A Master Class from Twenty Twelve

For a consummate example of how to hit a number of creative writing buttons all in a one-er, I suggest you - read Dorothea Brand's excellent book Becoming a Writer?  No, (but you should). Join an evening class? No, (but it may not be a bad idea). Work your way through all the great writers from Austen to Zola to try and fathom their literary mysteries? No, (although it's a great plan for the summer).

I recommend that you sit down and watch an episode of Twenty Twelve,  BBC2's pitch perfect comedy drama about the coming Olympics. Setting aside bravura performances from Hugh Bonneville and Olivia Colman, there is much you can learn from the flawless writing:

• It is understated.
• It is deftly, panifully observed.
• The characterisation is extraordinarily subtle - each person is recognisable, empathetic, irritating, amusing -- in other words, utterly human.
• The relationships it explores are fractious, misconstrued, unrequited and irresistibly fascinating.
• It deals with a familiar subject, something we all think we know a little bit about, so we are able to bring our own impressions to bear upon it, we can make a connection easily and that way half the author's work is done.
• Although it is written to be funny, the pathos and poignancy of every situation and in every personality is fully explored, giving each episode depth as well as humour.
• It has a David and Goliath feel to it -- the flawed, ordinary guy taking on big issues and overcoming them.

 So curl up on the sofa next Friday at 10 p.m. and turn on, tune in, and see what there is to learn...

Keeping It in the Family?

I heard an excellent edition of Start the Week on Radio Four a while ago, in which Andrew Marr interviewed a number of writers - AS Byatt, Colm Toibin and Will Eaves - about authors and their families.  I guess as a writer your family of origin is the most potent seedbed for ideas, although all the guests on the programme were in broad agreement that writing about them, if not an outright exercise of aggressive power, ran the risk of introducing 'disequilibrium.'

One of them referred to the relationship between WB Yeats and his father, "There may have been love involved, but love wasn't mentioned very much." This struck me as a fascinating starting point for a story.  It hints at the complexities of family ties, which both support and fetter. It also conjures up the emotional inarticulacy which makes writing such an interesting exercise - how people are unable to say what they feel, how oblique 'close' relationships can be, and how terrifying we find intimacy.

All of this is the stuff of great fiction, the indissoluble marriage of the domestic and the profound.  If you don't start writing it, I just might...

Reading - When Once Just Isn't Enough

There was an interesting article in The Observer last weekend, where a number of writers talked about books they had taken the trouble to read not once, but twice.  The piece was worth reading if only for a perfect image from one of my favourite authors, Geoff Dyer,

I'm not a great rereader – or at least, I'm a failed one: I decide to reread something I read 20 years ago and then give up because the original experience, presumed forgotten, turns out to have been mysteriously preserved, like a leaf between the pages.

 Mostly, I'm an accidental re-reader.  I was completely immersed The End of the Affair by Graham Greene and it wasn't until the very last page that I realised I'd read it before -- I even found the other copy on my bookshelves, testament, perhaps, to having my heart broken too many times. I don't even like Graham Green, that much.

I can think of two good reasons to re-read something: sometimes, it can be like a reunion with an old friend.  I can't bear contemplate ending my days without having read Wuthering Heights again and I've sobbed my way through it two or three times already.  Other than indulgence, it can be useful, as a writer, to re-read something you have really enjoyed the moment you finish it.  Devour it once for pleasure, then go through it forensically for a second time, trying to work out how the magic tricks are done.

With so many fantastic books waiting to be read for the first time, it can seem almost sacrilegious to return to an old favourite.  What books would you go back to, and why?

Anything but Silence - How to Use Sound in Your Writing

It's raining and I can hear the uncertain syncopation of the raindrops hitting the roof of my house-shaped shed.  It's evocative to listen to: small, staccato needle points of sound.  If I close my eyes, it takes me back to camping trips as a child: the caravan windows steaming up, condensation dripping from all the fittings, the dampness of my sleeping bag.

Even if you're not writing for radio (but especially if you are) sound can be a valuable tool for the writer.  It can help you out with a number of things.

