Week one

There were 14 people in the class, supposed to be 16. Elise, the tutor, said that every time there are a few people who pay up front and never show. I was non-plussed that anyone would pay out that amount of money and never turn up, but then remembered two distance learning courses I have shelled out for and not even started. Things happen. Since then the two missing people have joined us, but one of the guys hasn't been back since the first class. I'm not sure what he was expecting, but actual writing and critiques didn't seem to be it. It varies each week, but it was made clear to come even without homework rather than miss a class.

In the first class we spent a bit of time remembering people's names. Elise gave a bit of background, this is her here and talked to us about writing and how the course would work and answered lots of questions (mine was intelligently asking where the nearest loo was).

We were then set the first exercise and assured that this would be one we would use for the rest of our lives.

Create a character - name, age, salient physical and psychological characteristics. Give them something they 'have' to do - internal or external, then something that stops them from doing that thing. Fill in other details that matter such as where they live, how, who with, what kind of job they do etc.

We then each read our characters out and the tutor asked lots of questions.

The second exercise was to take the character of the person on our right and write a very short story about them.

I won't put my charac up here as it was based on a real person. I did like the story about her though and wonder if I'll ever have the guts to ask my friend if it's close to the truth!

My neighbour's character was a 40ish wealthy widow called Josephina who is stuck in the past and doesn't want to move on. Her friends keep trying to help her but she's not interested. She lives by the sea.

This is what I wrote:
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"Hey hon, it's Erica. Guess what? Matt & Meggy just called and they're going to be in town tonight. I've booked L'Anime for dinner and we're all going to meet in Paulo's for cocktails at six. Please say you'll come?"

Josephina looked down and sighed. She should never have picked up the phone, what was she thinking?

"Josephina? You still there? C'mon, we can have champagne, we'll all raise a glass. Josephina, we're your friends."

"I know Erica, I'll meet you at L'Anime at seven thirty. Looking forward to it."
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I know it's short but we didn't have long! The story in my head was that she and her husband always had a bottle of bubbly at 6pm on a Friday and I'd have gone on to describe that.