Learning From The Classics Podcast: Writing For Empowerment

Right today we are going to be talking about setting,

Plot development if we have time,

Certainly setting and i'm just going to recap now so i'm just going to start by recapping what we've done so far and giving a nod to why we are here if you are new here welcome uh my name is Stephanie Poppins and i talk about writing so i'm an author myself some of my work is on insight timer in audio tracks um some of my stories my latest story Blethingwood Hall is now out and that's directly related to what we are talking about on my new course um empowerment through your pen so it is an autobiographical novel written about somebody who is a mini me okay so we're going to begin and i'm just going to start by saying to all of those that have joined the course thank you and welcome and how exciting um the tracks i have specifically my return to your childhood bedroom is a good track um that's a good track to listen to if you have trouble with tapping into those feelings and going back to a time when perhaps your inciting moment happened so i've written a course it's a three-part course it has three lessons and it is teaching us to write our own story in our own words it's not quite the same as journaling because it's a narrative and we're writing it about somebody else who is essentially a little version of us empowerment through your pen because it's a process of catharsis okay so the lives that i'm doing these lives are complementing that course but if you are not ready to undertake such a thing at the moment you're in the right place for it there's too much going on just come join the lives have a listen i talk about writing and the idea is that you become inspired by that experience um because that's what i do i teach i write and i teach so welcome to my lives please listen along to Blethingwood Hall that will also help and i hope inspire you too and at this point i need to remind everybody that it's an introductory course so we are right at the beginning of our writing journey some of us might not be but the focus is on support for beginners and my lives are here to open your eyes to the beauty of the written word the course is here to give you structure so that you can put your thoughts into words but the course is not there to overwhelm you again i reiterate it's an introductory course so by the end of the course you may only have three edited long paragraphs but they're edited in such a way that you've quantified you've put that moment that you're seeking to address perhaps you've been carrying with you for many years you've put it down and you have given it structure so i don't want this to be daunting we're not writing a novel okay we are writing a moment and we are using the lesson to teach us how to do that in a structured way so it doesn't become overwhelming and again from the live last week and if you're new and you haven't seen me before or you're interested something sparked your interest by what i've said you don't really know go back on my um transcript so they're not transcripts i apologize the recordings of these lives are all available as tracks so you can go back bookmark and listen to the tracks and everything i've said on the lives will be there to support you so the reason i said that was because i'm saying be mindful of the time spent and only give what you can last week we did a time management live and that was um talking about being very committed just to have one moment of time to be aware of how much time that is and stick to that rigidly in the first instance so that um you don't get carried away with your thoughts and lose the structure the structure is there to support us so again if you've missed a live or you want to tap back into that um topic go back to my recordings last week's is now out it came out yesterday or the day before okay so if you if you've given yourself 10 minutes stick to the 10 minutes especially if you're finding this overwhelming this is not supposed to be it will be challenging but it's not supposed to be i want to do it but i just it's too much for me it's supposed to be i've never thought about it that way maybe i will try and write a few things down and use that structure and really restrict the moment to a bite-sized manageable chunk where it's not going to hurt me too much so that i can't manage to deal with it it's not going to open this massive can of worms okay i'm taking off the lid i'm looking in and i'm saying okay it looks very dark in there okay but i know i'm only allowing myself a restricted amount of time in a structured way and then i can close the lid again yeah this is in no way open the can empty the whole thing on the desk and then for the next three weeks sit there crying about it that's not the idea okay it is supposed to be an empowering exercise and it is non-competitive which means you do not have to finish it you don't have to do anything you can just try it you can just learn about how to structure something how to structure your ideas you can use the lessons to teach you how to put your thoughts down without committing to them too much understanding they're just ideas and the story can take any direction so it's an introductory course the purpose of this course is to get to grips with one inciting moment and put it into words to frame it in a structured way so we can come to terms with it and we're writing the first person about someone who represents us now if you've listened to Blethingwood Hall i'm going to be referring to that a bit today Blethingwood Hall is my latest novel that's out we're on chapter two at the moment in novel form actually two chapters would be one but i keep it bite-sized so we can just tap in and tap out so in Blethingwood Hall Penny represents me i've drawn on direct experience but and this is the beauty of writing i've allowed her to sing whereas perhaps in my life i would have kept silent in order for me to resolve the lasting pain of past experience how good is that she can do what i could not do that's where the empowering comes in okay you in your little story can be any one of the multi facets that make up who you are it's not journaling it's not word for word account it's not a memory of a memory