Story Beginnings – Jude Higgins

Showing and Telling: The Mix

Back in 1960s, Fritz Perls, one of the founders of Gestalt Psychotherapy, coined the phrase ‘Lose your mind and come to your senses.’ He thought people were too much ‘in their heads.’ They should pay attention to body sensation; their whole experience. Intellectualism was frowned upon. Later generations of Gestalt Psychotherapists and theorists understand that balance is best – body experience and thinking functions are of equal value.

Writers know that a mix of well-judged ‘showing and telling’ is similarly important. I’m currently interested in how short story writers and novelists create such balance in their work and have been re-reading Antony Doerr’s short story collection ‘Memory Wall’ after finishing his wonderful Pullitzer Prize winning novel, ‘All the Light We Cannot See.’

This week, with Alex Wilson, I led a creative writing group session for Writing Events Bath on the theme of subtexts and showing versus telling. We briefly studied the first paragraph of ‘Memory Wall’, Doerr’s title story, to look at his mix of showing and telling.

Here’s the paragraph with my comments inserted in italics.

Memory Wall

Tall Man In The Yard

Seventy-Four year old Alma Konachek lives in Vredehoek, a suburb above Cape Town: a place of warm rains, big-windowed lofts and silent, predatory automobiles.

We’re told Alma’s age, where she lives and shown it’s a rich neighbourhood by the description, ‘big-windowed lofts.’ We are brilliantly shown the menace in this district by two adjectives – ‘silent, predatory’, put with automobiles, not people.

Behind her garden, Table Mountain rises, huge green and corrugated; beyond her kitchen balcony, a thousand city lights wink and gutter behind sheets of fog like candleflames.

Again we are told more about the setting (Table Mountain) and shown the look of the mountain (corrugated). Doerr uses the verbs ‘wink’, ‘gutter’ to show the way lights move and adds a simile, ‘like candleflames’ so we know it’s night-time in a big city.

One night in November, at three in the morning, Alma wakes to hear the rape gate across her front door rattle open and someone enter her house. Her arms jerk: she spills a glass of water across the nightstand. She hears what might be breathing. Water drips onto the floor.

Here we’re told the time of night (three am has a scary feel). Doerr names the ‘rape gate’ as if it is a commonplace term. (A South African woman in the writing class said these outer door frames are more commonly called burglar bars) – but the use of ‘rape gate’ at the beginning of this story is chilling. The verb ‘rattle’ increases apprehension. We are shown Alma’s fear by her actions –’arms jerk’ ,’she spills a glass of water’. Doerr conjures up Alma straining to hear by the short sentence, ‘She hears what might be breathing.’ The detail of water dripping on the floor from the spilled glass of water also evokes fear.

Alma manages a whisper. “Hello?”

A shadow flows across the hall. She hears the scrape of a shoe on the staircase and then nothing. Night air blows into the room – it smells of frangipani and charcoal. Alma presses a fist over her heart.

The use of the verb ‘manages’ suggests Alma’s frightened state – she summons up just enough courage to speak. Doerr now uses all the senses to suggest someone waiting in a state of heightened awareness. We know Alma is seeing the shadow flow. She hears ‘a scrape of a shoe.’ The mixture of smells is sweet yet dark. There’s a great detail to show Alma’s bodily reaction – She ‘presses a fist over her heart.’

Beyond the balcony windows, moonlit pieces of clouds drift over the city. Spilled water creeps towards her bedroom door.

“Who’s there, is someone there?”

The grandfather clock in the living room pounds through the seconds. Alma’s pulse booms in her ears. Her bedroom seems to be rotating very slowly.

“Harold?” Alma remembers that Harold is dead, but she cannot help herself. “Harold?”

The imagery in these sentences increases the sinister atmosphere. ‘Spilled water creeps’ and the grandfather clock in the living room pounds’, again shows Alma’s heightened awareness of things around her. We are then are shown Alma’s inner experience with a strong verb ‘her pulse booms in her ears.’ Her perception is altered by fear: ‘Her bedroom seems to be rotating very slowly.’

The repetition of ‘Harold?’ is poignant and appears to show that she is alone. We are told that Harold is dead.

It’s masterful writing. I recommend you read this story – the opening is a hook, but the events that ensue are entirely unpredicatable.

April: Join Jude in writing a month of flash fictions

April is poetry month – the task is to write a poem a day. Thirty pieces out there on screen or on paper. I don’t write poems but flash fiction is a close cousin to prose poetry – some would say even its identical twin.

Anyone want to join me and write a Flash Fiction/Prose Poem a day? Flash fiction writer and director of National Flash Fiction Day, Calum Kerr, wrote one a day for a year. Thirty days is a a snip in comparison. If you do want to complete thirty days of flash, tweet me on @judehwriter Perhaps we can arrange a regular cup-of-tea tweet-time each day and compare notes?

