Have to be honest - I'd not heard of them before and caught sight of the 2018 conference details on facebook; I knew the venue (St Martin's conference centre in Leicester city centre), it didn't cost the earth (just over £30 for a day ticket), and I hadn't been to York for two years and I felt in need of some writerly contact. It also included the opportunity to have a 1-2-1 with an agent or a publisher by submitting your work early.
I bet some of you are thinking 'but Squidge isn't aspiring - she's already published.' But I reckon you can always go along to these events and get something out of it, so I booked on.
It was a really good day. There was a variety of panels, talks and workshops from a mixture of authors, agents and publishers, and I would think about fifty people attending.
First decision of the day - what to wear. Which sounds daft, but as I've attended church-related trainings at the centre (it's run by Leicester Diocese and linked to the Cathedral) and experienced the literal highs and lows of the aircon there, I knew I needed to layer up! Felt a bit boring in a grey jumper and black jeans, so I decided it was a sparkly shoe day... (It's also something you learn when you go into schools; wear something distinctive and the kids remember you for it.)
Arrived in brilliant but cold sunshine to sign in and got the Best Conference Badge EVER!
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| Fab badge with *wipes away lone tear* my 'Cloudie notebook... |
My first session was Dramatic Screenwriting for the Younger Audience with Jonathan Wolfman. He went through his top ten tips rather than a complete intro to the craft - I've written a few short scripts in my time, but nothing huge - and lots of them could be applied to novel writing too. And I have to say that, having watched much CBBC with the Squidgelings when they were little, I had a bit of a fangirl moment when I realised Jonathan was the person behind Tracey Beaker's Dumping Ground and Wolfblood! Here's his top ten...
1. Write with your heart. Rewrite with your head. Scripts take as many edits as novels, and they need to breathe, too. Apparently Jonathan knew Tracey Beaker had got where it needed to be when he made himself cry...
2. Everything is a metaphor. But for what? You need to discover the universal within your characters or situations - Children of the New Forest and Tracey Beaker are both essentially about loss of family for example. And that metaphor must resonate intuitively and instinctively with your audience. You could say it's like a theme in a novel.
3. Arcs within arcs within arcs. Each story has an arc, each act has an arc, each scene has an arc...just like in a novel.
4. Don't tread water, turn the story. In other words, keep the action gong!
5. Don't be subtle, be subtextual. Add depth, not obviousness.
6. Create characters within a moral architecture, not role models. Write for entertainment, not education - yes, Tracey Beaker didn't behave well all the time (and Jonathan had had many a discussion with parents who wouldn't let their kids watch the programme because her behaviour wasn't what they wanted to see in their own children) but she was brave and loyal and did things for the right reasons.
7. Make your characters EARN the resolution. How much pressure do you put them under and where are the big moments where they have to make a choice?
8. Don't do set-up scenes. Start within the story. Or - don't info dump!
9. Precinct dramas are the norm in TV. Mainly because nothing to do with children will ever have big money thrown at it, and setting the script in one main setting is cheaper, ultimately, to film than a globe-trotting extravaganza...
10. What to do when you're stuck. Go back to a moment of choice or a turning point and make the complete opposite happen.
The next session was Creative Collage-Making for Writers, with Jenny Alexander. It appealed because it offered the promise of more than just words, and as I'm a creative person in lots of different ways, I thought I'd pop along.
The premise is that as writers, we have two parts - the child and the adult, the playful and serious. The child is the creator, the adult is the one who pulls that creation into a useable form. But all too often in the creative process the 'adult' in us pokes their nose in too soon and stifles the 'child'. Jenny does a lot of work with writers to try to keep the adult out of the way - to allow the child in us to come up with solutions by allowing our subconscious to play. I've done a session like this before, with Shelley Harris at York, but that was all word based. With Jenny, we'd be using pictures.
We started with a question about our current WIP - I wrote 'What's the title of Tilda's first story?', because the working title is too obvious. And then we set that aside and tore text and pictures out of magazines. They just had to appeal to us... I found myself recognising scenes from the WIP in certain pictures, and tore away quite happily. Then we stuck them on a big sheet of paper...
With the finished collages in front of us, we started to write. Just 90 seconds each time, on the following:
1. Describe what you see in your collage.
2. Pick out five striking things.
3. Choose one of them and imagine yourself to be it. Describe yourself.
4. As that same object, write how you feel
5. Now write what you want.
6. And finally, what you fear...
It wasn't an easy thing to do - at stage 5, my adult brain kicked in, and I wrote 'how can I imagine what water wants, except to flow along the path of least resistance back to the sea from which I sprang - to my source? It's a bit ridic...'
