"What matters is precisely this; the unspoken at the edge of the spoken.”
"What matters is precisely this; the unspoken at the edge of the spoken.”
Meeting your edge – the ocean and method writing
I am constantly being drawn to the edge. Interested in how characters survive by being stripped raw and pushed to wildest limits. If you strip a character, then what is left? A nothing? A rawness? A spirit or essence? What happens if you immerse both writer and character in land and seascape?
There is something about the sea. Its wild sound and rough music. I often write about creatures of the coastline – whether YA, a thriller set on an isolated island, a cluster of short stories. My first two books were written with a band of blue through the window. A static caravan with a sea view. It tugged the characters out of me, made them twitch.
I believe in ‘method writing’ – where a writer inhabits the mind of their character as much as possible and uses this preparation to feed into their story. The concept of method acting was taken from Stanislavski, who believed that actors needed to use personal experiences to imagine how their characters were feeling. They would plunder their own memories and channel these emotions to their portrayal of a character.
So The Island, my story of a teenage castaway, was written during a period of deliberate isolation. For 3 weeks I foraged for food from what I could find in my caravan cupboards, left behind by previous guests, drank only coconut water, wrote perched on rocks on a Welsh beach, lit fires in the sunset, explored the edges of what it is to be alone.
I had my dog, so I gave my character one, too. I learnt to climb, clinging with gripped fingers to the edge. I made myself exposed and elemental.
What next after my girl castaway? An island thriller. A dreamscape. A short story retelling of The Little Mermaid. Whatever it is, it will involve survival, transformation and immersion - the edges of ourselves.
There is something about the sea. Its wild sound and rough music. I often write about creatures of the coastline – whether YA, a thriller set on an isolated island, a cluster of short stories. My first two books were written with a band of blue through the window. A static caravan with a sea view. It tugged the characters out of me, made them twitch.
I believe in ‘method writing’ – where a writer inhabits the mind of their character as much as possible and uses this preparation to feed into their story. The concept of method acting was taken from Stanislavski, who believed that actors needed to use personal experiences to imagine how their characters were feeling. They would plunder their own memories and channel these emotions to their portrayal of a character.
So The Island, my story of a teenage castaway, was written during a period of deliberate isolation. For 3 weeks I foraged for food from what I could find in my caravan cupboards, left behind by previous guests, drank only coconut water, wrote perched on rocks on a Welsh beach, lit fires in the sunset, explored the edges of what it is to be alone.
I had my dog, so I gave my character one, too. I learnt to climb, clinging with gripped fingers to the edge. I made myself exposed and elemental.
What next after my girl castaway? An island thriller. A dreamscape. A short story retelling of The Little Mermaid. Whatever it is, it will involve survival, transformation and immersion - the edges of ourselves.