Thanks

Sorry, Gary, didn't get time to do the homework again this week, but hope to see you all tonight.  I would just like to echo some of the sentiments expressed recently on the blog: thanks to Gary for all your help and advice, and to the other writers in the group who have been so supportive and have made it such a worthwhile and enjoyable course.

Best wishes
Julie

Ending

Ellen had gone. She had left Carrie sitting on a bench at the edge of the park as dusk came. Carrie reflected on her mother's final words to her before she left.

' I thought you were the worst thing that could have happened to me. You were the best thing in my life.'  

Carrie sighed. Oh how easily she could have said the same thing back to Ellen.

Absent mindedly, she fingered the tiny gold apple that hung round her neck. It was a promise from Josh that one day she would see the big one with him. New York. He had given it to her the day he left the apartment. He  would, she knew, come back . Meanwhile as she watched the shadows creep slowly over the carpet of grass, enveloping the neat flower beds, and the nodding tulips hanging their heads for the night, she realised with a relief that overwhelmed her, that the birds had ceased their relentless chirping.

___________________________________________________________________---

I had already written this ending as I know where I am going with this novel. I feel very positive about it, So what if it spends the rest of it's life stored on my hard drive. - At least I can say I wrote one!!

( best copy it onto a memory stick though----just to be safe!)

Thank you Gary. When I look back over this year I am very proud of what we have all achieved in this group. You are a great tutor! ...... .and what a great bunch of fellow authors I have had the privilege of meeting each Thursday evening. 

Peter--Endings

The icebreaker churned its way through the pack ice that lay scattered all about like bits and pieces of shattered white plates.   On the bridge of the ship a small knot of visitors, wrapped up in colourful windproofs and woolly hats, faces partially hidden in sunglasses, were looking and listening to the lecturer.

“Bouvetoya Channel” the lecturer Gary said, arms apart, indicating the islands and icebergs on both sides.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” said Hilary, staring leeward where lay a string of snow-covered islands, whose mountains went plunging into the sea.

“Isn’t that Howlett’s Island?” asked Sandra, rubbing her hands.

“Yes!” said the lecturer in surprise.  “How did you know?”

“Because that’s Mount Cerebus!” exclaimed Julie

They all turned.  Smoke from the dominating volcano that lay at the centre of a grim range was curling up into the peerless blue sky.  Suddenly, they were distracted. A hatch on the poop deck was suddenly flung open and a man’s dishevelled head appeared.

“Tony, come on.  You’re missing this!” cried Hilary.  “Howlett’s Island!”  “Don’t forget your sunglasses, Tony” added Margaret quietly.   “It’s extremely bright up here.”  He shook his head, pulled up his hood  and clambered up the companion ladder to join them.

“Isn’t that the Radex Oil Depot?” asked Catherine.   “Will we be going ashore, Gary?”  “You all know more about this island than me,” admitted Gary with a laugh.   “No, afraid not.  After some disastrous oil exploration that almost ruined the walrus and seal colonies, the island was made a heritage site and no one but an Inuit family is allowed ashore.”

Faces fell.  There was an air of dismay and then surprise when a short, older woman who was not part of the group and standing apart, said emphatically  “I’m glad – very glad.”   She seemed almost to be speaking to herself, as she stared fixedly at the island without turning her head.

Peter studied her carefully.  There was something familiar about the small, wrinkled face.   He walked over to her.  “May I ask why you don’t want to go ashore?”   Without turning, she said, “Because I was a prisoner there”.

Removing her sunglasses, she turned and looked at him.  “Maisie!” he said in astonishment.  He fumbled in his pocket and produced the photo of her on the pier, taking the picture of Nochoska and Ned on the edge of the iceberg.  “This is how it all began, isn’t it?” he asked tentatively.   She nodded.  “ Please take it as a memento” Peter said.  With an enigmatic smile she replaced her sunglasses and extended her hand to take the photo, but a sudden gust of wind snatched it into the air.  Peter rushed to the side to watch it  fluttering  down into the sea.

An excited cry came from the group further along the deck.   “A polar bear!  A polar bear!”   Everyone looked over the side excitedly, cameras at the ready.   At some distance from the ship, floating on a piece of pack ice, a powerful king polar bear was watching the icebreaker sailing by.  “It’s Nochoska” cried Sandra, staring through binoculars.  “How do you know?” demanded Sue.  “The black mark over his right eye.”  “Let me see” said Julie.  “You’re right.”

