Notice them, please.

Or can they simply exist, as minorities do in real life? Work the subtleties of the wheelchair user’s movements into the fabric on the text without fanfare, and the writing will appear more realistic, rather than creating the impression they have been squeezed in to make up the numbers of lesbians / people with disabilities / crochet enthusiasts.

Be careful when writing outside your own experience. Research carefully and seek feedback.

There’s more in this chapter about minor/secondary characters.

Chap 6, p68 (on physical appearance, as we touched on last week)

Characters’ physical appearance and verbal tics can help show their individuality. It can be tempting to attach too much significance to

physical appearance in the early stages of a piece. Rather than providing too much data when the character is introduced (an expository lump), it is more effective to distribute detail throughout the narrative. Take particular care regarding appearance when writing in first person. Characters need a reason to mention a physical trait.

I ran my fingers through my blonde curly hair.

Why are they saying this? Is it purely for the benefit of the reader? Give them a reason to introduce physicality.

I always wondered why my hair was blonde and curly when the rest of the family had straight brown hair.

I envy Karen’s auburn hair. I feel like a bimbo next to her with my blonde curls.

My bush is black and frizzy in contrast to the blonde curls on my head. Why are pubes so contrary?

Chap 6, p68-9 (on names)

Choose your characters’ names with care. Are they correct for the location, era and class? Are there too many main characters with

names beginning with the same letter that the reader may confuse? For the same reason, it’s a good idea not to have characters that are

very similar in any other way, unless that’s a deliberate feature of the story.

Do you use abbreviated versions of characters’ names? If this is not done consistently, is there a reason? Using unreliable characters can add depth to a story.

Chap 6, p69 (on non-human characters)

Not all characters are people. Apart from non-human animals, these include personifications or abstract concepts. You may have heard the town or city in a story described as a character when it evokes a strong sense of place.

Chap 6, p69 (on character lists)

It’s a good idea to keep a character list as you develop your work. Record their features and be consistent – unless you deliberately make a character behave in an uncharacteristic matter, which can be quite powerful, especially if it is foreshadowed.

You may include in-depth character studies in these notes. What sort of school did the person attend? How many siblings did they have? Did their parents divorce? What careers have they had? What is their accent? What is their attitude towards money? Can they drive? Are they ill? Do they tell lies?

Have fun. These are your people.

Chap 7, p82

As a general guide, if you create a character you don’t share much cultural background with, do your research. Treat risky topics with respect. Then request a sensitivity reading from someone who has a connection.

References:

https://www.nodghosh.com/

How to Bake a Book, A textbook on Creative Writing”, Nod Ghosh, Everytime Press

Interview with author Damyanti Biswas on character: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKAEtca6YKA

https://www.suereidy.co.nz/blog/does-your-character-lack-a-beating-heart/

Creative Writing, A Workbook with Readings, ed Linda Anderson, Routledge in conjunction with the Open University, 2006

Also, I acknowledge points presented in a talk by author Jenny Howarth in 2018.

 Handout for “On Dialogue”, Linwood Arts 14.2.26:

On Dialogue

Nod Ghosh Saturday 14.2.26, Linwood Arts.

ACTIVITY ONE: Introduction

Introduce yourself in one sentence. Add another about your experience of using dialogue in your writing, if you wish.

Brainstorm: Why do we use dialogue in our writing?

From “Creative Writing, A Workbook with Readings”, ed Linda Anderson:

Dialogue has three main functions:

·      Advances the plot

·      Demonstrates character

·      Indicates relationships.

It has important jobs to do, but has to them while sounding realistic.

This combination is what can make effective dialogue difficult.

ACTIVITY TWO: Pick’n’Mix Ten minutes writing time

·      Pick two x character names (red) from the basket

·      Pick one situation (blue)

Optional extras:

·      Pick an interruption (purple)

·      Pick a secret (black)

·      Make a note of the names, situation etc. you picked. Return prompts to their baskets.

·      Write a piece featuring a conversation between the characters. Not every word needs to be dialogue.

·      You may use attributions (X said, Y said) or beats (bits of physical action between portions of a person’s speech). But the majority should be conversation.

·      If you have chosen to incorporate a secret, you could have one character reveal this to the other or, the hardest option, let them keep it a secret, but allow its existence to influence what they say.

·      As with any prompts, if you don’t like them or they hinder your flow, ditch them. They are tools to get you started.

Writing effective dialogue:

·      Listen to how people actually speak to inform your writing.

·      However, don’t reproduce real speech exactly, with all the “kind ofs” and “pardons?” To quote from Browne and King’s book, “Self-Editing for Fiction Writers”: “dialogue is an artificial creation that sounds natural when you read it.”