it is a narrative it's a story okay so we're composing it we're putting together all the elements and we're making something just like when you were a child and you had play-doh or plasticine you took a little bit of green a little bit of yellow yeah you molded it maybe made a couple of balls or maybe oh i'm gonna make a pretend cake you layered it up and you put the icing on and the little candles and and then you looked at it and you said oh that's really fun but i'm gonna try something else now and you just squeezed it all together and you did something else okay this is malleable it's in it's changeable it's a story it's not word for word account and actually you may not be capable of documenting a moment in your past maybe from a long time ago word for word anyway i know i i'm not because you are remembering memories okay so process of catharsis catharsis means releasing and thereby providing relief from strong or repressed emotions that's what we're doing releasing and providing relief from strong or repressed we are seeking to alleviate the pressure we are not seeking to give ourselves more pressure it's a story okay so it's quite important that we understand that our brain is going to seek out actively seek out what we more of what we are thinking about the reticular activating system in your brain rsa if you have focused on something negative it will actively seek out other negative associations with that thing it's going to find those moments it's going to focus on them okay so what we've spoken about in the last couple of weeks on the lives is creating a balance and that's where the setting comes in today's theme a balance we looked at the composition of a piece and all the elements that exist in order to create that moment so ras reticular activating system is like a gatekeeper for your brain and it's going to determine the information from the external world that gets your attention okay and you need to be aware of that because in every moment in every moment there is a black and a white okay there's two sides um and we need to have a balance when we write our story it can't all be black okay because no story's all black otherwise you wouldn't be here today right that's it's going to be roller coaster it's going to be up and down it's going to be black and white and all the shades in between but we have to be aware of what our brain's doing and say to ourselves i'm not just going i've written a lot of dark now i'm going to use the structure and find a little bit of a lighter tone okay so rsa is sifting through the immense amount of sensory data you have okay and it decides which bits are important if you have already decided in my story it's important for me to succeed to triumph your brain will start remembering some of the little triumphs that you've experienced as a result of your inciting moment your inciting moment is what the story is about it's where we begin in lesson one it's about something shocking or poignant that happened to you so we do need doom and gloom in a good story there has to be a balance when composing any art form and we are composing a little piece of something that we can look back on in years to come and say i did that do you remember when i did that let those lessons on that course that was fun and the thing with this course is you can do it over and over again for different inciting moments so we're part of the composition we're not the only thing in the composition there are other things going on okay let that sink in that's the key we must gain perspective and when we write about a setting as we're writing if we're talking about a story about a dark setting we realize oh this sounds very dark doesn't it and we will remember dark moments but then we have to seek out that open window we have to seek out that chink of light so what happened to me that's what we're talking about okay it was bad what else happened at the same time what was happening outside of my experience what did i gain what did i lose where is the balance so in Blethingwood Hall the first character mentioned is Penelope Darlington and we go straight into the action as i spoke about um last couple of weeks lesson one's about right in the action Penelope Darlington's already at Blethingwood Hall the backstory is back to front so the backstory happens in later chapters but she's already there why because it's a good idea when you're addressing a feeling a heightened emotion an experience to go for it that was the idea behind it so lesson one get that down what happened and use the structure but just write whatever whatever comes into your mind and be mindful of your RSA be mindful of what you are looking for in the beginning you'll only be looking for the dark but that's the beginning and that's okay as long as you're listening and understanding that eventually we're going to have to have a balance when we go back to the editing of that that's fine you can be as dark as you like for as long as you like until it's out but that's when the editing comes in because then you're being mindful of what you've done you're rereading it and you're learning about yourself wow i talk about that a lot don't i that is very dark isn't it did i remember that correctly and then suddenly the story opens up okay so Penelope Darlington's at Lethingwood Hall and she comes to a realization her mother has deserted them they're stuck in this school and they've realized ah we we're we're on our own in this and this is really difficult Lethingwood Hall is a cold and unforgiving place the sky is gray outside this is the setting now and Penny's on her own trying to clear up and trying to avoid getting in trouble because inspection the head teacher's on her way um her brothers are outside having fun they're two boys she's the only girl they get in trouble a lot so she's scared okay it's dark in the beginning she's scared she's small she's quite a plain little thing she's bullied by this beautiful woman this head teacher who is in fact the ugliest person she's ever met she likes to hide she wants to be as brilliant as she can to get this head teacher's attention to get people to like her but it's no good she learns very early on I'm doomed so it starts off dark where's the balance in that?

