Directing and storyboarding an animation

How does a film director relate to the animator?

In stop motion animation the director and the animator are often the same person in which case it's vital to differentiate between the two roles. 

Director of the animation:

• A clear vision
• oversees the creative process
• casts the characters
• chooses the location of the set
• decides on lighting, camera position
• Directs the characters
• Sets a mood for each scene
• Chooses a shot list

Animator

• creates characters for close-up, mid-shot and long shot, side profile, head-on
• transforms the characters eg in an explosion
• designs animated backgrounds
• creates props 
• develops transitions between shots
• creates contrast between character and background
• offers ways for characters and background to interact

Between them, the director and animator agree on a storyboard. Story telling involves introducing characters which the audience can relate to, setting a challenge for the main character which leads to conflict which reaches some kind of resolution by the end of the film. 

In animation, characters are few and all are generally introduced in the opening frames. This offers the viewer forewarning so they can anticipate what may unfold and part of the fun of watching film is to be surprised at an unexpected turn of events.

Viewers expect a film to refer back to films seen in the past: borrowing, parody, adaptation, and modernisation are central film-making and lead to recognised genres with styles and typical storylines such as gothic, realist and anime.

Once the storyboard is agreed, 

An animatic is helpful in translating the storyboard into an animation. An animatic is a series of clips or stills using the characters which is played out in real time to test for timing and clarity. 

The animatic may be shown to a naive audience in order to judge its effect. Once the animatic is adapted, the shot list is next. This is a list of all the planned shots in the film, which helps in deciding in what order to shoot the scenes. Usually this is completely different to the final sequence as the opening and closing scenes oftren closely resemble each other, with crucial differences. This saves time in building sets and animating the characters. In craft animation there have to be reserve copies of the characters as the process of filming can damage armatures or models. The shot list may indicate essential shots and optional extra shots.  But in practice, some shots work better than others.

Filming throws up all kinds of practical problems. Lack of time, change in lighting, weather and incidental factors may all prevent the non-essential shots being taken. 

So what happens next? 

Directing involves ditching shots which fail to come across and developing new shots which explain the story better. It may be necessary to make new models of central characters and to change the set to reach internal consistency. When the clips are joined together, some scenes may stand out as inconsistent and need to be thoroughly reworked.

Throughout filming, the director is asking: 

How does this shot develop the story? 

In animation this especially involves transformation and transitions which are impossible in live filming. After each day's filming, the question is: what worked best today and how can filming tomorrow take in these lessons?

1984 the stage play: Angst und Zeitgeist

1984 presents a vivid, scary, dystopian view of the present. 

The Party sees, hears and knows everything people do through a system of screens, cameras and paid informers. People willingly submit to this invasion of privacy because of Project Fear: 

the country is at war

 terrorism threatens 

the collapse of civilisation is imminent

  'There is no alternative'  

Michael Billington's review 
The illusion is maintained through constant repetition and sinks into the world view of everyone. Though I found the play melodramatic and the scenes of torture unbearable, it did make me think about the narrative that national governments like to foster.

There is the narrative of Great Britain: the 'golden years' of a benevolent empire founded on profits from slavery and naval aggression. A transient lead in technology has endowed Brits with the illusion of supremacy, hints of which were heard in the run-up to the Brexit vote. 

It's convenient to forget that Britain is sinking into a morass of corruption and inequality; taking its place as a small nation on the edge of Europe.
In a way, our present state resembles the book group who debate Winston Smith's diary: the myths and illusions of our present day Zeitgeist are invisible to us because we all want to believe a cosy narrative.

The British Empire gave a lift-up to nations that hadn't experienced bureaucracy or prejudice on the grounds of sexual orientation. Missionaries civilised primitive peoples and their illegitimate children, rebellions, torture and starvation are not a part of this story.

Popular science: Five clues to common overstatements

Lazy interpretation creeps in when science is popularised.