·      People don’t often address one another by name, even though we probably should. If used, it can appear forced, as if the writer does it purely to inform the reader who is being addressed.

·      Recording real conversations without people knowing you are doing it could provide a great teaching resource, but there are privacy issues, plus it is disrespectful and probably illegal in some situations. However there is nothing to stop you capturing snippets of conversation you hear in public in your memory. Buses, cafés and shops are good places to study the vernacular/dialect people use, particularly those of different ages or from different backgrounds.

·      Listen to dialogue in interviews, films or television programmes.

·      Having characters use a voice other than your own can enliven your work.

ACTIVITY THREE: Editing dialogue

This exercise is adapted from “Creative Writing, A Workbook with Readings”, ed Linda Anderson. Focus on the following two points when editing the short piece that begins “It’s going to rain.”

·      Don’t rely on dialogue to do too much of the plot advancing.

·      Avoid using too many adverbs (-ly words) to describe speech. They may appear to provide more detail about character, but like the above, can make writing sound clumsy. (Another way to assess how it sounds, is to read your work aloud.)

Unedited version:

“It’s going to rain. We can’t go to the outdoor theatre performance,” Felicity said firmly.

“But the forecast says it should clear up” Robert replied angrily and continued scrolling through his phone.

“Please may I go upstairs?” Lachie asked his parents politely.

“You can’t believe forecasts. We’ll go to the art gallery instead,” Felicity responded impatiently, taking their cups to the sink.

Revised example:

Felicity peered through the window. “We can’t go today. It’s going to rain.”

“But the forecast says it’ll be fine.” Robert scrolled through his phone.

“You can’t believe them.”

“They’re the experts. Why don’t you . . .”

“I’ve been at enough outdoor theatre rehearsals to know.” Felicity pushed her chair back and stood up. “Freezing cold. Soaked through to the bone. It’s a bad idea.”

Lachie put his half-full cup down and asked his parents if he could go upstairs.

“We’re going to the art gallery.” Felicity stomped to the sink, banging cups together. “That’s what’s going to happen.”

(The minor character no longer uses dialogue.)

***

How do we know when someone says something?

How is dialogue demarcated in the text?

·      Speech marks, (double or single)

·      Italics, though this limits the availability of italics for emphasis or to indicate “so-called” etc.

·      Contextual implications with no physical indication. Writers need to be very clear, when using this. Example: “Prophet Song” by Paul Lynch, 2023 Booker Prize winner. There are no speech marks, no new line for each speaker, yet there are enough attributions, beats and pointers to allow the reader to discern when dialogue starts and stops, and who is speaking.

Generally, begin a new line/paragraph when a different character speaks, though this will be determined by publisher’s house rules.

Beats

These are the bits of physical action inserted into a character’s dialogue, as mentioned in activity two, (Pick’n’Mix). They remind readers where characters are and what they’re doing. Beats can develop character too, as they show how someone behaves, without the need to outline that action separately.

Use beats to break up long pieces of dialogue from the same speaker. Alternate them with attributions (see below). Use enough to serve these functions and improve rhythm, but not so many that they slow the pace of the writing.

Example:

“He’s grown into a fine man.” I put my fork down and hold his hand. “And his sister. Let me tell you about his sister.”

Pointless Dialogue

In activity three (Editing Dialogue), I said we shouldn’t rely entirely on dialogue to advance the plot, even though that is one of its functions. Have you ever read writing where it feels as if the character is speaking purely for the benefit of the reader? It comes across as something they wouldn’t say naturally in real life, because there’s no purpose to it. It’s better to use other means to convey the information in this situation.

Over Explaining

In “Editing Dialogue”, I also mentioned avoiding adverbs around dialogue. This goes for explaining what the characters are talking about in other ways too, for example, reinforcing what’s been said by means of internal thoughts/monologue.

Attributions

In activity two, (Pick’n’Mix), I suggested using attributions (X said, Y said). Although it is tempting to use other verbs than “said”, such as “yelled”, “snarled”, “hissed”, this is another way of over-explaining the dialogue, and rarely improves it. The character’s emotions are best demonstrated by the words they speak, not how they say them.

Some alternatives to “said” are unlikely, or close to being physical impossibilities. Take this example:

 “Sam has a hole in his trousers,” Robin laughed.

Although it’s not physically impossible to laugh and utter words simultaneously, it’s unusual and doesn’t enhance the dialogue.

If a character hisses something, unless the words have “s” or “sh” sounds in them, they’re probably not really hissing.

Attributions generally follow the spoken words rather than preceding them.

“Robin said,” is found more often than “said Robin,” in contemporary writing.

The attribution’s function is to clarify who is speaking. If there are other ways to show this, for example distinctive voices, then you don’t need the attribution.

