Kay Harker and Cole Hawlings Picture accessed via BBC There are few things more Christmassy than the opening few bars of the theme tune to The Box of Delights . In fact, the tune is based on Victor Hely-Hutchinson's Carol Symphony and had been used in radio adaptations of the same novel years earlier than the 1984 television series. Clearly, everyone already knew that you just couldn't improve on that sound to evoke the magic of Christmas which - for me and for many - is so wonderfully explored in John Masefield's story. As a viewer, one of the things I enjoy most about the television series of The Box of Delights is the acting. Child actors are precarious things: too sweet and they're almost unbearable to watch, not sweet enough and they're unbelievable. They must walk that fine line between the two, and it is a perilous one! Most young actors fall into the first category, where their on-screen presence is almost dangerously saccharine. Not so the child actors ...
Day 6 - Writing Relationships
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| Photo by Git Stephen Gitau from Pexels |
Relationships are tricky – not just in real life, but in writing as well. We essentially have a relationship of some description with everyone that we meet – and certainly anyone that we meet more than once. I was shopping in Tesco during the October holidays and spoke with so many people I knew – ranging from current pupils to one of the conductors on the train which was a part of my commute eighteen months ago.
These relationships can be difficult to recreate in literature. We tend to dwell on the meaningful, and they are tricky enough! But how often are we writers guilty of neglecting those people who are important ‘friendly faces’?
When I’m writing established relationships, I tend to make it all about inference. Think about introducing, if appropriate, a nickname for one of the characters. Or what are you inferring if the teenager in your YA manuscript calls their parents by their first names? It automatically says something about the relationship that your character has with their parents which, in a YA novel, is probably going to be quite important.
What about if your main character says to someone “I booked a table at that restaurant you love”?
Another key feature of writing relationships is that the relationships we write have to reflect the relationships we have experienced. That doesn’t necessarily mean we have to have experienced them ourselves, but I do think you have to have witnessed it at close quarters. Even so, I would suggest focussing on what you know – those are the relationships which will leap naturally off the page and grip your reader.
Judith Crow
www.crowvus.com
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