Here are some clues to help to detect overstatements:

1. "Because" 

any article that uses this word is veering from the truth. We are living through a Crisis of Attribution; that is, we have no secular theory to explain why a follows b, only that they are associated more often that expected by chance. Our theories are not built to answer the question: "Why?" or "How?" only to make predictions and test for associations.
Suggested alternative: avoid altogether

2. "Scientific" 

Scientists are aware of what we don't know which enables them to ask a discriminant question: ie one that can be tested in our present state of knowledge. The adjective 'scientific' conveys nothing more than: 'I want you to believe this.'
Suggested alternative: "doubtful"

3. "Facts"

In the Words of Friedrich Nietsche: "Es gibt keine Tatsachen, nur Interpretationen" 
'There are no facts, only interpretations.' 
Human perception is notoriously susceptible to error, blue sky is grey to some people and my 'blue' is almost certainly completely different to yours.

Suggested alternative: avoid altogether

4. "Proved" and "Validated" when combined with the 'S' word.

Suggested alternative: "suggested"

5. "Brain chemicals" and "Neuroscientists" and "raises the level of"

In science, theories are contested, try finding two 'neuroscientists' from varying fields who agree with each other; the neuro-anatomists barely talk to the neuro-chemists and as for the neuro-electrophysiologists and the brain scanners, they rarely even see each other.

It's a tough life being a populiser of science, though I can't fault Brian Cox, particularly as I don't understand astrophysics.

Natural Mindfulness

What is natural mindfulness? 

I like the phrase: 'Letting nature in'. For me, there is always something which the natural world can show us that is immediately valuable in our lives. Our unconscious is able to present that to us through our mind, body or feelings. But we need somehow to practise stepping back from everyday concerns: regrets about the past or anxiety over the future, in order to be open to this message.

How can a guide facilitate natural mindfulness? 

  [my personal view]

• By slowing down. there's no hurry in mindfulness. There is something about moving slowly through the countryside that renews our connection to the natural world. Way back in time, moving through the landscape was vital to our survival. If we spend too long indoors we miss out on this experience.
• By being in a calm, timely state of mind, body and feelings. Mental, physical and emotional pains can seem overwhelming but on a wintry day in the Cotswold countryside you have to pay attention to where you're putting your feet. But it's more than distraction: it is listening for the underlying message.
• By being curious. Curiosity, asking questions takes us to new learning. It's been said: 'Beginner's mind, Zen mind'. 
• So is a guide an expert? No. The most naive questions that a beginner could ask, such as: 'Why is the sky blue?' experts struggle to answer. A guide is not an expert, he or she is a facilitator, encouraging the conditions for natural insights to come for every person on a walk.
• Do I need to study nature in order to benefit? No. Use your favourite way of 'being in the present' going beyond overthinking, customary body sensations and well-worn emotional paths: meditation, centring, relaxation or creative visualisation and [I believe] you will find that you are more than your mind, body and feelings. Some people call this disidentifying
• Does mindfulness take a lot of effort? If you discover that this state of mind is useful, your unconscious will practise it often and enable you to use it when you need it most.
• Is it like a nature walk? It's what you make it. Maybe a wilderness experience is part of it, maybe noticing the particular season, time of day and seeing, hearing or feeling something special to that particular time and place.

The final week, access all areas

With only six days of November left, it's time to try out all strategies in order to finish the editing this month. 

These are the strategies I'm using [perhaps you have better ones]

Set goals: 

dividing my remaining task into five with 30 pages to go; that's six pages a day. On good days I'll try to exceed that.

Keep the journal: 

I [sometimes] write in my journal before going to sleep. it reminds me which scene I've been working on and shows me how far I've come in the last week. I need to see how close I come each day to my goal; the end is practically in sight.

Book train journeys

Make sure you have the hard copy or laptop to edit on the way. I have a two hour journey planned tomorrow. Trains are great for creating the illusion that there's no escaping the task. Journey times flash by when you're revising. I have another journey on the final day of the month so [if it's not overcrowded for Christmas] I can binge edit and hopefully reach the final page.

Stay away. 

Often a hotel can have the same effect as a journey, giving me nothing to do but write. I'm staying away for two nights this week. I think of it as a writing retreat. At this stage I need to trick myself with strategies like this.

Be kind to yourself. 

Obstacles often rear up at the last moment and we can't ignore the needs of work, familes and friends. This month I've had a domestic emergency: leaking pipe, workshop duties, busy weekends everything to disrupt my intent to finish editing the novel this month. It's 45,000 words long so it's not as long as some adult novels; it should be easy, no?

Bake.

It may be counterintuitive but baking helps me write because each time my dough is proving I have time to revise a few more lines of the book. The smell of baking raises my mood.Also writing increases my appetite and I have no time to shop for food.