ACTIVITY FOUR:  Party Game (Ten minutes writing time)

We’re going to produce a collaborative piece of dialogue-rich writing. If there are enough of us, we will play in pairs, passing a sheet of paper between you. Otherwise, we will work in a circle, passing the paper to the person on the left.

The situation is a conflict taking place in a supermarket.

·      The first person writes some dialogue for one minute. They may use beats and/or attributions, but the majority comprises spoken words from a single character.

·      The second person writes response dialogue from a second character. Pass on/back after two minutes.

·      The next person can choose to write words for character one, or have a third character continue the conversation. Write for two minutes.

·      Repeat, to create the fourth section of dialogue, (two minutes).

·      Final part: Try to create a cohesive ending in response to what has come before. This can be dialogue from one of the earlier characters or someone new. (Three minutes).

·      Have fun!

Establishing Voice

A character’s word choices reflect their background, upbringing, education and experiences, as well as individual personality.

Verbal tics are common in real life, and can be an effective way of showing who is speaking. For example, a character may commonly use a “weasel word”, one of those meaningless words we are advised to remove from our narrative. However, the characters don’t know they shouldn’t use them, so they may include characteristic words, almost like a trademark.

Author David Michael Kaplan has compiled a list of these rubbish words. I include some that might make good tics:

actually, basically, exactly, finally, just, kind of, practically, really, simply, somewhat, sort of, suddenly, truly, utterly.

“Basically, you need to do it like this,” Robin said.

“Am I doing it right?” Hassan asked.

“Yep. That’s basically it.” (No attribution required.)

Gobbledegook

Dialogue flows better if long or complex words are replaced by something simpler, to resemble how people really speak.

Use contractions, e.g.: don’t instead of do not.

Misdirection

This technique is often used in films. Here is an example Browne and King use:

“I don’t know what you were thinking, going into a place like that. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, I really am.”

Replace this with:

“What did you think you were doing, going into a place like that?”

“I’m all right. Really.”

The second character doesn’t directly answer the question.

Including small misunderstandings can also be effective in dialogue.

Read it out aloud

I’ve mentioned this in activity three (editing dialogue), but it’s important, so I’ll say it again. Reading aloud identifies language that doesn’t sound like real speech. These sections might be hard to detect by eye alone, without vocalising.

Dialect

Depicting dialect or accents by mis-spelling words is hard to do well without confusing the reader or reinforcing stereotypes. If you use it, do so sparingly. Try using turn of phrase instead, for example when your character doesn’t have English as their first language.

ACTIVITY FIVE:  Someone Else (Five minutes writing time)

Write a piece that is rich in dialogue using at least one voice that is different from your own.

ACTIVITY SIX: (If we have time left at the end of class. Five minutes writing time)

Repeat Activity two: (Pick’n’Mix)

ACTIVITY SEVEN (homework):  RE-WRITE (Fifteen minutes writing time)

Take an existing piece of non-dialogue prose, either your own work or someone else’s and re-write it replacing parts of the plain text with dialogue.

***

Points relating to dialogue from “How to Bake a Book, A textbook on Creative Writing”, Nod Ghosh, Everytime Press

Chap 3, p34

Show don’t tell can be achieved by using dialogue, but it’s not the only way. If direct speech isn’t your strength, keep it to a minimum.

Dialogue skills can be improved by eavesdropping on real conversations. Note how people use incomplete sentences, interrupt one another and often use contractions: “don’t” rather than “do not”, “I’m” rather than “I am”. Incorporating consistent verbal ticks can help develop a character, for example, a person who frequently prefaces sentences with, “the truth is”, “so” or “well”.

Caution: hyper-realistic speech, with the “ums” and “I means” and stuttering can be dull and slow the pace.

Chap 3, p35

Clichés can be difficult to identify, because overused words and phrases change with time. Broaden your reading. Good writers will weed “tired” words out. Idioms may come across as overused, although characters might use them in dialogue. Also, they mean different things to different people.

Dialect is tricky to handle. I’ve tried emulating my favourite authors in the past, where a character’s entire dialogue uses transliterated accented speech. It didn’t work as well for me as it did for Irvine Welsh. It’s something that’s fiendishly difficult to do. It can also

come across as offensive, especially if coupled with a stereotypical storyline.

Chap 6, p70

Consider the period in history when your story takes place. . . How does the era influence the choice of language, both in dialogue and (indirect) reported speech?

***

References:

https://www.nodghosh.com/

How to Bake a Book, A textbook on Creative Writing, Nod Ghosh, Everytime Press, 2025

Creative Writing, A Workbook with Readings, ed Linda Anderson, Routledge in conjunction with the Open University, 2006

Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself Into Print, Renni Browne and Dave King William Morrow Paperbacks, 2004

Images for Linwood 1.11.25

For Linwood Scribes 1.11.25:

Linwood Writing Group, Nod Ghosh, Sat 1.11.25

Ideas for Writing – Past and Present

Introductory Exercises

Pick a word from the box and use it in a sentence revealing something about your writing.

