Attended this inspiring workshop run by Anna Turner yesterday at Gallery 1 in Centenary Square, Bradford. It was a beautiful sunny day, so excellent for the planned walk to inspire.
There were five attendees and we started the workshop with writing about places that you go to in terms of love and hate via two characters. It was very interesting that in both exercises, the writers tended to use the same examples but twist how each character feels about it - e.g. one beach lover enjoying the warmth of the sand on her toes and another hating the fact that it sticks to her suntan lotion slicked body and that it gets everywhere.
Anna then outlined the origins of the Flashback Memory, for example everyone remembering where they were and what they were doing when Princess Diana died, in that it is in built in our DNA from our ancestors who had to remember a place in terms of it being safe, e.g. emotion is interlinked with a place. Anna then gave us five emotions - Anger, Fear, Joy, Resentment and Peace - asked us to pick one and write about a place that you have experienced that emotion in. Some of the other writers and I found this quite a hard exercise as more than one emotion kept slipping into the writing.
Anna then explained how the Watershed project came about and what it involved and discussed the four short stories contained within her Watershed project book Legging It, published under her author name of Anna Chilvers. Anna very kindly gave each attendee a free copy of the book and also signed it.
We then all went outside to people watch and let it inspire stories within us (we were allowed to take notes if we felt we needed to). It was very pleasant wandering around the Centenary Square lido, watching and listening to the fun people were having splashing in the water, running through the fountains and soaking up the sun. Among the many interesting characters I noted were an old couple with shopping bags and she in a wheelchair resting by the water but he was standing not sitting, a handsome young man with long dreadlocks dancing to a tune that was clearly in his own head, several cute toddlers with over-filled nappies thanks to the water fun, a paunchy businessman walking through the square oblivious to anything except his mobile phone call, a topless man on a bicycle with tattoos over 90 per cent of his visible skin, several women on precarious heels/wedges tottering across the Square and a man guarding his pram whilst his toddler son wanders further and further away from him.
After half an hour, we returned to the Gallery and had a cup of tea/coffee and a mini shortbread.
Anna began the workshop again by explaining what makes a story in terms of emotion:
1) Character in one emotional state
2) They want something
3) An obstacle is put in their way
4) Their emotional state has changed AS A RESULT
Anna gave us the following emotions - Anger, Guilt, Anxiety, Hate, Despair, Hopelessness, Indecision, Hostility, Fear, Jealousy, Grief, Suspicion, Loneliness, Worry, Sadness, Shame and Disappointment and we were asked to write a short story (in three sentences) with a character starting off with one emotion and move them to another.
We were then given two lots of 15 minutes to write a short story or outline ideas for a longer story using one of the characters we had been inspired by using the emotional route as outlined above.
Here is one of the ones I came up with (can you guess which one?):
Marvin could hear the drumbeat in his head and felt the rhythm right down into his toes. On days like today, when the temperature soars and there are no clouds to mar the sky, he totally identified with his namesake. There really were no worries on a day like today. Although there were no ear-buds, in fact no music of any tangible kind for him to dance to, he swayed on his toes non-the-less. Sunshine was sweet. He could stay here all day if he wanted to, alone with his thoughts and the Caribbean beats in his mind.
Across the way from him he registered the splashing of the children as the they played under the fountain. It wasn't quite home but he could imagine. All he needed now was Gelisa, but she was long gone. A world away in both geography and emotion.
He watched as a young child, her nappy hanging low beneath her pretty sundress, waddled away from her mother. Her skin was the colour of a ripe coconut shell and it was all too easy to imagine she was his. His and Gelisa's.
The odour of pot drifted across from behind him and he had to force his feet to keep moving to the beat rather than away and to the source. He had lost more than Gelisa to the lure of its power. But it was different now, now there was only one regret not the empty ache needing a plug.
It was indeed an inspiring workshop and I hope that more events are organised soon.
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