Tag Archives: writing

Who’s telling this story anyway?

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Which voice is best?

First person

As a children’s writer, I find this oh so tempting. Direct and immediate, it’s easy-peasy for me to engage with the reader. Over a longer time my lone voice can grate. It’s hard not to be strident or shrill. I make quite sure the reader can only ever see what I see in exactly the way I see it. Having an older version of myself reflect on my past in a bookend fashion is a useful way round this – often used successfully in ghost stories.

Ominiscient

I am the Great Narrator in the Sky and I can see everywhere. I can look inside all the character’s skulls and tell you what they’re thinking and make it really confusing. I can be just the smallest bit condescending, can’t I, children?

Third person

This writer stands just behind the shoulder of her central character, watching every move the protagonist makes. She reports faithfully on actions and conversations, and is close enough to hear thoughts. It is difficult for her to stand back.

The Great Double Act

The Eric & Ernie of story-telling – or French & Saunders.

She was right there, telling you what happened as it happened.

But there is also the narrator able to summon the whole world, to comment and sum up like the best of teachers.

It is a question of finding the voice that suits the tale.

How do you do that?

It’s not enough.

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‘S/he writes beautifully.’ So do a lot of them. It isn’t enough.

This tweet by Susan Hill ( a writer I much admire )  gave me to thinking. If beautiful writing isn’t enough – what is?

The loveliness of prose lies in its ability to create atmosphere: the use of music in film would be a suitable analogy. But we have all suffered tedious documentaries where the producers have sought to ‘sex it up’ with inappropriate music and it just doesn’t work. A particular hate of mine is the misuse of orchestral music -in particular Górecki’s haunting and poignant Symphony of Sorrowful Songs – for banal purposes. It is like writing writing the story of Humpty Dumpty to the tune of the Death of Boromir: you are creating the literary equivalent of a round in ‘I’m sorry I haven’t a Clue’.

At their best, both music and prose directly convey emotion with integrity.

Writers generally hope the reader will make an emotional connection with their characters. Is the portrayal of character the essential element? Perhaps not. The hero in The Day of the Jackal has no name and Frederick Forsyth famously asserts that in his books the plot is 80%, leaving the remaining 20% for character, description and dialogue combined. He cheerfully claims, ‘It is all I can do,’ but it seems to be popular.

Not that popularity is all – Captain Jack Sparrow is a wonderful character full of contradictions and surprising subtlety of portrayal – but he’s not enough to carry the whole Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. A story, written or filmed, is more than the protagonist – things must happen.

This leads me back to plot – but if this is not to be a biography, a list of things that they did, then it must have structure. Books worth reading reveal events little-by-little. They often have sub-plots which culminate satisfactorily at the end, and suggest all manner of things running under the surface of the central drama.Yet this too is not enough.

An essential element, perhaps the quintessence as the alchemists had it, is the voice. Ella Fitzgerald sang, ”T’aint what you do it’s the way that you do it,’ and demonstrated that wonderfully throughout her career. For me the voice is the spirit of the piece, some aspect of the author that permeates the whole creation. And I am still struggling to find mine.

Which leads me to ask you, dear reader, what must I grasp so that my writing is good enough?

We need to talk about it.

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First off, I suspect it’s down to how much dialogue says about your characters’ backgrounds . I am scared of consistently getting the register right – the best range of words for the character’s age, social class and period. I am nervous of expressing regional identity – how do I handle my own  dialect without coming across all clogs-and-shawls? I need lessons from David Almond. I’d also love to make my characters so distinct in the way they talk that the reader immediately knows who’s talking .

Secondly there’s the question of subtext. How much should the dialogue reveal what my characters feel? How do I do that without being trite or full of improbable psychobabble? On the other hand  I know it’s good when the underlying emotion is at variance with the spoken word. Then I worry about how to reveal the hidden feelings without confusing the reader. Complex stuff.

A third area of concern to me is the sheer logistics. How to orchestrate a duologue seems OK, though there can be status reversal, but including  more people gets tricky. It’s like maths with ‘perm any three’. Just how many lines of communication can I cope with?

Finally, though I doubt it’s the last word in anxiety, the technical stuff. I can get all in a tizzy about attributions: how much is too much? What about adverbs? They can be deadly – or revealing. Likewise with business – what do people really do when they’re talking?

In short the only way I’ve found is to write it. And then act it out. And the  cringe.

How about you?

Stringing it out…

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As part of  my MA at West Dean College, I am writing episodic fragments of an original novel. Our tutor, Greg Mosse, has referred to them as ‘bricks’. Each one is a self-contained whole that can form part of the larger edifice.

I prefer to think of them as beads, or on a good day, jewels.

I have always liked jewellery. I even started studying jewellery design at Loughborough back in the Cretaceous. Words like ‘pendant’,’ talisman’ and ‘amulet’ are music to my ears – and I rather hoped I might find Firefrost or some other magical stone.

But I think I will stick to beads.

