Janice Galloway “…a good short story frames not just the credible now, but an implied past – and a stretch after the putative ending into infinite space. I guess that’s what is meant by writing that ‘comes off the page’: 3D is certainly possible on the flat page.”
[writing in MsLexia magazine, June/July/Aug 2013]
[photo: Mslexia.co.uk]
I remember being told by one of my creative writing tutors to ‘write around the story you think you’re writing about’. It was a good piece of advice. Sometimes I start to write about one thing but then explore the plot, the characters, the timeline, and new things suggest themselves so that the finished story can be totally different from the one I started with. I think this 3D effect on the page which Janice Galloway describes also comes from truly knowing your characters and your subject, the result of lots of thought and work which isn’t written on the page but is there unseen.
If you agree with Janie Galloway, perhaps you will agree with:-
Natasha Carthew – if it feels right, write outdoors
Kate Atkinson – on using your own life and family, then fictionalising it
Joel Dicker – on killing secondary characters
‘All Made Up’ by Janice Galloway [UK: Granta]
And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
Write ‘off the page’ says #author Janice Galloway http://wp.me/p5gEM4-qK via @SandraDanby #amwriting