The winner of the Boekehuis gift voucher for the October writing exercise and competition is Heather Hotaling.

We found this exercise on the site of a US writer, Meredith Sue Willis. Here it is:

“Anthony Burgess once said that he always began a novel by drafting sixty pages of dialogue– no “he-saids-she-saids” or other tags, no narrative, no description, just the words said. After his characters had talked for sixty pages, he would, he said, discard the entire sixty pages and start to write. I’ve never been sure I believe that he actually threw away all those pages, but the technique seemed to work for getting him started.

Try this: Do a directed free write with a kitchen timer set for fifteen minutes. Start with some words of conversation you have overheard or participated in. They can be totally ordinary, even boring. But keep writing, and adding more dialogue, maybe more speakers, more drama. But keep them just talking for the full fifteen minutes. “

Heather’s Come To Bed Dialogue.

Come to bed!
No
Come on, come to bed!
Just go back to bed
I can’t go if you’re not going to go
Why not?
Because. Will you just come to bed, please!
I don’t feel like it
You’re being ridiculous
Fine! I’m ridiculous then
This is so stupid!
Fine, I’m stupid
I didn’t say you were stupid, this is stupid
Whatever
Look, if I say I’m sorry will you come to bed?
Are you saying you’re sorry?
If I do will you come to bed?
Are you saying you’re sorry?
If I do will you come to bed?
Are you saying you’re sorry?
Fine! I’m sorry. Now will you come to bed?
That’s really not the point, though. I mean, it’s great that you’re sorry but it really doesn’t solve anything
Whatever!
See! You’re not even sorry anyway
This is making me crazy!
You’re making yourself crazy
That doesn’t even make any sense
Whatever – just go to bed. I don’t even want you here anyway
Fine!
Fine!
So… Will you just come to bed already, babe…come on, come to bed
No
Come to bed
No
You know you want to
No I don’t
I’ll give you a neck massage… Well?…
Maybe
Come to bed
Maybe
Please
Maybe
Please
Maybe
Please
Only if you tell me why you’re sorry.
Just fucking forget it! I’m going to bed!
Good!
I’m going to
Good!
I mean it
I want you to
I’m serious
Fine!
Fine!
Fine!
Fine, you fucking freak!
Fine! I didn’t want to go to bed with you anyway!
Good! I sleep better when you’re not there anyway
You sleep better?! You’re the one who’s tossing around and scratching your balls all night!
Fuck you, you fucking bitch!
Fuck you, you fucking dick!
Whatever
Whatever
So, will you knock this the fuck off and come to bed already?

Click here to read a selection of the entries.

What do Inspector John Rebus, Hamlet and Tony Soprano have in common?

We think of them as real people. Why? Because Ian Rankin knows a thing or two about building unforgettable characters from the ground up. Shakespeare knew his audience loved complex characters full of apparent contradiction. And David Chase wasn’t afraid to create a sympathetic Mafia boss.

Join two writers and a psychologist on Saturday, October 24, to learn what makes great characters tick. Jo-Anne Richards, Richard Beynon and Pierre Brouard have joined forces to help screen-writers, novelists and television writers create characters that leap to life from page or screen. Interested? Read more about our Johannesburg Character Course or email us at allaboutwriting@worldonline.co.za or phone Trish on 082 652 4643

How would you convince your readers that the passionate understudy could be driven to murder to get the plum role? Well, our advice would be to e-mail Characters on the Couch – a blog written by a practising psychologist to help writers hone their craft.

Pierre Brouard, writing as Gabriel St Claire, offers psycho-literary advice to writers on www.allaboutlove.net . Writers from around the world send him questions about human motivation and character complexity – and he responds with practical advice both from his professional insight and his love of story.

“I do think it’s possible,” he told Adil, busy with his book set in the world of opera, “but I’m more inclined to think the acts of your understudy were a result of a heated and impulsive moment which would fit the so-called artistic temperament more closely.”

“To our knowledge, this is the only service of its kind available to writers anywhere in the world,” says Jo-Anne Richards, co-creator of allaboutlove.

“Every great novel – not to mention films and television – is rooted in characters that leap to life from page and screen. We remember them as real people,” says her colleague Richard Beynon.

In fact, all three are so convinced of the importance of complex characters, that they have also designed a one-day course to help writers of all kinds build characters that will effortlessly drive any plot forward. The first face-to-face Character Course is being held in Johannesburg on October 24, 2009.

