I had visited India after 25 years last November and it had changed damatically. Ten days in Kerela were wonderful. Kerela is known as God's own country and majority of people are educated. People that we came across were very kind, helpful and humble.
Some pictures to share with you all.

How frustrating it must be - so much to say and your mouth gagged and your hands tied.
Well not being able the post on your blog is just the same I guess.

Well once you are on the room 11 creative writers blog page and you have logged in - (important to know the email address of the group and the password). Then click on "NEW POST".

This opens the word editor (like a word processor) and then you type away like mad or not so madly perhaps.

You then save or publish the post. Click publish and it goes live, like the whole of the internet can read it. All the 1.6 billion people will be homing in via the great god Google and its mighty search engine powered by more processing power than put all the men on the moon or anything else of significance for that matter.

Putting a picture on the post. This really sets the post off - so put on an image. Picture paint a thousand words so that saves so much typing.

On the editor at the top there is "b" [this is bold] "i" [this italics] (a chain link image)[this hyperlinks text or images - so we'll forget this one for the moment] ";;" [this is to put something in quotion marks] "abc" [this is for people you can't spell American] - and then the image icon - followed by the video icon.

Click this image icon - a new panel will appear. Click the chose file button - this will open another window on your computer. This is looking into your computer - you need to navigate to the image. Might be good to have downloaded the image and put it onto the desktop or image folder of your computer where you easily know where to find it.

Click open - decide where you want the image to sit, left, centre, right.
Click upload and then it is done.

And I'm about done too....

Oh yes - at the bottom of the post there is a pencil - if you click this you can open the post again and correct any mistakes.

sal
Anyone tried haiku. I wrote this a while back.


Cry for me in Spring
Weeping Japanese Maple
After I am dead.

Sal
Congrats on the new blogspot from a team member, interested in writing a screenplay? Check out John Costello 'Writing a screenplay' - best book - and only £3.99. Hope you get rid of your virus!

I seem to have picked up a virus today. Not one of those head cold types or something more serious like Dengue fever or HIV, God forbid. No almost as serious for blogging people - a computer virus. I am still trying to track it down to its lair. 

It is stealing words from my webpages. It is bizarre really. I type "Britain" into Google - the search results are returned but the word "Britain" is absent from the page. Like someone came along with an eraser and rubbed the word out. I logged into this blog - the letters I was typing in didn't appear on the page, it was something of an act of faith that they were there at all.

Quite why people do this I cannot understand. Viruses are little programmes that are designed to get copied, get spread around and cause some mischief to the poor devil's computer they land on. They are really very much like viruses attacking living creatures. So what satisfaction the creatures who create computer viruses get - knowing they are messing up someone else's computer - someone they will never meet, well it is a mystery. 

I think the computer is about to die - I would add a picture to this post - a screen shot of what Google looks like on my computer right now.  But the buttons to attached the image have gone.  What a caper...  . .

Well I finally managed to put the image on the blog - where's the page going. I only was able to do this are the Firefox browser works even if Internet Explorer and Google Chrome are effected.

The BBC issued some notes on writing for drama in 1981. Times have changed but radio is much the same medium today as it was when the family huddled round the Home Service back in the days of Marconi. So not surprisingly the guidance for radio drama is still relevant now. I thought all you needed was a script, a creaking door and two coconut shells. Maybe I should read these guidelines as well.

The Nature of the Medium

Radio is a descriptive medium. On the surface it has obvious attractions for the writer in its very simplicity and freedom from technical restrictions. It is the medium of the word — where anything that can be described can be imagined. It can span centuries and continents and can present extremes of action and movement without the limitations imposed by the cost of sets and costumes. It can explore the recesses of a man’s mind without the problem of how to fill the rest of the stage or screen. In short, it is a medium of almost unlimited possibilities — even in times of economic stringency.

