Bali Blessings: Day six - Peia sings
by: Jennifer Richardson on
Blessed by the Bali Spirit Festival this weekend and the lovely Peia sings Blessed We Are.
Blessed by the Bali Spirit Festival this weekend and the lovely Peia sings Blessed We Are.
We read because we want to feel what it’s like to be another person and experience another reality. We watch films for the same reason. When a movie or a story is gripping it is because the emotions that we’re seeing on the page or screen are replicated in us.
We’re gunning for the hero to make it across the desert before the enemy tracks him down. We cheer on the heroine as she breaks free from her painful past. We become so involved with their lives that we think about them after we’ve left the cinema or put the book down. Something inside us is touched – and through that we are changed.
In fiction or narrative non-fiction you want to make your lead characters live and breathe on – and off – the page. If you are the main character in your story, the reader needs to feel your highs and lows. You must take the reader by the hand to the scene of the action. At the key points in the narrative, we need to see through your eyes, hear through your ears.
Some people you meet in real life are so unique that you couldn’t have written them better in fiction. This is often true in travel writing. We may go to exotic locations but it’s the individuals who stay with us after the landscape has faded into sepia.This is why I’ve chosen to combine my travel writing retreat in Italy with immersion in traditional village life. Mercatello sul Metauro isn’t on the tourist trail. It’s full of artisans and craftsmen and women who still ply trades dating back to the Renaissance. They are unique and colourful; the older men’s faces are craggy. Exuberant Luisa (pictured here) owns the Donati palace where we will be staying.
How a person looks is one way to bring a character to life. Famously Philip Roth uses only three words of description. Raymond Carver avoids any physical traits to show character. Most writers use a combination of telling details and action.
Here are 8 more techniques you can use to portray character:Don’t you love it when you surprise yourself?
I know I do!
Join me in Italy this August for a special travel writing retreat. Early bird bookings are now being taken for Travel Writing in Mercatello 2014.
See more at: http://clairescobie.com/blog/post/wordstruck-creating-three-dimensional-charactersMy apologies for not posting yesterday, I have just moved into my new house and had no internet.
I'll make up for it now with 2 posts in one on the 'heart' warming, 'house' warming blessing ceremony that took place before I could enter and live in the new home.
This collage of pics is of 2 gorgeous women who took part. I am so blessed!