The holes line up allowing you to join them together. If I am to write a first book worth reading, it will have a single narrative thread. I know cleverer people than me can weave many strands into complex webs – but at least to start off with, I’ll go for one bit of band.

My episodes vary in length, colour and shape like faience or toho seeds. I can arrange them in groups to make a sequence that becomes steadily more dramatic – like a graduated row of pearls.

I need to work with all the right pieces and I need to believe I can create them one at a time.

I find I have to revise , to reorganise the pattern. Sometimes there are missing sections – like the  Murano chevron bead that rolled under the workbench. Sometimes a whole section has to be unstrung and redone. But always to an underlying structure.

And the structure has its rules. There are demands of genre – you don’t make short story earrings if your reader wants a an epic lariat. But rules can be played with. The mash-up of expectations can create wonderful things. Intersperse your Native American hair-pipe with your dichroic glass and see what happens. I am popping gargoyles into the world of Jane Austen and Celtic selkies in Heartbeat coastal Yorkshire. Why not?

It is through experiment bounded by a given form that new things can emerge – and its unique quality is the way the maker puts it together. This works as well with a novel as a necklace.

From the heart

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Thursday 5th May 2011 I had the pleasure of attending a fundraiser for StonePillow , a local charity working with homeless people. I went to hear readings from three very local writers: Isabel Ashdown, Jane Rusbridge and Gabrielle Kimm. The quality of the extracts was excellent – and it gave me to thinking why.

The three main works were quite distinct – though all had an historical element. Both ‘Glasshopper’ by Isabel Ashdown  and ‘The Devil’s Music’ by Jane Rusbridge take place in England in the  recent past, whereas Gabrielle Kimm set  ‘His Last Duchess’ in 16th century Italy. But it wasn’t the vivid recreation of a previous era  that captvated: it was the emotion.

All three authors read with a clear sense of the emotion in their work. Speaking to them afterwards, it became clear that despite the distance between the reading and the publication, the feelings of their primary characters still animated the writers. And this in turn engaged their listeners.

This is critical to me as both reader and writer. I may have no idea how banquets were conducted at the Court of Alfonso d’Este – but I can connect with the tentative feelings of a young bride. Similarly, I can identify with  the experience of a frightened boy or an embarrassed  teenage girl in any time, location or culture because of their emotions. Emotions link us to all humans: and the single emotional thread was the first key concept Greg Mosse taught us on the Creative Writing MA.

These writers, and many more who engage with their readers, portray emotion with clarity and honesty. They use dialogue and action to reveal their characters’ emotional lives. Everyone experiences anger,  love and loss – and writers show these because they are inherent to the human experience. They don’t use emotions to draw the reader in – they experience the emotions of their characters and record them.

Therefore a creative writer shows anger, love and loss through distinct voices.  At this reading, I had the direct experience of hearing those voices and the physical emotion in them. As a reader, you ‘hear’ the voice of the characters in your head – and you also have a sense of the author’s voice. It is the intensity of feeling in the writer’s voice that draws us into their fictional world.

Animal Instincts

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I don’t know if animals truly are good judges of character – but they can be used to show it in fiction. I am focusing here on how animal characters can illuminate the human ones.

The way your characters treat animals can be a simple method to indicate empathy. They might take care to feed birds over winter. They might use humane traps for vermin. They might lift their piglet on the wall to see the parade! More conflicted characters can be revealed by a confused approach – vegetarian but eat fish, or keep urban chickens yet feed foxes. You might use concerns about animals as a plot driver: the vegan diver who liberates lobsters from local fishermen, the shoplifting  lady with too many cats or the kid with a catapult keeping magpies away from  nesting birds.

On the other hand, their behaviour towards animals can be used to show a character’s darker side. The green-stained fish tank, the donkey with untrimmed hooves or the stinking rabbit hutch speak of neglect and failed promises. What about the horrors who train magnifying glasses on ants, or pull legs off spiders? The choice of animal associated with a character can speak volumes – Philip Pullman knew that well with his use of daemons. And where would a world class villain be without an appropriate pet?

But it’s not just our character’s attitude towards animals that indicates personality – it’s the animals’ reactions to them. Ever since Bucephalus, the behaviour of the horse around a person has been used to  indicate nobility and trustworthiness. Similarly the wagging tail of a dog can suggest they sense a warm open personality. An affinity with wildlife in particular has been used for innocence and patience – I love Dickon in ‘The Secret Garden’ for that.

Ambivalence, mystery or less stereotyping can be created by the showing the trust of more unusual animal in a given character. How will your reader react if a character wins the affection of a hooded rat,  an ocelot or a seal? What if they are generally unpleasant – but feed deer at dusk on nectarines?

Of course, the fear or hatred of  animals can be used to great effect. The reader does not feel comfortable round someone who makes the joyful blackbirds fall silent, makes a wolfhound tremble and droop its tail or a wildcat cower. And having a carrion crow as a companion certainly says something about a person.

So using an animal as a minor,  secondary or ( as in the case of Black Beauty) central character can be useful strategy for letting your reader see personality in action – without hanging a label around your characters’ necks.

