Enid's technique

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Belly
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Enid's technique

Post by Belly »

Last night I had a dream whereby a group of people were having dinner together. For some reason these were wide boy criminal types (no, I don't know any in real life):)

They were laughing and joking and one man and his wife were terribly funny. Making scores of jokes that were clever and demonstrated very quick wit, verve and flair. (I could remember some of these jokes earlier this morning but they've gone from my memory now).

I dream very vividly and could never come up with such clever jokes or tales like there are in my dreams in a concious state. It made me think of when Enid thought she could never come up with the things her characters said/did in a million years.

Enid wrote unconciously. It must have been that she lulled herself into a dream or hypnotised herself. Perhaps she had unwittingly trained herself since her youth, the bad atmosphere and unhappiness meaning that she got very good at it in a short space of time? I know some of the best things I have written have been when I've been very unhappy.

It might be that you could learn how to write and think like that. So that you became a live narrator of your dreams?

I am reading Sunny Stories (a collection of short stories published about 1945 that inclued that Quarrelsome Toys, Thirteen O Clock etc). These don't seem as good as her /some other short stories and don't have the same page turning quality on the whole (to my mind). It made me wonder if some of these were not written with her usual technique?

Apologise for the slight repetition of my earlier thread and if I have duplicated what others might already have said about this. I just felt so motivated to write after such a wonderful dream that gave me some sort of insight to Enid's technique. How I wish I could narrate my dreams.
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Re: Enid's technique

Post by Rob Houghton »

I've always been keen on writing, and have written quite a few (unpublished) novels for both adults and children. I've always thought that Enid's descriptions of seeing things on her own private cinema screen are very much like my own expiriences when writing fiction. To me it's how I write, basically. I might have a dim outline of a plot, but when i start typing the characters and settings all come to life in my mind and i write down what they say. If your mind is flowing properly then quite often things happen and you just write them.

Of course, for most of us (me included) this process needs some trimming and editing at a later date, but I should think it is pretty much the same writing technique that Enid employed. I thought everyone wrote fiction in this way, but because i've never known anything else, perhaps it is just me! Enid was certainly gifted, and had the 'cinema screen' thing honed to a 'high art', I should imagine, having thought up stories since she was a child. but I don't think she ever went unconcious or hypnotised herself, its more to do with writing down what is in your 'undermind', which everyone can do to a certain extent.

Well, that's my opinion anyway! :)
'Oh voice of Spring of Youth
hearts mad delight,
Sing on, sing on, and when the sun is gone
I'll warm me with your echoes
through the night.'

(E. Blyton, Sunday Times, 1951)



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Re: Enid's technique

Post by Ming »

Don't know if it's just me, but my imagination works far better in my dreams or when I am sad than when I am fully aware of what I am doing. I guess Enid was always drawn into th e stories herself and thus wrote very unconsciously? :)
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Re: Enid's technique

Post by Rob Houghton »

yes. i think Enid did write quite unconciously, as you say.

I think too much has been made of the 'private cinema screen' idea. Surely everyone who writes has a similar 'screen' in their heads, where we imagine the things we are writing about. I don't actually think the cinema screen thing is all that unique. What I do think is unique is the way Enid managed to utilise it and to make what she saw in her head come so much to life on paper. THAT'S the talented bit, rather than the part where she was seeing the action taking place in her mind. :)
'Oh voice of Spring of Youth
hearts mad delight,
Sing on, sing on, and when the sun is gone
I'll warm me with your echoes
through the night.'

(E. Blyton, Sunday Times, 1951)



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Belly
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Re: Enid's technique

Post by Belly »

Robert Houghton wrote:I've always been keen on writing, and have written quite a few (unpublished) novels for both adults and children. I've always thought that Enid's descriptions of seeing things on her own private cinema screen are very much like my own expiriences when writing fiction. To me it's how I write, basically. I might have a dim outline of a plot, but when i start typing the characters and settings all come to life in my mind and i write down what they say. If your mind is flowing properly then quite often things happen and you just write them.

Of course, for most of us (me included) this process needs some trimming and editing at a later date, but I should think it is pretty much the same writing technique that Enid employed. I thought everyone wrote fiction in this way, but because i've never known anything else, perhaps it is just me! Enid was certainly gifted, and had the 'cinema screen' thing honed to a 'high art', I should imagine, having thought up stories since she was a child. but I don't think she ever went unconcious or hypnotised herself, its more to do with writing down what is in your 'undermind', which everyone can do to a certain extent.

Well, that's my opinion anyway! :)
That's very interesting. I have done similar in the past. However much I get carried away by the narrative it is me who is in the driving seat though and I am aware I am coming up with the descriptions and plot (although they flow very well).