Okay she's in this room looking through the cracked glass at the soulless skies above there's a big wardrobe looming over her casting long shadows across the room everything's dark but guess what she notices this fresco hidden behind a bed and this fresco is the only one that hasn't been whitewashed over in the school and she can see pictures of wildlife and nature scene right just as with Jane Eyre the outside nature mother nature is her saviour it's the same for Penelope Darlington and this story I've written is about man versus nature our chemical intervention and how we're destroying the planet so it's dark but then she sees this scene there's the balance okay everything's awful and then suddenly oh isn't that lovely there's a seed of hope she thinks about her father okay her father is another light he's a scientist who's trying to save the world she looks outside later on in chapter two she goes outside with her brother and we see the beautiful grounds the wonderful situation they are in visually speaking and that's balance but of course then we have the dark because we've got these evil black birds called the feridor who are watching everything they do and the feridor are birds who thrive on chemicals plastics and so on and the more they have the more of it they the more of it they get the stronger they are right so this balance what I'm saying is there's a balance there it's not all dark and it's not all light there are a myriad of colours in between and probably the lightest element of all in that moment where she's hiding in the wardrobe and she's really scared because she knows this woman is coming for her she has her daydreams she has her own escape in her head okay and we then find out towards the end of chapter two um or maybe chapter one and so many now that her brother her younger brother has seen that there's something beyond and they can escape there's something beyond um which they first realized and there's hope okay so you're writing about your moment but there had to be something beyond that or you wouldn't be here now if it was all dark that would have been it done and we are seeking that out we are programming our RSA we're saying no i'm going to write all the dark first i accept that less than one that's fine i'm going to get it all out and then i am going to come back to it and i'm going to look and i'm going to read and i'm going to notice what's going on and over the period of maybe a week or so i'm going to start to edit that i'm going to start to edit out too much dark so that i have a little bit of hope in there and we can do that by incorporating things into our setting symbols weather okay pathetic fallacy different literary devices in order to balance out the experience we are creating a little story and what you can think of it is well i'm my child and i'm going to give her a little book or him a little story book so that they will know me better that will be really calming and it will empower them and make them understand that even in the darkest hour there is hope so that's what we're doing and setting can provide that it can provide an escape from the pain of the moment okay escape from the fear was there somewhere you felt safe penny was safe in the wardrobe that's a symbol for the dark the hidden now the dark can be scary but penny over time comes to embrace it because that's a place she could be quiet she can get away she can escape okay and darkness can also symbolize intrigue fascination illusion so it can be a strength of the story so it's not all about bad versus good there are so many different takes on the same settings and you have to make that work for you so again lesson one heightened emotions you are going to get it all down it's going to be emotional but it will pass because you know you've got a structure and you can move on and if you are overwhelmed by it you say to yourself right that's it close the book that's the end of my chapter one i'm not i'm not even going to look at that again for a while i'm going to leave that and i'm going to go on to chapter two because i don't want to talk about the setting i don't want to talk about me feeling bad anymore okay so i wanted to talk a bit about illusion as well um because i spoke about the dark creating an illusion of something or a setting creating an illusion of something and the word illusion means an instance of a wrong or misinterpreted perception of an experience a wrong or misinterpreted perception of a sensory or an experience something you see doesn't it doesn't it isn't what it appears to be so you can set yourself up in this dark place but in fact the dark turns out to be your savior again with these lives we're using my words as inspiration rather than oh my gosh i've got to get that done as well you don't have to do anything but hopefully i'm just dropping little seeds and some of them might grow so in bleffingwood hall penny interprets being sent to the hall as abandonment okay she feels like she's been abandoned and i have struggled with a fear of abandonment my whole life yet now i acknowledge situations are not that black and white and my predisposition to a particular fear does not mean that i am constantly being abandoned it means i have a predisposition to feel i'm being abandoned that's not the same thing and that's the idea behind this cause understanding that so i'm struggling with something i'm going to write a little story about it and the more i might write the more i come to realize i have a predisposition to feel like that but that doesn't mean that's constantly happening to me it means i'm constantly feeling like that okay that's quite big so we're going to compose the story and we need certain elements in the story and certain elements will be there'll be more of an emphasis on certain elements than others because that's what we do okay let's say we're composing a melody a song all right this is your setting we need the bass line the rhythm the drums the strings the list goes on and on and on what do you give more energy to so for me if i'm listening to a song i give more energy to the bass line why um when i was younger i won a scholarship to music school to play cello and that was bass bass is invariably warm it's a masculine sound it's slower paced it's secure it's repetitive i feel secure it gives me a sense of security that's what i'm listening for but i am acknowledging there's a melody there are strings there are drums okay so my ras is saying i'm going to actively seek out the strong foundations but i'm going to have to have other things in the story because otherwise it's going to get boring okay and when i