“My God, he’s waving at us with his right paw!” shouted Tony.   

Everyone shouted exultantly – for, as the ship made its way out of the Bouvetoya Channel into the open sea, Nochoska was saying goodbye…………..

        

Summer Courses and courses starting in the Autumn

From Caroline.

Dear All,

I have been 'speaking' with Andy McDonnell who is the course co-ordinator, for creative writing, for Adult Ed.

The 'Being a writer' which was wrongly advertised as a 'writing for children course' (dates: 11th, 12th and 13th July 2011 - 10am to 4pm) will probably not run, however Andy was prepared to discuss the possibility of changing the time to make it an evening course instead, if some of you would be interested. They need 6 people to be able to run it in any case, and at the moment only 1 person is booked on it. I am not sure if this could interest any of you as it is quite soon. If you are please let me know. I can also provide you with a course information sheet.

The  good news is that the 'Masterclass for novelists' course ,on Thursday the 14th July, which some of us are going to attend is going ahead!!

Andy has also given us a teaser for the courses coming up in the autumn. These, from what I understand, are follow-on courses to the summer ones.

However, please note that if the a summer course doesn't run due to lack of numbers, its follow-on course, in the autumn, might get drop by Adult Ed.

Bower, Sarah,       Master class for Novelists                                         Tues 7-9         

Bryan, Lynne        Starting to Write Fiction                                           Monday 7-9   

Bryan, Lynne        Writing Short Stories                                                Friday 1-3      

Holland, Andrea    20th Century Women's Writers                                 Monday 7-9   

Holland, Andrea    Word & Image                                                         Thurs 7-9       

Holland, Andrea    Creative Writing - Poetry                                          Monday 1-3    

Jordan, Meirion     Intro to Medieval Literature                                       Weds 7-9        

Jordan, Meirion     Poems, texts and Performance                                Tues 7- 9         

Kanayama, Kelly  Eastern Stories                                                       Tues 7-9         

Kanayama, Kelly  Folk Tales (Bad Bridegrooms&Murderous Husbands)  Weds 7-9       

Nettleton, Ian*      A Look at the Graphic Novel                                     Mon 7-9         

Pugh, Adam        An Intro to Artist's Moving Image                               Sat 11-1          

Pugh, Adam         Animation - A Critical Approach                                Sat 2-4                       

Walker, Hannah    The Brain Shed - Poetry for beginners                       Sat 2-4            

Walker, Hannah    Poetry & Performance                                             Thurs 7-9        

Wernham, Mark    Being a Writer                                                        Sat 2-4           

Wernham, Mark    Music and Writing                                                   Sat 11-1          

White, Lynsey       Writing Short Fiction                                              Sat 2-4           

N.B.:The times days have yet to be confirmed. I hope that some of the literary classes might appeal to writers who are wanting to furnish there writing with a bit of extra research.

I Hope all of the above makes sense!!!

Caroline

Ends

Hi all

 

The homework for this week? Please think about the end of your novel. We've already talked about ends, but I'd like you to write me a final paragraph. It might help clarify your ideas about what you want to achieve for your characters.

 

 

Here's what we discussed last time:

 

Editing

Vladimir Nabokov said: ‘I have rewritten – often several times – every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.’

Most novels are written not once but again and again. Most writers revise, and revise, and revise, seeking to make their work as good as it can possibly be.

This sounds like hard work, but revising is actually a lot more fun than it sounds. The revision stage is when you look at your work, congratulate yourself on what you’ve achieved, and then build on it. Personally, I enjoy revising. After all the labour of trying to conjure up characters and situations from thin air, revising is like a holiday.

A clarification is needed here, though. There are really two kinds of editing. The first involves the small edits, word changes, paragraph repositionings and adjective deletions that are done when wiser counsel prevails. You can do this as you go along: in fact, I find it helpful to edit the previous day’s work before starting on any new writing, since it helps me to immerse myself in the world of my story and limbers up my writing muscles.

The second kind, however, involves major structural changes: alterations of point of view, the insertion or deletion of major characters, the change of locations. It involves addressing the novel as a whole, either as a first draft or as a serious chunk of writing. If you can leave a delay before going back to do major revision, it will almost certainly benefit you. Put your novel on a shelf for a month or two, and then return to it with a fresh eye. You will see much more clearly where it could be improved, and you will also have acquired a necessary degree of ruthlessness; distance from your everyday struggles will give you the courage to cut and change with broad strokes.

