Encounters of a Soft Kind continue...

CW4

Another day of interaction and I was now quite comfortable in the space created through our interactions on the previous days.

This time we concentrated on techniques like POV. I gave example of a story and using it , indicated what POV was and how shifting POV should be avoided.

We also talked of different genres, there are so many of them, and then each genre has its subgenres as well. I just like to stick to the principal genres , and let the subgenres take care of themselves. For example, speculative fiction has so many subgenres, and when one writes, one will know whether the story is horror, fantasy or hard sci-fi and that should be enough. Otherwise, sections like gothic-horror, steampunk, and so on and so forth can blow your mind. It is something like medical specialization. There are bifurcations and bifurcations, so it is better to stick to some basic railroad tracks.

We discussed what   ‘foreshadowing’  means, and how Chekov had stated that if you mention a gun on the wall in your story then the gun has to become a part of your story later on, otherwise it is a useless inclusion. 

How ‘flashback ‘works  as a technique was also discussed, and most of them understood what flashback was, since movies use a lot of this.

We then focused on our written stories.

 This was a reading out and critiquing of the stories with Gangadhar as the main character, or Ganju i.e. the man in the yellow pants. This was the character we had developed in the earlier class and had had a lot of fun in doing so. Someone had also sketched him out, and had done a good job of it.

The class was interested in reading out their stories more than doing exercises and felt it was helping them in figuring out how things work. 

The stories were different and the language and approach was different, some very good and some okay, but the main thing was that each one had attempted to write a story. 

I distributed the feedback forms and the response was excellent. All of them came up to me and thanked me and said they hoped I was holding more classes. 

This has been a very fulfilling experience for me. I too look forward to more workshops.