To get going, I’ll be consulting my current favourite text on writing flash, the excellent Rose Metal Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction. In this book, with regard to the ongoing debate concerning flash fiction and prose poetry, author, Kim Chinquee, says that although a “prose poem may be more about language and poetics, whereas a flash carries more narrative and story“, they are “interchangeable…more inclusive than exclusive – each of the other.“

I also like the following exercise suggested by Steve Almond in the same book – a brilliant idea for revitalising a tired short story or one needing to loose its flab. He suggests that you ” stop whatever story you’re working on and convert the whole thing into a poem. It will end up as a much shorter piece, in which you bid various extra words, characters and subplots, goodbye.” The poem can be as bad as you like.When you’ve finished you remove the line breaks and examine the resulting piece of prose. Leaner, tighter and now, perhaps, fizzing with energy. I’ve a few sad little pieces that could do with this treatment.

Inspiration also comes from checking out current flash fiction competitions. It would be good to have 30 pieces to pick from when considering which to enter. It’s a shame I can’t enter Bath Flash Fiction Award – no-go – I’m organising it. ( I would if I could though – even though I say it myself – with 3 different entry options it tries its best to get as many writers on board as possible. And there are big prizes and a great short list judge , Annemarie Neary).

The Bridport Flash Fiction competition has its usual pull – something good may turn up for that and there are also the super fun competitions at themolotovcocktail.com to inspire. A new competition, Flash Fury, is kicking off tomorrow, April 1st and the results of their latest competition, Flash Fool, will be announced on the same day. The guidelines for general submission to the ezine on their site, as I said in a recent tweet on @bathflashaward, must be the most pertinent and funniest around. For anyone wanting to write a fresh-sounding story of any length, it’s great advice whether or not you like submitting to magazines. A recommended read.

All that remains is to write – today, 31st March = warm-up day. I’ll go for a handwritten story in my under-used new journal.

The Freecycling Writer

I’ve been giving away furniture on the Bristol freecycle site. Freecycling is great in all sorts of ways. Everyone is pleased – people get things for free which would otherwise go to the dump and they come and take away stuff almost immediately, an amazing bonus. A lovely, cheerful guy spent ages dismantling a monster Ikea bed which a tenant had left in the house. A mother and daughter patiently took a sofa apart to get it through the door, two strong women hauled out a heavy washing machine. A woman whizzed in and filetted a battered leather sofa of its cushion stuffing. She’s making her own sofa from pallets and is going to send me a picture of her creation when it’s complete.

Freecycle is brilliant for writers who are looking for stories. If you scan the daily digests of wants and offers, you get a window into people’s lives, those telling details that bring characters alive. Yesterday I saw a post from someone wanting a futon or old sofa. He said the sofa bed needed a firm mattress, enough to support a weight of ten stone. Not really that heavy, you’d think. But in this case it was for his ten stone Great Dane who needed a comfortable new bed! I do have a futon to shift, so maybe I will get to meet the man and his dog.

Last week there was a brilliant post from a man wanting to freecycle a surf board. I include it here with thanks to its author.

“Offer: One old and quite mangled green foam surfboard. It is approx 8ft, old school shape, single fin and made of soft foam, which is falling to bits. It’s probably just about surfable and guess it would be ok for messing about in the waves but not going to be great except for a laugh. Could possibly be repaired, but probably not worth it, unless you are desperate, or need a challenge. Would be good for fancy dress, or a theatrical prop, or some kind of strange project like some people seem to be doing.”

I like the idea of a story about a desperate surfer wanting a challenge, or a person involved in a strange project. I should write this story perhaps – a desperate older woman surfer in need of a new challenge in life…?

Borrowing from George Borrow

One hundred and sixty years ago today, 27th July, the Victorian gentleman writer, George Borrow, set off with his wife and daughter to travel around Wales. ‘Wild Wales’ the travelogue he wrote about his journey, has a wonderfully intimate and chatty style which starts at chapter one. It’s a classic and I found a copy in its great 1950’s paper cover, in Wells market.

There is much to learn about voice in George Borrow’s writing. His strong preferences come across from the beginning and he is charmingly manipulative with his wife and daughter. (Yes somewhat sexist, but you have to forgive him because he is a man of his times).

Here’s the first paragraph from Chapter One.

“In the summer of the year 1854 myself, wife, and daughter determined upon going into Wales, to pass a few months there. We are country people of a corner of East Anglia, and, at the time of which I am speaking, had been residing so long on our own little estate, that we had become tired of the objects around us, and conceived that we should be all the better for changing the scene for a short period. We were undetermined for some time with respect to where we should go. I proposed Wales from the first, but my wife and daughter, who have always had rather a hankering after what is fashionable, said they thought it would be more advisable to go to Harrowgate, or Leamington. On my observing that those were terrible places for expense, they replied that, though the price of corn had of late been shamefully low, we had a spare hundred pounds or two in our pockets, and could afford to pay for a little insight into fashionable life. I told them that there was nothing I so much hated as fashionable life, but that, as I was anything but a selfish person, I would endeavour to stifle my abhorrence of it for a time, and attend them either to Leamington or Harrowgate. By this speech I obtained my wish, even as I knew I should, for my wife and daughter instantly observed, that, after all, they thought we had better go into Wales, which, though not so fashionable as either Leamington or Harrowgate, was a very nice picturesque country, where, they had no doubt, they should get on very well, more especially as I was acquainted with the Welsh language.”

