The first-person narrator – ‘I’

Dear Monthlies – here is your reminder and clarification of the assignment from the APRIL workshop:

1. Look at the story written in 3 steps from the ‘I’ narrator (the now grown-up childhood pest), and see where it might need work – adding in or editing out etc.

(I also suggested that you might like to try changing it from the first person (‘I’ narrator) to the third person. Just to see the difference, and to notice how the ‘I’ narrator determines the story told.)

Bring two or three copies of your story for feedback to the MAY workshop.

2. If you took someone’s draft story for feedback, send them feedback by the end of the 3rd week of APRIL.

Remember, don’t make a huge critiquing exercise out of this. You simply need to let the writer know how you experienced their story. Again, I recommend you read the story, and then freewrite for about 10 to 15mins about how you experienced it, what you particularly liked about it and what confused you or seemed unclear. You can end with some general comments. Then edit your freewriting into a final email of about 500 words, and send it.

Happy writing….

xx Anne

Shifting point of view – easier said than done – so practise by doing your homework!

Without further ado here are Anne’s homework instructions again.

Dear Monthlies – here is your reminder and clarification of the assignments from the March workshop:

1.  Draft a story from any one or more of the following:

a)   the sentence or ideas from the sentence you wrote from the words starting with 4 letters of your name

b)  the changing Point of View (POV) exercise you wrote in the workshop from the pic of the two people holding some kind of handle

b)  a story from the small pic you took away from the workshop – choose which POV would work best, this can be the changing POV from one character to the other, or you can focus on one character and use just one POV, or even use the detached author POV.

Bring two or three copies of your story for feedback to the April workshop.

2.  If you took someone’s draft story for feedback, send them feedback by the end of the 3rd week of March, say by 25 March.   I recommend you read the story, and then freewrite for about 10 to 15mins about how you experienced it, what you particularly liked about it and what confused you or seemed unclear.  You can end with some general comments.    Then edit your freewriting into a final email of about  500 words, and send it.

Maire has found some great examples of stories which use the shifting POV.  I’ll be sending these out as attachments in the next day or so.

Happy writing….

xx Anne

 

As you saw from a later email, Anne chose to send out only the  ‘The Daughters of the Late Colonel’ by Katherine Mansfield,  in which to use her words, ‘Mansfield shifts us subtly and flawlessly from one daughter’s POV  to the other’.