Venom's First Assignment

Finally I have access! :yahoo:


Most of these writing tips I endorse, especially the lovely lines about characterisation. I ALWAYS create a detailed picture of my characters that doesn't stop at their eye- and hair colour. To grab their personality, I use to ask: what car are they driving?

Yes, yes, along comes Venom with his car fetish; but for most people the choice of car is an emotional and therefore personal act (let us pretend that money is irrelevant in this case).

Furthermore a good characterisation helps to prevent repetitions: beside the character's name terms like the girl, the blonde, the Italian are at disposal.

The words about the dialogue: absolutely true! It's a powerful tool to tell and to "break open" longer passages. I also like to give the characters unique phrases or a specific style of talking. Ideally the reader detects who is speaking just by this. For example I let a person use a term or a short phrase from her/his native language, without translation. A direct translation would only disturb. Therefore it is necessary to give a clean context, like: "Hola," he greeted. No need to understand Spanish...

The part about the sequels doesn't give much to me. At every point of my stories I have a rather clear idea what and how to tell the reader - mostly intuitively.
I also never had a problem to create a plot. My head is full of central ideas, and for a clean structure I'm follow H.P. Lovecraft's technique: two detailed plot/chapter lists, the first with all parts in the order they are happening, the second one with all parts in the order in what they will appear in the story. But the most important item is the total freedom of changing these orders whenever it is necessary.

The Deadwood part is written just for me: my weakest point is using much too many words. Not that I'm a fan of endless sentences - no, I even love strong single terms. But the text must provide precision; I'm just not happy to count on the reader for understanding a sloppily written scene.


I think that's it. I don't see myself as a great author, at least not in the extent my text above could suggest. But I'm good enough to know that I can - and have to - learn a lot more...

Yah, I am pleased you finally got access too!

Thanks for a very percise and interesting review of the readings. I am constantly amazed at how much I learn about new students from this assignment, and how much I learn about different styles of writing.

I like the idea of having the two detailed plot/chapter lists - must read up a bit more about that one! I think your idea of thinking of what car a character might drive is interesting too. For me, it is not so much what car they might drive, as how they might dress or even what job they might do. It is all about creating a rounded image of a character to help the reader understand them better.

Okay, now to move onto assignment two. You get to see a story from the other side - to edit a story as you would if you were editing it for someone else. The best way of presenting the assignment is to highlight any changes in a different colour and then tell me why you would make that change.

Have fun with this assignment, don't be afraid of upsetting either myself or H Dean and really focus on ways of improving the chapter. BTW if you have not already found them, the chapters are in the sticky at the top of the level. PM me if you have any problems or questions.

Thank you...