Transcript

Derek Neale

Hello and welcome to Start writing fiction. I’m Derek Neale and I teach creative writing here at The Open University. I’ll be your guide throughout the course and each week, I’ll let you know what’s coming up.

We’re going to focus on a skill that is central to the writing of all stories and novels – creating characters. Through course you’ll explore various ideas and exercises to help you develop your own characters and then reveal them to your reader.

You’ll hear from a number of writers – including Michèle Roberts, Alex Garland, and Louis de Bernières as they talk about their own experience of writing.

And you’ll have the chance to share comments and ideas with your fellow writers while sampling how established authors such as Toni Morrison and Graham Greene have written and presented their characters. By the end of the course you’ll have learned tricks such as using a journal to generate ideas, the importance of editing and redrafting and you’ll have started to read like a writer.

You’ll be writing throughout and towards the end of the course you will capitalise on the tools you’ve picked up by writing a more substantial story.

So, welcome to week one! To begin with we are going to look at how keeping a journal can help you capture and develop your ideas. You’ll explore the difference between fact and fiction and take a look at some George Orwell and Zoë Heller characters. And you’ll hear from writers including Tim Pears and Abdulrazak Gurnah talking about how they started to write.

Most important of all, you'll start writing yourself.