Lovely to celebrate on Monday in London’s Chinatown at a delicious meal with our Thai friend, Irene.
So in honour of the Year of the Dragon, a quote from Cornelia Funke to remind us of the joy of being able to create our own worlds in fiction…
I always wanted to ride a dragon myself, so I decided to do this for a year in my imagination.
May all you have an easy – and fun – ride this year.
One of my favourite creative writing exercises is to have students create a character on the paper through a series of questions, and then get them – one by one – to pretend to be their character and submit to being interviewed by the rest of the group. It’s amazing what startling storylines can come up when we allow the character to take over. They stop being just a possibility and end up being multi-dimensional.
Now obviously we can’t do that on here, but here’s a list of 100 of the top questions I use to help develop my characters. Please feel free to use as many or as little as you want. The last two have been deliberately placed there though.
1. Where were you born?
2. What nationality do you consider yourself to be?
3. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?
4. What is your physical build?
5. Are you happy with it?
6. How old are you?
7. Where do you live now?
8. Who with?
9. Who is the most important person in your life, and why?
10. Do you have children of your own?
11. If so, what is your greatest hope for them?
12. If not, would you like children one day?
13. What is your view on keeping pets?
14. What is the view from your bedroom window?
15. Which is your favourite room in the house? And why?
16. Can you describe how your kitchen smells?
17. How is it different from the kitchen in your childhood home?
18. Are you happy with your home circumstances?
19. What makes you laugh out loud?
20. When was the last time you cried?
21. What colour is your hair?
22. What colour eyes do you have?
23. Do you have a birthmark? Where?
24. What does your voice sound like?
25. Do you have any quirks, mannerisms or body gestures that people might notice?
26. What is your first childhood memory?
27. Tell me about one of your scars. Where is it? How did you get it?
28. What are/were your parents names?
29. What were their jobs?
30. Can you tell me one thing that happened in the year of your birth?
31. Were your parents pleased to have you?
32. What is the one thing you would change about your childhood?
33. What is the one thing about your upbringing that you are happy for?
34. What birth position did you come in the family?
35. If you had siblings, how was your relationship with them?
36. If you were an only child, how do you feel about that?
37. What is your relationship with your family like now?
38. Did you have friends as a child?
39. Were you popular at school?
40. What did you want to do when you were a child?
41. What is your occupation now?
42. How do you feel about that?
43. How much schooling have you had?
44. Do you enjoy learning?
45. When and with whom did you have your first kiss?
46. Are you a virgin? If not, how did you lose your virginity?
47. Have you ever been in trouble with the police?
48. What’s your opinion about authority?
49. Did you have a favourite/influential teacher?
50. Who was it, and why?
51. How do you want to die?
52. How do you treat other people (with deference, rudely, as equals)?
53. Do you make friends easily?
54. Do you believe in love at first sight?
55. Who have you been in love with? Can you name them?
56. Who would you turn to if you needed desperate help?
57. If you died, or went missing, who would miss you?
58. Do you care what others think of you?
59. What phrase would you never say?
60. What do you secretly believe that may surprise other people?
61. Do you have a good sense of direction?
62. Do people comment on a skill or area of knowledge that you have?
63. What has been your greatest achievement?
64. What has been your biggest disappointment?
65. Do you find it easy to forgive and forget?
66. Do you speak more than one language?
67. Do you read?
68. What was your favourite book or TV or film character when you were a child?
69. What qualities did they embody that you like still?
70. Do you feel you have these qualities?
71. Do you have an internal moral code (something you’ve come up with for yourself)?
72. Do you believe in a God or higher being of some kind?
73. What is your biggest fear?
74. Do you believe in the afterlife?
75. Look down at your feet, and tell me about your shoes.
76. What are your hobbies?
77. What three things would you do if you weren’t scared?
78. Of all the places you have lived in, which is the one you think about most?
79. Where, and how, would you like to live when you retire?
80. Do you smoke, drink or use drugs?
81. How do you deal with stress?
82. Which living person do you most admire?
83. What is your greatest extravagance?
84. What do you buy but never tell anyone about?
85. Who is your best friend?
86. What do you value most in him/her?
87. What is your current state of mind?
88. When have you been happiest in your life?
89. What would make you happier than you are now?
90. What is your financial situation?
91. What do you always have in your fridge?
92. What is your ideal night out?
93. How do you spend Sunday mornings?
94. How do you get around (bus, car, bike)?
95. Do you have any secrets you have never told anyone?
96. What one will you never tell?
97. What is your most treasured possession?
98. What do you want most in the world?
99. What are the nicknames you have had in your life?
100. What is your name?
To be honest, Dan Purdue’s blog profile doesn’t give away that much about him:
My name’s Dan. I write fiction – mainly short stories, but with a novel approaching completion. Well, sort of. I’m thirty-something, I live in Worcestershire, I don’t have a cat.