It’s a good opening. I think it’s always worth trying out a modern day version of a classic/ You might include details or sentence structures you don’t normally use.

e.g. In the summer of 2014, my husband and I decided to go to Wales for a long weekend. We are city people, living in the country not too far from Bristol and at the time of which I am speaking, were tired of all the familiar distractions of our house, with its shelves of unread books, the washing up that always needed doing, the garden thick with weeds. We didn’t know where we would go to start with. I proposed Wales from the first, but my husband wanted to stay in Herefordshire and go to Hay on Wye. I said he’d spend too much money on books and he should be cutting down, it was like an addiction, but he said because we’d been eating vegetarian for the last month, we had money to spare. I then said I was being selfish – of course he should go to Hay. He might pick up something he really wanted with the spare cash. Of course, he backed down then and said he had too much to read already. Why didn’t we go to Aberystwyth and visit Nanteos Mansion where I used to live as a student…

Oh that was fun. I should carry on with that if only for the energy, copying an opening creates. And I might go to Wales, inspired by George Borrow.

Colin Barrett and story beginnings

Colin Barrett recently won the 2014 Frank O’Connor prize for his collection ‘Young Skins’, first published by Stinging Fly in Ireland 2013 and by Jonathan Cape 2014 in the UK. These memorable stories show life in small town Ireland from the perspective of young men with few prospects, who become involved with crime, drinking and disastrous relationships. The stories are funny and moving and the characters are likeable even though some of them commit acts of violence.

The longest story in the collection, ‘Calm With Horses’, tells the story of Arm, former boxer, retired in his early twenties from fighting and employed as a hard man by a drug dealing gang fronted by his friend, Dympna. Arm has a young autistic son who is soothed by therapeutic horse-riding sessions but nothing can soothe Arm or offer him hope. When he kills alleged paedophile, Fannigan, to save him from a worse death at the hands of Dympna’s vengeful uncles, his own fate is sealed.

I interviewed Colin Barrett for the Bath Short Story website and he said this about writing a short story:

“Try to make something interesting happen as near to the opening as you can. Now this doesn’t have to be some showy eruption of plot or an aphoristic nugget of an opening line, though it may well be; it might just be the deployment of an unobvious adjective or unexpected detail seamed somewhere into your opening paragraphs. A nuanced little observation or moment, carefully placed. If you can get a small moment right near the start it sends a signal to the reader that you can trust me, you can keep reading. There’s nowhere to hide with short stories, if its five or ten pages long it’s got to start well, do well in the middle, and end well. No point saying it gets good half way through.”

Colin demonstrates this advice at the beginning of ‘Calm With Horses’ :

“Dympna told Arm to stay in the car while Dympna gave Fannigan a chance to plead his case. This wasn’t the way it usually went but Arm nodded okay. Arm watched Dympna stalk up the lawn and politely hammer on the front door of the council house Fannigan shared with his mother. Eventually Dympna was let inside.”

So why does this beginning work so well?

The names immediately suggest place and character. We can guess, if we didn’t know anything about the settings in advance, that we are in Ireland. The nickname, Arm, suggests a character who is known to swing his fists. Fannigan is clearly not a friend.

We are thrust into the action in the first sentence. There is a situation. Something bad has happened (Fannigan must plead his case) and we guess something bad is going to happen. Dympna is in charge; he ‘told’ Arm what to do. In the second sentence, we know Arm has been used as a heavy weight before and we can surmise from the tone this does not bother him – he nods okay and watches.

The third sentence emphasises the type of characters by the marvellous use of ‘politely hammer’ (More on this in point 5) The fact that Fannigan lives with his mother and we don’t exactly know what is happening inside the house makes the whole opening compelling and sinister. I definitely (with trepidation) want to know what happens next.

There is only one adverb (politely) and one adjective (council) in this paragraph and each earns its place. As I already said, ‘politely hammer’ is an evocative combination. To me, the odd juxtaposition suggests Dympna’s thought processes e.g.’ I will at least knock (instead of perhaps smashing down the door) out of respect for the mother and thus doing, absolve myself of anything bad.’ ‘Council’ house neatly sums up Fannigan, Dympna and Arm’s world. They probably do some sort of shady business in a large council estate. The verb ‘stalk’ shows how Dympna wants to appear menacing, but also gives him an air of self importance. ‘Stalk’ also suggests a prey.

.The sentence length is varied for effect. Long, short, long, short. I find the last short sentence chilling.

The action is summarised and the sparsity of detail increases the tension. The reported dialogue increases this tension too.

The title is interesting, because this opening is far from calm in tone. So there’s another hook here. Who or what is calm with horses?

I recommend reading the whole collection for both enjoyment of language, and great character and plot. At the moment ‘Stinging Fly’ may still have some signed copies of the book.