Writers' Courses

Ceri and Rick are participants on the current Writers Course, run by Sherman Cymru and tutored by Alan Harris.

Read Rick's English and Ceri's Welsh blogs...

Week 1 - The W word....

I’m in a room last used under the Ceaucescu regime by agents of the Romanian Rugby Football Union during interrogation of Dai Young. At the Sherman. It’s homely and warm, with barred windows.

I’m first here, despite the haul in from Pembrokeshire. A gentle welcome from Alan - mentor-in-chief, lovely, short skin’ead - and then the writerly mob; seven gals, three blokes. And, with that ole chestnut - pairing off, friendly probing, introducing our new oppo’s - we’re off. Successfully. For me it’s Sara, the actress, stretching the possibilities, wondering if she is a W (Too). I can tell she is, (I know these things) so I slobber love and encouragement all over her, sincerely. Thus, we have ignition. For W-ing.

Here too are Mitra (Iran), Steph (Ireland) and Marged and... most of Canton. Unsurprisingly, it turns out I’m the one who gives away too much, but as a group we quickly shape up to be generous, funny, supportive. So it’s therapy without the (financial) expenditure. We exercise our emerging W in a minor stream-of-consciousness exercise, which is fine, and as with everything it’s suggested by Alan in a skilfully light, unthreatening kindofaway.  And we choose phrases we like. And we go for a silent walk, returning to W 20-word plays arising from the experience. And after, not one of us says “Ommmm” man, honest.

Instead this and the conversational appreciation of a particular, adversarial play is undertaken warmly, seriously, generously. As is the final exercise – she writes ten words I write nine, she writes eight, I write seven, etc. No consulting. In ‘ours’ we meet, in the chippy, for a blind date which crashes inevitably when she fails the Coen Bros test. I mean dude, how can you not know “The Big Lebowski?” Call yourself a W?!?

Week 2 - What happens?  Connections. 

Exactly how mad is it that I pulled a pint or two for (fellow apprentice W) Actor Phil in a Pembrokeshire bar twenty something years ago? And that Mitra’s fellah is currently filming something about gypsies in Narberth – 4 foot 2 from where my missus is teaching yoga, today, and where I would be dutifully waiting if I wasn’t here, jaw akimbo. But I digress...Characters! Ask 20 judicious questions and root them or risk the wrath – risk everything.  Truth, integrity, believability, audience drift, loss of Scriptslam, slow death by disinterest. 

Who are these people, your characters? Know them and then write them, lest the Bums On Seats twitch distractedly at your brilliant, idle fantasy. Hack 20 memories per character into the stone tablet, the backstory: make these people inviolable and then let them fly. 

It’s a challenge for those of us who fear the prosaic, but authoritative opinion seems massed on their side. Goddamit. So know your characters.

Week 3

So if it’s week three...it must be...Dialogue. Good and bad; slack and taut; hilarious (over) exposition. But we start, as ever, with a 3 minute clear-out; verbal stroke literal colonic. Anything in the system –out! Then briefly examine the er... stool. And discuss, returning to what makes good dialogue. 

Easy; it’s people being true; talking. Beyond that, avoid exposition - don’t let Mum say daft stuff to Daughter which Daughter already knows. Because Mum wouldn’t. Know your characters, know what they want at every breath. And thus make it live. 

So do an exercise where one of your two characters wants something but may not ask directly, and the other doesn’t want to give. Mmmm, that tension feels good.

Lastly mentor Alan sparks up a contest between us. Who can load up an individual scene to The Max with breathtakingly unnecessary factual expo-cobblers? Aled wins, hands down, with a spectacular but unnervingly familiar torrent. We fall about at the surreal magnificence of it all, whilst secretly wondering “ Do I write like this, ever?”. But now, of course, courtesy A R Harris and Sherman Multinational Inc., we don’t.

Week 4

Well blow me down with a quill, it’s week 4. Penultimate painterly dabbling; probing wee exercises. Change; forward movement and again, unavoidably, character.

The customary warm-up, with 3 mins free-wheeling. Perhaps keying in to inspired memory or unborn meistersomething. Perhaps well... doodling.

Then sharpening, necessarily, to cope with meaningful contemplation of Scene Z, which does very little...but moves forward. And we ask ourselves – Did this work? Why and how? And look... how little seems necessary. But something changed - the quality of a relationship – or our awareness of that small newness.

So write again, twenty minutes maybe(?) and reveal a simple scenario: two characters and a place. Briefly describe and then introduce an object and maybe some dialogue. Anything. And then the object goes. And don’t worry – you don’t have to read this out.

But sometimes we do and that’s fine, actually. Because we really are kindof sharing and people really are giving off this soulbro’ or sisterly goodwill at inevitably and interestingly different pitches. Some (well, me) foaming whilst others keep it all in. The clever ones.

Week 5

Wave goodbye to the w’s blog. 

So that stuff about suffering for your art... that would be this then – an epic return from the metropolis to sleeping Pembrokeshire, courtesy train problem train problem bus train minibus. And a long stop in Llanelli – right here, right now 0.20 am. And a “Night Cafe in Arles” kindof feeling.

But the course, the course has been well... great. Challenging enough and fun enough and - bless its heart - even life-affirming. Honest. Not self-congratulatory or masturbatory or flawed by too many politenesses or moments whistling with reticence. Folks were generous – all of us – and the multifarious writerly notions were typically shared well and prompted well by mentor Alan. 

Tonight we did structure, and particularly endings. Whether to resolve, whether there are rules? Endings that have struck us – good and bad. And an exercise or two that said look very hard at every move/ every scene/ every implication. And are they necessary and are they true? To the characters, to this story? And will, therefore, the folks who come to this unknowing, want to know – feel connected? And if they do...you’ve finished...so start again...and write it better.

Thank you Alan, thank you Sian, thank you Sherman. The w has landed.