#WriteCBC tip and task from Ally Zetterberg
BY Emily Powter-Robinson
4th Apr 2024
Welcome to our April 2024 #WriteCBC prompt challenge. I hope you’re ready to be inspired by our latest writing tip and task! If you haven’t taken part in a #WriteCBC X/Twitter competition before, we’re excited to welcome you to our writing community. Get up to speed by reading our blog full of information about how to play and the prizes on offer. It’s a lot of fun, and you might just win a free place on one of our six-week online writing courses.
This month’s special guest is Ally Zetterberg, author of debut novel The Happiness Blueprint, out now with Mira (HarperCollins, US). Ally studied on our Writing Your Novel – Three Months online course in 2021.
Previously, she has also generously sponsored a scholarship place on our three-month online Writing Your Novel course (the Klara Nilsson Novel-Writing Scholarship for Writers with Low Income).
Ally's writing tip:
- Miscommunication is vital to plotting and character building. Misunderstandings like characters saying the wrong thing in the wrong way or failing to communicate at all provide intriguing hurdles to your narrative's resolution.
Miscommunication is integral to the storyline of Ally's debut novel. The Happiness Blueprint is a heartwarming tale of two lost souls— Alex who is grappling with grief since his brother died in an accident and Klara who is dealing with societal acceptance.
Klara's and Alex's stories unfold through a series of miscommunications. Read this passage from the novel, in which Alex and Klara meet for the first time. Alex has arrived to interview for a carpenter position at Klara's dad's construction company, the company that she has begrudgingly agreed to run whilst her dad recovers from illness.
- The door swings open before I have a chance to say come in. This is not a good sign. As a head followed by a torso pops into view, my foot starts tapping and I really really wish I had some soothing rap blasting in my ear. Because this is a surprise. Whoever I was expecting, I was not expecting this. Firstly, it's a him. I study him in detail just to be sure. Yup. Gender is definitely male, assumed preferred pronoun him, title Mr.
My chest feels tight.
"I'm Alex," he says with a southern accent that rolls on each letter, lingering in the doorway, noticing my hesitation. Alex. Of course, he's a male Alex. You knobhead, Klara. I regain my composure and — I'm proud to say — manage some coherent speech.
"Oh, sorry, do come in. Please excuse my surprise, it's just that I specifically asked for female applicants."
Klara's internal monologue conveys her confusion before Alex even introduces himself in this scene. Her body languages ('my foot starts tapping') shows that she is tense without directly telling the reader, we can already discern that something isn't quite right in the situation. Whilst this miscommunication is quickly cleared up, there are many other examples in the book which add up to delay the resolution of the story.
This leads us nicely onto Ally's task...
Ally's writing task:
- Write a tweet-length scene centred on a miscommunication. Your characters are having a conversation in a public setting. One person in the conversation misinterprets the interaction. How does this cause tension between your characters?
We’d love you to write a tweet-length response prompted by Ally's task. Here is some more advice to help you get the ball rolling.
Remember this task is about the tension between two characters. We want to know what is said (or left unsaid) that leads to the miscommunication between them. Perhaps someone forgets to pass on a message or they listen at a door, hear half a conversation, then walk away without getting the full context.
The miscommunication trope is particularly popular in romance books (think characters who are scared to articulate their feelings or articulate them in a way that leads to misinterpretation), but miscommunication can also be a powerful plotting tool in any genre. How a character understands the world around them and how they understand other people says a lot about their character. Creating original characters by showing how and what they understand from others is a powerful tool when writing fiction of any genre.
Here are few more tips to inspire you:
- Don’t rely too heavily on speech, make just as much use of what is left unsaid. Even in a dialogue heavy scene there should always be discernible subtext bubbling beneath the surface conversation. The way your characters talk (and what they leave unsaid) can be a great tool.
- Every gesture your character makes offers an opportunity to convey their personality and get vital information across to the reader – they may not voice what they're really thinking, but their body language might give it away.
- Action versus thought. Perhaps your character acts one way but feels differently because they are deceiving someone, embarrassed or frustrated.
We can’t wait to read your tweet-length scenes. Tweet @cbcreative with your responses to Ally's task and you might win a free six-week online writing course place. Competition closes Fri 5 Apr, 10am (winner announced at 11am).
Congratulations to this month’s winner, Amanda Smith @Amanda_LS_Myers
- It wasn’t her secret to tell. His eyes searched hers for an explanation. If she couldn’t explain the real reason he’d walked in on her embracing Luke, she couldn’t offer one. Nor could she expect a second date. “Shall I just go?” he asked. “Yes” she reluctantly replied.
This is a really clever use of miscommunication — someone keeping someone else’s secret. Our protagonist can't tell her date the real reason why she's embracing Luke because she is protecting him. Yet her loyalty to Luke comes at the price of jeopardising her date at the expense of her own happiness. We had so many questions reading this! What is the relationship with Luke? An ex? A friend? And what could the secret be? We're desperate to read on and find out! Well done, Amanda – you get a free place on a £220 online course.
And this month’s runners-up – each getting a £50 course discount – are Clare Cheetham @cing56 and Sara Partington @SJPfiction. Congratulations, all!
To redeem your prizes please email help@curtisbrowncreative.co.uk
Brilliant fun – hope you all enjoyed it and see you next month. #WriteCBC will be back on Thursday 2 May.
The Happiness Blueprint is out now!