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| A couple of souvenirs from our day |
On Saturday, 5th
April, I went to a fabulous writing day led by the brilliant Sue Moorcroft.
Organised by Marilyn Rodwell, the co-ordinator of the Birmingham Chapter of the
Romantic Novelists’ Association and thanks to a grant from that highly esteemed
organisation, it was a huge success. Sue Moorcroft is known to many of us
through our association with the RNA and, besides being the author of several
acclaimed novels, short stories and serials, is a writing tutor. What follows
is a brief precis of all we learned.
We’d all been
asked to bring a book reflecting the genre we tended to write in and discussed
the importance of cover images and the need for back-page blurb to reflect the
content of the book. We were surprised to learn that in the US, the romance
genre always features a man on the cover whereas in the UK, it tends to be a
woman. Next came a discussion about ‘saggy middles’ – not our own but those of
a work-in-progress – and some of the ploys we can introduce to liven up turgid
prose. Sue advocated a one-sentence synopsis which summaries the plot – a
useful tool if speaking to journalists or anyone who asks, ‘What’s your book
about?’ We discussed the different kinds of heroes and heroines and agreed that
when a hero was said to have leadership skills, in a woman the same skills she
was said to be bossy! We discussed how to give our characters more depth and
make them act, react and interact.
I was impressed
by the venue, the prestigious new Library of Birmingham, although not so
impressed by the fact that, on the way out, the down escalator wasn’t working
and it was very hard on my dodgy knees. Because of the problem with my
eyesight, my husband had accompanied me to Birmingham, though not to the
workshop. Bless him, he bought me a souvenir mug from the gift shop which read
‘Rewriting The Book,’ very appropriate since that’s what I’m doing with my
novel!