Where do writing ideas come from?

Overheard conversations

The news

The past ­– personal and historical

Prompts e.g.: flash nano starts today https://nancystohlman.com/flashnano/

Other sources?

Sources for historical writing:

Interviewing family members

Graveyard visits

Papers Past: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/

Shipping manifests

Subscribe to genealogy sites, court records etc.

Museums

Libraries

Saige England, author of “The Seasonwife” states anything set 35 years ago or earlier constitutes historical writing. Whatever your age, use the rich resources from your own life history (diaries, travel notes, concert tickets, magazines, photographs, recipes).

If you haven’t lived through the “historical times” you want to write about, explore the past via books/websites/films/documentaries, which can provide a rich source of information.

Focal points for historical writing

It’s less daunting if you select a time and place to set your work and focus your research accordingly. The era might be associated with a particular historical event or practice, e.g.: Partition of India and Pakistan, abolition of slavery in the USA. (Series of linked pieces.)

See the world through the eyes of someone from that period. What was it like to exist with those people’s limitations and resources? Consider language, healthcare, family sizes, infant mortality, food, fuel sources, lighting, animal husbandry, class, disposable income, clothing, religion, commonly held prejudices, etc.

Any other ideas?

Immersion into a Setting

The Coal Thieves by Frankie McMillan (Shortlisted, Edinburgh Flash Fiction Award 2024)

(The piece was inspired by an image like one on the sheet of pictures)

We whistle like men as we push the wheelbarrows, and those without barrows sling a burlap sack over their shoulder and away we go hauling ourselves up the slag heap and as the soot thickens, blackens our moving shapes – watch out, one of us cries, wary how the slag can suddenly shift, swallow whole a woman with a barrow – while another grunts as she lifts a lump of coal closer to her eyes, places it in the wheelbarrow, as tender as any baby.

We whistle like men until our throats are clagged with soot, our necks bridled by the strain, our faces lost in the black until one of us slips as she sorts through the breakers and we scramble blindly towards her, haul her up, put her hands to the barrow, the fire will burn tonight we say, or don’t say, but it’s there in our eyes and then straight down we come from the slag heap, calling out to each other, pushing the heavy coal, the  creaky wheels a lullaby of sorts.

We whistle like men when we hear the patrol, the company police who take our sacks, break our barrows, send us running, but mostly on the way home, our backs aching, our eyes streaming, the only whistling we do is the noise between our teeth, the crooning noise of old women coming home in the dark, fondling a lump of coal in each pocket. 

***

Frankie says: the ‘we’ p.o.v. (as used) in “The Coal Thieves” can be a useful device when depicting people in moments of history.

Ekphrastic writing exercise (six minutes, see reference images)

Write a piece in response to a chosen image. You can select a word from the box if you want to impose a further constraint.

Constraints

These can be useful when writing. For example, examine different poetic forms.

The trenta-sei poem https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/trenta-sei-poetic-forms is a form created by the poet John Ciardi comprising 36 lines that has a particular pattern:

Six sestets (or 6-line stanzas).

Each sestet has the following rhyme pattern: ababcc

Each line in the first stanza makes the first line in its corresponding stanza.

Homework Even if you don’t “do” poetry, try this. Working in different genres can inform and improve our practice. If the form doesn’t appeal, look up definitions for other poetic forms and try those. Examples include: acrostic, Burns stanza/Habbie, clerihew, ghazal, golden shovel, haiku, haibun, pantoum, rengay, sestina, sonnet, tanka, villanelle

Seeking Connections/Thematic Writing

Papal Exercise (Five minutes)

Pick one of the excerpts from the news items below, and write a piece derived from it. Your protagonist could be one of the central characters or a distant observer.

Female Pope

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Joan

Pope Joan (Latin: Ioannes Anglicus; 855–857) is a woman who purportedly reigned as popess (female pope) for two years during the Middle Ages. Her story first appeared in chronicles in the 13th century and subsequently spread throughout Europe. The story was widely believed for centuries, but most modern scholars regard it as fictional.

Most versions of her story describe her as a talented and learned woman who disguised herself as a man, often at the behest of a lover. In the most common accounts, owing to her abilities she rose through the church hierarchy and was eventually elected pope. Her sex was revealed when she gave birth during a procession.

Peace Event at Colosseum

https://anewz.tv/world/world-news/14737/pope-leo-joins-peace-event-with-other-faith-leaders-at-rome/news

Pope Leo joined hundreds of faith leaders at Rome’s Colosseum on Tuesday (October 28) for a multi-faith prayer for peace, urging the world to reject the “abuse of power” and bring an end to wars that continue to claim countless lives. . . Drone footage captured the illuminated square filled with people standing in silence as the candles flickered, representing a collective call to end conflict and foster unity among nations and faiths.