More suggestions invited...

Dealing with hold-ups during editing

In writers' workshops, I've always found it confusing when writers offer alternative readings for a paragraph or announce that sections in their manuscript are 'to be arranged'. 

How can you comment on two versions at once? 

Now I find myself doing something similar when coming across a problematic chapter. By which I mean a section that diverts from the main plot, is intended as humour but is a bit too knowing or even irrelevant. 

I can't simply cut it out because I need a pause, a change of scene, a change of pace or I want to create tension and delay a reveal. Scenes like this arise because I have two alternating voices in two locations, one first person and the other third person, it's not a simple thing that I can fix in one session.

I'm at risk of losing steam in the three-pages-a-day edit that will see me reach the end by the end of the month. I worry that if I slow down and fix small rpoblems I'll 'loose the plot' ie miss out on the narrative trajectory.

Why don't I just fix that chapter? I need to see the manuscript as a whole. I need to get back to the narrative voice that I recognise. I'll decide later how the problem can be fixed. 
If I linger too long I run the risk of losing momentum and compounding the problem which is relatively small in comparison with the task of creative continuity witrh a consisten voice.
So what's the solution?
I've decided to change the font colour so I know that that section needs to be revised when I read through it next time. Anyone got any other suggestions?

Researching a novel setting, using maps, editing and keeping going

Prompts that help me edit

I've always been fascinated to see writers' scrapbooks and research notes. Because I'm writing about a remote historical time, research is vital to imagine how people lived

 Maps help me track the route characters need to take to get around the village. I have an outline of the key buildings, the river, the valley and the forest. I can see where the sun will be shining in the morning. 

I'm doing a line edit at the moment but it still helps to remember the context and to remember the feelings I had when I envisaged the landscape.

My book is set in the Neolithic period, or new stone age so I check through the images I have of stone age artefacts which play a big part in the story. 

Cave sculptures like this amazingly life-like creation remind me of the artistic creativity of the people and their relationship to animals. 

Totem animals may have had a spiritual significance, animals played a huge part in people's lives.

This photo reminds me of visits to neolithic sites. This stone circle in County Cork is close to a stone house that still has stone beds and and a stone sink. 

A lot of my research was from illustrated books and archaeological digs. I copied the drawings that might be significant to the story. Whenever I spent time in a library or a museum I always did some free writing about what I had seen that day. I feel this helped me internalise my learning and imagine how people felt when they wore these clothes and lived in these houses.

These are the things that help me keep going.

I have more suggestions on novel editing to come...

Truly creative writing, attribution and mindfulness

There are many books for writers that are designed to inspire you to write and to write well. 

For me, the best books are the ones that you have to put down because you feel: "I have to write now; it can't wait"

Writers often offer insights into their inspirations at literary festivals but the best advice I ever received was from Julia Green , children's writer and tutor at Bath Spa University. 

It has stayed with me and I often return to those five words:

"Get close to your character"

Whenever my writing diverts off into my own thoughts and favourite places or when I feel it's not resonating it's because I've lost that inkling of my character's feelings and thoughts. 

This is particularly likely to happen when I write in the third person. "She" feels a long way away and I need to remind myself that a novel perpetuates an untruth that we all act for a reason.

In real life I believe our actions and mediated by all kinds of random events to do with brain and body chemistry, day of the week and unplanned accidents.  Perhaps that's what a post-modern novel is designed to convey but it makes for heavy reading.

We live at the the Age of the 'Crisis of Attribution'; for most of us, natural disasters are not 'Acts of God' as they were in medieval times but random events which challenge a belief in a plan or an organising consciousness. 
In my best moments I believe in a spiritual realm but mostly I bumble along like everyone else, beset by regrets and ruminations.
In novels, A follows B which causes C in a believable and inevitable consequence of a character's actions. 
The challenge for the writer is to simulate free choice; to persuade readers that decisions and actions have consequences. It is conventional for puzzles to be solved, for evil doers to suffer consequences except in the case of lovable rogues and antiheroes. 
There's a great hunger for uplifting stories to be true and it's so strong that Governments employ storytellers to explain away setbacks and ugly inconveniences.
So my conclusion is to 'be in the zone' I need to become mindful and to imagine each of my characters is meeting the consequences of his or her actions.