Revision is often about cutting (see below), but it is also about expansion. When you are really imaginatively caught up in telling a story, you might write rapidly, telling it in ‘skeleton’ form as you rush from one plot development to the next. Only later do you go back and add material, filling in what needs explaining, solidifying characterization and adding descriptions.

Be careful here, though: something you add can dislocate other parts of the book. A character may have cropped hair at the beginning of the book and a few pages later their hair may be at waist level. Also look for consistency in dates, seasons and weather. Is someone wearing a T-shirt in Edinburgh in January?

Cutting

As mentioned, much of your revision will involve cutting. In a way, this is inevitable. Writing is about exploring and risk-taking; some explorations will reach dead ends, and some risks won’t pay off. These failed experiments must be pruned. It can be very painful to cut what you have spent a lot of time over, but you must think of it in terms of the good of the finished product, and be brutal – cut out whole pages or chapters if they seem to intrude or break up the flow. A novel is not like an exam in which you must ‘show your workings’.

Here are some things to look for when cutting:

• Exposition. This is the dreaded ‘information dump’ (or even more crudely, ‘infodump’) in which you regale your reader with your research: historical information, technical details of a subject, the family pedigrees of your characters when these have no relevance to the plot. These are ‘the parts that readers tend to skip’.
• Pointless dialogue. Cut conversations that don’t lead anywhere, don’t advance characterization or develop the plot, or which have no tension.
• Overblown descriptions. Remember Robert Louis Stevenson’s remark about scenery – we hear too much of it in novels. Similarly with opulent descriptions of buildings or interiors. Single telling details can be much more effective.
• Characters who don’t seem to be contributing much or are too much like other characters. Characters should, if possible, have a job to do. If one character loses a key, at least consider the possibility that the person who finds it in the street could be someone who later crops up and has a role in the plot – and not someone insignificant who we never hear from again.
• Anything deliberately obscure. Readers will not generally appreciate arcane references designed to be comprehensible to .01% of the reading public, or baffling foreign words intended to impart exoticism.
• ‘Over-writing’ – see the next section on ‘murdering your darlings’.

Finally, don’t throw away the material you cut. Something that is cut from one place may belong in another. Put your cuttings in a scrap file on your computer. Even if you never use this material, it could still be useful. Re-reading your scrap file may serve to remind you of something about your character or plot that could be done differently.

Murder your darlings

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch in his book On the Art of Writing (1916) talked about a Persian lover who hired a professional letter-writer to convey his passion. The letter-writer produced a missive dripping with fulsome vocabulary and courtly turns of phrase. Sir Arthur went on:

Well, in this extraneous, professional, purchased ornamentation, you have something which Style is not: and if you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it – whole-heartedly – and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.’

In other words, if something you’ve written seems particularly excellent, it may be a prime candidate for cutting.

That doesn’t mean that everything that satisfies you is bad. But you should subject these ‘darlings’, these fine turns of phrase, to very close scrutiny. A startling image, for example, in which one thing is compared bizarrely to another, may seem like a flash of genius, but can disrupt the flow of a narrative, especially if it follows hard on the heels of another bizarre image, or doesn’t fit with the general tone of the book. Intrusions of an authorial voice saying something amusing, or reflecting on how the book is going, should also usually be considered very carefully. Purple passages in which locations are established may be a little yawn-inducing.

In short, look for the things you are most pleased with, and ask yourself why they seem to stand out so much. It may be because they don’t belong there.

See you next time!

Gary

Moving On

Not homework just some thoughts.


 Forward then my friends into the foray,
Of agents and publishers and critics.
Are we ready to relinquish our nursery?
Of warm milk and tender critique,
For harsh put down and crushing comment.

I fear we may not be.
I am worried for you and for myself.
I want to protect our  innocence
In glass jars labelled ' Preserve'.
With blue gingham covers.
On cool marble shelves.

A writer has no choice.
It is a compulsion that consumes and envelops.
We will write till our pen runs out,
We will laugh till there is nothing left to laugh at.
We will squeeze ourselves into unfamiliar situations.
And we will survive.

