Piecing Together a Plot

Image: Row Three

Workshop
Over lunch, I wrote and posted the revised version of part 2 of the fourth exercise at the Advanced Dialogue workshop. I’ve edited in a sentence or two to subtly indicate where the antagonism is coming from, thus explaining the motivation behind what’s happening in some of the scenes as they develop.

When I began writing this particular (story, as it turns out), I had no plan, but as it’s gone on the plot has developed itself in line with what is being asked of us in the workshop. It means it’s exciting, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants-writing, and that there is a lot of going back and reading what went before. It’s very easy to go off on a tangent without realising it’s happening.

I also wrote up my piece for the fifth assignment. By far, this is the hardest yet as a lot of the strands are brought together in a revelation in which all four characters are involved to some depth. Unfortunately, I left it to settle overnight and forgot to upload it into my Dropbox so I could finish it and post it on the train through to Glasgow this evening. I’ll have to write the damn thing again from scratch if I’m to make my deadline. I can only hope it;s as good as the first draft.

Invite
I’ve been invited by The SKY Project to visit them and read some poetry to the kids. I’m not sure of the date yet—the information I have wasn’t positively clear—so I’m not sure I can make the original suggested date in question.

Whenever it happens, though, (and it looks like it’s definitely going to) I’m really looking forward to it. I think it will be good for me to do something like this on a personal level, but it will also give me a chance to perform my kids’ poems in front of the toughest and most honest audience that exists in literature: children!

I’m really looking forward to it—I just hope my poems are up to scratch; they’ve never been performed before. Eek!

Leith Walk
It turns out my recent post about the tram works in Edinburgh was quite timely, because shops and residents on and around Leith Walk—one of the areas worst hit with business closures when the entire street was dug up to replace the underground water and gas pipes so they could lay tram lines—is going to have to go through it all again.

Nobody bothered to write down what pipes lead to where and as a result, they are going to do it all again, this time to find out what they did the first time round. And of course, the tram lines aren’t even going to go as far as Leith Walk so both exercises are a giant waste of time and money.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Edinburgh Councillors are a bunch of incompetent, unintelligent, egotistical morons.

Until Sunday
No blog post until Sunday, I’m afraid. I’ll be heading through to Glasgow this afternoon to have dinner with my wee sister, Binny, and then after a night of laziness at hers, I’m meeting my mother for the theatre tomorrow. We’re going to The Citizens Theatre to see Men Should Weep, Ena Lamont Stewart’s dramatic play about a family living in poverty in 1930s Glasgow.

You can follow me on Twitter @colingalbraith if you’re desperate to hear from me. Drop me a Tweet—I always get back!

Friday Vid
This week’s Friday Vid is a piece of shameless promotion. Well, I thought: “why not?” It’s been a while since I did so and I’ve run out of jokey vids to post for now, so here’s one of my favourite trailers so far, for my paranormal spy thriller STELLA. If you can’t see the video, click here.

Have a great day; peace and out!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq9S5qxxpqk

OKTOBERFEST EBOOK OFFER
Enter coupon code OKTOBERFESTUK305 at checkout (OKTOBERFEST305 if outside the UK) and receive 15% off your order of my poetry ebooks: FRINGE FANTASTIC, POOLSIDE POETRY and SILLY POEMS FOR WEE PEOPLE VOL.2. Offer cannot be applied to previous orders and only applies to books or eBooks ordered through the Lulu option. Offer expires at 11:59 PM on September 23rd, 2011.