But what seemed amazing was that everything linked back to that initial question - an initial conscious intention, a subconscious exercise, reflecting back on the conscious mind and possibly providing an answer. For me, I discovered through this that the Power in the story is central, not a particular person, so perhaps my new title needs to go down that route?
Other collages made by the group gave new insights into characters, or new angles to the stories they were telling, and Jenny shared some of her examples with us too. They were all very personal, unique, and useful. I was so impressed the technique, I bought one of Jenny's books, and will perhaps be trying out a few other exercises the next time I have a burning question on the WIP!
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| The other book's from the cathedral bookshop, and is still writing in a way; it's about writing prayers |
Keeping with the non-wordy theme, I opted for Writing from Images with Pam Smy next. You've probably seen Pam's work without realising it, because she is an illustrator with lots of book covers under her belt - but she is also the author of Thornhill, a mould-breaking illustrated YA novel.
The crux of Pam's talk was that as a creative person, you need to be self-aware and confident, and our lives and experiences shape us until we are a mix of so many things that ultimately blend together to create the work we want to create. Which is something that applies to any creative field, not just writing or drawing. It was fascinating to see how Pam's love of illustration, of particular books, of landscape, of walking, of creating atmosphere, had all gone into the blender and produced this beautiful book. Incidentally, it took 4 years, 165 paintings and lots of hard work to put it all together.
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| Just some of the things that make Pam, Pam and add to her work |
Oh - and remember Jonathan talking about metaphor? Thornhill is about bullying, and if you know where to look, there are hints from the very first picture in the book. (Hint: look for the cat, although he's not the only one)
I had a 1-2-1 over lunch with Ruth Huddleston of Old Barn Books. She was very complimentary about the sample I'd sent ("beautiful opening, great world building, you can certainly write,") but felt that I needed to really hone in on the theme of the book. I think I'm aware of that - just not sure how to find it in retrospect, because I wrote an adventure story ten years ago when I was less experienced and didn't even know you should have a theme... What was also rather lovely is that Ruth said my writing had a bit of a feel of Kiran Millwood Hargreaves (Girl of Ink and Stars), a book I read and enjoyed very much.
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| My view while munching on a tune mayo pannini... |
After lunch, we listened to Anne Fine - yes, Anne Fine! - talk about What I Wish I'd Known From the Start. I have to be honest. I know Anne only through the shelves of the school library; she has written a lot of books, *whispers* but I've never read any of them, a fact that will be remedied ASAP. Now in her seventies, Anne is a lively and entertaining speaker, and lots of what she said would have applied to very many of us in the room. Like - work out how many hours you want to put in, and how many life allows you. Keep track of progress with your book, or it's easy to become disillusioned. Work on a physical copy when editing - it's easy to rearrange bits if you literally cut and paste. There's no one way to write a book - it's a product, not a process. Read your work over and over in lots of moods - that way, it'll appeal to more readers!
She also had some notes of caution, like 'your grandchildren will love anything you do, but not everyone is a writer!' And admitted that nowadays, she would probably not have had the career she has had, because she didn't know how publishing worked back in the day, and nowadays the 'bean counters' seem to have more of a say in what gets published and how authors are promoted than readers.
The last session was You Can't Take the Editor out of the Author... with Non Pratt. Non writes edgy contemporary YA novels, and she described how she became an author via becoming an editor. She writes for 14 year old Non - the Non who wanted to read stories that simply weren't being written at that time, so she wrote them herself.
Now, Non said she wasn't a big planner - she knows the start and the end, and then fills in the middle exciting bits before she links them all together - but her editing is definitely planned! First stage is to Read (no pens allowed), Ruminate and React. Then she makes pace notes for every chapter before preparing a synopsis. The she sets to work, aiming to cut at least 20% from a first draft (aims for 80K...first drafts have been up to 500K!); review the timelines and seasons, reviews each character outline and check that your heart is in the book.
She was a great presenter and I can see exactly why she is such a hit with her teenage audience. She said in a later panel session that YA writing has to involve hope - teenagers will look for hope even in the bleakest of books - and they need to end the book knowing that they have the tools to survive and face life. I admire her for being able to write novels that achieve such a major result for their readers.
And that was it - a short panel session at the end to allow Q&A's to be put to many of the session leaders, and I was back on the bus in my sparkly shoes (one attendee admitted to shoe envy and I had quite a few other comments) and home to mull over everything I'd heard...and to write this blog.
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