The Cambridge introduction to creative writing
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Harry G. Broadman - Africa\'s Silk Road China and India\'s New Economic Frontier (2007, World Bank Publications) - libgen.li
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- Reading techniques and music
| Writing Game A M AG I CANT HILL This is a group game. Choose to perform in venues that are harsher about the place and purpose of creative writing or create a situation in your real life that becomes such a performance (the more surprising of these appear to be spontaneous but need thorough planning. Take your performance into inner-city schools, or get permission to perform in a prison, amusement park, factory, train, public park or shopping mall. If you wish to create a public performance, then do not seek official permission carryout a performance in a space where people would not expect it, such as an elevator, a public street, on public transport, a science and technology parka sports arena, or the waiting area of a hospital or airport. As a class, create a list of local places in which you will perform and begin writing for permission, or planning your spontaneous performance. A I M In the epigraph to this chapter, Margaret Atwood describes how she first entered the magic anthill – the place where people other than yourself might think you were a writer. Your task is to create such a place for yourselves, and define and extend expectations of creative writing in performance in your area. Reading techniques and music A charm Approach your own event with as much calm seriousness as you can muster. A good reading is like a charm you plan and prepare in order to make the reality of it possess inevitable magic. Sift the work you are going to read and what you might say about it byway of introduction. Like playwrights, you may wish to create a performing version of a work. What is on the page may notwork so well on the ear alone. Intrigue the audience with some anecdote about a work’s composition, but keep your commentary brief or you risk making it sound more interesting than the work itself. The length and language of this explanation should be economical people prefer jokes and anecdotes. Overstate nothing; over-explain nothing. Understate the importance of your work beguile by your restraint. With a novel or book of creative nonfiction, read short excerpts that tug on a reader’s curiosity, or which are playful, relaxing the audience. With poetry, choose poems that resonate strongly with your own speaking voice; there is no need to play safe with simple or humorous work. An audience will rise to your challenge if you offer this as a game. If the language of your poem is 222 Creative writing dense, or its form is part of its pleasure, then consider distributing a copy of this poem to the audience. You will know how long you are expected to read always undercut this time and never exceed it. Understay your welcome. It is always better to leave an audience wanting more than to leave them word-weary. Space The audiences to whom you perform inhabit their own dimensions, and both you and they are affected by the space in which the performance takes place, and by the moment. Make something of this space if you can try to rehearse in it briefly beforehand sit where the audience sits and explore the dynamics of your performance from that perspective before they arrive. If you wish to make use of music or visual display as part of your performance, it is vital this is arranged, setup and tested well before your reading. Does your work really need it, though Keep it simple if you cannot make it professional. Set When you are starting out, rely on having a set, a standard reading that you tailor to fit to different times. If you area poet, it is always much more striking to learn the poems by heart than to read them aloud from a book it makes them seem an everyday part of speech. Having a performing version of your work is useful at first, but dispensing with the prompt of a manuscript or book encourages greater freedom in this new open space. You may wish to play variations on your work, to add or remove words or whole paragraphs or stanzas to suit that time, place and audience, something a popular or jazz musician would do as a matter of course. You might even improvise poems or stories on the spot, freewriting them aloud from prompts solicited from the audience. You could even make the audience do some writing, too. Download 2.89 Mb. Share with your friends:
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