The elements  that brought us together
Will split and send us shooting off  in different directions.
We can never go back to what we were before.
We will slither and slide with the current
And emerge dripping with sweat and screwed up paper
On the other side.

Bon Voyage. xx

flashback -hilary

Flashback – Hilary

Josh has just survived an horrific attack as he walked with Carrie to find the Rive Gauche hotel. Carrie has fled the scene.

Josh was lying flat against the dampness of the pavement. His head was pounding and blood was slowly meandering down the middle of his face, where his nose had received a heavy kick from the side of a boot.  He tasted the saltiness of it as the blood found an opening at the side of his mouth and he coughed and spat out another tooth which had also become dislodged in the battering.

As he sat up, his head began to swim and even as he fought to remain conscious, his eyes desperately trying to focus on the graffiti on the building opposite, he felt his heart pounding and seconds later he fell back to the pavement again

The officer was flicking his pencil between his teeth as he stood at the desk, looking directly at Josh. The rap sheet remained unfilled as Josh had refused to acknowledge Detective Roundhay’s supposition that he had been party to the drug taking at Sandy’s earlier that day.

It would remain at stalemate until later when Josh’s father arrived with Sam Flint, the family lawyer, to sort it all out. For the moment, he had to sit it out.

‘Y’know’, the desk officer began, ‘You could make this very easy by just confirming what we all know already’.

For f****s sake, this was nothing to do with me. Sandy had been doing stuff I didn’t even know she had, that’s the reason she fell, I wasn’t even in the room!’ Josh was fighting back the panic. If he wasn’t careful, they could lay this whole rap on him. He sank back against the wall, shaking his head. He thought of the awful scene which had awaited him when he reached Sandy's flat earlier that afternoon. Her broken body lay at the foot of the staircase where she had fallen, her head at such an unnatural angle that he knew she was dead. He had immediately ran up to her flat, pushed open the unlocked door and rang the Police.

‘Son’ I’m here.’ The familiar sound of his fathers voice cut through the melancholia in which Josh was drowning and he lifted his head.

‘Dad, help me. It’s so not true, what they’re saying!’  Josh suddenly fell forward towards his father who had appeared with Sam Flint. ‘I am so sorry, I was just trying to help her…..’

There was a blue light which kept flickering over the graffiti. Josh could now see that it was a picture of a soldier with a gun, and the words  ‘La guerre est finie - les sortir!’ A  siren sounded loudly, too loudly, Josh rolled his head to the side to follow the noise.

 ‘Rester immobile.' An urgent voice came from the other side of his head. ’ Vous avez une blessure grave’  The paramedic turned and spoke to his partner, ‘rapidement à l'hôpital’

 Publish Post

Sandra: Flashback

Fred lay on the ground like a stick man. His limbs stuck out at odd angles as he jerked uncontrollably. May had seen him like this many times but each time it twisted her stomach and pulled at her heart till she herself had to run to the bathroom and bend over the toilet retching over the bowl.
Fred never remembered his fits but was always exhausted and disorientated in the aftermath. Sometimes he did not have a fit for weeks but on bad days he had several. They seemed to follow each other like a thunderstorm going round and round in a cycle.
Today had been a bad day. May sighed and wiped her mouth before going back to him. He was quieter now.  She took a flannel and mopped his face. His blue eyes flashed like a rabbit caught in the headlights.
Fred tried hard to remember the face that swam in and out of focus in front of him. He had seen her before.

Out of the grey light he pulled her up out of the soft sand.  'It's time to go' he said reluctantly. She had shaken the sand from her crumpled dress and wrapped her arms around his neck. 'Do we have too?' She asked although she knew the answer. Hand in hand they walked by the sea's edge. The waves had thrown up a creamy foam that reminded Fred of the head of a pint of Guniness.
A fisherman setting up for the day smiled to himself at the young couple who looked so delighted with the world. The man was dressed in a soldiers uniform, the tunic was undone and the belt was swinging.  The
girl was laughing up at him, her face flushed and warm. "Wonder what they have been up too" the fisherman smiled to himself and waved to them. They were so engrossed in each other they did not even notice him.
A seagull called out its own greeting. A  stray dog stopped its morning scratch  to wander over wagging its tail. Fred bent to greet the dog who rewarded him with a wet lick. Fred wiped the wetness from his face with the back of his hand.
Someone was talking to him. The words were all jumbled.  He was angry. He wanted to be back on that beach with that pretty girl. Not here on this hard floor with this old woman fussing over him. 

