Tag: prose

Uncategorized

Writing Just Enough

As writers, I think we’ve all had the experience of starting a poem or a story with a great idea, but it fails because there simply isn’t enough material to sustain a complete story.

I remember one instance when I was invited to write a poem inspired by a botanic garden. I was particularly taken by a species of tree where the seed is sealed with a natural glue that can only be opened when it melts with heat. As such, in a natural environment, it requires a forest fire to reproduce. Despite writing many lines to this effect, I found only the first two and last two were strong candidates, so the end piece was much shorter than expected, but much punchier as well.

I’ve also experienced the opposite effect at least once. I set out to write a little joke for my online pals about how YouTube videos used to be sent out to customers by post. The fictional history of the company became so detailed that I eventually turned it into a 2,000-word short story.

The same unpredictability also happens in non-fiction. The Wikipedia page for Kirkton, Dundee is relatively short because it’s mainly a residential area, albeit with four schools and excellent transport links. On the other hand, the riot that erupted there at Hallowe’en in 2022 is given a separate page that’s around twice as long as the main article, simply because there is so much to be written about the incident.

Having written this blog for a decade now, I can generally predict how long my entries will be. Something else will occasionally occur to me while writing that extends their length. Every so often, I’ll run out of steam, leaving me with a draft entry that goes nowhere.

As these drafts are beginning to build up again, I’m going to see whether I can revisit them and add enough to create a fully-fledged topic.

Uncategorized

Inform the Troops There Has Been a Complete Breakdown in Communications

Because of other commitments, I sometimes don’t write my blog entries until the last few hours. Most of the time this isn’t problem; I usually have at least one idea ready to go.

Today, however, the Internet connection isn’t co-operating. As such, I’m going to write this short entry and keep trying the Schedule button until 8pm.

Uncategorized

Rewriting the Handbook

As mentioned in the last entry, our open-mic night for writers – Hotchpotch – held its first event in four months.

The bottom line is that the evening went well: we attracted a sizeable crowd, the event ran on schedule, and people embraced the new donations system. While there were a lot of variables outside our control, it helped to have a robust plan to remove as much guesswork as possible.

When I brought an assistant on board earlier this year, I composed a document to show her the structure of our events, as I’d previously done it from memory.

This is not an exhaustive textbook, but rather a handbook to give an overview of how the event is run, plus best practice gained from years of experience. For example, it reminds the host to recap the introductory speech after the first break for the benefit of those who arrive later.

Because our format evolved on the pub circuit, where we could finish later in the evening. I rewrote the handbook to include a stricter end time and added in revised best practice advice.

As the handbook is a living document, it will likely be updated every month or two with new tweaks, but it really did help with our event last week.

Uncategorized

Writing Clear Instructions

Back in May, I started running a new writing class called Placing Your Mark.

Unlike the other events I run, where the members bring their existing projects, this one is actively geared towards creating new work. The format has now settled down to include regular features such as writing a passage containing five given words, starting with a line taken from a novel, or inspired by picking a card at random.

When I’m writing these prompts, I do it by myself and it’s difficult to tell how well they’ll be understood.

For example, there is always a break halfway through, during which I produce an object and ask the members to muse upon it and write a piece inspired by it. I initially thought I was making the intention clear: a ten-minute break, followed by five minutes of writing. After trialling the feature and finding members were confused, I rewrote the instructions to make it clearer.

Other prompts don’t fly as well as I’d hoped. A few of these have involved an office setting, which frequently has a power structure and is ripe for conflict. However, some members have had difficulty relating to this because they haven’t worked in that type of environment.

Based on this feedback, I’ve had less of a problem with prompts that don’t work. It’s just as well because we’re now into the third block of four sessions, with possibly enough interest for a future block, and that means I need to write even more of them.

Uncategorized

Writing Yourself Out of a Corner

If you were a fan of Friends back in 1998, you’ll remember the hype and speculation around what would happen during Ross and Emily’s wedding.

Coming at the end of Season 4, this had to be a climactic scene. These days, it’s hardly a spoiler to mention that Ross accidentally says Rachel’s name, which feeds into the entirety of Season 5. However, I’ve only learnt in the last week that the writers struggled to think of a proper ending until the actor who played Ross – David Schwimmer – accidentally switched the names during another scene.

This serves as a good example of how even professional writers are rarely bestowed with fully-formed ideas. A story often needs to be written out and figured out along the way, and that process can take years.

Larry Cohen pitched the idea for the film Phone Booth to Alfred Hitchcock in the 1960s, but neither of them could think of a reason to keep the main character in the booth. By the late 1990s, the public was becoming increasingly vigilant to the threat of terrorism, and Cohen played into that as he realised a sniper with a weapon could be a good reason. It was even a plot point that the main character was one of the few people still using a payphone by that point.