But it was a pleasure to meet him recently on an Arvon course, and getting to read his writing, I will put a bet on him becoming much better known in the future.
And not only that he is running an interesting treasure hunt/competition on his blog, with just one week left to enter. It’s just the kind of puzzle I like, and has been designed to promote his book, Somewhere To Start From which is a collection of 21 short stories, most of which have been published online or in print, or have done well in various competitions over the last couple of years. These include Writers’ Forum, The Waterhouse Review, Defenestration, The James White Award, and The Guardian.
You can read one of Dan’s stories here, but for now, finish those sentences Dan….
When you were small, you wanted to be… a palaeontologist. When I was a toddler I could reel off dinosaur names and facts like a chubby little encyclopaedia in a nappy. My parents taught me to say “I’m going to be a palaeontologist” and convinced a lot of my relatives I was some kind of infant genius. Once I started going to school, I decided I’d prefer to be a vet – until I got to my A Levels and discovered I wasn’t even vaguely competent at chemistry, after all.
The one thing you can never resist is… flapjack. When it’s made well, it’s more addictive than crack cocaine. I assume.
You may not say it aloud but… I don’t believe in writer’s block. If a writer steps away from the pen / keyboard for a few hours and doesn’t spot the inspiration bombarding them from every angle, they’d perhaps be better off taking up another pursuit. You might not find something you think is worth writing about, but there’ll always be something to write, and once it’s there you can work at improving it. Stories lurk anywhere and everywhere – you just need to appreciate the difference between seeing something and noticing it.
The last time you went ‘WOOP’ with excitement was … when I opened the box containing the first twenty-five copies of my anthology. It was a WOOP of excitement, joy, and – to be honest – relief. I’d done pretty much everything myself, so I had nobody to blame if it looked terrible. I’d ordered a proof copy, which had been pretty exciting, but seeing them en-masse, lined up and ready for action, looking all glossy and giving off that fantastic new-book smell, was a real rush.
Your five favourite words are … if I’m allowed a French word, I’d like to start with un oubli – because when I first encountered it, it was defined as “the opposite of a memory”, which I’m not sure is entirely accurate, but I love the concept; triceratops – because it’s one of the few dinosaurs I can remember these days, and it was pretty much the best one; bazooka – because it’s fun to say, particularly if you draw it out a bit (baah-zooo-kaarr); pod – because (in lower case at least) it doesn’t matter which way up you have it; pulchritudinous – because it sounds like it should mean the complete opposite of what it actually means.
Thanks, Dan! And help yourself to the plate above because, my, how pulchritudinous do they look?
Other FIVE SENTENCES…
* With Peggy Riley
* With Anthony McGowan
* With Tania Hershman
* With Abegail Morley.
* With John Siddique.
* With Clare Best.
* With Scott Pack.
* With Jonathan Pinnock.
This paragraph from the excellent Raymond Carver, A Writer’s Life feels like something lifted from any piece being written today about the publishing industry. Apart from the last line. And more’s the pity.
In the 1970s, mainstream publishers began to reflect the changes that had washed across the American landscape in the 1960s. The business got bigger and faster – more books were published and fewer stayed in print. Shopping mall book emporiums began to replace traditional bookshops and force publishers toward larger wholesale discounts. To stay in play, publishers increased advertising budgets for a selected few books on their lists. They also sought new authors – the young, women, Asians, blacks – and new formats that suited busy people. Novels composed of story-length vignettes, fiction broken into text blocks with generous white space, books with movie tie-ins, and books about popular culture gained popularity. As writers who had attended MFA programs in the 1960s became college teachers, they passed their interest in literary short stories along to their students. This is the wave that Gordon Lish was riding when he turned himself into Captain Fiction. It was only a matter of time until book publishers discovered that short story collections could be marketed for a profit.
