Some Exercises

I've given up on writing any more Creative Workshop stories, sadly. I knew I wouldn't be able to give it full attention when I signed up, and I'm actually glad that I kept going as long as I did.

But I'm still partially hanging in there, reading the posts, and hoping to come back to them and pay a bit more attention once August is over. And in that vein, I'm going to try some of the exercises that have been posted recently, starting with some thoughts on theme, inspired by this post

I probably have the opposite problems to most people in this regard; rather than difficulty pinning down a theme it's one of the first things I think of. Not necessarily a message - if that exists it comes later - but certainly some central idea. Quite often characters, setting, plot are built up around that theme.

To take an example, I'm going back to the story I wrote a few weeks ago about a woman visiting her former homestay student in Japan. The central theme here is that everyone's playing a role, pretending to be someone else - but it is more subtle and less problematic here than that description might otherwise suggest.

Looking broader, there are certainly some themes I keep returning to (as there are motifs). Finding a home or place to belong is a big one, as is realising a new way of doing something, particularly of fighting for something important.

Moving on now, to this post about real people.

Example: there's a woman who takes my bus, probably in her early to mid twenties, dressed for work. She looks the typical nerd (takes one to know one, I guess); thick rimmed glasses, head always deep in a book. But when we get off (which is where a lot of people change buses) she hangs out with a bunch of college kids, laughing and hugging them. Is she younger than she looks, perhaps been accelerated? Is she making up for lost time? Is one of them a sibling? Are these the only people she feels comfortable with? She seems to be in two world already, so rather than playing fish out of water in a strict sense, I'm imagining what if one of those disappeared? One to come back to.

The last one, this excellent post on turning disappointment into ideas, is not one I'm going to write on right now - my brain is too foggy to tease apart my pet hates (and believe me there are many) but it's definitely one I'm coming back to.