This is the blog of the yet to be named Skagerak Middle School creative writing group. The name for the site comes from Ted Hughes' poem The thought-fox. The poem is about the process of writing, and the 'something else' I read as the spark of inspiration or the creative idea. Here's a copy of the poem and an analyis that has some interesting things to say about how and why people write too. This picture I took last winter. It's not a great shot but it reminded me of the lamp-post in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Anyway, here is an exercise we could try.Looking Inside
I got this idea from watching a cop show on TV. Both the cops and the 'baddies' spent a lot of time sitting in cars on the street watching buildings, seeing who came and went and 'scoping out the joint'.
This made me think about how in many ways writers do that too. Observing closely and trying to figure out what's going on inside from what you can see on the outside is pretty important for good writing. A building can be like a metaphor for a character.
Choose a building that you haven't been inside. It could be a house on a suburban street, an office in town, a warehouse, a boatshed... whatever you feel like.
Find a place to sit and watch it. Look for people coming in and out, movement inside, the types of windows, what the
surrounds are like, the colours, the steps up to the door. Spend at least ten minutes, and if you like try to look at it from other angles.
Imagine what it would be like to walk inside. What do you think the interior looks like? What is on the floor.. the walls? Who is inside? How are the rooms arranged?
Free write about the building.
.. take 15-20 minutes to just 'blurt' sentences and phrases.
Read what you have blurted and think about a structure you could put it in. Arrange and edit your blurt into something more organised. It could be a poem, a paragraph or two or a short narrative.
Find a description of a building that you like from a book you have read. From Hogwarts to Wuthering Heights... whatever piece of 'real estate' you think is a particularly well written description. What has the author done that you admire?
Bring along the description you have written and the one that you have found... ready to share them to our next gathering.
Here's something to start you off. This is from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
Most of this novella is set in the Congo, but before the narrator sets off he pays a visit to Brussels, and
this is his description.
"In a very few hours I arrived in a city that always makes me
think of a whited sepulchre. Prejudice no doubt. I had no difficulty in
finding the Company's offices. It was the biggest thing in the town,
and everybody I met was full of it. They were going to run an over-sea
empire, and make no end of coin by trade.
"A narrow and deserted street in deep shadow, high houses, innumerable
windows with venetian blinds, a dead silence, grass sprouting right and
left, immense double doors standing ponderously ajar. I slipped through
one of these cracks, went up a swept and ungarnished staircase, as arid
as a desert, and opened the first door I came to. Two women, one fat and
the other slim, sat on straw-bottomed chairs, knitting black wool. The
slim one got up and walked straight at me--still knitting with downcast
eyes--and only just as I began to think of getting out of her way, as
you would for a somnambulist, stood still, and looked up. Her dress was
as plain as an umbrella-cover, and she turned round without a word and
preceded me into a waiting-room. I gave my name, and looked about. Deal
table in the middle, plain chairs all round the walls, on one end a
large shining map, marked with all the colours of a rainbow."
