Creative writing tips GCSE.
What does your character want?
And what do they need?
Consider these questions in the light(and often darkness) of your title. All titles will give you the opportunity to explore a particular, crisis moment in your protagonist’s story. The crisis drives your narrative and gives a structure to your writing.
Here’s a powerful opening for you to consider:
‘When they come for me, I will think of the end of the northern ridge for that’s where I was happiest..I will have that sunlit rock in me.’
The opening of Susan Fletcher’s Witch Light compresses her protagonist’s want and need, communicating the urgency of her situation( she is condemned to be burnt at the stake for witchcraft) with her source of spiritual sustenance, Glencoe. Fletcher’s heroine, Corrag wants to escape her horrible fate yet we hear her need for the Highlands, a place that has forged her identity and birthed her soul’s language. It is interesting that her love for Glencoe seems to transcend the terror of her situation and gifts the narrative with a singularity that infuses the story with wonder.
Setting.
Remember- your story or memoir takes place somewhere.
Evoke a sense of place through a few carefully selected details. If the details have emotive connotations then the setting will seem to reinforce the story or even participate within the narrative.
Remember that when you animate a setting or place, the story takes on an atmosphere and the setting may even seem to be a character in your protagonist’s world.
In the following passage from Le Carre’s The Spy who came in from the Cold, where the protagonist and his girlfriend are trying to escape from East Berlin via the infamous Berlin wall, the setting delivers a palpable sense of unease and menace.
‘ The watchtower’s search light began feeling its way along the wall towards them, hesitant ; each time it rested they could see the separate bricks and careless lines of mortar hastily put on…‘
The animation of the watchtower’s search light gives a sinister, predatory, serpentine aspect to the scene. The suggestion of the light’s apparently ‘hesitant’ character is ironic as it underplays its dangerous purpose and the exposed ‘lines of mortar’ foreshadow their impending fate. The verb ‘rested’ suggests a lack of haste and again adds a (misleading) personality to the search light.
‘ The sky was yellow as a duster and the rest was granular black….Already the traffic was at an irritable crawl. By dusk it would be stationary. ‘ (Margaret Allingham, The Tiger in the Smoke).
Here the setting seems malign. Even repulsive. Its moral darkness evoked through the banality of the ‘duster’ and then the city’s darkness intensified by the personification of the traffic as ‘irritable’. We are in a city that is not happy with itself. We expect criminality and discord.
Dialogue.
When a character speaks ensure that their speech reinforces their character and adds something significant to the story.
” ‘It may be only blackmail,’ said the man in the taxi hopefully.”( The Tiger in the Smoke)
Here the noun ‘blackmail ‘ insinuates a sense of mystery and criminality but also yields up a character who believes that blackmail is the lesser evil than the unspoken more serious alternative. The adverb ‘hopefully’ denotes a tentative optimism and reveals a character striving to be supportive, yet all too aware of the irony of underplaying blackmail as a possibility. The anonymous man’s attempt to minimise the gravity of the situation creates a strong sense of character and we are intrigued as to his motivation and the nature of his relationship to his fellow passenger.
Then Henry spoke. His words were low but deliberate and distinct.
‘ Should I do what is necessary?’
To my surprise , Julian took both Henry’s hands in his own. ‘ You should only, ever, do what is necessary.’
(Donna Tartt, The Secret History)
Here Henry’s simple question veils a threatening, loaded subtext. The description of his words before they are spoken underline their coldness and oblique clarity. The narrator who is the observer and outsider, ‘ to my surprise’ seems naive and excluded from this exchange. We hear the measured menace in Julian’s response, yet share the narrator’s outsider status, thus increasing a sense of menace and suspense.
The problem.
Identify a problem early in your story, ideally in your opening paragraph. Something or someone is wrong for your protagonist. This antagonist can be a person, situation or even a dilemma within your protagonist’s own mind. The stakes surrounding this problem must be high. They must matter. Conflict deepens your writing and keeps your reader involved. They have to care.
Make them not at ‘home’ in some way.
‘ That is what a son should be.’
Here in The Song of Achilles, the narrator’s father makes a declaration about Achilles in response to the latter’s athleticism. Such a preferment is devastating when made conversationally and therefore naturally. We understand the hurtfulness of this pronouncement and the humiliation too. The narrator is clearly not Achilles and this seems a deficit that the narrator’s father, seems unwilling to forgive. The novel then proceeds to explore the impact of such rejection and the ironic intimacy that develops between the narrator and the charismatic, beautiful, doomed Achilles.