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03 October 2023

Identity

This week’s session of Mayflower Creative Writers, ahead of our trip next week to Sizwe Banzi is Dead, was about Identity.


To start us off, we chose a well-known character from a book / TV show but did not reveal them to the group, instead writing a ‘true description’ of them (as if we were being first introduced) without revealing their name or gender - to see if anyone could guess who we’d chosen.


Answers (and descriptions) included:

  • Spongebob Squarepants (“bright-eyed, buck-toothed, and highly annoying”)
  • Count Dracula (“at night, they are free to fly, bat-formed, on the lookout for blood”)
  • Elle Woods (“she wears her heart on her sleeve, as seen in this month’s Vogue”)


Using the character we chose, we then wrote down:

  • What they want
  • The main location of their story
  • Their main 2 relationships


Other characters included Poirot, and Piggy (Lord of the Flies).


Next, we did a 7 minute freewrite about the character in third person, introducing these details.


With this fleshed out, and our character vivid in our mind, we now wrote down the opposite of:

  • What they want
  • The main location of their story
  • Their main 2 relationships (the least likely people for them to get on with)


Our task was to present this opposite version of the character in a 7 minute freewrite.


Poirot was now a murderer, Dracula needed marriage counseling, and Elle Woods was enforcing systematic oppression.


We gave our new opposite character a name.


Finally, we chose one of many blank envelopes Holly had brought in. Inside each was a piece of card with a prompt such as ‘beneath the surface’ or ‘a ripple in the water’. On it, we wrote a letter from our newly named character to somebody in their world, inspired by the prompt, but left it unaddressed*.


*To be continued… Mayflower Creative Writers returns next week.

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