WRITING TIPS – NO:  30

STOP THINKING AND START WRITING: 

Every aspiring writer should keep a Journal.  This is where you make notes of any ideas you have for expanding on at a later time.  It is where you record phrases, sayings, scenes, which might be used in something you write.  You can create characters here, build them up as though modeling them from clay, only you will use words. 

You can create plots, weave mysteries, and set locations for stories you will write later.  You might think of descriptive lines for poetry, or come up with an idea for a play, now that you have our notes for that.  If you have recorded something in your Journal, it can’t be lost, and you will later be able to weave your story from what you have recorded.

When that time comes, you will have a collection of fragments.  None of which may look very promising as a story, it may even look hopeless. So what do you do?

1. Brood:  Read your notes a couple of times.  Try not to analyse or to judge them.     Just see what you have.
2. Respond:  How do you feel about what you have written in each of these fragments?  Do some of them surprise you?  Do some of them bore you, embarrass you, exhilarate you?  Do some of them ring true to you and do you recognize in others that you have put on someone else’s voice?  Are there things being concealed behind the writing?  Make quick notes of these reactions as they occur to you.  Don’t try to analyse why, just recognize.
3. Free Associate:  As you re-read, do other images come to you?  Does something here make you think of something else?  Are you finding more details coming to you as you re-read?  Make quick notes of everything that comes to you, regardless of how silly it seems at the time.
4. Cluster:  Can you see a common thread in any of the fragments?  Does one idea recur, or a word being repeated?  Is there a similar mood about any of them?  Are you able to group them into past and present events?  Can they be grouped by feelings – some sad, some angry or funny?  Can you group them by voices – your own or some other voice that might suit a character you create?
5. Write:  Don’t ask yourself ‘how can this be turned into a story?’  Just ask yourself, ‘how can I play around with these ideas?’

WRITING A RADIO PLAY (4)

                 To conclude the notes for writing a radio play, which, by its very nature is a topic that can continue for quite some time, my aim is to give you enough tips to enable you to explore this subject, and then decide whether you wish to take it a step further.  I hope that you will find sufficient information through these tips to inspire you to try your hand at this unique format. 

So moving along...

EXTREMES:  When writing anything, to be successful, you need to explore the extremes of our psychological and physical limits.  To pitch one against the other and see what happens when these extremes come together. 

ATMOSPHERE:   This is the emotional spirit of the play.  The atmosphere will create a believable world in which your characters live.  Atmosphere for a radio play may be as simple as a sound effect or mood music.  What you are trying to achieve is the stimulation of the imagination, emotion and ability to create pictures in their minds around what they are hearing.