Tony: Names

1.    A nail bar – Flatter your fingers

2.    A yacht – La dolce vita

3.    A mid-American town – Bend-In-The-Road

4.    A graphic novel – Sign City

5.    A Chihuahua – Little John

6.    A forger – Daniel Quilter

7.    A set of quadruplets – The Armitage Four

8.    A new religion – Universalism

9.    A provincial newspaper – The Winterbourne Gazette

10. A chocolate bar – Crow-Bar

Managing time: assignment and summary

Hi all

The assignment this week is to write a flashback that will fit into your novel, using the flashback tools we discussed. They are:

1. Set the scene
2. Establish the flashback with a past perfect tense (‘had’). You can go straight into the flashback without using a phrase such as ‘Her mind drifted back to...’ You may wish to use some sort of a trigger that reminds the character of the past, however.
3. Discard ‘had’
4. Use action and dialogue in the flashback
5. Get back into the present, possibly using a trigger from the present to rouse the character from a reverie

Eg...

[scene setting:]

            Ray sat on the bank of the canal, fishing. He had his umbrella, rod, bait bucket and net. The canal gently tugged at the float.

[new para – into the flashback. Use ‘had’ once and then discard it:]

            Ray had not been surprised when the thin man came into the shop. The thin man didn’t waste any time. He pulled out a shining eight inch knife.

            ‘Give me your money, he said.

            A flight of swans landed and Ray pulled his rod in slightly, much as a train commuter pulls in his feet when another passenger comes down the carriage.

Here’s a brief summary of what we discussed last time:

Manage the flow of time

A novel begins at the beginning, meanders through the middle, and concludes with the end. Or does it? There’s more than one way to manage time in a novel. Novels can skip back and forth through time, and often do.

One popular technique that plays with time-dislocation is to hook the reader with an action scene and then explain the background. Chapter One, for example, might begin with a car-bomb explosion, and Chapter Two explain the backstory of the families caught up in it.

The World According to Garp by John Irving opens with the information that the author’s mother was once arrested for stabbing a man in a cinema. There follows several pages of backstory before we find out exactly why she stabbed the man. This is a similar device, which, on this occasion, is used to generate suspense.

Flashback is probably the most common device used in novels for shifting time-frame. Many novels, especially first-person novels, are told as memoirs, and memoirs lend themselves naturally to a two-stream approach: the events that are happening now as the narrator tells the story, and the events that happened then in the story itself. In Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham, the narrator goes back to a number of different scenes – to his childhood, to his young manhood and to his recent adulthood – while also narrating scenes that happened in the very recent past – the ‘yesterday’ of the novel. What we get is a sense of two plots happening at once, each with their own narrative suspense. Flashbacks are often criticized for detracting attention from the main plot and thus defusing tension, but, if handled carefully, they can also be suspenseful, since they may withhold information that arrives in the next flashback.

Flashbacks, however, should be proper scenes and not just the provision of information necessary to the plot – sometimes called ‘information dumps.’ Use action and dialogue in your flashbacks if at all possible. That way they will gain immediacy.

How about if the plot is too frenetic? You can slow the pace by interposing a scene of reflection between scenes of action. I’ve always found that it’s a good idea to write a novel through at the pace it seems to demand, and then, at the revision stage, read it for narrative pace. If I can see moments that would benefit from a less frenetic scene, I introduce one. That way the novel gains contrast. On the other hand, if the plot is too slow, I blue-pencil the transitional scenes (coach journeys, pointless dialogue, etc) and cut to the chase.

See you on Thursday,

Gary

Tony: ten novels and the feelings they evoked

1.    Marius the Epicurean: his sensations and ideas by Walter Pater – enjoyment, absorption, sadness

2.    The magic mountain by Thomas Mann – sense of space, fear, awe

3.    A Christmas carol by Charles Dickens – tenderness, fear

4.    Tom’s midnight garden by Philippa Pearce – wistfulness, tenderness, longing, sense of intermingling of past and present

5.    Dubin’s lives by Bernard Malamud – enjoyment (of the richness of the narrative, the descriptions of nature, and the exploration of close human relationships)

6.    War and peace by Leo Tolstoy – fascination, admiration (for the ingenuity and range of the narrative), absorption (in the lives of the various characters)

7.    Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf – excitement, curiosity, sadness, amusement

8.    To the lighthouse by Virginia Woolf – tenderness, sadness, grief, a positive response to the end of the novel (for expressing the quality of the Ramseys’ relationship).