Happy Endings in Children's Books

Happy Endings used to be vital in children's books. 

Not so with the recent trend for 'terminal teens' as seen in titles such as Jenny Downham's Before I die, John Green's The Fault in Our Stars and most recently in Sarah Benwell's The Last Leaves Falling. 

Perhaps these books reflect a post-modern rejection of moral tales and a willingness to tackle subjects specifically excluded in earlier guides for writers. They certainly tap into strong emotional events and enquiries about what lies beyond. Mainly, I think, the writers encourage us to live honest lives knowing that injury or disease can strike people of all ages without warning.

As a doctor, I'm glad that chronic disease in childhood, learning needs [Sarah Hammond's The Night Sky in my Head] are represented implying a more inclusive society. Since it's my blog, I can mention my own title: Speak to Me: Mute, witty and dangerous, which seeks to explore the teenage experience of advanced cerebral palsy.

All these titles challenge the overriding perception of a fit society in which 'fitness' is equated to both 'sexually attractive' and 'deserving'. The experience of people outside the presumed majority urgently needs to be explored in an age of hate crime of outsiders: those with disability, different gender, orientation or race. 

Despite advances in treatment, living with chronic illness is an experience of a minority of young people, their friends and their families. Arthritis, Down's Syndrome, autism, hemiplegia, cystic fibrosis, diabetes, heart disease all deserve to be represented here. 

What young people seek is not pity or charity but a recognition that their lives are as eventful and precious as any of the celebrities of whom we hear so much.

The Art of Being Normal by Lisa Williamson

I love the title which alludes to Jeanette Winterson's book: ".. when you could be normal" It's well researched with a heart-warming final scene, Trans deserves to be written about. Lisa portrays some of the anger, confusion and bullying in and around people who question their gender. So why do I feel let down? Alternating first person narrators are great for a YA romance [see Ann Turnbull's No Shame no Fear]but when both voices [spoiler alert] are transgender it can create confusion especially if one voice, Kate's, is less convincing. Secondly, the plot shifted between locating absent Dad and coming out. Some scenes were written to 'create a realist feel' rather than advancing the plot. There's a big difference between M2F and F2M transition; Kate and Leo's experiences differ enormously. This difference is borne out in a recent autobiography of transition: Professor Maxim Februari's The Making of a Man: Notes on Transsexuality. Maxim explains the effects he has noted while taking testosterone which has a gradual effect on emotions and strength.

Kate keeps a log of her male puberty changes and as she says: 'time is running out' while Leo can effectively pass as male. Overall I thoroughly recommend the book, Lisa Williamson is a talent to look out for and I hope to see more inclusive stories like this.

The secret of Wicked's success

The Musical 'Wicked' is a massive transatlantic success. 

What's the secret of Wicked's success?

1. Wicked champions the outsider, Elphaba is picked on for her colour and refusal to conform. We see many redeeming qualities in Elphaba: she sticks up for her teacher when he loses his voice and he falls into disrepute because he's not human. Opening scenes often feature arrival at school or college but Wicked pulls it off with humour, poking fun at the apparently sincere good witch, Glinda. But later on, the wicked witch Elphaba releases flying monkeys which cause havoc.

2. Wicked has style: strong female leads, an emerald and black colour scheme, brilliant lighting and stage effects  clocks to rival Harry Potter and Philip Pullman's Dark Materials and a cross between Victorian steampunk and 1930's American costumes. There are enjoyable touches of irony and parody. The Wizard sings a song in 1920's style reminiscent of King Herod's song in Jesus Christ Superstar 'Try it and See'.

3. It even begins with a disabled character, NessaRose whose relationship with her sister Elphaba promises an emotionally intelligent sub-plot

For all its style and popularity, the plot chunters off into nowhere land with arrests, escapes, re-arrests. The most glaring travesty of Elphaba's feisty nature comes in a stick fight with Glinda over Fiyero, the self-confessed shallow male lead.

Sadly Tessa Rose is portrayed as a mistake resulting from her parents' desire to avoid having a second daughter like Elphaba. "She's my fault," says Elphaba. The disabled sister and daughter is a millstone for all to carry. [as in Sleepovers by Jacqueline Wilson] Thus reinforcing widespread perceptions.

