Ayr Writers' Club Blog

Well, haven’t we have had some excellent club nights in recent weeks, from Maggie’s Children’s workshop to Sheila Templeton’s poetry, so last night’s fiction workshop had some talent to live up to. Well, I for one think Janice Johnston maintained this high standard in leaps and bounds.

The frame of the evening was character creation and Janice started us off with a crib sheet of questions you’d commonly see in many varied magazines and newspapers.

This was swiftly followed by the presentation of various clothing props to get our creative juices flowing - from a nice, but apparently uncool, boiler suit to a rather saucy, red basque of which Janice assured us belonged to her son’s friend Andie, which I’m quick to reassure everyone that it’s not mine!

Stories came forth of characters such as Dave, formerly Davina - a clearly confused man who desired to be a boiler suit wearing Formula One test driver - to a Slipknot-hoody-wearing disgruntled youth who liked to rap Wordsworth.

It seemed that many of our members’ imaginations were caught by the sexy basque, which following on from  an apparently lengthy and hilarious previous night’s discussion about an Alien’s ‘drooples’, begs me to wonder just quite where the group’s imagination runs riot of an evening!

The second task set was to combine various characters we’d created into the beginning of a story and, as usual, we were not disappointed by a wide array of wonderful and imaginative tales.

Yet another fine class lead on this occasion by Janice Johnston, which has given me a lot of useful inspiration and I’m sure so the whole group.

No pressure on future speakers.

Andrew Leslie