::mslexia workshops::

The Blank Page #11
a writing workshop with Margaret Wilkinson

THEME: JOURNEYING

INTRODUCTION

I'M NOT the world’s best traveller – but I love the idea of travel. It’s the actual event that always disturbs me – the ear plugs, tickets, support socks, insurance, the extra dental floss, the travel iron, the sweaters and woolly socks I’ll never need. Because I’m a worrier, some of the charm of travel is lost on me. I believe, however, particularly for writers, it’s a beneficial thing.

Travel refreshes and inspires writers. The good news is – if you’re a nervous voyager like me – you don’t have to leave the house to get bright ideas. Just use the following exercises. They focus on journey and place, and are designed to excite you from your armchair. We aren’t actually talking about travel writing here – but using the notion of travel to inspire prose fiction and poetry.

EXERCISES

#1
Take a guided fantasy
The following guided fantasy is constructed to help you slow down and experience, through your imagination, a particular moment in a particular place in time. Recording sensual, physical and emotional reactions to a location can create a strong piece of writing with a feeling of immediacy. In other words, the reader’s made to feel she’s right there.

Find a map of an area which is foreign and exotic, and choose a place name that appeals to you, or one at random. If possible, sit comfortably, with a pen or pencil in your hand, a notebook in your lap, having already arranged for someone with a soothing voice to read these questions aloud to you.

Imagine you are entering the main street, marketplace, wilderness, or home of a native in the place you’ve selected. Respond to the following questions in 1-2 sentences of prose in present tense. Questions 1-11 help you write in-scene, which actually puts you in the place you’re describing, avoiding more distant exposition. Questions 12-16 add conflict, a useful prose technique to move events, description and anecdote into the territory of short story.

1 What is the first thing you see when you enter this place? How does it make you feel?
2 What time of day is it and what does this mean to you?
3 Almost immediately you become aware of a particular object (man-made or natural) in this place. What does it remind you of?
4 What can you see or hear in the distance?
5 You become conscious of a smell. Describe it.
6 There’s something in this place that does not belong. What is it?
7 While looking around, you catch sight of yourself in a mirror or reflective surface. Describe the expression on your face.
8 What are you wearing?
9 Notice something particular, or distinctive, about your shoes.
10 What are you holding in your hands?
11 There is a magazine, newspaper, label, or scrap of paper with writing on it lying at your feet. You bend down to pick it up. Describe what you find.
12 Someone approaches. Who?
13 How do you feel about this person?
14 This person looks at you and makes an aggressive comment. What do they say?
15 Your reply?
16 What happens next?

#2
Travel with a purpose
For prose writers, the idea of a journey is especially important because it is connected to the construction of plot. I think it was Chekhov who noted that getting a couple of characters together, putting them in a troika, sledge or barouche and sending them off on a journey makes plot because it gives the narrative movement and gives the characters motivation – even if it’s only to get to where they’re going. To create drama and urgency, give one of your characters a single compelling reason to reach their destination. Motivation, change, depth of feeling and urgency will turn even the most superficial events, descriptions or anecdotes into short stories.

Using your chosen map, plan a journey from one place name to another for your characters. Write in first or third person. It doesn’t matter if you know nothing about the landscape, customs, climate, language or currency of these places. At this point, knowing little or nothing is an aid to the imagination. Create place from the sound of the place name, or the image brought to mind by the name. Later, if you wish, you can do some research and add reality to your first, innocent, idiosyncratic draft.

#3
Write a list
Lists are almost poems. They create gaps between items and can travel freely in time and space, through real and imagined details.

List all the things you would pack for a journey to one of the map sites.
List all the things you wished you had packed.
List all the places you want to visit on your trip.
List all the places you actually visited.
List the beautiful or squalid things you saw.
List the sounds you heard.
List and describe the photos you took.

#4
Go on a life journey
Using any of the previous exercises as a starting point – write on by imagining falling in love in one of the places noted on your map – being born, getting ill, or even dying there.

#5
Keep in touch
Write a letter or postcard poem home from the place you’ve selected.