Writing tips with Hanna Alkaf

The most interesting parts for me were:

  • Dig deep- the author needs to feel the emotion to transfer it to the reader
  • Dialogue- needs to move the story forward or reveal information about characters/ their relationship’s
    • Also leaving it bare with no description can have the biggest impact

I think this was a very interesting talk. It let me know how to write but I could also recognise some of the things she mentioned from books that I have read before.

Writers Fortnight day 3: Hanna Alkaf

Hanna Alkaf was completely different from the other speakers I have seen so far. Not only was she not talking about one story she was talking fully about her story.  My favourite part of it was the resonance with her and the audience when she talked about books that were important to her and those who had read it felt included. A possible angle would be how she was talking about how most kids that had grown up in English colonies had probably read most of those books like Enid Blyton’s. I would be curious to find out how they were received in different countries in terms of popularity. Another idea that I like is she said something regarding Enid Blyton along the lines of “if you reread some of those books now you realise she put some quite problematic things in there,” and as someone who grew up reading those books I would maybe want to have a look into that and see how they are problematic and if there was any way I could link those things to her and see if I think those impacted her when growing up.

Overall it was interesting but I am not convinced if I would actually want to write a full article about any of the ideas I have come up with so far.