Bloody 'Creative Writing' Courses

29 posts / 0 new

Mon, 2013-05-06 20:08

After finishing Jolono's 'East End Butcher Boy,' which I highly recommend by the way, I’ve just started another book about a couple who head out to Tenerife to buy a bar. It’s a book that I quite fancy, having lived four years on the Algarve and witnessed one Johnny-come-lately after another buying or renting bars and thinking they were going to be millionaires by the end of the season.

The book starts in a fish market in Bolton, but I’ve found myself drifting away as I’m reading it because of the bloody writing. I have to keep going back to check on what I’ve just read. Take this for an example;

“Brass wall lights topped with cocked green shades cast the room in a sickly pallor throwing sallow circles of light onto the once-white wallpaper now jaundiced through decades of low-grade tobacco.”

He’s just walked in a shitty pub.

However it reads like he’s just finished a ‘Creative Writing’ course and the trouble with these courses is that they don’t teach you how to write so you ‘capture’ the reader and give him no alternative but to keep turning the page.

I’ll let you know if I ever get to finish this book.

Mon, 2013-05-06 22:03

VeraClark

Howling laughing.Ditch it.

Mon, 2013-05-06 23:11

karl_wiggins

Vera, I'm so tempted to babe. I'll stick with it for a little longer.

Mon, 2013-05-06 23:27

celticman

I think I wrote that!

Tue, 2013-05-07 08:24

jolono

Thanks for the read Karl. I can't be doing with books like that. i think I'd have set fire to it by now!

Tue, 2013-05-07 10:08

fatboy74

I think if it were changed to: 'Brass wall lights topped with cocked green shades cast the room in a sickly pallor throwing sallow circles of light onto jaundiced wallpaper.' Then I think it works well, still a bit wordy - it's just been massively overwritten with 'once-white wallpaper' and the ending. I've given up trying to finish books that don't do what you describe, my free time's too precious.

Tue, 2013-05-07 10:52

karl_wiggins

I think if he changed it to; "It was right shitty pub, what was left of the carpet was slippy with old fag burns, matching the collar on the barman's shirt, which was manky with sweat glands working over-time. Three blokes with no necks were leaning on the bar. An evident associate, dragging his knuckles on the floor, walked in and was greeted by shouts of, "Oi OI!! Oi OI," indicative of the fact that they'd met before. Prostitutes and Chinese Triads, bouncers and alcoholic Scotsmen, dope dealers and MILFs in short shirts. My local."

Tue, 2013-05-07 12:36

VeraClark

It was a shit-hole. The innards smelt of piss and yeast slops. There was dried blood on the toilet floor from bloke beatings over the years. Orange skid marks on the shitters, fag bullet holes studded the floor. Cheap white strip lighting reflected the grease on every piss head's nose.Big Pete, the landlord was a hunk of flabby gammon tied up by a string vest.He used bare knuckles, not speech. Pete had no neck and smelt of guts. He'd become mute when Vera walked out because she was doing his brother.And his dad.

Tue, 2013-05-07 12:38

VeraClark

I have no idea why I have just wrote that. Please forgive me.

Tue, 2013-05-07 12:43

#10

karl_wiggins

I like it though. You're doing his brother AND his dad??!! Fair play!

Tue, 2013-05-07 13:03

#11

VeraClark

Look, I'm not the Vera in that tale.Prefer older men.

Tue, 2013-05-07 13:19

#12

karl_wiggins

Oh, thank goodness. I thought it was a Freudian Slip.

Wed, 2013-05-08 01:33

#13

Richard L. Prov...

He walked into the bar after a shootout, slipped on the blood of the carnage before his new shoes slid across a pool of red, saw the burly man come up behind him, knife in hand, turned and somersaulted over the stranger, gun in hand, shot, another kicks the dust from the filth of floor, then finishing his flip ends up smacking into a wall, gun still cocked goes off, hot flare of lead creasing his heart, pumping erratically for a few moments and hits the floor on weakening legs, falls over the first body and ends up jammed under a table, left over Royal Flush decorating the wooden top above him, like a casket covering. A rat comes from the corner of the room and begins licking up the blood. Yaaaack. Where do these ideas come from, Vera?

Richard L. Provencher

Wed, 2013-05-08 01:34

#14

Richard L. Prov...

Richard L. Provencher

Wed, 2013-05-08 02:35

#15

VeraClark

Richard, I love it.

