1. Week 1: Perspective, Voice and opinions.
Aims and objectives
Perspective: making sure the voice we are writing in is the right one for the story: 1st, 2nd 3rd
Writing from different perspectives: discuss/explore the language needed, and why it is important to the story. Find examples and discuss.
A matter of opinions: how to get our point across to our readers: Still I Rise, Angelou; Annie Lennox Blog; Shikari

2. Weekly blog posts Written work to be finished in Friday workshops.
All work to be recorded on the Blog covering what we did in the lesson, how we did it and why: give specific reasons for your thoughts, analysis and evaluations.
What were the most beneficial aspects of the sessions to you and your practice and why? How will this impact on your future work?

3. Perspectives: why your initial choice needs to be right!
Discuss/explore the language needed, and why it is important to the story. Find examples and discuss.
Tel me about a story where the voice of the narrator is important to your understanding of the story.
Best perspectives for:
Coming-of-age novels
Ghost stories
Thrillers and suspense novels

4. Pros and Cons 1st person 2nd person 3rd person
Research on line and find definitions and the pros and cons of each
Then discuss your findings

5. Perspective/narrators!! Why choice is important
First-person narration shares action as seen through the eyes of your narrator. A narrator can therefore only narrate scenes in which he or she is present.
First person, Multiple perspectives?
Third person narration uses “he” or “she”, where a first person narrator would say, “I”. BUT, still mainly through the eyes of our protagonist (hero) i.e. Third Person: One Point of View

6. Third Person: Multiple Points of View
What you get from those many perspectives is the ability to see into many hearts, many minds, many souls. That multi-viewpoint narration gives your novel:
Richness – all those multiple perspectives
Flexibility – you can set your movie camera up wherever the action is happening. You avoid the restrictions of narrow first person narration.
Potentially something epic in scale – because all those characters and voices lend a depth and scale to your story.
Also notice this:
There are types of suspense you just can’t deliver in a first person novel. So Hitchcock famously distinguished between surprise and suspense.
If two people are sitting in a cafe, when a bomb detonates – that’s a surprise.
But let’s restructure that same episode with multiple viewpoints, and you get something completely different. So we might see (Point of View #1) a terrorist planting a bomb in the cafe, then switch perspectives to (Point of View #2) the innocent couple drinking coffee right by the ticking bomb. IN that case, the simple scene of two people drinking coffee becomes laden with suspense.
The reader knows the bomb is there. The couple don’t. What’s going to happen . . .?
That’s a type of suspense that 1st person can not deliver.

7. Third Person: Multiple Points of View
Consequently, third person / multiple viewpoint novels are particularly common with:
thrillers and suspense novels
anything epic in scale. George RR Martin and his Game of Thrones series is a perfect example of modern and big. Ditto any door-stopper by Tom Clancy.

8. Warm up – free write
using theme of the sea. Write two different genre’s using the sea as the theme. SEE AQA Handout
Write this in two very distinct voices and perspectives: try 1st, 2nd and 3rd

9. Simon Armitage Poem: The Christening.
Writing from a different perspective. Using the Simon Armitage Poem: The Christening as inspiration, try and write a short pieces from and unusual perspective.

10. Tone The perspective also effects the tone of a piece
The language chosen/written in helps the reader place the characters in a world.
In Journalism:
Tone and language also help us understand the writers viewpoints/feelings/opinions etc.
A journalistic tone. This is a combination of a formal and objective tone; the focus of the piece is on reporting the facts. A journalistic tone informs readers of who was involved
In determining the attitude, mood, or tone of an author, examine the specific diction used. ... Other examples of literary tone are: airy, comic, condescending, facetious, funny, heavy, intimate, ironic, light, playful, sad, serious, sinister, solemn, somber, threatening.in an incident and what happened without providing an opinion.

11. Greeting Card exercise
Imagine someone is choosing a greeting card: decide who it is and who they are sending it to. Describe the search for a suitable card from 1st person POV.
Now imagine the recipient’s reaction. Write a short dialogue or monologue on how the recipient feels about the card and the sender. How successful were you with the different perspectives? Can you extend this as piece of fiction/memoir or autobiography?

12. Your Greeting Cards.
In teams: Produce a range/series of cards thinking visually and how the words work with images to attract a particular audience for a particular/specific occasion/event.
Think about the tone that the language sets and how it will effect the customers.
Feel free to find images and then use InDesign & Photoshop to create your range of cards.

13. Weekly blog posts Written work to be finished in Friday workshops.
All work to be recorded on the Blog covering what we did in the lesson, how we did it and why: give specific reasons for your thoughts, analysis and evaluations.
What were the most beneficial aspects of the sessions to you and your practice and why? How will this impact on your future work?