Better to travel…

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There you are , not sure how to open your story.  You don’t really want to fire off all your exciting stuff immediately, – how could you build a crescendo from there? You could do worse than start with a journey.

Your reader will appreciate being introduced to your central character by herself, and then secondary characters individually. This can happen naturally with the preparations for a voyage or trip. How and what  your central character packs, for example, can say a lot about her. It’s not unlikely that further characters could board the bus, or walk up the gangplank one-by-one, giving your reader time to see them separately at the very least.

Another advantage of travel in fiction is the setting. You have the opportunity to show minor characters going about their business in active and interesting harbours, airports etc. and interacting with your main character. You also have the reaction of the main character to the place and its challenges – how does she cope?

There is nothing forced about description of a new place animated by action. There’s nothing forced about showing the reader a situation which is strange to your main character, so that’s all good too. You have forward movement because your character is doing something: the sense of place is integral to the small dramas like getting a visa stamp, misunderstandings about customs or simply choosing food.

And these little things, these mundane events can evolve. An insignificant interruption might lead to a delay. The delay might mean missing the connection, missing the connection might lead to a stay in a hotel on the wrong side of the tracks and so on. It could be comic, it could be tragic – but consequences of even a straightforward journey could be huge.

So if your writing’s going nowhere, try taking a holiday. Who knows where it might lead?

Is there anybody out there?

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You know the one: the social situation with people milling about, being polite. Someone asks you what you do. You tell them you write. Then they ask what sort of thing. You explain you’re a children’s writer. At this point, you may be asked what you’ve had published – or if it’s someone feeling clued up, who’s your target audience?

It’s then I translate their question into the one I want to answer – like a politician. What I hear is ‘Who am I writing for?’ My immediate response is me. There’s an element of ‘you can’t please everyone…’ in there, and the child inside. I write the books I wish someone had written for me.

Then, of course, come the second thoughts. A nasty little Imp of Doubt asks whether modern children could possibly have any interest in my concerns. I bat it away with the assertion that adults’ needs and desires haven’t change over millennia – and neither have children’s.

My third thoughts bring me back to the original question about ‘target audience’.

I don’t have one.

Chasing trends, thinking about demographics and responding to focus groups is SEP* as far as I’m concerned. Perhaps it’s arrogant, but I think my calling is to tell this one story as well as I can.

And what I see, who I am writing this book for, is a boy (I have three sons). He is boy fascinated by the sea. He is a boy who wonders if there’s some truth in myths and legends. He is a boy who half-sees things in grungy corners, who wants to escape into another world. He thinks the ’60s were cool.

I hope he’s out there – him and his mates.

*Someone Else’s Problem

“It matters not what a person is born, but who they choose to be.” J.K. Rowling

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As part of my MA at West Dean College, I gave a presentation about my work-in-progress. I used images and texts to evoke the period and place that my story was set in quite comfortably. I felt confident about portraying the 1960s without cloying nostalgia, and happy firmly locating it on the Yorkshire coast. I was able to outline the general social background: the underlying tension between the seal people and the fishermen of Scoresby Nab.

But then I reached the specific ‘who’- my central protagonist – and it all went a bit vague. Come the plenary and it was clear my audience had been left in some fuzzy hinterland they disliked.

I determined to do something about this.

I had no joy with writing a bog standard character description. It came out twee, stereotypical. If  I could sneak up on him sideways somehow, Mattie might become clearer. It occurred to me that in the best stories we learn a good deal about a character by the reactions of those around them. I hit upon the idea of ‘asking’  Mattie’s grandmother and others: I could see him through a matrix of other people’s views.

So now I am creating chunks of Grandma’s diary, newspaper cuttings, and  a doctor’s note. I wonder what else might inform.

Any suggestions?

Focus

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The writers on the Creative Writing MA at West Dean College are reshaping their work in different forms. Some have chosen to explore screenplay; some poetry; others are working in the radio play format. I am tackling a theatre play – in much the same way that my first forays into gardening involved equal parts of enthusiasm and ignorance. My initial attempts have pruned a story set in Scoresby Nab right down to the bare stems – a very useful exercise. I’ve had to hack away all sorts of extraneous matter. But now it needs to grow.

It is abundantly clear to me that it needs a clear framework. Storytelling in any form is about how you choose to reveal the sequence of events – but you first must have a sequence. I am learning oh so slowly how to intertwine one story strand with another. It’s pruning rambler roses all over again: which to tie in, which to cut back hard, which diseased shoots must just go.

Add in to that the Head Gardener standing over me and my secateurs just come to a halt.

Self-consciousness must be like honey fungus. Its evil rhizomorphs lurk, waiting to spread into any crack . Then the mycellium of despair get in and you’re done for. According the RHS, the only prevention is a physical barrier – and I hope concentration will act like that for thought.

So my intent is to persist, following the Head Gardener’s patient instructions, doing just one bit at a time. It might be slow and painstaking but my ambition is to understand. I want to be able to do it for myself.