A Pontifical Pageant in 1880

Press, Volume XXXV, Issue 4847, 16 February 1881, Page 3 https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP18810216.2.23

The “Times” correspondent at Rome sends the following letter dated December 16th 1880.

In the Public Consistory this morning . . .Leo XIII has resumed all the ancient pomp and usage. Even the reports of the proceedings published by the Vatican organs are once again printed according to old fashion, and the heading “Provvista di Chiese,” adopted since 1870, has given place to the official form “Atti del Conciatoro, tenuto dalla Santita di Nostro Signore Papa Leone XIII (tredici) nel Palazzo Apostolico Vaticano il di 16 (sedici) Decembre 1880 (diciotto ottanta).” At ten o’clock this morning, attired in the full dress Pontifical etiquette requires I alighted at the bronze gates of the Vatican, and was entering frankly, as usual, where I am well known and, I may justly say, well received, when the sergeant of the Swiss Guards drew up his cane horizontally, barred my passage, and demanded where I was going. “Into the Consistory,” I replied. “Where is your biglietto?” he asked. “Biglietto?” I rejoined. “Si, Signore, il biglietto: without the biglietto I cannot let you pass.”

Closing a Gap

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cnve5mdze8yo

King Charles and Pope Leo made history in the Sistine Chapel by praying side by side – a first for the leaders of the Church of England and Catholic Church.

Under the scrutinising eyes of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, when Pope Leo said “let us pray”, it meant everyone, including the King, closing a gap that stretched back to the Reformation in the 16th Century.

Spending a Penny at St Peter’s Basilica

https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/360852720/pope-leo-shocked-after-man-urinates-altar-during-holy-mass-vatican-city

Pope Leo XIV is reportedly “shocked” after footage emerged of a man urinating on an altar during Holy Mass at the Vatican City on Friday (local time).

The video showed a man at the top of the Altar of Confession at St Peter’s Basilica – in a spot where the sitting pope typically performs mass. He was then seen dropping his pants to his ankles and beginning to urinate.

The man was quickly taken away by plain-clothed police, but not before mooning worshippers as he pulled his pants back up.

Homework Write pieces in response to each article you didn’t use, to make a collection of pieces linked by a common theme. Find more Papal stories if you want to expand the collection.

Prompt word exercise (Six minutes)

Write a piece that incorporates the following words:

Castle, steam, vestement, torrent, horse, log, scorpion, timepiece, garden, toil

For NZSA Children’s Literature Hub 26.10.25

NZSA Children’s Literary Hub

How to Bake a Book (Everytime Press), by Nod Ghosh

Sunday 26th October 2025 Handout

What we will cover:

            Introduction with exercise

            Why I’m here

            Learning the basics

            Genesis of “How to Bake a Book”, with a reading

            Thoughts on writing for children

            Taonga exercise

            Answers to commonly asked questions

                        How do you find time to write?

                        The Publishing process.

                        The Importance of Play.

            Exercises from the back of the book, if time

Introductory game

•       Take two sheets of paper

•       Write something commonly regarded as negative on one sheet, e.g.: anger, bomb, spider, vomit

•       Write something typically thought of as positive on the other, e.g.: chocolate, compassion, shelter, birthday

•       Fold both sheets so the writing is concealed, marking the negative one with a minus sign, and the positive with a plus

•       Place the negative one in the negative foil box, and positive one in the positive box

•       Pick one of each, (hopefully you don’t get your own, but if you do, work with it)

•       Write an introductory sentence or two about yourself, incorporating the “good” and the “bad” word.

(You are allowed to lie!)

Thoughts on writing for children

•       Every human in existence was once a child.

•       Remember that.

•       Look at the world through your child-eyes.

•       Though they are all of the same species, there are many different sorts of children.

•       Some variations can be catered for: books for newborns are different from those for older teenagers.

•       Learn about what has already been done. Visit libraries, bookshops, people who have or care for children.

•       How do they handle layout, language, literacy requirements?

•       Other aspects of the child are highly individualised.

•       Your character(s) can’t represent everyone, but they can appeal to a wide group if you give it some thought.

•       To quote Ben Brown: “The mantra is that boys don’t read. It’s not that boys don’t read. It’s that you’re giving boys shit that they don’t want to read.”

In 2021, Ben became the first Te awhi rito Reading ambassador.

(See Ben at Common Ground, Commoners Bar, at Sherpa Kai, Lyttelton 7pm tonight.)

•       If you “preach” morals or lessons, don’t be surprised if children don’t want to know.