Im my dreams I am completely unaware I am in any way in control. The characters and scenarios have absolute independent lives. The stories are clever and the descriptions very rich. I doubt I could ever write anything of that quality conciously.
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Re: Enid's technique

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

Interesting stuff. I read somewhere that it may help if you regularly write down whatever you can remember about your dreams, immediately upon waking up. Apparently, as well as creating a record which will enable you to spot patterns etc. over a period of time, you actually get better at recalling your dreams. Who knows - some of them could contain the germ of a good story! I wonder whether Enid Blyton ever did that? In The Family at Red-Roofs Michael is puzzled about how to fix a broken barograph he is working on, and one night he dreams the solution to the problem. I've never tried writing down my dreams but I did once have a rather odd dream in which I entered a large hall full of stalls selling different items. The first stall was being run by Viv, who tried to sell me not ginger pop or Enid Blyton books, but a necklace of red and yellow beads!

Anita
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Re: Enid's technique

Post by Belly »

Interesting Anita, I wonder if anyone could analyse that dream for you :D Could certainly make a good short story!

I have had a recurring dream most nights for the last 35 years or so. About my Grandmother's house. Sometimes the house and garden is under threat from developers or the garden being dug up by builders, that sort of thing.

Other times I will have a completely unrelated dream such as being at a holiday resort with my family. Suddenly an emblem from the house will pop up. I'll be drinking a coke by a pool and suddenly a decorative urn from the garden will pop up or the sprawling beech that borders the lawn, or the well.

Once I had a dream that something of significance was buried in a certain part of the garden known as a 'satanic arc'. It was some sort of gold, curved object. I picked it up and suddenly thunder rumbled in the sky in a sinister way. I dream about this particular point in the garden a lot.

Recently a relative of the head, prize winning gardener from the 1890s got in touch. She showed me photos that are not available publically of the gardens as they were back then. I saw outbuildings which I had dreamed about which were part of the school as it was then. There were paths that carved up the lawns which don't exist now. (The garden is largely overgrown and unloved but still has a large lawn area with a well that is reasonably well cared for). Suddenly the dreams I've had seem to be about the garden wishing to return to its previously well cared for and beautiful state.

Amazingly there was a gazebo, deer house and pergola then. All of which I had imagined in dreams.

Maybe it's too many pink gins & sun in Singapore of course :D I have often wondered why I dream of this house so often. Some of my best writing has been about it.
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Re: Enid's technique

Post by Julie2owlsdene »

That's interesting Belly. You could gather all that information from your dream over the years, add a few bits and pieces from your imagination, a good plot and produce your own novel. :D

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Re: Enid's technique

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

Sounds as if your grandmother's house really fired your imagination, Belly. I wouldn't be surprised if your reading as a child - books like Tom's Midnight Garden, A Traveller in Time, etc - contributed to the impact that that place made upon you. Perhaps you'd read about gazebos, outbuildings etc. in books like that and subconsciously superimposed them upon the garden you knew? Impossible to know, but the place obviously got under your skin when you were very young and remains a part of who you are in some way. You must have been thrilled to see the photos. Have you ever researched the history of the house?

I sometimes realise halfway through reading a book that a particular room or setting is (in the way I've been picturing it in my own imagination) based on one familiar to me from real life, but with a few changes to suit the story - eg. the kitchen may resemble the kitchen of a childhood friend but is located in a different style of house. I suppose that's typical of what happens when we read, but we may not always be aware of it.

Anita
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Re: Enid's technique

Post by Rob Houghton »

I always used to imagine the Find Outers lived in my area, and even was able to imagine my house and garden as being the setting! the same for the secret Seven, because we had scrub-land, a canal, and other locations very close by. :D

The dreams about the old house are very interesting, Belly. I often dream about the strip of land behind our house, which runs next to the canal. I dream it has been rennovated, with shops and leisure facilities and that there is a main road coming through the waste-land where we used to play as kids. it's a dream I've had on and off for years and have often wondered what its significance was. :D
'Oh voice of Spring of Youth
hearts mad delight,
Sing on, sing on, and when the sun is gone
I'll warm me with your echoes
through the night.'

(E. Blyton, Sunday Times, 1951)



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Re: Enid's technique

Post by Belly »

Anita Bensoussane wrote:Sounds as if your grandmother's house really fired your imagination, Belly. I wouldn't be surprised if your reading as a child - books like Tom's Midnight Garden, A Traveller in Time, etc - contributed to the impact that that place made upon you. Perhaps you'd read about gazebos, outbuildings etc. in books like that and subconsciously superimposed them upon the garden you knew? Impossible to know, but the place obviously got under your skin when you were very young and remains a part of who you are in some way. You must have been thrilled to see the photos. Have you ever researched the history of the house?

