Edited by Martin Cadwell, Wednesday, 16 Apr 2025, 09:27
1 The Evolution of a story that serves as an illustration in an unrelated subject.
The tags for this are: writing by numbers, the evolution of a character, the evolution of a story
These tags will be used only for posts that directly relate to this story and character evolution, so clicking on them in the list of tags will show only this evolution with the related posts. Because they will not display in chronological order the posts are numbered.
I am going to keep coming back to this post and continually update it. I shall also, intermittently, continue to make other posts on other subjects that are not related to this evolution.
One of the only ways I can write about something such as marketing or economics that makes any sense and is afterwards, to me, relatable, is to create characters and stories. This technique of conveying information is certainly not unusual in many books. In some dry books they are presented as case studies, and, for me, in interesting books they are given as examples.
One of the hardest emotions for me to write about, as an example to demonstrate a point I want to make in a piece, on, say, economics or logistics, is 'Love'. (Tricky subject).
Many of us have heard of a cost - benefit analysis that should be done before a major decision is made. In economics, this is extended to include the cost of doing something in terms of alternative opportunities that will no longer be available once a course of action is taken. An example of this is less time spent with one's own children or partner at home if overtime at work is decided upon and enacted: the opportunity of interactive home-life with our children is fully negated if the children are put to bed by a partner before one gets home from work each work day. In order to describe this, we could write about the negative aspects in terms of pain, sorrow, and loss, and so on. We could 'show' the effect on the children too.
I want to learn how to write about the joy of love, passion for our loved ones, wider familial love and love for our communities. There are physiological changes in the body, but many of them are cliches; heart racing; butterflies in the stomach; a warm feeling; smiles even when adversity is apparent; and so on. Colours even seem brighter when we fall in love and our love is requited.
In this post, I am going to continually update my efforts to write about love; hopefully the evolution of love; how love plateaus; the bifurcation of love towards a single person to include attraction to a second person; the deterioration of love; and hopefully, the remnants of love lost.
Toby's garden will evolve in line with his love for a person
I am going to try to avoid cliches, but I will include them as placeholders - we all know what we are talking about with cliches.
The evolution from draft to, in my mind, close to a final piece of some kind, I shall leave in this post. The musing, the foolish, the unnecessary, and the mundane; all will stay.
Black font is pretty much final but subject to change.
Red font will be changed.
Green font is a replacement for the red font.
I am going to also use blue font for comments and bold typeface and italics for something else.
So, green font is the replacement for the red font. Like this: Toby walked down his path. Toby ran across the lawn towards the path
I am not a writer and cannot tell anyone how to write.
If you are on an OU Creative Writing course, then that course is plainly where your first focus should be. I am making no recommendations, only demonstrating how I am learning.
An evolution
Toby and the garden fell in love
It was mid morning
in mid-April, but it felt like late Summer to Toby. A warm yellow sun
low in the sky shone on damp full leaved plants. It seemed that all
the plants had already flowered and were now preparing to make seeds.
Toby felt a simultaneous surge of bitter-sweet disappointment and
contentment because, despite a late English Summer being his
favourite time of the year, he somehow thought that he had missed the
exciting journey of getting there. The flowers seemed to have already
thrown a free festival with a riot of colour, and the bees and
insects had been and gone. They hadn’t, of course, and Toby,
returning from a memory of the past that had snuck in and masqueraded
as the present, didn’t care, because Toby was in love.
His toast hadn’t
burnt this morning. On the way to the bus, the miserable and lonely
mother with the ever-crying baby in a stroller had smiled at him
today. He was glad because normally he felt helpless when he saw her;
helpless and unsure what to do. The bus arrived on time, and he
didn’t have to sit next to the man who smelled of wet dogs, because
the waiting passengers at the bus stop had unthinkingly complied with
some innate and arcane reasoning to let happy people go ahead of
them. If these people had been sword-wielding warriors arriving at an
ancient battlefield already populated with vicious barbarians, they
would have looked at any man grinning at the thrill of battle and
laughing in the face of death, then looked at each other and said,
‘Yeah, we’ll let him go first.’ Today though, in modern day
peaceful Suffolk, the waiting commuters had silently and morosely
just shuffled aside out of the clump of bodies that was their queue,
and Toby got on first, the corners of his mouth slightly upturned.
I am spontaneously moving towards his new love interest being the magistrate / judge who sentences him for some misdemeanor. We'll see. This paragraph with speech may not make the final cut. It is italic red so I know that it can be deleted because nothing following it rests on its existence yet. Italics are also used for different reasons.
In town, at the
courthouse, Toby passed through the metal detector and collected his
belongings. A five pound note lay on the floor near his foot.
‘Hurry up, move
along, Sir’
‘There’s five
pounds here,’ Toby said, pointing down.
‘Move along.’
Scowls came from the
queue on the other side of the metal detector. Toby moved on. The
person behind him had only a phone, so was quickly through, and called, ‘Wait!’
Scowls came from the
other side of the metal detector. Toby moved on. The
person behind him had only a phone, so was quickly through.
‘Wait!’
This (below) is a paragraph I wrote that was going to go before he got to the courthouse, but I am not happy with it. I think there is enough to describe how he is feeling and I want to move on with the story, so I have left it here for future reference and big changes, no doubt.