It would be wrong to assume, however, that this freedom makes it easier to write for than other media. On the contrary, it calls for a greater discipline of structure and a more precise awareness of the nuances of language than most other forms of dramatic writing. Given that the listener must be attracted and held by means of sound alone, then that sound must be constantly stimulating. The visual media can rely on a variety of stimuli — on light and colour and movement — to compel the attention. Deprived of these, the radio writer must construct mental images in the listener’s head by a careful orchestration of the only four sources at his disposal — speech, music, sound and silence. Each of these may have a proper place in the author’s original concept but of course speech is the most important.

In radio, the writer must provide everything in his dialogue. The producer can underline, heighten or embroider by skilful casting, timing and use of effects and music, but he can seldom, if ever, create from scratch an idea which is not originally planted in the dialogue. So the dialogue in a radio play will actually contain more information than is normal in everyday speech, but it should still be able to sound completely natural. It follows that radio dialogue and construction make the highest possible demands on the writer’s skill. A radio play that was simply ‘all talk’ in a conventional conversational sense would be very boring.

Some Practical Points on Construction

1. In radio, one abandons the convention of theatre or film in deciding the length or number of ‘scenes’. A sequence in a radio play may be several pages long or it may be simply one line. It depends on the complexity of the idea or the mental image you wish to create ‘ and should never go beyond its natural length. Of all the media, radio can most easily create boredom — and is fatally easy to switch off.

2. When nearing the end of a sequence, it is important to prepare the listeners, as subtly as possible, for the next one. It is easy enough to make a rapid change of scene from a technical point of view but the listeners need help. They have no programme and they can’t see. When the scene or viewpoint has changed, an equally subtle signpost should confirm it.

3. ‘Stage directions’ for the producer’s benefit are a temptation that should be avoided. If it’s important, it should be in the dialogue. If it’s not, then nobody need ever know. [I think this means ‘explanations’ and other notes. — IB]

4. It should be remembered that the listeners will always (quite involuntarily) supply their own mental images in response to what they hear. They should be given enough ideas to work on but never so many that they become restricted or confused. Radio is not a definitive medium. At all levels, it should stimulate only, so that the listener can adjust the basic idea to his or her individual experience.

5. When deciding the number of characters in a scene it should be borne in mind that the only ways of establishing someone’s presence unequivocally are either to have them speak or for them to be spoken to by name. If there are too many characters in a scene, the listeners will lose track or become confused.

6. Sound effects, either singly or in sequence should certainly be part of the writer’s concept but it is worth remembering that they need to be integrated in, and usually identified by, the dialogue. Sound effects that are ‘left to the producer’ will be hard to introduce at production stage without altering the balance of the sequence.

7. Since radio involves only one of the senses, it is important to construct each individual sequence and the play as a whole, to provide a variety of sound which will hold the listener’s attention. This variety can be achieved in lengths of sequences, number of people speaking, pace of dialogue, volume of sound, background acoustics and location of action. On radio, one room sounds very like another, if they’re roughly the same size, but the difference between in interior and an exterior acoustic is considerable. The difference between a noisy sequence with a number of voices and effects, and a quiet passage of interior monologue, is dramatic and effective.

8. There is no formula for writing a successful radio play. It requires all the basic techniques of good dramatic writing plus an imaginative awareness of the restrictions and advantages of a medium where nothing is seen. It is only by listening as often as possible to radio plays that a writer can begin to judge what works and what doesn’t.

This 1949 photograph, Hat Fashion by Norman Parkinson, has just got to be my favourite photo. I remember walking by a book shop in Oxford when it caught my eye. It was displayed in the window. Every time I walked by I'd take a look, every time I'd think I'm going to have that picture. As a student at the time it wasn't cheap but it was just so appealing to me it became irresistible. The young women set against the backdrop of a New York skyline, the elegant fashion, the intrigue about what they were gossiping about - the same intrigue their friend on the right perhaps has. Straining to listen - feigning impatience with their chatter.
It is still a great picture to me.