Creative writing class for Mahurangi community

By Michael Botur, May 26, 2018

On Saturday May 26 I ran a successful creative writing workshop for the community north of Auckland in the Snells Beach – Mahurangi – Warkworth – Leigh area.

We covered:

• Structure of novel, short story, play/drama and flash fiction
• Essential word counts you need to know
• Workflow – the benefits you’ll get from polishing a piece of writing – how great it feels
• Voice – real, practical advice including To make the voices of your characters distinctive:
  • Mix up vocabulary that is archaic, retro, then modern, contemporary, and even futuristic
  • Be creative with spellings
  • Some characters’ voices will have idiosyncratic punctuation
  • Some voices will have their own jargon/slang/idiom
  • Your voices must be written so distinctively that the reader can tell who is speaking without attribution.
  • You won’t need he said / she said on the page if you have written distinctive voices.
• Real, practical advice including
  • Write with the door closed
  • Edit with the door open
  • Expect your work to require 2-10 drafts. Never one draft.
  • Intoxicants are fine – but you’ll need to edit sober.
  • Anticipate mood swings as you write and await response
• How to make your characters ‘pop’ off the page
• WAYS TO POLISH PROSE:
  • Hit CTRL+S every 30 seconds
  • Write with the door closed; edit with the door open
  • Get your writing perfect – then cut 20%, usually from the start. Murder your darlings.
  • Leave white space on your page. It makes your writing more inviting to look at.
  • Difficult Titles Deter – select a title that your hero would select. Don’t get clever in the title.
  • Murder your darlings.