•       Be subtle when imparting wisdom or information!

•       Learn how to craft the style you aspire to write.

•       For example, if writing in rhyming verse, appreciate it is easy to do, but very hard to do well. Read the masters: e.g.: Lynley Dodd.

•       Learn about scansion, appreciate where syllables are stressed, test out the rhythm.

•       Don’t invert sentence structure to force a rhyme. It helps to choose the final rhyme word of a pair/group first, and select rhyming words to appear before it.

•       Writing songs or poetry can inform you of the skills required.

Taonga Exercise (Five minutes):

Select an item from the “taonga tray”. Write a piece inspired by emotions the item triggers in you. Don’t over-think it.

Things you might want to incorporate:

Where did it come from?

Imagine the item is much larger than it is in real life.

If the article could make a sound, what would it be?

What if it were sentient?

Answers to commonly asked questions:

How do you find time to write?

Exercise from the end of the prologue. (Do this when you get home)

Ten Minutes When You Must Write

You want to write, but you’re too busy to start. If that’s you, do this exercise now. If you won’t do it now, set your alarm ten minutes early tomorrow morning and do it then.

Ingredients

• something to write with

• something to time ten minutes with

Method

• Preparation required: none

• Write for ten minutes without stopping

It doesn’t matter what you write about.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t feel inspired.

It doesn’t matter if you haven’t had the “big idea” yet.

It doesn’t matter if what you write is bollocks.

Have ten minutes passed yet?

No

Keep going

Have ten minutes passed yet?

Yes

Stop

***

The publishing process

Chapter Nine “Getting Your Work Out There” focusses on what to do after you get your work to a publishable standard. Topics covered include: the submission process (online and print, for short and long work), free submissions vs. those who charge a reading fee, using social media to identify places to submit, high calibre publications with low acceptance rates and vice versa, identifying “vanity press”, marketability, remuneration, bios, author websites, CVs, keeping track of submissions, unsolicited submissions, agents, competitions, post-publication promotion.

Chapter Twelve, “Other Ingredients for a Book”, deals with other aspects required for a book beyond writing. You’ll need to be particularly aware of these elements if you choose to self-publish. They include structural editing (story structure, identifying inconsistencies of ideas etc.), copyediting (ensuring text conforms to consistent style, sentence construction etc.), proofreading (correcting any remaining errors).

Synopses. Endorsements. Typesetting. Print-on-demand vs print run.

Distribution. Marketing.

Chapter Fourteen, “Where to Next?”, elaborates on the latter. Plus: seeking reviews, the role of booksellers, book launches, publicity via media.

The Importance of Play

As author for children, you are well aware of how important a playful approach is for children.

But what about you?

The book incorporates “recipes” at the end of each chapter. Some are just activities. You can break your writing time up by dedicating ten minutes here and there towards work / study related activities, household chores . . . People can use minutes less efficiently when they have plenty.

“Stone painting” comes from Chapter Thirteen, “Ancillary Activities”

“Creative Journalling”, is the exercise at end of Chapter Thirteen, p131).

You can use a blank notebook, or an old hardback book. The purpose is to free up the creative process. The exercise talks you through the process, and provides suggestions:

Give yourself permission to deface the book.

• You could paint the cover and add a title.

• Don’t necessarily work from the beginning. Start in the middle or the end.

• Using a fat marker pen, write automatically for the duration of a piece of music. Use two pieces: one you know and love, another you’ve never heard before.

• If you’re using an existing book, highlight selected words to create sentences that are unrelated to the original text.

***

Exercises from the back of the book

We likely won’t get through many of these during the workshop. Take them home and complete at your leisure.

In the book, these all have varying recommended time limits, but we will do them in a shorter time period during the workshop, (3-5 mins) depending on how much time we have left.

Setting Exercise

Recall a room or building from your past – a place you lived or visited or a location seen in a film or on television. Do a rough sketch of a floor map of the place. Where are the doors /windows? Are there any emotions associated with this place? Jot down key words. Create a story in this setting where the main character overhears an argument they’re not supposed to. Evoke senses besides visual (smell, sound, touch, taste).

Elaborate on a scene

Two cars are parked next to each other on the roadside beside a river. A man steps from one and lets two children out of the back. The children walk away from him towards a woman holding the door of the second car open for them. The narrator may be one of the characters or an observer, or you can use an omniscient perspective.

Vandalism

Show your character’s reaction after being told somewhere / something that is important to them has been vandalised / stolen / damaged and can’t be accessed / used anymore. You can use dialogue, but try to show how the person feels without describing their emotions directly. If they do speak, focus on what their voice sounds like as well as their words. How do their stance and mannerisms reveal their feelings? How do other people respond to them?

Hunger Game

Describe what it’s like to be hungry to someone who has never felt hungry.