Having just come back from a week at the Hurst, I’ve been wondering what makes Arvon – both teaching and writing – work. I think it’s something to do with this quote, which I read out there:
‘To write means to live thoughtfully. To respect your inner life. To engage with the world. Why shouldn’t everyone aspire to this richness? Publishing is something else altogether, and doesn’t belong in the same sentence with the word ‘writing’. Monica Wood
The week was all about writing. It was about not having to say you are writing a novel to someone and have them come back with, ‘so when can I buy your book’ or ‘so you fancy being the next Dan Brown then?’.
No, last week was about process, and having that process respected as being just that…. letting the writing sit in a place of being allowed to be just what it is. Rather than what other people feel it should be. It was amazing how large and deep and funny and beautiful each piece of writing seemed to grow as a result.
Oh and the week was also about wine, laughter, tears and very very good stories.
There’s still time to enter the Kent & Sussex Open Poetry Competition, with over £1500 of prizes. The deadline may be extended a week, and we’d be very grateful for your support now. This is a difficult time for all arts organisations, and to be honest, competitions such as these are what are keeping many (including us) afloat. You don’t need an application form, just click this link and it will tell you what to do.
Plus you might win, fingers crossed, and if you do and come to Tunbridge Wells to collect your prize, I will treat you to a cake.
Like it?
The poetry collection will be out properly at the beginning of March – details of the party to come! But I know that some lovely people have pre-ordered it here and although I don’t know who you are unless you’ve contacted me direct for your ‘in-limbo’ postcard, thank you thank you thank you…! You should be getting yours hopefully in February.
Here’s what some people have said about the poems…
‘Sexy and Tragic – my favourite combination.’ Will Hermes, Rolling Stone Magazine and author of Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever
‘Subtly angled glimpses of love, sex, marriage, which reveal them as they really are: matters of life and death. There’s a quiet sizzling underneath the surface of these poems, which can make you smile and wince at the same time.’ Philip Gross
‘Sarah Salway gets under the skin of your secrets and makes you squirm in delicious recognition. I come undone when I read her words. Her poetry slays me.’ Susannah Conway, author of This I Know: Notes on Unraveling the Heart
‘A dissection of the secrets, desires and addictions that haunt contemporary relationships; darkly funny at times, Sarah’s poetry shows us the extraordinary richness and complexity lurking just below the surface of so-called ‘ordinary’ lives.’ Catherine Smith
With all this talk about starting a novel, I’m very pleased to bring Peggy Riley to the blog to finish my five sentences.
Peggy Riley is a writer and playwright living in Kent, and one of the reasons I was so keen to feature her is that, not only is she a fab writer you will be hearing much more of, but her website is a really useful guide to how a novel progresses step-by-step, as it were. Peggy also blogs well about what she reads, what she learns, and how she’s writing, with Scrivener. It is very much a writer’s blog, and in previous lives she has been a bookseller, writer-in-residence at a young offender prison, and a festival producer.
Now she runs workshops for writers (with Betty Herbert) through Hope & Anchor Writing” with some particularly interesting webinars coming up.
AND… her first novel, Amity and Sorrow, was bought by Little Brown just before Christmas and will be published in 2013. Or at least, I think Peggy wrote it. Here’s her cat looking as if there’s something we ought to know…
So, anyway, Peggy … answer my sentences please.
When you were small, you wanted to … be a writer. I clearly lack ambition, as I never went through a astronaut or supermodel or president phase. Or maybe I’m just stubborn.
The one thing you can never resist is … red licorice. It isn’t even licorice, really, but I adore it. I scour American cities to find it. But it must be Red Vines. It cannot be the more readily available Twizzlers. Those will not do.
You may not say it aloud but… I believe the universe is a kind and just place, by and large. It is hard to believe it every day, in the light of the horrors around us, and a kind and just universe does not presuppose that all of its inhabitants will be similarly kind and just, but the alternative is too grim to contemplate.
The last time you went ‘WOOP’ with excitement was … during a phone call from my new agent, me with a houseful of writers to see a performance poetry event in my living room, with her very welcome words – we’ve sold your book. “Amity and Sorrow” will be published by Little, Brown in spring 2013 and I couldn’t be more thrilled.
Your five favourite words are ….
knuckle
heliotrope
rareripe
crinoline
splay
Thank you, Peggy! Here’s hoping your book makes a huuugggeee impact…
Other Five Sentences …
* With Anthony McGowan
* With Tania Hershman
* With Abegail Morley.
* With John Siddique.
* With Clare Best.
* With Scott Pack.
* With Jonathan Pinnock.
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