9.    Resurrection by William Gerhardie – wistfulness, amusement, sense of breadth (of time and location).

10. In search of lost time by Marcel Proust [still trying to read this!] – fascination, tenderness, reflection

A sense of place - Hilary

A sense of place -     Hilary

Set in the leafy backwaters of the Hull suburbs, Newland Park is peopled by individuals who have an innate belief that if life had dealt them a different hand, they would be living and meeting in the streets of a far more hip and happening place such as Islington or Notting Hill.

Many of the inhabitants are locals who have managed to climb the very greasy poles within the local council until they finally haul themselves to the top to become a ‘head of project team’ or ‘service lead’ for this or that.

Their shrill, east Humberside tones have acquired an air of officiousness, the pronunciation having a studied ‘poshness’ designed to conceal the distinctive Hull burr. This trick was learned from the Masters who preceded them in their council posts until, like coconuts, those Masters were knocked off their poles giving the prizes to their apprentices. In turn the disciples grasped the baton and proceeded to remove themselves from the lesser areas of the city such as Anlaby Rd or Skulcotes Lane to the resplendent Edwardian, Mock Tudor or edgy, architect designed dwellings that settle behind high hedges in the wide and tree -lined avenues of Newland Park.

These ‘locals-made-good’ sit somewhat uneasily with the other inhabitants of this pinnacle of Hull living; those non Yorkshire 'outsiders' who have by dint of circumstance been offered, and accepted, posts as professors or lecturers at the University of Hull which sits at the entrance to the Park or it’s poorer sister, Humberside University which has to make do with a lesser site on the Beverley Road. The University of Hull has additional cachet having had poet, Philip Larkin as it’s librarian. His modern residence sits within the confines of Newland Park

They just about rub along together, these two oddly paired groups, mostly ignoring the somewhat superior air which the locals imagine the outsiders possess, and which the outsiders smugly try to hide, only occasionally letting slip, some telling anecdote which only they, as ‘outsiders’ could possibly have experienced.The locals are proud to have reached this nadir of Hull society and are themselves fairly condescending in a lord or lady bountiful way to the rest of the local population. They do not ignore them they merely speak as if they hold higher office.

Into this prestigious, quietly confident backwater, arrives Ellen Jameson and her family of three daughters.

She fits into neither the first or second category, being what is known as a ‘self made woman’. In other words, her degree and a large divorce settlement, has given her the opportunity to start her own business consultancy. The business has thrived over the ten years since she started it, and she has grasped the opportunity to open two further branches in Manchester and Newcastle.

 U -  Focus became one of the largest agencies in the North East, eventually floated on the stock market, making Ellen a very eligible single woman, with several hundreds of thousands sitting idly in her personal account.

Being a Hull girl at heart, she refused to move from her home city, capitulating, eventually, to friends and a lover’s advice, by moving out from her three bedroom council house in the centre of Bransholme, the largest social housing estate in Europe, to a double fronted property of Edwardian splendour, just next door to the modern property which had belonged, until his death to Philip Larkin.

A determined woman, she does not hold back with her opinions or her praise. A breath of even fresher air was about to descend, with the scent of Dior, into the Park.  

Sandra - Place

Sarah decided to park her car on the village hall car park and walk to St. Annes Church.  It was a bright sunny May day. Sarah locked the car and walked towards the exit past a green wooden notice board with a yellow poster advertising Saturday night bingo. One of the drawing pins had come out and the poster flapped against the board in the morning breeze. Opposite the village hall she noticed Bernie Gotts was putting out
runner bean plants into a wooden pallet to sell to locals and passers by. Not that there was much traffic likely to be idly driving through the village as it was well off any major route and not easy to find.
Bernie noticed Sarah and tipped his flat cap. Sarah waved back and made a mental note to buy some plants before she left.
The grassy path to the church was still wet with morning dew.  Trees on either side of the path formed their own aisle the sun glinting through the new bright spring leaves. Sarah could feel May's presence all around her. This was the village where May had grown up and where three weeks earlier Sarah had watched as her
grandmother was buried next to her brother Jack.
Sarah smiled to herself imagining her grandmother as a young girl skipping along this very path with her brothers and sisters. May had told her that every Sunday the whole family walked to church for morning and evening worship. It felt very right that this should be her final resting place.
Sarah had been amazed at the large congregation at the funeral. She had no idea that her grandmother had so many friends.
Pansy Potts had brought bundles of bluebells to the church and festooned it with them. She told Sarah later that she had gathered them from the garden of May's old family home. Now almost derelict but still standing and used as a grain store by the farmer that now owned it.
Sarah paused at the duckpond to watch a mother duck swim proudly across with her brood of ducklings.
Then sighing she carried on. Turning the corner the large tower of St. Annes swung into view. The iron gate was open as if she had been expected.
Sarah walked towards the left of the church door and round the side of the church. May's grave distinctive because of its newness.
As Sarah drew near to the grave a pair of skylarks soared above. Sarah looked up into the sky to watch them and  her grandmothers face smiled down on her.  A great sense of peace washed over her and a weight lifted from her heart.