In one powerful scene, Tessa is cured by Elphaba's spell and stands for the first time. It must be hard for anyone in a wheelchair to witness this escapist denial of the meaning of chronic illness which harks back to sanitised fairy tales. 

Tessa Rose's fate is sealed off-stage when she is later crushed by a falling windmill and we are left to imagine that her recovery may have been temporary so she was unable to get out of the way in a sudden malevolently stirred-up storm.

The victory of style over contemporary resonance is complete.

How to keep readers reading

Best advice for novel writers: READ MORE

It's vital that writers to understand the conventions that readers are familiar with, in order to avoid cliche or worse: incoherence. 

Breaking the rules invites ambiguity

So what are the rules about keeping readers motivated to read on?

Plot comes first. However convoluted the plot, it can fit into one sentence. 
Tell your friends no more than that one sentence and remind yourself of it every day.
Keeping the plot sentence in mind helps writers write a continuous story and also helps agents and readers decide whether to buy. Knowing the plot keeps you away from sub-plots and irrelevant episodes.

Beware any changes in plot after your first draft; every change will have consequences on each page which will be tiresome to correct. By all means change the characters' names, gender, dialogue as much as you like but plot is sacred from the start.
Plot provides the motivation for your main character and it changes in a special way through the story. and yes, keep to one main charcater and maintain their point of view throughout.
[established writers ignore this but for first novels a rambling point of view puts people off] 

So what is a plot?

Stories open with stasis: the kingdom is in neglect, doom-laden, or everything seems fine but the king is ageing, rumours of dragons abound. Whether you start with action or dialogue, your novel informs the reader of the characters, the place and time and underlying this: the genre [thriller, mystery, horror, historical, romance] Concentrate on your favourite examples of your favourite genre and you will have a repertoire of clever plot twists. 
You can introduce the rules of your fictional world through action, narration or dialogue. If there is magic or paranormal events they are bound by certain rules such as: having a wand made of a particular wood, or having telepathy only with those you love.
Then comes the trigger, the call to action for our hero or heroine. A significant event brings the character to life [eg a beautiful princess is entranced and sleeps for a hundred years]
Ther character sets out on a quest. The object of his quest is often a symbol rather than anything especially valuable. Readers are asked to suspend disbelief, the wrtiter and the character believe that only this one object will bring happiness, relief, safety or survival.
Surprises happen. 
A good writer constantly reaffirms and contradicts readers' expectations. Stories that are entirely predicatable are boring so plan a surprise for every chapter ending. A surprise is an unexpected plausible obstacle or help to the character's quest. She meets antagonists and protagonists, a wise woman or a cruel tyrant.
Then she is faced with a critical choice which demonstartes free will. Things could go either way. She decides to follow a path which is fraught with danger.
This leads to the climax in which she confronts her greatest adversary: time, dragons, a torturer or an arranged marriage and a tense conflict plays out resulting in a reversal: now the character has changed in some way, become more resourceful or lost the battle and accepts defeat. Finally we have the resolution: the new stasis in which the world of the novel is altered following the climax.
So what has kept the reader turning each page?

Surprises and rising stakes. As the story proceeds the character rsks more and more until she stakes her whole life on the outcome. 

I haven't made these rules up, if they sound dogmatic, they can be traced in most films and books and talked about in plot advice to authors since the time of the Greeks. 

In my view, plot awareness is the author's best friend.

Bringing characters to life

one minute 2D stopmotion video tutorial 

There are some excellent sites which show how animation is done:
Michael Parks' stop motion walks

The 12 rules of animation

Here I'm sharing my experiences in making 2D figures using cut-out foam shapes sewn together with cotton. I've let the materials decide the colours and shapes and this can cause problems later. In 2D I don't need to balance the character but they do need walk somehow, which may be complicated for my dancer in this one-minute video tutorial:

I've chosen pastel shades for the dancer's dress which will distinguish her from the other characters who will be in different shades of grey.
  I've decided to stand the characters on a cobbled pavement which will take up the bottom third of the screen, though I am experimenting with a silhouetted background of audience heads.
Follow further one-minute tutorials on walking and green screening to see how the film develops.

The point of Close ups in stop motion films

Close ups have several functions in film. 

