That’s a bit more like it! Yesterday was far more productive than the first two days of the month put together.
I started out with two readings of Crash, three hours apart. It was the first time I tried this and – not surprisingly – the second reading was more fluent. I think this means that on the day of the performance itself I will need to read the piece at least once in the morning before I head off to the venue.
The other slightly unexpected activity was the recording of another podcast episode, this time the story “Out of the Woods“, also taken from my An Irregular Piece of Sky collection.
Planned work was a little drafting of “C” and then the Ripon Writers’ Group in the evening. Although challenging, the exercise I set was light-hearted and the finished pieces generated a great deal of laughter. Here’s the brief:
Too Good / Too Bad
The Task
You have to take a well-known character – from legend, life, literature, film or television – who is recognised for being an example of virtue and goodness or the opposite, and depict them with alternate attributes: i.e. make a good person evil or an evil person good.
For example: depicting Elizabeth Bennett as a mass murderer.
The Method
The subject, scene, timeframe is entirely open but it shouldn’t be from the work / realm in which they are best known.
For example: you could transfer the evil Miss Bennett to 21st century Brixton. Having her still in 19th century Longbourn / Pemberley would not be acceptable.
In prose:
– should be written in the first person and only from the character’s perspective.
– the narrative should be made up of a series of short emails, tweets, Facebook posts, letters etc.
Your character should not be named anywhere in your piece. Neither should you make direct reference to other characters who would give the game away.
For example: you would not refer to Mr Darcy.
Obviously you will need to leave clues as to who you are writing about, but nothing too explicit please.
For example: you would not write an email starting “Dear Jane…” and ending “…love Lizzie”.
It will be up to the rest of the group to see if they can guess who you have written about.
Time: c. 20 minutes
We were treated to the alter egos of Lady MacBeth, Robin Hood, Cinderella (twice!), King Arthur, Dr Who, and the Big Bad Wolf!
Nothing in the same vein for me today however: “C”, New Contexts: 5 admin, maybe Crash again… Who knows?
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Ian Gouge - Writer 