Place(s) - Julie

Sorry, I’ve done three as I would welcome feedback.  I seemed to struggle a bit with tense and viewpoint.

Somerton was too small to technically be called a village, and certainly not big enough to support a pub, school or post office, although it did have a regular bus service which ran every Tuesday.  The narrow, winding roads had evolved from footpaths worn by agricultural labourers between the cottages and farms, in the style of a dot-to-dot puzzle.  The centre, if it could be said to have such a thing, consisted of half a dozen houses clustered around the medieval church.  To the casual visitor, the churchyard contained the usual collection of memorials, but to the few who knew, the most important headstone was hidden under a tangle of ivy in the eastern corner.  It commemorated the life and death of John Godwin, who had lived in the village during the late eighteenth century.  His claim to fame was that he was the grandfather of Mary, who had married the poet Shelley and had written Frankenstein during a drunken night in.  It was rather tenuous, as claims to fame go, but was the best that Somerton had to offer.

***

The Caribbean island of Anegada is made principally from coral and limestone and is almost flat: it rises at its highest point less than thirty feet above sea level.  The consequence of this is that it is always necessary to sail from its nearest neighbour, Virgin Gorda, using a compass and chart, rather than by sight as is possible, on a clear day, between the other British Virgin Islands.  Once the course is set, nothing can be seen for a while in front except the sea.  Then, indistinctly at first, peeping over the horizon, a smudge appears.  A sailor, new to the area, may well make a fruitless attempt to clean the mark from his binoculars.  Once he sails a little closer, he will realise his mistake, as the smudge becomes identifiable as a lone palm tree.  As he gets closer still, the smudge will spread out, either side at the base of the palm tree, to denote the extent of the few miles of southern shoreline.

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The town of Fircombe slept for six days of the week and only seemed to get out of bed on market day.  Then, like a teenage boy going on a date, it would spruce itself up with an enthusiasm and attention to detail lacking at any other time.  Early on the appropriate day, the market place would bustle with activity: the unfurling of colourful canopies; the assembling of trestle tables and the unloading of many boxes.  Stallholders would shout a cheery greeting to each other and whistle tunelessly whilst accomplishing the transformation.

Peter--Point of View: Place

Howlett’s Island lay as one of a number, jumbled together like disjointed jigsaw pieces inside the Arctic Circle.   No more than ten miles in width and length, it was a forbidding place.  Grim cliffs rose up precipitously from the shore, veiled in sinister cloud.  The island was dominated by the smoking Mt. Cerebus sending a trail of sulphurous smoke up into the leaden sky.  

For most of the year Howlett’s Island lay uninhabited.  Only in the hunting season did a small group of Inuit venture by kayak from Sulivan’s Islands along the Davis Strait to make camp at Upernavik Bay.  But there were places that were taboo: Utakenviq Vyken (Land of the Black Polar Bear), a desolate peninsular of jagged, windswept hills, which shamans warned was home to the legendary black polar bear. Another was Kolyma’s Gullet, a bottomless hole into which the Russian explorer Admiral Alexandrovich Kolyma had fallen in l84l during a descent.  Rumour has it that if you knelt down by that ghastly, bottomless pit, you could still hear the unearthly echo of the unfortunate Admiral’s dying scream and you would never ever countenance sleep again.  But Howlett’s island sat like a gorgon’s head on a field of treasure, for beneath this benighted terrain lay oil, oil, oil in such measure to make a Texan wince!