acknowledge that i can then create a balance within my work so when i acknowledge oh that sounds very dreary everything's set in a dark place it's pouring with rain outside it's been wet for weeks i haven't been outside nothing's when i acknowledge that i say okay now how am i going to balance that out within my setting what am i going to do am i going to have pictures on my walls that i escape into in my bedroom for example um again listen to my return to my childhood bedroom track because that is is quite good at just helping you just be in that moment in that room and revert back to being a child many of the situations we found ourselves in that were shocking happened when we were younger so think about which elements you can drop in to keep your story alive because you're writing for you you're writing for your inner child and you want to keep them excited about it you want to think oh there are there are other things not just the misery no child wants to write read a story where there's no hope and everything's just doomed nobody we look to online games there are various clicks pops rings crackles okay so this phenomenon operates on the principle of the dopamine loop keep getting those dopamine hits as soon as you get a little reward oh something's released in the brain okay and then you get this pleasurable sensation i want more i want more i want more when we're writing we can do that by for example injecting unexpected humor making fun of something that's really serious an unexpected comment or action by the protagonist that reminds us just how ridiculous this situation is something to unexpectedly lighten the mood so think about that it can be dry humor any humor you like but something someone says or that you think that just pooh poohs the ridiculousness of it all because this is what humans crave this is what we crave without consciously realizing it we want the balance we don't want all gloom and misery and this writing course is about making order out of chaos that's why it's difficult okay the story's already happened it's really difficult to pick out every single element of the song every single element of the story isolate them and then write them down it's really hard but if we restrict ourselves and say i'm only going to do this for a certain amount of time i'm just going to pick out one element today what was the funny where was the funny in that i don't know maybe something awful happened you ran away you went down i don't know it you ran into the public loo shut the door and there was something funny written on the door that was ridiculous that had nothing to do with it whatsoever but in some kind of stupid way you thought well at least someone's having a laugh at least which symbolizes their life beyond your experience at least the world still continues to turn okay okay so we're picking up the elements and we're saying right we're going to start like with beth in the tall dark penny's hiding in the wardrobe but the wall and the walls are whitewashed but they're supposed to be whitewashed picture hidden somewhere okay the window to another world outside the setting is beautiful but then you've got the dark evil birds looming over you inside is bad outside is good symbolism give a sense of time and place okay so so what age were you what were you doing and how significant is your success setting to you how significant is where you are to how you felt is it significant at all if this thing happened anywhere else would it have felt the same probably not but you might have noticed funny little things going on that had no relevance to the inciting moment at all and yet you remember them vividly really clearly it might be something on a parent's coat for example something written on a wall some piece of fabric that was torn that you didn't know was torn you think oh i'll go stitch that up tomorrow something ridiculous okay so that's all about your setting and the reason we focus on the setting in lesson two so lesson one is about the inciting moment what happened who told you you're having a dialogue with a couple of people you don't have too many characters only really you and a couple of others but you've got to have an enemy you've got to have an antagonist and they might be delivering bad news or they might have done something to you whatever that's chapter one the dark bit lesson one lesson two is all about you escaping and talking about the setting where are you how are you coming to terms with this and creating a balance okay so if you're thinking of undertaking the course or you've signed up to the course and where do i begin structure is everything lean on my foundations okay stick to the plan because if you don't it can be like journaling and you can just go on and on and on and on and what you're doing is programming this rsa to keep seeking out more of the same and that's actually going to make you feel over time worse so we'll do that so you want to acknowledge yeah it's going to be a dark bit to start with and i'm going to finish it off but i know there's an end to this i'm going to move on once i get to lesson three this is going to be over because i am going to my little character my mini me is going to make a decision and she or he is going to empower themselves to get the devil out yeah and move forward to being the person that you are today i hope this made sense i've spoken a lot about um i've got so much more to say but i'm mindful of the time because i always say the lesson will be 30 minutes i've spoken a lot about setting structure balance if this is not enough time for you say we can make it a bit longer next time um what i would say is there's a lot of information here so always go back to the lives recordings and listen to them each week keep communicating with me group chat we've got the course lessons and the messages there the support is here i'm always here and i return messages quite promptly and you're not in it alone we're doing it together there's quite a few of us now and it's going to be something that you look back on and say i'm glad i did that i'm glad i took the time for myself to do that i learned a lot doing that and as long as you understand it's an introductory course as long as you understand that you mustn't demand too much of yourself try and see where the river takes you but be mindful of what your brain's doing and what it's focusing on i think you'll be fine and yet i'm so pleased that you're here with me and hopefully i shall see you next week and we're going to go into the plot development that i didn't get to cover this week and good luck with the course i'll see you next time