I sometimes realise halfway through reading a book that a particular room or setting is (in the way I've been picturing it in my own imagination) based on one familiar to me from real life, but with a few changes to suit the story - eg. the kitchen may resemble the kitchen of a childhood friend but is located in a different style of house. I suppose that's typical of what happens when we read, but we may not always be aware of it.

Anita
Hi Anita

Thanks for the insights, interesting.

Thing is I hadn't read Traveller in Time or Goodbye Mr Tom until very recently. My literary diet was almost exclusively Enid Blyton (mind you that is probably enough in itself) at that time.

There is something haunting about the house and gardens that goes beyond anything I read at the time I think. There is little or no history available about the house. I have searched and searched and found virtually nothing. Curious as it was a large boys school up until about 1905.

As I child I found the rotting remains of a see saw in the woods, which probably dated from when it was a school. There was a rope swing attached to a large tree (but the branch that supported the swing came down in a storm in the 1980s).

The gardener's relative has found the same thing. There were curious statues under the bushes (in pieces in the 70s). In the last 5 years they have been painstakingly put together by someone. They are unlike statues I have ever seen before. The man appears to be a sort of 17th century peasant with a floppy, felt type hat, tunic, dagger in his belt (or cutlas type implement) and curiously an injured man that appears to be bandaged up inside his tunic. (Like you see Nelson but looking anything like Nelson even when he was casually dressed. This is not a gentleman).

The woman has her head missing (but I could have told whoever put it together it used to be in a flower bed at the front of the house 30 or so ago)! She wears a dress with a laced together corset in the front and had hair scraped back into a bun. She has a shawl covering the dress.

Usually statues glorify the past or are nymphs or classical figures or something. These seem ordinary and I wonder what the significance of the injured arm was? They seem like ordinary people, possibly workers on the estate in years gone by. They are interesting as I think they are at least 300 years old. Perhaps there is some legend/myth I am unaware of about a man with an injured arm?
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Re: Enid's technique

Post by Belly »

Robert Houghton wrote:I always used to imagine the Find Outers lived in my area, and even was able to imagine my house and garden as being the setting! the same for the secret Seven, because we had scrub-land, a canal, and other locations very close by. :D

The dreams about the old house are very interesting, Belly. I often dream about the strip of land behind our house, which runs next to the canal. I dream it has been rennovated, with shops and leisure facilities and that there is a main road coming through the waste-land where we used to play as kids. it's a dream I've had on and off for years and have often wondered what its significance was. :D
Funny you have similar dreams. I think a house is supposed to symbolise something but not sure what? Perhaps your dream is about fear. A peaceful, unspoilt spot that you value and have fond memories of is at risk from land hungry developers?

One other thing about my grandmother's garden was it seemed to have the power to make you feel different emotions at different times you visited.

Once my brother and I were in the garden (as young children) and he said 'the garden is completely different today'. He was right, we looked around for changes in the landscape etc but it was unaltered. The feeling of 'difference' was so strong that we thought something must have happened to disturb things.

Sounds a bit bonkers when you write it down but it really was/is like no other place on earth I've visited in that it seems to have a 'personality' for want of a better word. Perhaps something happened on the land in the past? It is quite close to fields where the Battle of Barnet is supposed to have taken place, in fact it was said that there is a burial mound in the front lawn (certainly a small mound). From what I've read debris from the battle was dumped there, armour, weaponry etc. (In fact as per my earlier description of the statues I have often wondered if the man is a Civil war Parliamentarian. That said his belt is around his waist rather than over one shoulder).
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Re: Enid's technique

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

Sounds intriguing, Belly. Have you tried enlisting the help of staff at the nearest library in your quest for further information about the house and garden? Some libraries keep records of local history. (Obviously I realise that you're currently in Singapore!)

Anita
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"There is no bond like the bond of having read and liked the same books."
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Re: Enid's technique

Post by Belly »

Yes, me and the gardener's relative have managed to get a photo from the local library/archive of the house. It is apparently the only one they have. They have no further information on itn(beyond who owned it in the 1700s when it was built and what was on the site previously, a church or similar.

It is dated 1896 and shows a very long drive up to the house which doesn't now exist and various outbuildings which again are not there now and I can't imagine where there would have been sited.
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Re: Enid's technique

Post by Rob Houghton »

have you ever tried looking at census returns for the house? These can tell you quite a lot - who worked and lived there etc. Sometimes they can give quite an insight into a building :D
'Oh voice of Spring of Youth
hearts mad delight,
Sing on, sing on, and when the sun is gone
I'll warm me with your echoes
through the night.'

(E. Blyton, Sunday Times, 1951)



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