E-mail Gabriel at info@allaboutlove.net

For more information contact allaboutwriting@worldonline.co.za

Here’s an exercise we adapted from one developed by the writer John Gardner…

A wo/man steps off a bus. In so doing s/he trips and manages to recover, reddens, and as he looks up sees someone of the opposite sex watching in a slightly amused way.

Write five little scenes built around the same incident in five entirely different ways, possibly using different genre conventions (romance, detective etc), or different points of view (third person attached, omniscient, etc)…

Mandy’s Exercise:

1. Joe was having a bad day. A day he really should start over.

He had literally got out on the wrong side of the bed and smacked his head into the wall. He’d cut himself shaving. He’d tripped over the rug in the passage and spilt his coffee, which even now was dripping down the walls.

He’d had no time to clean it up. He was terribly late. And now, as he stepped off the bus, he tripped again and stumbled, managing to save himself but not his briefcase, which snapped open on impact, sending papers all over the road.

But no matter. He’d made it, and there she was, waiting, just as she’d said she’d be, with that infuriating grin plastered across her face.

“Joe Anderson, you clumsy klutz,” she said. “You’re a sight for sore eyes. Come over here and give me a hug.”

2. As the bus pulled into the station, I scanned the crowd. How would I find her? I had to give her the package today – she’d said she’d be waiting.

I hung back, waiting for the others to disembark, hoping she’d be left behind, alone on the platform. But there were too many people, too many buses.

Finally it was my turn. Intent on keeping the package intact, I missed the last step and stumbled on to the station. Embarrassed, I straightened up quickly.

A shadow fell across me and I looked up into a face partly obscured by a dark hoodie. “Mr Cruz,” she drawled in a feline voice. “You certainly know how to make an entrance.”

3. Lindiwe was struggling to really enjoy the trip. Sure, these Rea Vaya buses were comfortable and convenient, air-conditioned and spacious. There was no jostling for space, no shoulder-to-shoulder sardine tin sensation. But she was nervous about what Jakes would think.

Finally they reached their stop in Mooi Street. The door opened and she faltered out of the door and down the steps.

As she stood up, she looked straight at a pair of Converse sneakers, a pair she’d seen many times as she collected her taxi for the day’s journeys. “So,” said Jakes, a cruel smile playing around his lips. “This is how you betray me.”

4. Heather waited anxiously at the bus stop. She smoothed her skirt down for the umpteenth time. This was a very odd place to meet for a first date. Still, at least it was a public place.

She ran her fingers through her hair. God, she needed to stop fidgeting and concentrate. How on earth would she recognise him? She hoped the picture he had posted on the site was recent.

She’d like his ad. He’d seemed normal, down to earth; not like all the others, who were interested only, it seemed, in parading their status symbols.

The bus slowed down and stopped and the doors hissed open. A little old lady tottered out, followed by … was that him? He tripped and stumbled as he alighted, and she smiled. He was everything he’d said he was in his ad – tall, dark, ordinary looking… and pathologically clumsy.

5. Owen couldn’t bring himself to look out of the window. He didn’t know what to feel, what to think. He’d waited so long for this day. He hoped he wouldn’t be a disappointment. Hell, he didn’t want to be disappointed either.

He’d been surprised when she’d agreed to meet him – the agency said it was a rare thing. And he was desperate to make a good impression.

He shone his shoes on the back of his trousers before walking to the front of the bus, and dried his clammy hands off on his handkerchief.

As the doors opened, he walked confidently out and then tripped as he stepped onto the pavement. When he looked up, it was into the smiling face of a woman he should have recognised anywhere. Finally, here was his mother.

Alethea’s Exercise:

1. From the window they all looked little better than ants. Filing here, dotting the pavement with their awkward bodies. Bobbing, begging, infinitely squashable. Until a woman drew to herself the scrutiny of the universe by blushing when she tripped in front of an upright man.

2. Shoes waited for shoes. Buffed to a shine, or scowling they stepped in half steps forward, some tapping on the metal of a step, others beasts of burden lifting suitcases on. The lady had shoes that said, “moccasin, I am an Indian in spring”, before they took to the air, and landed in front of a pair of Kenneth Coles, leather cut to the foot in a wide smile.

3. I remember every passenger, just like I remember the names of the roads I drive. They never change, and mostly the people never change, hidden behind newspapers and respectable clothes, sullen faces, and pallid or purple skin. But sometimes, like today, the clock comes off the works, and a lady tripping, then blushing, will light the face of even the most gangrenous gent.

4. Take another card. The joker. Yes, I see. At 4:15 you will do as you do every day. You will travel a familiar road, as though you were sitting, but inside you are standing, so that when it comes time to run, you will be ready. And as you run, the steppes that you know so well will fall away beneath you. You will find your feet again though.. to the rosy glow of a sunset… and at the feet of a dashing lover. If only you take the risk.

