I’ve been to see Kate Atkinson myself a long time ago and she is well worth listening to. This event will be at York St John University De Grey Court Lecture Theatre on March 25th 2010 at 7.00 p.m, where she will be in conversation with Dr. Roger Clark of York St John University’s Literature Department, an old teacher of mine.

Tickets can be bought for £5.00 at York Theatre Royal box office on 01904 623568.

More information is available from City Screen - 871 704 2054 -  www.picturehouses.co.uk 

or if the website is still down contact:

Mark Finnie
t: 01908 364 213

or

Alison Hull
t: 07977 670 868

1. The competition will accept entries of creative writing (poetry & fiction) as well as artwork and photography.

2. Each section will have one winner that will receive a prize of £500 and a subscription to Aesthetica Magazine

3. The new Aesthetica Annual will be a book that will present winning entries and runners-up in the genres of artwork, poetry and fiction. It will be distributed through Borders stores nationwide.

4. Entry allows the submission of either five images of artwork, three short stories (up to 2000 words each), or five poems (up to 40 lines each).

5. The entry fee for the Aesthetica Annual Creative Works Competition is £10.

6. Deadline for entries is 31 August 2008.

For further information please go to http://www.aestheticamagazine.com/submission_guide.htm

Aesthetica Magazine will still continue to be published bi-monthly covering visual arts, literature, film, music and theatre all in one issue.  We will still continue to distribute through WH Smith and Borders. However our literature section is evolving and we will be working with major publishers to bring you exclusive excerpts from newly published novels.

When collecting material for narrative, it must be assumed that you have the material for your story in your head, or you would not be sitting down to write it. Your problem is to decide what is to be omitted, what briefly told, and how you are to arrange the material that is left.

The arrangement of matter is to a large extent imposed from without. Things happen in a certain order, and in most cases the narrator should follow that order. It is true that in dealing with a long series of events, as in history or in an epic poem, it may be necessary to present various incidents rather in the order of importance than in the exact order in which they occurred. Epics almost never begin at the be­ginning: they start off in the middle of an interesting situation and go on, gradually picking up preceding events as the story de­velops. The same is true of many novels. On the other hand, many narratives, such as Robinson Crusoe and The Pilgrim’s Progress, follow the time order: they begin at the be­ginning and go right on.

Even in those cases where series of events are grouped according to their importance in the whole narrative, the events within each series must be given in their time order. It would appear, therefore, that once the general arrange­ment of series is made, the rest is a mere matter of memory. You start at the beginning of each series, and let the mind recall each event as it happened. But the matter is not quite so easy as it looks. Two opposite lines of error present themselves: we may omit essential points, or we may include points that have no value in the narrative.

Listen to children telling stories. One of the commonest remarks you will hear is “Oh, but I forgot to tell you that . . .”. This is said when the child finds that the development of the story demands a knowledge of some preceding inci­dent, that at an earlier part of the narrative was not of sufficient consequence to command their attention. On the other hand, when we listen to the stories of certain garrulous persons we are not spared a single detail, however unim­portant.

The true view is that here as elsewhere we must make a selection among the facts that present themselves, we must choose only those that are of consequence in respect of the purpose we have at the time. The reader of a narrative is en­titled to assume that every fact set forth does something towards aiding the development of the story. For example, if we are told that a man walked to town “by the shortest route “, we have a right to assume that he was in a hurry to get there. If the context shows that there was no need for haste, then we are justified in assum­ing that later on in the story we shall find that something depended on his taking this particular way to town. Sometimes, it is true, a remark is introduced not for its own sake, or for future use, but merely to convey a present impression. / heard the wall-clock ticking at the far end of the corridor need not lead us to expect the clock to play a prominent part in the story. The context shows that the reference is made in order to strengthen the impression of the silence that reigned at a critical moment in the story.

While in narrative there is thus the usual need for a point of view and for a corresponding selection of material, there is always the great help of the time order. You must choose the proper incidents, but the incidents all pass through your mind in the order in which they originally occurred. In description, on the other hand, the facts may present themselves to the mind in any order. We must adopt our point of view, and then determine the relative importance of the facts at our disposal. It is true that, speaking generally, we have in description all the facts arranged according to space, as in a narrative they are arranged according to time. We may describe emotions, theories and other immaterial things, but the beginner in descrip­tion will do well to confine himself to things seen, and there he has the aid of space arrange­ment. Even with this limitation he has to determine which facts are, for his present purpose, the most suitable to begin with.

Your treatment of the facts will be decided in part by your method of telling the story. The most usual method is to pretend that the author knows everything and is everywhere. In telling the story they can enter the minds of the characters and proclaim their secret thoughts; they can describe what happened in one place, and afterwards what was happening at the same time in another; they can traverse infinite distance, and leap across the years. This method is clearly most convenient since it imposes no restraint upon the writer, but there are times when other methods are appropriate.

When a story deals very particularly with the experience of a single character, it is common to make that character the narrator, and to write in the first person. David Copperfield and Robinson Crusoe are examples of this method. It has certain limitations in that you can only present what the narrator themselves heard or saw or experienced, but it is often a more convincing method, since the reader easily imagines themselves in the place of the character who is telling the story.

A third method is to make an imaginary character tell the story for you—a difficult method, which should not be attempted by the inexperienced. It is often used when the story would be incredible if told in a more direct form. Reading it, you feel that the author is not vouching for the truth themselves, but heard it from another, who possibly heard it from a third. Henry James uses it very brilliantly in his ghost story The Turn of the Screw, where the events would seem utterly beyond belief if the story were told more directly. Many ghosts stories employ this method. It is used with different effect when the narrator is a “character” like W. W. Jacobs’ night watchman, for then much of the fun of the story lies in the way it is told. “Q” uses all three methods in a very skilful way in a short story, The Roll-call of the Reef.2 It opens in the first person, with a conversation between the author and his host, but this merely serves as introduction. His host tells a ghost story, which he himself heard from his father, and because he is telling a story well-known to him he uses the freer direct method as if he him­self were the author. He thus reaps the ad­vantages of all three methods. Phillip Pulman’s uses a special device for this in His Dark Materials with the invention of demons, an external form of the human soul, to tell characters, and the reader, things that they wouldn’t normally be able to know. You will be well advised not to try any such intricate methods of story-telling yourself if you’re new to writing stories, but rather learn from these tricks by studying how they are handled by accomplished writers.

Budding movie makers will need to supply the first themselves, CITYsj Productions, the commercial film production wing of York St John University, will provide the second. Over the summer a series of weekend courses will teach movie makers how to get started on screenwriting and filming.

The tutors will be James Richards and Alasdair Beckett-King, both of whom have won awards for their films. The courses are open to everyone, of any age and background. No previous experience is needed. Training will be done using equipment that anyone can operate and afford.

The York based course will be held at Miller’s Yard off Gillygate and will happen on the weekend of 2-3 August 2008. The morning sessions will run from 10.00am–1.00pm, the afternoon sessions from 2.00pm–5.00pm. The cost of a two-day course will be £50.

The courses will cover planning and scripting, filming and lighting and editing and post production. CITYsj Productions can’t promise to turn you into Martin Scorsese or Shane Meadows over a weekend, but we can demystify the film making process and give you the confidence to plan and make their own movies. There will also information available on next steps and where to find out more.

York St John University, Lord Mayor’s Walk, York. YO31 7EX.
Tel: 01904 624624 Fax: 01904 612512

Further details of the event can be obtained by phoning: 01904 628740