The theme for the 2014 Ake book and art festival is
bridge and pathways. Six people registered for the class and only four
attended.
The first section of the class was taken by Ben
Aaronovitch. He is the peter grant/rivers of London urban fantasy series
author. I am proud to say that we were the first set of people he taught about
writing science fiction. Mr Ben has a great sense of humour and we had an informal class were we talked
about Ideas are a science fiction authors main currency, how to test your ideas
and turn them in to stories, writing the book that you want to read, four act
structure, the do’s and don’ts of writing, description and characters. We
talked about plot in films and book and conservation of details. We were
rewarded with glimpse of Ben’s life and we learnt some London slang. At the
end of the section I got an autograph on the rivers of London.
The second session of the class was facilitated by Stella
Duffy. She taught creative writing for 25 years. She is the author of thirteen novels, ten
plays and fifty five short stories. We learnt about the ordinary extraordinary
way to write stories with truths and look for common links to include in our
stories. We did lots of fun exercises that helped us to become better observers
and to break the patterns in our writing. We learnt to test different point of
views, the trickster hero narratives,to use the old wise woman and that
not everything should depend on the hero.
Stella Duffy had a
positive energy that said I’m a happy person. The science fiction master class
taught me to write like myself.