5. How is it that all thirty-five year old women look the same? As though, at the dusk of the nether year, they hit pumpkin hour and turn into their mothers. They even think like their mothers. If I bore my eyes in to the front of this ones curled and fringed head I can tell that she’s wondering if I’m married; if perhaps, I’d like to marry her. With that doleful look, I’d sure as hell not. But then she trips, and like a twenty year old, blushes it away, and then, well, I could be persuaded to a drink.

Encouragement? Professional guidance? Insight into the sorts of techniques that turn a humdrum story into an electrifying narrative? Deadlines? At Allaboutwriting, we give you all this and much more over the course of our 12-week Writers’ Circle Course.

The next course starts on Wednesday, September 16. It is designed for writers who have a specific project in mind as well as for those who simply want the chance to exercise their creative skills.

The Writers’ Circle Course runs participants through a range of practical techniques, reinforcing each with exercises which are both fun and challenging. Sessions are held in Parkview, Johannesburg every Wednesday evening from 7.00-9.30pm. Cost: R5000 for 12 sessions.

Course Outline
• Freeing you up/finding your voice
• Brainstorming and story-boarding
• What is the story?
• Point of view
• Building characters, be they real or fictional
• Beginnings: where do you start to tell your story?
• Scenes: telling stories in a series of scenes
• Middles and ends
• Suspense: setups and payoffs
• Detail and description
• Avoiding exposition: show, don’t tell
• Dialogue and wrap-up

Please click here for a more detailed course description.

For more information please contact Trish on 0826524643 or email allaboutwriting@worldonline.co.za

Read testimonials from past participants and information about the facilitators.

Allaboutwriting is a partnership between Richard Beynon and Jo-Anne Richards who have both made their livings from writing for many years. We’re passionate about good writing, and have devised our courses to help communicate that passion – plus the skills that make it all much more than an academic exercise – to others with a similar calling.

“As for myself,” says Stephen King in his wonderful book On Writing, “I’m doubtful about writing classes, but not entirely against them.” What I want to insist on in this article is that writing classes – or seminars, or workshops, or writing circles, call ‘em what you will – can be
• Inspirational
• Motivational, and
• A spur to action and
that Mr King would do well to approach the subject a tad less sceptically.

Our experience as facilitators of such groups – both online and face to face – suggests that if a number of cautions are borne in mind, writers can derive real, practical value – and have one hell of a lot of fun as they go – from writing seminars. Whether you’re a writing instructor – or a writer contemplating the mountain of your first major writing project – these pointers can help.

Here are the cautions for face to face groups:

• Get the size of your group right. We’ve found that less than six is too small, more than twelve unmanageable.

• Make sure the individual members of the group are more or less on the same rung of the skills level.

• Get the composition of the group right. A good mix makes for the best and most productive discussions. One recent group we guided featured a talk show host, a dedicated environmentalist, an IT entrepreneur, a midwife and a publisher. Each was in the process of writing a book – both fiction and non-fiction – or on the brink of starting.

The same cautions don’t apply to online groups. Interactive groups, with discussion forums and contact and feedback with facilitators, can work well with any number of people, all at different skill levels – and from different sides of the earth. (Isn’t nature wonderful!)

And here’s what great workshops, whether online or face to face, should do:

• Workshops should provide solid intellectual stimulation. Something for the participants to get their teeth into. Something designed to be useful to them in the writing process. Something practical. How to choose the most appropriate point of view. The nuts and bolts of creating memorable characters. How to structure scenes. How to add steel and fibre to avoid a sagging middle.

• Workshops should be structured around a series of challenging writing exercises. Challenging, that is, but not so hard as to be intimidating. Exercises need to be fun. People should be dying to try them. They enable wannabe writers to apply their new skills to the sort of problems they’ll face as they drive their projects forward. (And, in our experience, they love doing them!)

• Participants should work in an atmosphere of creative freedom, where they are encouraged to share their problems and their achievements.

Finally, what we’ve learned is that a relaxed but focused approach yields the greatest results. And nothing helps that as much as a bottle of soft red wine to wind up the evening. Of course, this isn’t necessarily a universal truth, but it’s worked for us. And perhaps that’s why Stephen King’s a little jaundiced. He’s on the wagon, poor sod.

