Keynote: Notes from a long-term resident in the home for perpetually bewildered

John Marsden

John mentioned these titles as good resources: Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre and Impro for Storytellers by Keith Johnstone.

Good impro activity (and John actually did this with delegates from the audience): Line of people (students) on each side. One to play one role e.g. Umbrella seller and the other to play another role e.g. Person who wants to buy umbrella. Have to carry out conversation but can’t use any words with letter “S” for example. Student is out if they say word with letter "s" and the next student continues in their place. Could be used for a story writing activity.

What John likes about this type of activity is that it provides for unexpected outcomes and a greater level of listening participation by the audience. The audience delights when a participant is very skilful and doesn’t say words with “s” and delight when someone does. They don’t like it when someone is too measured in their responses avoiding words with “s” or when participants are too quick and can do it easily. They like happy losers and don’t like bad losers.

John argued that there are two sorts of literature:

1. Literature which has great characterisation and very little plot e.g. Pride and Prejudice. They are about exploring a theme and are deeper and engage us at multiple levels.
2. Airport literature which are plot driven and we really don’t know greater depths to the character e.g. James Bond. A good way to check is to look at verbs on a page in the book. In airport literature they are energised e.g. thumped, sprinted. There is a drive to absolve the plot. The language of symbolism is not present.

Some writers can put literature and airport literature together.

At this point John conducted what he called a two-minute writing workshop which he recommended conducting with students.

Think of three very ordinary sentences e.g. We went to the beach. We had lunch. We went home. He described it as most likely a D or F grade.

What are the nouns and pronouns. Beach, lunch, home, we. That’s not enough detail. We need to add some more words to give more information. Change beach to Bondi Beach, lunch to cheeseburgers for lunch, home to Sally’s place, we for names Nick and I.

Nick and I went to Bondi beach. We had cheeseburgers for lunch. Then we went to Sally’s place.

What are the verbs in the sentences – went, had. Very dull. Verbs energise and provide power for stories. Change went to skated, had to grabbed and went to caught a bus.

Nick and I skated to Bondi beach. We grabbed cheeseburgers for lunch. Then we caught a bus to Sally’s place. He described this as now being more like a B or B+ grade.

He advocates that we need to teach the power of verbs and of providing detail. Adjectives should be used with discretion. This was a learning point for me as I probably would have been putting adjectives higher on the agenda.

John met with Peter Carey once and talked with him in regard to his teaching of writing and he said that he teaches his students to think about the weather. The weather drives everything he says – the conversation between characters, clothing, what they do. John said of course Carey was right but he’d never thought of it before.

John described 4 relationships between the writer and reader.

1. The writer writing from the conscious mind to the readers’s conscious mind. Examples would be Enid Blyton, James Bond stories. Everyone gets everything.
2. The writer writing from the conscious mind to the reader’s unconscious mind. The reader may not notice – an English teacher may need to bring it to the attention of students. He gave the example of page 11 of So Much To Tell You and the description of the jigsaw quilt and how it does all join together just like the fragments of Marina's life and how it will all come together again - not the same but it will be together which conveys a sense of optimism.
3. The writer from the unconscious mind to the reader’s conscious mind.
4. The writer from the unconscious mind to the reader’s unconscious mind. He gave the example of transcribing a dream that they’ve had from the unconscious mind and how a psychoanalyst may understand it. Example from his writing is the false spring in Hamlet, A Novel – because Hamlet’s life is like a false spring but the river described as a giant, grey-green snake he doesn’t know why.

He gave some more examples of his intent in his writing from Hamlet, A Novel.

• The snow white hair of Hamlet is metaphoric for goodness against the grey colour of the castle.
• Hamlet hugged himself metaphoric for the fact that there was no one else to hug him.

John says that sometimes he tries to let the words flow and tries not to think too much about why. The conscious and subconscious mind work together and the unconscious mind is the richest part of ourselves. He described literature as being our Lonely Planet Guides to delve into our unconscious mind – our friends along the way. His favourite writers include Pat Barker, David Malouf, Tim Winton, Helen Garner.

The search for truth he thinks is the endeavour of our lives. He realized two and a half years after So Much To Tell You was published that it actually had a lot about himself and his own life in it. It was a shock realisation - also that this was the reason that he had been suffering from so much stress and anxiety prior to it being released.

Unfortunately he thinks that there is nothing around in recent times that will help students to explore their unconscious mind.