Writers' Circles a repost from the Aether Guild of Writers

Comment by Geoffrey Johns 1 minute ago

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Not strictly speaking Steampunk, so forgive me. Today I awoke full of the joys of what may, if we're lucky, eventually become spring in London (no smirking you Australians). Last night was the Richmond Writers' Circle. Everyone shone and my piece was brilliantly read for me by the lovely Feola, which meant that no one had to suffer my speech impediment. She made it sound so much better than I do. My point being that I strongly advise anyone who can to join a writer's circle, The two I have attended, now in Richmond and earlier in Rozelle, Sydney have been supportive and offered great feedback. James Murray earlier posted 'At least others have heard your work, mine is hiding on the hard drive :)'. Well, I'll bet there is a writers' circle not too far from you, You should give it a try. 

PS Or start one yourself. You'll get to meet some  great people

Richmond Writers' Circle

The day after the Wednesday Richmond Writers' meeting - the high spot of my writing week! One of the main things I get from this is the heightening of my own critical faculties when I am reading to others in this situation. It is quite different even to reading aloud on my own. Also, I am more sensitively attuned to the comments of others. This is the reason why people are generous in the praise and circumspect in their criticism. Both the writers' groups I have attended, in Richmond and in Sydney, have been especially good at this. I suppose that is down to the sort of people who get involved.

Yesterday reinforced what I know already in a way. I have to work more on delineating my characters. Characters and plot are very chicken and egg. The plot partially evolves from well developed characters and characters are developed to serve the plot. And, yes, I can also see some plot problems coming. Actually they are here in what I shall be writing this week.

I shall try to approach things in a way I discovered flicking through a 'how to' book I saw in the Saltaire bookshop. (I wish I had bought it,) First, I shall try and push on to complete a first draft of the story and accept that there are going to be many weaknesses in the result. I am, after all, learning on the job as I go. My first rewrite will be to try and tie up all the plot loose ends and implausibilities. The next will be to sort out the characters. The one after that will be to attune dialogue to the characters. I wish I can remember what comes after that. Never mind perhaps I shall come across the book again.

http://richmondwriterscircle.org/

The story so far - September 2012

I have been meaning to post a synopsis so far for some time. The main reason is that people at the Richmond Writers' Circle who are new, or who ,quite understandably, have not followed the convolutions of plot, often expect me to recount the 'story so far'. To do that would take all my 10 minutes allotted reading time. So I thought I'd put it here, if anyone is interested.

Actually I didn't enjoy writing it. For one thing it was fiddly and detailed. I'm not sure now if I got all covered. Also while at the same time being surprised there was so much of it (I'm about 40,000 words into the story), it was still a bit sad seeing all those words reduced to the bare bones of plot. I might have another go at doing it better in a few months time.

It was a good thing to do, mind. It helped me stand back a bit and see where it was all going. I do know the ending but the bit in the middle is a bit hazy for me.

I put it in the cloud on Google drive. Here:

Gentlemen Rankers - Story So Far - September 2012

Oh and I should point out - obviously this containes spoilers - it goes up to the end of my last RWC reading but in this blog so far I have posted only the first few scenes of Chapter 1 - I shall do one or two more soon.

Also, I am aware that my first rewrite will be one to fix up plot anomalies.  There seem to be quite a few so far. :)

Writers Circle

The Wednesday reading has come and gone. I enjoyed the response from the Richmond Writers' Circle. Mind you they are far too generous and polite to be actually critical. I feel a bit bad about my speech impediment making the reading so bad. Just too many explosive Bs -too many 'bicycles'. Oh well I'try to do better next week. Y is still my fiercest critic and while it annoys me I don't have too many good responses to the things she says and she does seem to read more fiction in a week than I have in several years.