Arthur Piper

Owning human nature

The US courts are deciding whether to prevent companies that identify new human DNA sequences from patenting them - and, therefore, obtain exclusive ownership of one minute slice of nature. Businesses and the legal profession were astounded this year when a judge ruled that genticists had to do more than be the first to find a new gene to own it.  That has been the position for years.

Campaigners have complained that companies often hoard the results of their genetic research and stop research into new, life-saving drugs.  Those patenting the genes argue it's a fair return on their own investment.

You can read the argument in an article I wrote this year, here.

If you're keen as mustard, I'd also recommend J. Craig Venter's autobiography, A Life Decoded.  It's a rivetting account of the race to code the human genome.

Space futures

When I wrote this piece, I was surprised to learn that so many private companies are falling over themselves to get into the space race.  You wouldn't think that there was money to be made from commercial space travel, for example, but Virgin Galactic is one of many businesses ploughing cash into such ventures. 

Most companies make their profits by supplying hardware, software and expertise to government projects in the US and Europe.  And where there are companies, there is red tape and rapidly dating legislation.  I could say something about final frontiers, but to read more, click here.

[Image copyright Virgin Galactic]

Science underrates fiction

“In scientific fields, I believe the constructive role that literature can play is much misunderstood,” said N. Katherine Hayles, professor of literature at Duke University in the US and author of the groundbreaking book How We Became Posthuman (1999).

“Scientists don’t fully grasp how literature can be such a powerful resource for thinking about what is really at stake in a scientific endeavour.”

Hayles, speaking to me in an interview soon to be posted on the University of Nottingham’s website and to be published in the journal Paragraph, said that while the science fiction novelist Philip K. Dick may not have been a great writer on a “sentence-by-sentence level,” he had a profound vision of how the view of human nature implicit in cybernetics would affect the way that people saw themselves.

“What makes sense [in Dick’s work] is that what we take to be reality has certain assumptions built into it, which may turn out to be highly questionable,” she said. “It turns out that Dick was keying in on exactly the assumptions that would, in fact, turn out to be subverted in the work of cybernetics.”

The main assumption that cybernetics and writers such as Dick challenge is that people are autonomous agents who are directly responsible for their own actions. Cybernetics tends to see people enmeshed in large networks comprising humans, machines and institutions, which all interact in complex ways that are difficult to understand.

Hayles says this altered perspective “decentres” the human subject as an active agent in a world governed by simple causes and effects. In Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, for example, the central character hunts down androids that are almost indistinguishable from humans. In fact, he may even be an android himself.

“The idea that deep affective forces might be at work in something like the decentring of the human subject is implicit in the cybernetic texts, and yet because they are written in the scientific tradition, they don’t deal directly with the affect that is really at stake here,” she says. It took someone like Philip K. Dick to do so.

Characters, who do they think they are?

There are no hard and fast rules for writing interesting characters for the stage, but if actors are to have something to get their teeth into they need to be fully rounded, said the writer Amanda Whittington at a recent Year of the Writer workshop at the University of Nottingham.

Whittington, who's play include Amateur Girl and Be My Baby, said that writers should ask themselves three questions about each of their characters: Who does the character think they are? Who do other characters think they are? And, who does the audience think they are? 

The different answers to these questions should reveal dramatic tensions and character conflicts that can help writers create believable and complex stage personalities. She said that another way that writers looked at character development was to track the journey that each person in a play travelled. "All characters should fundamentally change on their way through the story," she said.

Participants were asked to write some dialogue - then rewrite it as a parody. Surprisingly, the more exaggerated writing seemed more believable. "What you get is rhythm and truth when you push your writing to extremes," she said.

Stories in sound

If you can imagine a beach in winter, what do you see and hear? What colour is the sea? Is it windy or calm - are the waves gentle or wild? Everyone's answer is likely to be different, which is what makes radio broadcasting so powerful.

"The more mind pictures you can make, the easier it is for listeners to concentrate," Catherine Adams told attendees at a recent Year of the Writer Programme event at the University of Nottingham's Arts Graduate Centre.

Adams, who lectures in radio at Nottingham Trent University and works for BBC radio, said that if anyone doubted the power of radio to persuade, they should listen to the original broadcast of H.G. Wells' story War of the Worlds, which sent American listeners rushing for the hills.

Radio writing uses a wide range of effects, from direct reporting, to interviews, sound effects and live action material. Adams asked attendees to write a simple news story, making sure that all of the important details were present in the first line. Later they wrote a short "package," which is a piece using multiple sources of information.

She advised those aspiring to a career in radio news journalism to work in a newsroom for at least a year. The BBC's Writers' Room offers advice to those looking to write drama.

Short films need big characters

In writing short films, scriptwriters need to develop characters who are strongly drawn and who have clear objectives, according to Graham Lester George, the award-winning Nottingham writer. His films include the BIFA-nominated Washdays, which was awarded best film at Rushes Soho Short Film Festival 2009.

While the world in which a film takes place and the plot are also central, beginners could start creating ideas for films by focusing on character, Lester George told delegates at a recent Year of the Writer workshop at the University of Nottingham.

In one exercise, delegates were given a few minutes to sketch a brief outline of two characters, including their names, age, physical appearance and general temperament. As soon as the participants starting thinking about how those people might interact, they began getting ideas for stories. “The more you know your character,” he said. “The better they come across in the story.”

He also said that every character should have a problem, or be involved in an event, that is explored by the film. And that the stakes should be high: “Don’t wimp out on the story,” said Lester George. “Make it powerful, with an event that is important relative to the character’s life.” 

Keep on writing

Even if you are writing an academic dissertation, or a technical report, you can still be creative in how you approach it. For example, you can try some "free writing." 

Here's how. Just write down the first thing that comes into your head about your subject and keep going for as long as you can. Don't get uptight, no one except you has to read what you have done. It is surprising how quickly you can get into your stride and how many ideas it can give you for your finished piece. If you want to read a book about how to develop free writing into something more comprehensive, try Dorothea Brande's Becoming a Writer.

Students at a writing workshop I gave this month on the Year of the Writer Programme at the University of Nottingham managed to write about 150 words in just a few minutes. 

Click here are some ideas for keeping writing and some pitfalls to watch for: Download Starting writing and staying writing

Write now

 When people talk to the Nottingham-based novelist Nicola Monaghan about her fiction, the most common questions they ask are: How do you get ideas? And, how do you start writing?

“What they don’t realise is that for me they are the same question,” the award-winning author of the Killing Jar and Starfishing told attendees at a workshop on writing a novel held in January on the University of Nottingham’s Year of the Writer Programme.

She said that as she writes new ideas occur to her and as the characters and story develop the whole project starts to become more substantial. “The best thing to do is to put you pen on the paper and just write,” he said. 

Several of her pieces started out as exercises on creative writing courses, including the Killing Jar. One piece was inspired by a suggestion by the late Julia Casterton, who encouraged Monaghan to revisit scenes from her childhood, although the published story was eight years in the making.

Monaghan said that her own method of creating fiction relied on a lot of trial and error. Once she has an idea for a novel, she likes to write an unplotted piece of up to 15,000 words. This helps her develop the central characters, their world and provides episodes of the story that may appear in the finished narrative, she said.

She then plans out the whole work and starts again, keeping a flexible approach about how the story is to develop. A lot of people get stuck because they try to edit their work before they have finished a first draft, she said. She expects to spend at least as much time on the editing of each of three of the drafts she makes until the manuscript is ready. “Don’t edit too early,” she said. “Just keep going forward.”