This week saw another great turn out of eleven people with a couple of returnees coming back after missing a few meetings. It was great to see Mitra and Elizabeth back at West Lothian Writers.
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Month: June 2015
As you will know by now Eric has recently had his first novel, A Clear Solution published by Accent Press. We at the West Lothian Writers Website thought this would be a great opportunity to hear from Eric about the experience of being professional edited, something that many unpublished writers worry about. After the break we’ll hand over to Eric to hear his thoughts. We hope you find them as interesting as we do.
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Performance Tips
With our Performance Workshop with Polly Philips only a few days away we thought it was the right time to look at the subject on the website. Performance in creative writing is the same as any other creative industry as in it is piece of entertainment presented to an audience, usual live. Some people will have read that last paragraph and gone into a cold sweat. Don’t worry we’ve got some great advice from Writer’s Relief and Vivian French coming up which will help you. Just remember that, as Writer’s Relief says,
Remember that the people in the audience are there because they WANT to hear what you’ve written. The odds of success are in your favor even before you open your mouth to read!
We are probably pushing it in terms of relevance with this writing advice article but with Avengers: Age of Ultron, still in the UK top 10 (at the time of writing) I think we can get away with it. Over the past few weeks I’ve seen a couple of writing articles talking about What Writing Lessons You Can Be Learned From Avengers: Age of Ultron. So without much further ado lets have a look. There will be spoilers below the break so you have been warned!
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WLW Meeting – 09/06/2015
This week’s meeting saw a huge turn out of 12 people including the return of Sue and Norman after many months away (and for some years). We also welcomed a new member to our group Maureen. We hope you enjoyed yourself. After going over a few bits of news we started with a quick point of view exercise before getting down to the writing. You’ll be able to read about everything below the break.
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Point of View Exercise
We’ve talked about point of view before on the West Lothian Writers website but today we are looking at the topic from a different angle. At our meeting tonight we have adapted one of the brilliant worksheets from ereadingworksheets.com into a workshop on the topic of point of view.
Definitions
Of course we started with the definitions of the five kinds of point of view you can in creative writing. They are:
- First Person – where the narrator is usually the protagonist or central character in the story.
- Second Person – This form of point of view is rarely used for creative writing but own used for instructions & choose your own adventure books.
- Third Person Objective – the narrator tells the story only describing characters’ behavior and dialogue. No inner character thoughts at all.
- Third Person Limited – The narrator’s perspective is limited to the internal workings of one character. Can switch characters but not mid scene. Usually at the end of a chapter.
- Third Person Omniscient – the narrator describes the thoughts and feelings of every character in the book at any point. Can switch perspectives mid scene if required.
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Nine Quotes from Famous Writers
We always like sharing writing advice from famous writers because if anyone knows what they are doing the chances are it’ll be them. You can imagine then how excited we were when we came across Evan S. Porter article 19 Writing Tips & Techniques from Famous Writers That You Can Use Right Now. Rather than just coping and pasting the whole article we picked out our favourites, which you’ll find below the break. Warning there is a wee bit of bad language! You’ll definitely click now!
With the rise of the internet Flash Fiction has become a bigger and bigger so we thought we should look at Flash Fiction and provide some advice for those who want to try the format. Of course, let’s start with a definition.
What is Flash Fiction?
When looking at a new kind of writing getting a definition is always important. Today we using Writing Forward‘s from their article Flash Fiction Writing Exercises. They define Flash Fiction as:
Flash fiction is a short story that is extremely brief. There is no official word limit, but generally, stories of fewer than 1000-2000 words would fall under the flash category.
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WLW Meeting 26/05/2015
Sorry for the delay for posting the round of our our meeting on 26th of May 2015. The web monkey couldn’t make it due to work but the notes has reached him now. In total six people made it along to hear some great local writing. Below the break you’ll find out who read what!
