Bridges and Pathways, my 2014 Ake Festival science fiction master class experience.

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.