Aside: I am careful to say a person rather than a character. To refer to someone as a character already semi-fictionalizes them in a way that a thing and a place aren’t semi-fictionalized. And I want all our three plus one basic elements to exist on the same super primitive level. Mr But: What about […]
We now have two of our three things – we have an object, or something, we have a place, or somewhere, and I’m sure you will already have guessed that we also need… a person, or someone. We need a being of some sort – a person – who has a reason for moving the […]
We’re moving straight on. A story – any story – needs a thing, something. But things don’t exist in the void. And if you want an event to happen, then the thing needs to move around from one location to another. So a story also also needs a place for its thing. Mr But: Again, it’s possible to imagine a story that […]
Right, the first thing that a story needs is a thing – a material object of some sort that can be picked up or otherwise moved around. Mr But (we’re going to hear a bit from him – unless I cut him entirely as being too annoying) says: It is quite easy to imagine an […]
Okay. Often what you will have written for the first sentence is something like: ‘A story is… a personal journey of growth and discovery involving struggle and eventual triumph or defeat’ or: ‘..is about a character who faces a dilemma that forces them to define more clearly who they are through their choices.’ All these […]
We’re going to put together three basic things without which a story can’t exist (without, that is, great and sometimes gloriously perverse efforts by the writer). These things will, when I first describe them, almost certainly seem to you very oversimplified. (And perhaps familiar, if you have looked at the Starting to Write course. But […]
You are a Starter, a Middler or a Finisher. There are others you might be – the Dreamer, the Planner, the Diarist, the Angry Person, the Wanderer-Around-the-Soul, the Cynic, the Copyist, the Poet-Semi-Converted. All of you, this blog is for you. I have written it out of my experience as a creative writing tutor, out […]
Either/Or/Or I am guessing you are one of three sorts of writer. Does this sound like you? You have hundreds of ideas. You have dozens of opening sentences. You have lots and lots of half-stories. You have a few stories that have even reached what you once hoped was the end, but which turned out merely […]
Lots of writing manuals (yes, this is a writing manual) begin by addressing a virgin subject – a person who has always wanted to write and now has found the time to commit.This is not you – you are not this.
I’ve written a writing manual, and I’m going to serialise it here. It’s called Writing and Shit by Toby Litt. It’ll be weekly. It’ll be free. It’ll include exercises. And you can help me a lot – if you think you can learn something from it – by commenting on what you found useful and […]
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