Lacking Inspiration?

Here is a little exercise I am thinking of putting in the writing coach.

Find a piece of fiction which you admire and we are going to have a go at emulating the style of writing that the author has used. Okay style is a personal thing but there are some key components of 'writing fiction' which are shared.

This exercise works well with descriptive passages and also with beginnings.

Here is the beginning of Jackdaw Summer by the wonderful David Almond:

It starts and ends with the knife. I find it in the garden. I'm with Max Woods. Were messing about, digging for treasure, like we did when we were little kids. As always there's nothing but stones and roots and dust and worms. Then there it is, just below the surface, a knife with a wooden handle in a leather sheath. I leaver it out of the earth. The curved blade;s all tarnished, the handle's filthy, the sheath's blackened and stiff and starting to rot away.
I laugh in triumph.
'Treasure at last!'

1. Okay we need to take this apart before we can continue/emulate the style. Firstly what smacks you in the face is the sentence structure; short and full of lists. This is a child narrating the story so it's easy to see why David Almond has picked this style.

2. Then there is the symbolism of a knife, both destructive and protective. And why was it in the ground in the garden - lost, hidden?

3.The narrator - what is the opening showing the reader about the person telling the story? He is messing around but he is not a 'little kid' so we easily put him between 8 and 12. The fact that he imagines he is looking for treasure shows he is imaginative maybe a bit of a fantasist.

4. Finally notes the 'precise description' of the knife itself. It starts with wooden handle and a leather sheath. Then the character removes it and he gives the reader more detail; the handles filthy and the sheath's blackened and stiff and starting to rot away. We can not only visualise this blade blade but we know it has been in the ground for some time.

5. Almond is a very clever writer because without saying that the character takes a closer look we can almost feel him, after he has levered it out of the ground, holding it in his hand and inspecting it more carefully. When he shouts 'treasure at last', I imagine him holding it above his head.


EXERCISE

Okay so we have had a look at five areas of the opening, now here are some questions to think about:

1. Is there a powerful symbol that can sum up your story?
2. Have a character in your story find it?
3. Use the human eyes way of giving general detail before it then narrows down into specifics.
4. The narrator is a dreamer but I wanted them to be highly symbolic as the reader should be wondering if she has the gift of 'sight' when it comes to her dream. Also I wanted to capture how dreams are confused. It is not so much what you see in a dream but how you feel that is important. That lingers into the day.
5. Try to follow the exact same sentence structure above.

EXAMPLE

1. Swan's - they only ever have one partner and they stay with that one partner all of their life. If the other dies they never find another soul mate.

2. I have a swan pendent in my story - I don't want to find this in the ground because it has been carefully hidden as a key to a hidden mystery. So where? Symbolically this should be in water as water is the subconscious - lake, river, stream, not the sea - I like a lake.It's winter in my book and I could have a lake covered in ice with an island in the middle - there is danger as they. I feel it's submerged in the lake so it needs to be in something water tight - glass.

3. Glass heart, something black inside. Smashes it - it's a pendent with two swans , arched necks, bright gold.

4. Here is my re-write within the same sentence structure.

The dream starts and ends with a swan. She watches it glide out over the lake. She is alone. She is stood on an island surrounded by water, and she is searching, her mind stretching out for a memory. As always there is nothing but snow, white and endless and silent. Then her memory jolts, just below the surface, a heart, made of glass with something dark inside. She slips her hand beneath the water. The glass is freezing to touch, there are thin cracks on the back, it's so thick that it's hard to see what's inside.
There is a moments recognition.
"And so it comes to pass"


Have a go - happy writing.