The second workshop of the day was My dentist is a hero - an introduction to short story writing, with Valerie Harkness, which I review here:
Valerie started by asking the attendees what they expected from the workshop and explained that it was the first of two workshops she runs. She felt it was introductory and that it would give us methods to take an ordinary character and an inciting incident, so that the person is not so ordinary any more.
Valerie has written poetry in French from age 12, she came to England at 22/23 and then stopped writing poetry, but 10 years ago she adopted a little girl and started writing again. Publishers took 2 of her books of poems and a couple of years ago she started writing her stories in English, but after 20 years in the country as a foreigner she has developed an antennae that she feels makes imprints sharper than for local people. She believes language is context bound and her 'French-ness brings another angle as different settings.' She dreams both in French and English and was a teacher in secondary schools and at University, a teacher trainer in languages.
We were then asked to work with the person/s next to us to find out a bit about them before Valerie showed us a scene from the film 'The Piano' which she felt illustrated what the workshop was about.
Emotions never expressed, fears, dreams etc. are stories and they don't always need a resolution at the end of a short story. At one point in your story you will have a tear or more than one (echoes) and what leads to that tear can be sudden or it can take time to build up to the tear (a journey, so that the character will be ready for the tear). That space is like a window, this is where the richness is, the symbolism. There are different ways of doing this, tear then flashback is different to chronological, but the window is there. What happens next or is the window enough? But before the window happens, going to have to have clues.
Each group was then given a story to look at to break down who the main character is, the setting, where the tears are and what happens next (emotions). We were given The Pig and the Butterfly written by Valerie herself .
Valerie feels it is okay to break your story with a flashback, a page or two of not telling, but then you have to keep the reader. It is difficult to summarise a short story because there is so much in it, 2/3/4 characters and you take a small moment and look at the detail around it. Short stories are a mix of images and poetry and she avoids common place things to make it more fantasy. The building blocks of character and setting is the plot. 4 or 5 building blocks: context, person, padding, what happens (2 key moments) and what comes out of that that engages.
We were then asked to plot out a short story of our own with 2 key moments.
Valerie then showed an interview with Alice Munro who has written many short stories and recommended the David Constantine author website for the breaking down of the steps to short stories and themes. She recommended that the tears and echoes and where they are going to be, is the important bit of the story, but don't be too explicit, hook the reader but don't give them too much information.
The workshop ended with Valerie informing the attendees about a French and English poetry event taking place at Leeds Trinity University on 1 May 6-8.30pm featuring music and poetry (Japanese, Chinese, French and Italian) with ticket prices at £7 each including buffet and wine. There are 20 places left and to make a reservation contact Valerie: v.f.p.harkness@talk21.com
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