• It can create mood and atmosphere.
• It can kindle memories, providing something familiar to which your reader can relate.
• It can shift the focus of a scene -- a sudden noise will make your reader do the literary equivalent of turning their head to see what has happened. 
• It can shock -- think of the sound of skin being peeled back from human flesh.
• It can create suspense -- imagine the noise of a dress being slowly unzipped, or of a knife being eased from its sheath.

Close your eyes for a moment, and listen to all the sounds around you, and think how you might use them, creatively...

Necessarye Coniunction

We're putting the finishing touches to our house, now that the builders have fled.  Downstairs, we have an interior window looking in to a little snug which doesn't get much natural light.  To remedy this we commissioned glass artist Simon Howard to make a panel for us - cue drumroll, cymbals, fanfare...

The inspiration for it came from East Coker, part of the Four Quartets by TS Eliot.

The association of man and woman 
In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie—
A dignified and commodiois sacrament.
Two and two, necessarye coniunction,

Simon took the text from the last line and abstracted it - the coloured glass represents the negative space between the letters.  The panel has been acid-etched and sandblasted and my picture doesn't do justice to the shimmering texture of it.

As a writer and avid reader, I'm interested in the gaps between words.  Perhaps it goes back to a childhood fascination with the cracks in the pavement and the terrible fate which might befall you if you stepped on one. These gaps, these creative spaces, are freighted with the possibility that something unexpected might materialise, or that everything could fall apart. I love their ambivalence, their mystery.  I've already spent ages staring at Simon's opalescent panel. What he's created for us out of glass is as delicate and fleeting as breath on cold air.

Characterisation -- Reproducing or Creating?

When I first started writing, *drilling in the background, more shelves going up* many of the characters I wrote about were based on people that I knew.  Even if I didn't know them personally, I knew about them, in particular how they looked. To begin with, especially with minor characters,  I found this incredibly helpful. It was a way in, a prop; perhaps it had something to do with the comfort of the familiar. It took me a while to discover that this Central Casting approach to characterisation had its limitations.

Two problems spring to mind.

If you are writing about somebody you know, slicking a fictional gloss over them to protect both them and you, it becomes very hard to get away from the fact that ultimately you are working in facsimile. You may come to feel that you are involved in reproduction, rather than creation and it's difficult not to let this devalue what you are working on

If you are basing a character on somebody you vaguely know, it is unexpectedly challenging to get beyond vaguely knowing them.  What you do know about them can get in the way about what you'd like to invent. They don't shed the actual qualities they have, simply for your convenience, and gradually you find that your hands are tied. The semi intimacy with which you began is likely to be precisely where you end up, and for the writer and the reader, this is a highly unsatisfactory experience.

In the end, it is elating to cut yourself free from what is familiar. That fearfully clean slate is actully full of possibilities. For your reader to form a relationship with your protagonist, you need to do so as well, even if that implies ups and downs and moments of heartbreak. The characters who plague and confound you, who won't leave you alone but niggle away at your subconscious, are the ones you start by not knowing very well, but come to love the best.

P.S. Ed Reardon's Week is back on Radio 4 tonight -- I never know whether to laugh or cry.

A Curtsey to Coetzee

OMG I've finally, at last, got round to reading Disgrace, JM Coetzee's epic account of the dirty, jagged inevitable march of justice. Respect. The gaunt narrative follows the downfall of college lecturer David Lurie, from the seduction of one of his students which he perpetrates, to the horrific, metaphorically retributive rape of his own daughter, which he is unable to forestall. I won't anatomise the plot in too much detail - read the book yourself, if only for the pure notes Coetzee's prose strikes.


What did it teach me most as a writer? How important it is to empathise with your main character, for your readers to identify with her even if they don't like her very much - it's an extraordinarily subtle trick to pull off. You might want to have a go at it yourself: try writing a piece in which your heroine is initially alienating, but whom you end up liking inspite of yourself. How to do it? Start with her journey towards self knowledge, and see where it leads....