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Regular news and insight from our many poets, writers, educators and facilitators

27 January 2025

Posted by Alice Flynn

Inhabitants: Character Creation

Our town is rapidly developing. You can see a list of some of the places and spaces it currently has in the image below.

In our third session online together, the Writing for Page and Stage group focussed on crafting characters. We looked at how, through the use of metaphor and simile, we can describe characters in ways that reveal more information to the reader, whilst still making the reader (or audience member) ‘work’. After all, if we tell the reader everything, it leaves little room for their imagination and engagement in the process.

Participants were asked to think of other ways of describing a man with long, white hair who is running down a road:

His limp spaghetti hair trailed behind him as he huffed and bounced along the street.


Here are some of the other versions created by the group:


‘An old man glides effortlessly down the road, more floating than running: his hair shines in the moonlight like the stars themselves, and I hold my breath in awe, in fear.’

 

‘His heeled leather boots clipped and clopped on the cold concrete like a headmaster trudging the school corridor.’

 

‘Wispy white strands, of varying lengths, flying as he shamefully bows his head, like a mouse scuttling, scared of his own shadow’


After this short warm-up, we co-created a character together. Each of us finished a particular sentence about the character, from the first person perspective, completing statement sentences such as:


I always…

I never…

I regret…

I love…


What sentences would you add to the list? From here, we decided on who this character is, with all the contradictions and idiosyncrasies that arose from the answers. We it was Mr.Magpie/Mags/Magpie/Maggie.


We then wrote about Magpie, weaving in some of the statements indirectly, or simply having them in awareness, letting them influence Magpie’s behaviour or motivation. You can read some of the pieces on our Padlet.


Everyone was invited to create answers to the same statement list for another character from the town and to to keep this on hand during the semester, for inspiration and both character and story development. We don’t have to reveal all the information about a character we create, but it is useful for us to know what insecurities, secrets, strengths and beliefs they have!


So far, we have been around the town, inside some of the buildings and now, we have heard from a few of its inhabitants. Next week, we’ll continue to get to know the locals (and strangers) in Our Town. We hope you’ll join us.

A list of generated locations from the writing session

Writing from the session

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