In the run-up to the Story Elements course, I'm posting a trio of Writing Skills, one a week, to get you exploring the different ingredients that go into story creation: premise • characters • place • time • plot layering • tension & stakes • plot point of view • beginnings • themes & symbols • subplots • detail & dialogue • endings.
This week's Writing Skill is THE PRETENCE, to play with the first four topics of the course: premise, characters, place, and time. You have two characters, each of whom is pretending to be something they're not. They might be pretending they have a different job, status, class, nationality... whatever you fancy. I suggest you choose a different type of thing for each character. And both characters are trying to impress the other. For example, the CEO of a big finance company is pretending to be the janitor, to seem more practical and down to earth, and the new hire is pretending to be French, for reasons I haven't quite yet worked out, but which might emerge in the writing. NB: The reader already knows the truth about both characters, so we know they're lying, and we're giggling away and half eating our hands with the tension.
To start, spend a couple of minutes deciding what each is lying about, being reasonably specific. For example, if they're lying about their job, what's their actual job? What are they pretending is their job?
In choosing their lies, you'll also be generating the setting for the scene (the place and time). For example, with my CEO of a big finance company, I've immediately got a setting of the City of London, a towering glass building, a corporate environment, and I can keep that present day or jump back a bit in time. How about 2009, when bankers were deeply unpopular? That would give my CEO added motivation to hide their real identity!
You don't have to stick to your own lived timeline either: one of the characters could be a pyramid builder, lying about being the pharoah, or indeed the pharoah, lying about being a pyramid builder.
Once you've got your two characters through their lies, and the setting, spend the rest of the time (about 8 mins if you're doing a ten-minuter) writing their interaction. You can stick to dialogue mostly, throwing in action/description where it's relevant, as this is very much first-draft stuff. And play it for laughs!
Why this skill?
This Skill gives you a swift, nifty way in to the first four elements of stories: premise, characters, place, and time. I've given you the premise: two characters lying to each other. That's enough to start you off writing, and how you develop it is what will make it unique. Your characters are created through their lies: an unusual start to character development, but a fun one to loosen up your powers of invention, and it instantly creates character complexity. And those lies in turn give you your setting, your place and time, which immediately makes it easier to start writing and suggests new avenues of story and character possibility – such as my CEO's lie being in the context of the global economic crisis.These four are the first four elements we explore in the Story Elements course, starting at the end of April / start of May, as live online classes OR in person in Oxford, your choice. Read more about the course and heaps of reviews, and book your place here. Bookings close 23 April.
I'll be posting more Writing Skills in the coming two weeks, so if you want them delivered to your inbox, you can also subscribe to the mailing list below / on the side of this post.
