AUT - James George
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James George
‘Show/Don’t tell’ to get inside the story.
Description – what it is and isn’t. How much detail? What to focus on and why. What to merely suggest. Using linguistic colour to give mood, tone, tension. Using the physical landscape as a voice in the story, to take some of the narrative weight. Handling exposition and background, get vital information onto the page while maintaining a storytelling voice.
Using Metaphor, Symbolism and Subtext
Using objects as emotional and psychological echoes. Inserting a plant. Foreshadowing with nuance. Thematic and hidden metaphors; What we’re saying when we’re not saying it. Dialogue at cross purposes, elliptical dialogue. What remains hidden on the page but haunts us from the margins.
Character Development from the inside out
Getting past biographical sketches. Creating a character piece by piece. Identifying a character from what they hold on to, push away, save from the fire. Putting a hole in your character. Where did it come from? What can they do to fill it? If it can’t be filled, how can they live with it? Projecting psychology outwards. Shading and shadow.Drivers (Needs, guilt, regrets, ghosts.) Staying honest and true to your characters. Matching characters’ complimentary or opposing needs and motivations. Moving characters through psychological and emotional time and place.
Point of View and Voice
More than ‘who’s telling the story.’ How to load and aim your story, by manipulating the various Points of View. (First person, second person, third person (limited, subjective, camera eye), omniscient.) Using point of view to blindside the characters, blindside the reader. How we give ourselves away. Narrative voice (the character’s vernacular voice, the voice of the time/place/world). Includes: angle, tone, mood). When to go ‘wide angle’, when to go to ‘close up.’
Narrative structure and shape
Proportion, inciting moments, development, tension, drama, turning points, managing parallel or interweaving character threads, framing narratives, backstory and flashbacks, when to go into flashback and the most evocative ways to move in and out of them, handling the timing and placement of expositional detail in an overall narrative).
Sophistication
Avoiding amateurisms. Varying sentence structure by mood, tone, emotion. Compressing and stretching time.Rhythm and pace. Where should a scene begin? Transitions. (Switching points of view, timeframes, tense, characters.)
How much is just enough? When to get out of a scene and let the silence after the last full stop speak.