That’s the only difference between face to face and online courses. There’s no cyber-wine. (Of course, there’s nothing stopping you opening your own wee bottle and toasting us somewhere out there, wherever you are. For the rest though, our online courses have the same advice, which we try to present in the same personal style, sharing our experiences and the mistakes we’ve made along the way. We hope participants will get to know us through our various courses, and feel they’re in conversation with us. We give feedback and interaction, just as we would to our face to face groups, and participants can get to know their fellow writers and share problems and experiences.

Richard Beynon and Jo-Anne Richards run face-to-face writing courses in Johannesburg and online romance writing courses on allaboutlove.net

Read On Writing by Stephen King

Advice from Stephen King

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A friend of mine is a fine writer, whose first book was a great success.

His characters were beautifully drawn and tugged us into a poignant memoir. But he had always longed to write a novel. I couldn’t wait to see it.

When he showed me a draft, I couldn’t believe it. The characters were cardboard stereotypes.

“But where are the kind of characters you had in your first book?” I asked.

“But that was non-fiction. This is a novel. I have to make them up.”

But you see, you don’t. You can, but you don’t have to. If you work from real life, think of a real character and lie. Change them to suit your story.

That is important. Real life is fine as inspiration. But don’t stick so closely to the real model that you lose sight of the dramatic imperatives of your story.

If you make a character up from scratch, don’t think of them merely as “the tough game ranger” or the “prostitute with the heart of gold”. Everyone has quirks, inconsistencies and contrasts. Everyone has hopes and dreams, fears and heartaches.

Characters don’t exist in isolation. They are the sum of their history, experiences and personality.

You need to work out far more about a character than will ever actually appear on the page. If you don’t know how someone grew up and what relationship they had with their parents and siblings, you’ll never know how they’ll react to older men, younger women – in fact, to anything at all.

You need to work out how someone appears to others – what they look like, what they do, their work, hobbies and everything else that make up their public self. But everyone has internal characteristics too. You need to know how they feel, what makes them tick, their likes, dislikes, fears and favours.

Don’t forget what they look like and how they feel about themselves.

You need to be able to see and hear your character – to know intuitively how they’ll react. If you say to yourself: “Hmm, what should I make this character say now, they’ll never sound real.
For more about characters and lifting them beyond the cardboard, join our one day Character Development Course on 24 October 2009 in Parkview, Johannesburg.

Jo-Anne Richards is the author of four novels. Her latest is My Brother’s Book, published by Picador.

She lectures in journalism and writing skills at Wits University, besides running workshops in literary skills, narrative journalism and Romance writing. She supervises Masters students in the Creative Writing Masters programme at Wits.

She is co-founder of allaboutlove.net. The site runs interactive online writing courses in romance writing.

Erotic fiction is experiencing a new wave of popularity – and, it seems a new level of respectability.

Collections of erotic fiction are suddenly everywhere. And people are no longer ashamed of enjoying it. The ‘90s, it seems, was the decade of chick lit, while the noughties have apparently been well named.

This is a genre populated mainly by women writers, who have moved from under the counter to the literary mainstream.

Louise France wrote in The Observer: “As a publishing trend it might best be summed up thus – from big knickers to no knickers. Ten years ago the bestseller lists were topped by the frustrated Bridget Jones, a fictional creation less interested in sex than in the cigarette she could smoke afterwards. Part of her popularity – and that of the clones that followed – was that she was far too neurotic to be good in bed. It was romance, not lust, which made her pulse beat faster.

“A decade on and chick lit now seems curiously chaste, as lascivious as a warm mug of Horlicks. But a new kind of explicit bedside reading, both fictional and autobiographical, means the three-for-two counter in Waterstone’s now displays the kind of X-rated material more traditionally found in a cornershop in Soho…

“True, some of these books have been risible, a publisher’s idea of a quick buck. Others have seemed absurdly opportunistic. Want to complain about your husband’s poor performance in bed? Write a book! But the best of the titles means that a new kind of graphic literature, written from a woman’s point of view, is reaching a mainstream readership. Whereas previous generations might have been uneasy about the distinctions between erotica and pornography, for many of these authors the debate is redundant. They argue that good erotic fiction explores women’s fantasies and shows them to be acceptable – what’s so wrong with that?”

It’s popular. Besides being great fun to write, there’s clearly a market for it. Why not give it a try? Karlita Diamond will get you on track with her erotic fiction course, and we can get you writing sex that won’t make it onto the Bad Sex List. You can find both these courses under the Erotic and Sensual section on allaboutlove.net.

