#WriteCBC tip and task from Jennie Godfrey
BY Katie Smart
1st Feb 2024
Welcome to our Feb 2024 #WriteCBC prompt challenge. I hope you’re ready to be inspired by our latest writing tip and task! If you haven’t taken part in a #WriteCBC X/Twitter competition before, we’re excited to welcome you to our writing community. Get up to speed by reading our blog full of information about how to play and the prizes on offer. It’s a lot of fun, and you might just win a free place on one of our six-week online writing courses.
This month’s special guest is Jennie Godfrey, author of the highly anticipated debut The List of Suspicious Things, out 15 Feb from Hutchinson Heinemann. Jennie studied on several of our online courses, including our popular How to Write Your Novel series and our three-month Writing Your Novel course.
Jennie’s writing tip:
A setting works well when it feels like the story couldn't happen anywhere else. When I was writing The List of Suspicious Things, I wanted Yorkshire to feel like its own character and I infused every scene with a feeling of 'Yorkshireness'.
Yorkshire and growing up in the north of England are integral to Jennie’s debut The List of Suspicious Things. Miv’s family – and the wider Yorkshire community – are living in the shadow of the Yorkshire Ripper murders. Miv is worried that her dad wants to move the family ‘Down South’ – because of the murders. So, she and her best friend Sharon take it upon themselves to start making a list of suspicious thing, searching for clues to help solve the case, so that Miv is able to stay in the home she loves.
- Right from the beginning of the novel the atmosphere of Yorkshire during this time in history is palpable…
It would be easy to say that it started with the murders, but it actually began when Margaret Thatcher became prime minister.
‘A woman in charge of the country just isn’t right. They’re not made for it,’ my Aunty Jean said, on the day the election results were announce. ‘As if the last lot weren’t bad enough. She’s the beginning of the end for Yorkshire an’ I’ll tell you why an’ all.’
She was bustling about our small kitchen, vigorously rewiping surfaces I had already wiped. I was sat at the table, in my brown-and-orange school uniform, shelling peas into a colander on the chipped yellow Formica top, popping fresh ones into my mouth whenever she wasn’t looking. I wanted to point out that, like Margaret Thatcher, Aunty Jean was also a woman, but Aunty Jean hated being interrupted mid-flow…
With this opening scene Jennie conveys the political unease of England in the late 70s and the reader feels grounded firmly in Yorkshire. Aunty Jean’s accent creeps onto the page as her opinion on Margaret Thatcher is getting more heated. The reader knows that she had much more to say that Miv has not reported – choosing instead to let the reader into the intimate details of her family kitchen and her own thoughts on the subject, including the holes in her Aunty’s logic – this is not only a brilliant introduction to our protagonist and her family but a wonderful introduction to the setting. You can almost with a lingering scent of kitchen cleaner from the wiped down surfaces. And the other details of the ‘brown-and-orange school uniform’, ‘chipped yellow’ counter top and Miv popping peas into her mouth let us see, taste and smell a typical post-school, pre-dinner scene in Miv’s home.
The wider political context of the time and place and the grounded intimate details of this working class family home brilliantly convey the two important aspects of this story’s setting.
Jennie’s writing task:
Your main character is walking down the street in the place where you (the writer) were born/grew up. Write a scene where you show us that place, the kind of people who live there, the feel of the setting... without explicitly telling us.
We’d love you to write a tweet-length response prompted by Jennie’s task. Remember to draw on your own personal memories of the place to help bring truth to the scene. Think about how your protagonist would react to the setting (this won’t necessarily align with your reaction to the same location). If you’re not feeling inspired by where you grew up, choose another location that you know well – maybe where you live now, a holiday spot, or where you went to university…
Here are few more tips to inspire you:
- Let the setting influence your story: If you’re writing about a quiet country town perhaps something there is something suspiciously out of place that will disrupt a typically sleepy scene. If your character is walking through a bustling city centre maybe they’re panicked by the crowds or comforted by the swell of people, all walking past with their own stories unfolding.
- Use the senses: Remember to experience your specific time and place through more than one sensory detail. Sight is a useful tool for writers, but the other senses can help transport your reader into the character’s shoes in a more visceral way – scent and taste are particularly helpful.
- Setting as a character: It can be helpful to think about the landscape of your story as another character with its own personality. Settings can be wild and dangerous or safe and welcoming. The possibilities are endless.
We can’t wait to read your tweet-length scenes. Tweet @cbcreative with your responses to Jennie’s task and you might win a free six-week online writing course place. Competition closes Fri 2 Feb, 10am (winner announced at 11am).
Congratulations to this month’s winner, Malika Browne @LevantineLass
- Flora entered the old city through its thick walls of baklava-like stone and immediately the soundscape changed. She'd left the microbus station behind her, and was walking up the cobbled street past Jihad the hairdresser, towards the bells of the Armenian church.
We loved Malika's opening description, particularly the old city with 'its thick walls of baklava-like stone'. Not only is this a beautiful simile, but the mention of baklava hints at where in the world our main character might be without explicitly saying. Malika really used the senses in this scene with the sounds of the bells of the Armenian church, suggesting a bustling city enclosed within the ancient walls. Well done, Malika – you get a free place on a £220 online course.
And this month’s runners-up – each getting a £50 course discount – are Fiona Bannatyne @feebee117 and Karen Bryony Rose @SunSparks4. Congratulations, all!
To redeem your prizes please email help@curtisbrowncreative.co.uk
Brilliant fun – hope you all enjoyed it and see you next month. #WriteCBC will be back on Thursday 7 Mar.
Pre-order The List of Suspicious Things (out 15 Feb).
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