A one minute video tutorial:

close-ups blog post
Obviously they convey detail but more importantly they can show a character's emotions more effectively than a long shot which relies on gesture. A close up can imply an unseen observer. A close up may feel intimate or scary depending on how it is used
camera angles 
Extreme close ups and unusal angles can create surprise.
reasons for extreme close ups
A close up may help in continuity by coming between long shots that would otherwise seem jerky due to a change in perspective or angle.

For these reasons, I think it's important to duplicate a character's face on a large scale in a stop/start animation. In this video, I demonstrate how you can do this to simulate the use of close ups in cinema films. 
My characters are made from foam cut to shape and sewn together. The shapes are derived from photographs using a light box, as you can see in this one minute tutorial:

Tolkien on Fairy Tales III

By surrounding Alice in a dream, Lewis Carroll breaks the rules of Fairy Tales

Fairy tales are  presented as true stories. Wind in the Willows maintains the reality of talking animals throughout the book. Fairy tales, Tolkien argues, gained their popularity because they dealt with important issues.

Scientific facts are important and Nature is fascinating but people have always been interested in more capricious themes like communing with other beings. Written and read works are best suited to fantasy because each reader and listener can call on their own memories and images. This is not so easily possible in illustrations, stage plays and films.

Sound evolutionary arguments link us with plants and animals, so it seems natural that in fairy tales people communicate with  other forms of life. [After all 4% of our genes are derived from viruses] 

People have always known that animals are different but they have also longed to 'get inside the skin' of living things, to lift the 'sense of separation'.

Fairy tales do not end. 

'Happily ever after' is as artificial as the frame of a picture. Alternatives are: 'if they have not gone away they are there still,' the boundaries of the enchanted forest needs ambiguity, it shades out at the edges.'Once upon a time' evokes the timeless sense of fairy tales, but the characters must be named or the author will be accused of carelessness.

Tolkien on Fairy Tales

What's special about Fairy Tales?

Professor JRR Tolkien writes in 'Tree and Leaf':

 Fairy Tales are not moral tales [Bunyan] or animal fables [Aesop] or dreams [Alice] or travellers' tales or allegories [Orwell] or satires [Swift] They have an ancient origin with elements of the 

• mystical [supernatural like religion] 
• magical [through observation of Nature] and 
• a mirror [reflecting the nature of human beings]

Fairy tales often explore what is prohibited; what is behind the locked door? Forbidden love, for instance.A spell is both a story told and a charm with power over people.Fairy tales are not simple yarns that appeal to children, in fact not all children enjoy them. 

Fairy Tales can be a literary genre which explores the depths of space and time, the ability to communicate with other living beings, They are presented and read as 'true'.

 Andrew Lang, a collector and writer of Fairy Tales says they require:

'a willing suspension of disbelief'

Tolkien disagrees, 

  He states that the best Fairy Tales enchant,that is they create a secondary world, with its own rules that draws the reader in.

S a new book looking like a library book

Books that weren't meant to be read.

A new book that appears to be a library book with annotations on it.

It's a piece of dissembling but could it be a trend?

S  reviewed by Mark Lawson in the Guardian here

Maybe this is a reaction to the ebook revolution, which has done away with the hard copy of a book and created a double for practically any book you can buy and hold.People have said that the packaging of books will become more startling as a response to all this cyber-reality.

Mark Lawson refers to AS Bayatt's Possession, for which the author made up poetry that purports to have been written by a poet who is being researched by one of the characters.  
What other documents could be released which are ambiguous about their origins?

• A book marked TOP SECRET that appears to have been smuggled out of GCHQ.  Perhaps we have that already.
• A coach's notes on every member of a cricket team with strategies about how to exploit the weaknesses of each player [of interest to enthusiasts, probably sadistic]
• A book of texts, [yes, it's been done]

Laurence Stern's Tristram Shandy is perhaps the best example of this genre, a rambling comic novel which reveals much while interrupting itself repeatedly and dispensing almost entirely with plot.

     Feigned invitations and letters are an regular part of the realist novel and are used in  Gothic novels to set the scene before wandering off into more fantastical realms.  Mary Shelley employs this technique,  switching between narrators: the creature, Dr Frankenstein and a sea captain.

   There is a whole genre of epistolic novels which include non fiction titles such as Priscilla Wakefield's An Introduction to Botany from the 1830's in which Felicia guides her sister through the orders of plants in a series of letters.  A modern equivalent is Lionel Shriver's We need to talk about Kevin which is constructed entirely of fictitious letters.

