How to Make Fictional Oaks Grow From Little Acorns

We've had sleet today and there's snow forecast, so it's definitely a good time to hunker down in the warm and do some writing.

How's this for an idea?  Describe a character; flesh out as much detail as you can -- appearance, back story, strengths and weaknesses, hopes for the future, occupation etc.  Put in as much information as you can.  Then do the same thing for a second, completely different character.  Finally dream up a situation in which they might meet one another by chance, and see what happens when they do.

You'd be surprised how much well-realised and engrossing work can spring from such a simple beginning.  After all, every story has to start at some point and an exercise like this might lead to somewhere interesting, or be a good warm up if you're working on an existing project.

Think of it as a new door opening....

(I haven't indulged in one of these for ages...)

Getting Started

In a recent post I was chuntering on about how to build the back story of one of your characters -- what has happened to them prior to your narrative beginning - and using that as a means to help kickstart your novel or short story.  Brian Keenan (if you haven't yet read An Evil Cradling, his extraordinary account of being a hostage in Beirut, drop everything and start it now) once came up with an interesting suggestion.  He said that a good beginning for a narrative is a room containing some orange peel and a pair of unlaced shoes.

I've tried this with various creative writing classes and been astonished by  the range of fascinating situations and plots that it has given rise to.  Why not try it yourself, and if the orange peel etc doesn't get your juices flowing, come up with your own random ingredients and see what you can cook up with them...

SMALL PRESS

Alun Books

www.alunbooks.co.uk

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Alun Books is a small press, founded in 1977 in order to publish books about Wales and/or by Welsh authors, mainly in the English language. The Barn Owl Press imprint was added in 1982, for a series of award-winning children's books, and in 1991 Alun Books merged with Goldleaf Publishing, adopting Goldleaf as the imprint for its local history publications.