After I wrote so much about suspense last time, I found an interview with the fabulous British fiction writer, Ian McEwan, in the New Yorker. He’s one of my very favourite writers, so I was excited to find the following extract on the subject – and to see that he also believes that suspense stems from withholding information, rather than giving too much:

At a moment when the hardback novel seems endangered, McEwan’s work is almost scandalously popular. Although his novels headily explore ideas, and his gift for visual detail approaches that of John Updike (Briony’s cousin, fondling a suitcase: “The polished metal was cool, and her touch left little patches of shrinking condensation”), his international success has a lot to do with an old-fashioned talent for creating suspense. His plots defy what he calls the “dead hand of modernism.” (Even “Saturday,” which takes place in a single day, has enough incident to rival “24”: a plummeting plane, a car crash, a break-in, a tumble downstairs, lifesaving surgery.) McEwan said that one of his goals was to “incite a naked hunger in readers.” He discussed his technique reluctantly,
as if he were a chemist guarding a newly filed patent. “Narrative tension is primarily about withholding information,” he said.

McEwan is a connoisseur of dread, performing the literary equivalent of turning on the tub faucet and leaving the room; the flood is foreseeable, but it still shocks when the water rushes over the edge.

That’s how it is with the hounds that descend upon a woman in the 1992 novel “Black Dogs”; the orgiastic murder in the 1981 novel “The Comfort of Strangers”; the botched sexual initiation in “On Chesil Beach.” At moments of peak intensity, McEwan slows time down— a form of torture that readers enjoy despite themselves. In “The Child in Time,” from 1987, a man’s little girl is kidnapped at the supermarket, and his rising panic is charted with the merciless precision of a cardiogram. In “The Innocent,” a 1990 tale of espionage in postwar Berlin, McEwan spends eight pages conjuring a corpse’s dismemberment. And “Saturday” keeps the reader jangled for nearly forty pages, wondering along with Perowne if an airplane descending on London has become a terrorist missile. Martin Amis says, “Ian’s terribly good at stressed states. There’s a bit of Conrad that reminds me of Ian. It’s ‘Typhoon,’ when the captain is heading into this terrible storm and Conrad is in the position of first mate. Going into the captain’s cabin, he notices that the ship is yawing so that the captain’s shoes are rolling this way and that across the floor, like two puppies playing with each other. You think: Wow, to keep your eyes open when most people would be closing theirs.
Ian has that. He’s unflinching.”

Jo-Anne Richards is the author of four novels. Her latest is My Brother’s Book, published by Picador. Order it from Kalahari

She lectures in journalism and writing skills at Wits University, besides running workshops in literary skills, narrative journalism and Romance writing. She supervises Masters students in the Creative Writing Masters programme at Wits.

She is co-founder of allaboutlove.net, a website dedicated to good reading and writing. The site publishes novels and short stories, and runs interactive online writing courses in romance writing. It includes a basic lesbian romance writing course – thought to be unique.

Writers’ Circle Course

Our regular 12-week Writers Circle Course starts on Wednesday September 16. Designed for among others writers who have a specific project in mind, it runs participants through a range of practical skills, reinforcing each with exercises which are both fun and challenging. Sessions are held in Parkview, Johannesburg every Wednesday evening from 7.00-9.30pm. Cost: R5000 for 12 sessions.

Magoebaskloof Weekend Course

Last chance to book

Our next spring course is a weekend kick-in-the-pants for writers who need a short, sharp jolt of literary adrenalin. We’re holding this in Magoebaskloof, Limpopo Province, in a response to a cri de coeur from a group of writers in the Tzaneen area – but are opening it to writers from further afield who’d like to combine a literary weekend with the unique delights of the region. Over two days, we will introduce writers to the essential skills of writing fiction and creative non-fiction, liberally peppering our discussions with exercises that will stretch and strengthen the literary muscles of all participants. Cost: R5000, which includes two nights accommodation at the Magoebaskloof Hotel. Book and pay by 25 August and receive a 10% discount.

How to Build Characters

Our new one-day course on building characters has been designed for writers who recognize the cardinal importance of creating psychologically credible, dramatically coherent characters. Over the course of the day, we’ll teach you how to build a range of visible and invisible attributes for your characters that’ll help you uncover their stories. You might be a film or television writer for whom characters are the building blocks of the worlds you’re trying to create and sustain… Or you might be a novelist whose characters feel just a tad predictable or too predictable… Or you might be a writer of non-fiction trying to breathe life into the characters you’re attempting to recreate on the page. How to Build Characters will teach you a set of skills that will enable you to create a cast of unforgettable characters. 24 October 2009. Cost: R1250. Early bird discount: R200 if you book and pay by 31 August.