Emotional Responses

Select one or more of the following, and show the characters’ emotions without spelling them out in a story that takes place at a train station.

• He felt tired.

• She loved him.

• They loathed one another.

• The children were bored.

Sensory Maze

Evoke the senses: sight, sound, touch, taste and smell as your main character finds themselves in a new situation. Perhaps they wake up in hospital, with little idea how they got there. Maybe it’s the first day in a new school or job. Synaesthesia is a condition where stimulation of one sense leads to an automatic experience in a second sensory pathway. You may want to use this concept to enliven your writing.

Memory

Identify one of your earliest memories. Close your eyes and immerse yourself in that zone. Conjure smells, the feel of the air on your skin, and your emotions. Were you happy? Were you anxious? Try to gauge whether it is a genuine memory, a memory of a memory, or an assumption triggered by a photograph from your past. Let you from that time take control of the keyboard or pen, and write about that scene.

Strangers

Write about two characters who don’t know each other, showing how they interact, for example at a party, job interview or on social media.

Animal Magic

Make a story set in your home from the perspective of a non-human animal, large or small. Someone has just died as the story begins.

 For NZSA 18.9.25:

How to Bake a Book, by Nod Ghosh (Everytime Press)

NZSA 2025

Write your name on the identity spoons, so we know who you are.

Tell us where you are in your writing journey, by giving a single sentence bio – in third person, as it might appear in a publication.

Taonga Exercise (Five minutes):

Select an item from the "taonga tray". Write a piece that incorporates the item. It could relate to how the item was found or made, or a human interaction with it, e.g.: it features as a gift/is involved in a transaction/is used as a murder weapon etc. Or take a more fantastical approach. Imagine it is much larger, or you are much smaller, and are walking next to or into it.

Frequently Asked Questions

People often ask questions about how to get a book into the world. I aimed to provide the answers to these sorts of questions in “Bake”.

Here are some points discussed in the August 25 NZSA Canterbury meeting:

Layout of Dialogue

Use of attributions or not. There is no set rule regarding “he said/she said”. A publisher might have “house rules” they wish authors to comply with regarding use of single or double quote marks, italics, none at all, or whether a new line is required for a new speaker.

As long as the dialogue is easy to follow, anything goes. This can be achieved either by use of attributions, the use of “beats”, where an action by the speaker is described immediately after they speak, distinctive verbal style or other contextual clues.

Look at the example that begins “mind and body seek the supremacy of sleep”. This is taken from “Prophet Song” by Irish author Paul Lynch (Booker prize winner 2023). A conversation begins partway down the page at “Larry, she says . . .” See how skilfully the writer allows the reader to keep track of who is speaking.

Who is main protagonist? (Point of View)

There’s something about POV in Chapter Six of the book, “Sets & Drugs & Rock & Roll & Shady Characters”: When a minor character is given a point of view, i.e., the narrative comes from their perspective, whether that is in first or third or even second person, they cross a line and can be considered a protagonist.

There’s more on POV in Chapter Three, “Word Choices”: Is your work written in first,

second or third person? If third, is it a close third person, which borders on first, or is there more distance? Does only one character’s worldview shape the story?

How important is it to be consistent? You can change perspective, but do so in a considered manner that doesn’t suggest, for example, that the author was carried away and forgot they were writing about a fictional character, not themselves. Typically, a POV shift takes place between chapters or paragraphs.

Omniscient or eye-of-god POV, where multiple characters’ perspectives are prominent were more common in the past, but have been used successfully in contemporary literature too.

Tense

Also from Chapter Three, “Word Choices: Think about tense. How important is it to consistently use past, present or future narration within a piece? It isn’t, provided the changes enhance rather than appear accidental. For example, changing from past tense to “the dramatic present” can increase the tension of a key event.

Character profiles

This is taken from the exercise at the end of chapter four, “Different Genres” on writing a character study:

How old is the person? What is their relationship to the existing character(s)? Where were they born? Do they have siblings? What do they do for a living? Are they a morning or night person? Do they have any distinguishing physical characteristics or verbal tics? Is there anything they refuse to eat?

This is from Chapter Six, “Sets & Drugs & Rock & Roll & Shady Characters” on keeping character lists (when writing a novel):

What sort of school did the person attend? Did their parents divorce? . . . What is their accent? What is their attitude towards money? Can they drive? Are they ill? Do they tell lies?

These are only examples. Come up with your own list if what you need to “interrogate” when forming a character. Include the “big questions” such as class, political standpoint, religious beliefs. But also consider smaller stuff such as whether they interrupt people, walk in a funny way, what their voice is like or whether they are thrifty.

You could make notes about their physical appearance. While not as important as you might initially think, it’s good to record these in your character profiles to help you describe people consistently.