Wed, 2013-05-08 02:59

(Reply to #15) #16

Richard L. Prov...

Thank you, Vera. Isn't it fun being a writer? Cheers, from Nova Scotia. Richard

Richard L. Provencher

Wed, 2013-05-08 08:48

#17

karl_wiggins

Murphy staggered into the bar completely Janet Street Portered wearing a blindingly sparkly silver dress and high heels. The audition for the Radio City Rockettes hadn't gone well. The stiff brandy he'd partaken of to calm his nerves had turned into six or seven, and during one particularly high-kicking move he'd fallen off the stage onto the judge's table. Most of the lads from the site were in the bar and he was starting to regret his decision to not bother getting changed back into his work jeans and bridgeman's shoes.

Wed, 2013-05-08 09:39

#18

VeraClark

Karl, that is lusciously hilarious.I am sat in the gp waiting room ripping laughter out.

Wed, 2013-05-08 09:57

#19

karl_wiggins

Thanks Vera, hope it's nothing too serious

Wed, 2013-05-08 12:45

#20

VeraClark

Just piles again.:-)

Wed, 2013-05-08 12:46

#21

VeraClark

And a full prolapse.Varicose veins too.Need ripping out and re-routing.

Wed, 2013-05-08 13:07

#22

karl_wiggins

Ian at work's a good lad, but he also suffers with his Farmers, so I asked him today how they are. “How are your Farmer Giles, Ian?” I said. “Much better thank you,” he replied, “The Doctor gave me these pills, but they were bloody horrible. It felt like my throat was tightening up, as if foam was trying to get out but was trapped, and eventually they made me sick. I’m telling you, they tasted bloody horrible.” “I’m not surprised,” I said, “They’d be suppositories!” Should have seen his face. I suggested next time he gets one of his labourers to help him.

Wed, 2013-05-08 13:59

#23

VeraClark

I have never supported the use of haemorrhoid cream to tighten up bags under the eyes. Surely it could send your eyes in to the skull. Poor old Ian, he's lucky he didn't lose his adenoids. Despite the three week diversion on all topics, have you read your initial post book yet.

Wed, 2013-05-08 14:27

#24

karl_wiggins

No! What initial post? I lose track of everything. It's my age.

Wed, 2013-05-08 14:35

#25

karl_wiggins

Ah I'm with you. I'm struggling through it, but it is a bit boring. I lived on the Algarve for four years and I could tell you loads of gossip; Kevin the Murderer, The Munchkins (he was a chemist and was gradually poisoning her), Darkie Bracewell who tried to stab me in the face, that twat who forgot he was wearing a dry suit instead of a wet suit and had a piss on a dive hahahaha, Jo's dad who admitted to killing a little girl whilst being hung upside down by his ankles from the fourth floor of the GNR station (I've spoken to people who were drinking with him at the time - not when he was being hung from the fourth floor of course, when the murder took place), Dipper Dean (I gave him a whole chapter of his own in my book 'Calico Jack in your Garden'), Gill's first grey pupic hair, Timeshare Joe (did he jump or was he pushed?) .... I could go on. I should write a book.

Wed, 2013-05-08 14:42

#26

celticman

I wrote it but I'm modifying it to there was a guy named Joe, who I used to know and what a way to go, said Joe, slipping on a longish sentence stuck behind the settee for me, but you see that another one of those things that never take wings and the previous things always shine through and the guy called you-know-who is one of us writer blokes too, a geezer that can't parse of ease her topic or it's all true and you know what that means for me and you, there's no lies, just quiiet sighs and a general wish that you'd go away and start on some new story that doesn't involve bars or gangster's molls that look like la-ar-di-dars and bloody creative writing courss that dish out gold stars and comments that no one ever reads because they're too plain and need dressed up to strain eyes that a monkey and a thousand typewritters could never train.

Wed, 2013-05-08 15:00

#27

VeraClark

celtic - that is bloody abit beautiful.

Tue, 2013-06-04 22:18

#28

Denzella

Look I'm properly peed off with all this talk earlier about our local. It is a lovely country pub with beams and everything. Just because Saturday nights get a bit loud...We haven't had a fight in there for well over an hour and all the blood and some of the loose bits of flesh went in the hotpot so where's the harm?

Thu, 2014-04-03 21:13

#29

Ray Schaufeld

This man walks into a bar. Ouch! It was an iron bar.

Write your book. You know your topic, always a good starting point. I look forward to reading it. Elsie