Normally, his
twenty-eight year old body felt weighty, and sluggish. Today,
however, it felt like his blood viscosity had changed from heavy crude oil,
dark blue with frigidy, to high-octane fuel, bright red with
oxygenated heat. It felt more slippery than before. The annoying
ear-worm, he had had for the last three days, faded when it couldn’t
keep pace with the new speedier pace of his heart. Everything that
had shaded him yesterday could not shade him today.
Writing by Numbers without numbers 1
1 The Evolution of a story that serves as an illustration in an unrelated subject.
One of the only ways I can write about something such as marketing or economics that makes any sense and is afterwards, to me, relatable, is to create characters and stories. This technique of conveying information is certainly not unusual in many books. In some dry books they are presented as case studies, and, for me, in interesting books they are given as examples.
One of the hardest emotions for me to write about, as an example to demonstrate a point I want to make in a piece, on, say, economics or logistics, is 'Love'. (Tricky subject).
Many of us have heard of a cost - benefit analysis that should be done before a major decision is made. In economics, this is extended to include the cost of doing something in terms of alternative opportunities that will no longer be available once a course of action is taken. An example of this is less time spent with one's own children or partner at home if overtime at work is decided upon and enacted: the opportunity of interactive home-life with our children is fully negated if the children are put to bed by a partner before one gets home from work each work day. In order to describe this, we could write about the negative aspects in terms of pain, sorrow, and loss, and so on. We could 'show' the effect on the children too.
I want to learn how to write about the joy of love, passion for our loved ones, wider familial love and love for our communities. There are physiological changes in the body, but many of them are cliches; heart racing; butterflies in the stomach; a warm feeling; smiles even when adversity is apparent; and so on. Colours even seem brighter when we fall in love and our love is requited.
In this post, I am going to continually update my efforts to write about love; hopefully the evolution of love; how love plateaus; the bifurcation of love towards a single person to include attraction to a second person; the deterioration of love; and hopefully, the remnants of love lost.
Toby's garden will evolve in line with his love for a person
I am going to try to avoid cliches, but I will include them as placeholders - we all know what we are talking about with cliches.
The evolution from draft to, in my mind, close to a final piece of some kind, I shall leave in this post. The musing, the foolish, the unnecessary, and the mundane; all will stay.
Black font is pretty much final but subject to change.
Red font will be changed.
Green font is a replacement for the red font.
I am going to also use blue font for comments and bold typeface and italics for something else.
So, green font is the replacement for the red font. Like this: Toby walked down his path. Toby ran across the lawn towards the path
I am not a writer and cannot tell anyone how to write.
If you are on an OU Creative Writing course, then that course is plainly where your first focus should be. I am making no recommendations, only demonstrating how I am learning.
Toby and the garden fell in love
It was mid morning in mid-April, but it felt like late Summer to Toby. A warm yellow sun low in the sky shone on damp full leaved plants. It seemed that all the plants had already flowered and were now preparing to make seeds. Toby felt a simultaneous surge of bitter-sweet disappointment and contentment because, despite a late English Summer being his favourite time of the year, he somehow thought that he had missed the exciting journey of getting there. The flowers seemed to have already thrown a free festival with a riot of colour, and the bees and insects had been and gone. They hadn’t, of course, and Toby, returning from a memory of the past that had snuck in and masqueraded as the present, didn’t care, because Toby was in love.
His toast hadn’t burnt this morning. On the way to the bus, the miserable and lonely mother with the ever-crying baby in a stroller had smiled at him today. He was glad because normally he felt helpless when he saw her; helpless and unsure what to do. The bus arrived on time, and he didn’t have to sit next to the man who smelled of wet dogs, because the waiting passengers at the bus stop had unthinkingly complied with some innate and arcane reasoning to let happy people go ahead of them. If these people had been sword-wielding warriors arriving at an ancient battlefield already populated with vicious barbarians, they would have looked at any man grinning at the thrill of battle and laughing in the face of death, then looked at each other and said, ‘Yeah, we’ll let him go first.’ Today though, in modern day peaceful Suffolk, the waiting commuters had silently and morosely just shuffled aside out of the clump of bodies that was their queue, and Toby got on first, the corners of his mouth slightly upturned.
I am spontaneously moving towards his new love interest being the magistrate / judge who sentences him for some misdemeanor. We'll see. This paragraph with speech may not make the final cut. It is italic red so I know that it can be deleted because nothing following it rests on its existence yet. Italics are also used for different reasons.
In town, at the courthouse, Toby passed through the metal detector and collected his belongings. A five pound note lay on the floor near his foot.
‘Hurry up, move along, Sir’
‘There’s five pounds here,’ Toby said, pointing down.
‘Move along.’
Scowls came from the queue on the other side of the metal detector. Toby moved on. The person behind him had only a phone, so was quickly through, and called, ‘Wait!’
Scowls came from the other side of the metal detector. Toby moved on. The person behind him had only a phone, so was quickly through.
‘Wait!’
This (below) is a paragraph I wrote that was going to go before he got to the courthouse, but I am not happy with it. I think there is enough to describe how he is feeling and I want to move on with the story, so I have left it here for future reference and big changes, no doubt.
Normally, his twenty-eight year old body felt weighty, and sluggish. Today, however, it felt like his blood viscosity had changed from heavy crude oil, dark blue with frigidy, to high-octane fuel, bright red with oxygenated heat. It felt more slippery than before. The annoying ear-worm, he had had for the last three days, faded when it couldn’t keep pace with the new speedier pace of his heart. Everything that had shaded him yesterday could not shade him today.