    It all goes to show that dissimulation is at the centre of the writer's art.

Children's writers- advice from an editor

1/5 books make 4/5 of the profit for publishers.  The FInkler Question won the Man Booker in 2010 and had the biggest boost ever: 200,000 books; meanwhile Jordan's biography sold 300,000 in 6 weeks.  Big successes fund the many failures.  

Mills and Boon are the most successful publishers, they sell 130m books a year.  Their success is based on  a promise to readers. An attractive young woman will meet a dashing virile man.  Every genre promises its readers something, eg Beast Quest.

What a story needs:

1. A good concept, well written.  The concept is more important than the writing.  If the concept can be summarised in five sentences it's high concept and that's your elevator pitch.
2. Practice summarising your book in 5 sentences max.
3. "But" is a useful word:  "Like Stephanie Meyer but with more heart."
4. A strong main character, male for young boys, female for teen novels.  Strong means aspirational, honest, cool, slightly older than the intended readers.
5. Younger boys prefer books about external conflict [eg dealing with monsters] which are usually written in the 3rd person
6. Girls prefer internal conflicts, written in the first person.
7. The inciting incident occurs in the first chapter.  Don't worry if it's confusing, readers can read on to find out what's happening.
8. Write short chapters [eg 200 words] and finish each one with a cliffhanger.
9. Word count: 5-7 4-8,000   8-10 8-10,000 10-13 10-50,000 13+ 30-80,000 words picture books, under 500 words.
10. Always have more ideas in outline form.

With Thanks to Lil Chase.

How sad and other mistaken assumptions

My aim as an animator is to make models of disabled characters to challenge the assumptions people have about disabled people. 

 If I put a female character in a wheelchair people ask, 

"Will she be wearing a bandage?"

No, she's not ill.  

"A girl in a wheelchair, how sad."  

No, it's not sad, it's everyday life for a lot of people.

I'm searching for the right materials and a suitable setting, experimenting with 2D and 3D images.  I'm attempting realism, meaning contemporary, everyday settings.  People say: 

"Doesn't a wheelchair have giant back wheels?" 

No, look around you, they don't.

More to follow, with moving images.

Free lesson plan: writing a love poem

LESSON PLAN: WRiting a love poem

for aspiring adult writers and teenagers, exploring romance and commitment through poetry.

Could be adapted for younger age groups

	Groups, timing	content	A/V aids
Introduction	5 minutes	In this hour we will 1. Read two poems 2. Discuss their meaning 3. Write a few lines 4. Share a little	Aims projected overhead
First poem	2 minutes	Wedding by Alice Oswald	Handout: Wedding
Impressions	5 minutes	What strikes you first of all?
Rereading	In pairs, 5 minutes	Read the poem to a partner and talk about its meaning.
Deeper thoughts	silently, 5 minutes	It's quite an intimate poem, write down some ideas; what does the poem evoke for you?	Paper and pens
Second poem	2 minutes	If I could tell you by WH Auden	Handout: If I could tell you
Impressions	5 minutes	Seek to include people who haven't spoken up.
Rereading.	In pairs, 5 minutes	Read the poem to a partner and talk about its meaning.
Writing	silently, 10 minutes	Write creatively borrowing an idea or a rhythm from the poems.
Sharing	10 minutes	Talk about what you've learnt or read your writing aloud
Feedback	5 minutes	Comments on today's task
Summary	1 minute	Well done, today we've done some creative thinking and writing.

Handout, page set-up: landscape, two columns cut to A5 size

If I Could Tell You

Time will say nothing but I told you so
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be sold, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose the lions all get up and go,
And the brooks and soldiers run away;
Will Time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know. 

WH Auden

Wedding

From time to time our love is like a sail
and when the sail begins to alternate
from tack to tack, it's like a swallowtail
and when the swallow flies it's like a coat;
and if the coat is yours, it has a tear
like a wide mouth and when the mouth begins
to draw the wind, it's like a trumpeter
and when the trumpet blows, it blows like millions . . .
and this, my love, when millions come and go
beyond the need of us, is like a trick;
and when the trick begins, it's like a toe
tip-toeing on a rope, which is like luck;
and when the luck begins, it's like a wedding,
which is like love, which is like everything.

 Alice Oswald