Timeline, linearity

From the exercise at the end of Chapter Five, “Story Structure”: Write a story plan in two ways, one with a linear timeline, the other non-linear, and then review both plans:

Do any juxtapositions you’ve made in the non-linear timeline add anything to the story? In what way are they better than the linear timeline, if at all?

The exercise is to examine one element of story structure – the timeline. It can be tempting to write non-linear narratives without giving it much thought . . . In its laziest form, you might add a flashback to “explain” something that’s about to happen in the main timeline. This can

come across as a contrived afterthought . . . Flashbacks and flash forwards can be a poignant way of revealing the storyline, aiding character development in an original way. However, it’s wise to craft non-linearity so it adds to the reader’s experience, rather than jumping back and forth because that’s the order in which the ideas come to you.

There’s more in Chapter Six, “Sets & Drugs & Rock & Roll & Shady Characters”:

When you read books or watch film and theatre, observe how time is handled. As well as linear versus non-linear timelines, one character’s timeline may be handled differently from another’s. Consider why these choices have been made.

If you play around with timelines (a necessity if writing about time travel, for instance), keep detailed notes to avoid unplanned conundrums.

Setting

As the name may or may not suggest, Chapter Six, “Sets & Drugs & Rock & Roll & Shady Characters” contains information about setting:

Setting includes time, place, and other elements that provide a base for your narrative. The chapter goes on to outline how it’s better to create the characters’ world as an integral part of the storytelling than to dump too much description at the outset.

There’s discussion about historical writing: use of signposts for the era, technology, language choices and how attitudes such as gender roles are influenced, differences in life expectancy.

When considering location, think about climate and length of daylight.

Incorporate fragrances and odours.

When you describe locations, you can draw on real places you have visited. Use your catalogue of memories. Travel diaries are useful. You can transplant details from one real place to another and invent a new imagined scene. Compared with writers in the past, we have the benefit of online satellite images.

Imagination is an essential tool, especially when you can’t easily access reference material. What does that alien’s skin feel like? How is vision affected when light doesn’t travel in straight lines? Has that corpse been there long enough to reek?

Investigating whether a change will enliven your work, or help you identify what needs developing

This is mentioned in the exercise at the end of Chapter one, “The (Almost) Infinite Freezer”. Ways of seeing work from different perspectives include changing the tense, point of view (first to third person or whatever) or even the font, unless you’ve written longhand. Try reading the work out loud. Try reading the words in a different accent. Put them through Google Translate and convert into a different language. Then translate them back. What has changed?

Use of beta readers

In chapter eleven, “The Writing Community”, I discuss finding well-matched partners for mutual critique. Aim to match your levels of experience and productivity/output/turn-around time. There’s a 2½ page section on how to give critique, and a 1½ page section on how to receive feedback. Both are important.

The publishing process

Chapter Nine “Getting Your Work Out There” focusses on what to do after you get your work to a publishable standard. Topics covered include: the submission process (online and print, for short and long work), free submissions vs. those who charge a reading fee, using social media to identify places to submit, high calibre publications with low acceptance rates and vice versa, identifying “vanity press”, marketability, remuneration, bios, author websites, CVs, keeping track of submissions, unsolicited submissions, agents, competitions, post-publication promotion.

Chapter Twelve, “Other Ingredients for a Book”, deals with other aspects required for a book beyond writing. You’ll need to be particularly aware of these elements if you choose to self-publish. They include structural editing (story structure, identifying inconsistencies of ideas etc.), copyediting (ensuring text conforms to consistent style, sentence construction etc.), proofreading (correcting any remaining errors).

Synopses. Endorsements. Typesetting. Print-on-demand vs print run.

Distribution. Marketing.

Chapter Fourteen, “Where to Next?”, elaborates on the latter. Plus: seeking reviews, the role of booksellers, book launches, publicity via media.

Exercises from the book

(If we don’t have time to complete these, take them home to do later.)

Hunger Game

Describe what it’s like to be hungry to someone who has never felt hungry. (Five minutes)

Automation

Write for t minutes without pausing using a stream of consciousness process where what you’ve written triggers the next part, which may or may not have an identifiable association. It doesn’t have to make sense.

Surreal Past

This exercise is ten minutes long. Recall an event / experience from your early childhood. Write an account of the event / experience, but introduce at least three elements of surrealism into the story. For example, if writing about a scary music teacher, you could include something about the sleeping dragon that lives in the guts of the piano. If writing about a memorable holiday, you could add a part where the narrator (you) flies over a beach once the adults are asleep. Think of something impossible that is compatible with the scene.

Prompt Words

Write for four minutes, including the following prompt words:

heavy, tent, last, tight, order, chaos, thimble, danger, outside, hammer.