I even have a few examples of my own. One particular example was a three-line fragment of poetry I wrote at school before I ever routinely wrote poetry. In 2013, more than ten years after I left school, I finally found a way to work it into a fuller piece. It gained a sequel in 2018, taking a very different tone from the original, chiefly in recognition of how I’d changed in those five years.

But even professional writers miss the mark sometimes. The final episode of The Prisoner was broadcast in 1968. Although its writer Patrick McGoohan was pleased with the result, he was under pressure to deliver it quickly and many viewers were unhappy that it raised more questions than it answered.

And we must mention the ninth season of Dallas, which was entirely written off as a dream to bring back the character of Bobby Ewing.

Uncategorized

Pen at Work

Two weeks ago, I spoke about seeing a one-woman monologue at the Edinburgh Fringe. It particularly appealed to me because I’d previously written my own play with a similar theme and presentation.

With the festivals now over for another year, my attention has turned to giving my own work its first major rewrite for some time, including a new snappier title.

In particular, the main character has always been an English literature student who keeps a video diary I changed the subject to a music and video production course, giving her more reason to use a camcorder. I’ve also restructured the narrative to include self-interruptions where she looks back at her student days from 15 years in the future.

If I really give the piece my attention, it should be roughly redrafted by next week, and then I need to start reshaping it neatly into its new form.

Uncategorized

How to End a Series That Was Never Meant to Be a Series

For the last three years, I’ve been writing a fantasy series under a pseudonym on a well-known website.

To set your expectations, this has been purely a passion project. I’m not at a stage where I wish to claim public ownership – and I might never be. As such, there will be no links to the series in this entry and only vague references to the plot. However, I feel now is the time to bring the series to an end, so I’ll be discussing the mechanics of this.

Back in September 2020, I published the first part, intended as a one-off story. It received a positive reaction, plus I found there was more I could do with the characters. I went on to write a sequel, then a third instalment, then a fourth. All the while, I’d been peppering my introductions with hints that the next story might be the final one.

In the early days of the series, my greatest hurdle was adding characters and moving them to new locations once the plot was exhausted in the first location. I was able to do this by taking unnamed side-characters from the first two stories and applying some retroactive continuity, known as retconning. Around the fifth story, the series had grown enough legs that it could stand up as its own self-contained universe.

Three months ago, I posted my 23rd part, and the 24th will definitely be where it ends. It’s taken so long because I wanted to tie up the loose ends while taking all the necessary space to explore that ending. So while most parts of the series have ended up between 1,500 and 2,500 words, the finale is likely to touch 5,000. There is even a circle back to the early days with the surprise return of two characters.

After that, I’m considering compiling the parts into a single volume and giving it some more editing, but that’s a long way off at this stage.

Uncategorized

Embracing New Beginnings, or Something Like That

Regular readers will know I run an open-mic event called Hotchpotch. This is primarily for writers rather than musicians, and it’s been happening since 2010. Since I took over in 2015, the one constant has been the need to change venues from time to time. We are now in such a transition period again.

This time, we had several weeks’ notice from the venue. The owner intended to sell the place, but it unexpectedly closed before the sale went through rather than afterwards. The new place has not responded to our email asking whether they would honour the bookings for the remainder of 2023.

As a stop-gap, we held the July event in an open-air amphitheatre. It was a lot of fun, but the Scottish climate means this is not a feasible long-term solution, so it won’t be repeated any time soon.

On Friday, someone did reach out to us to offer assistance, and I hope it leads to a fruitful outcome, especially as a couple of other venues in the area have also closed suddenly.

For 13 years, we’ve been able to secure venues free of charge in return for members buying drinks and snacks from the bar. I’ve come to accept these days are probably at an end, and I’m actively considering how we might implement a new model involving donations.

That said, a fallow period of a month or two might give Hotchpotch a chance to reinvent and reinvigorate itself, just as we’ve done for the last 13 years.

Uncategorized

The Satisfaction Line vs the Finish Line

At the weekend, I was talking with other writers, which led to a discussion about narrative structure.

Unlike a theatre or film script, there is no standard or accepted narrative structure for a short story. While this can be freeing for an author, my experience also tells me it can lead to a disappointing story without a decent resolution. I’ve had some difficulty articulating exactly what makes a satisfying story, but I’m working on a way of explaining it.

Bear in mind that I’m still working out some details of this metaphor, but below are my initial thoughts.

I’ve started thinking of a story as having two endings. The first ending is where the author stops the narrative. The second ending is the point at which the reader feels satisfied; this will vary from person to person, of course. That second ending is the Satisfaction Line.

Ideally, the Satisfaction Line should come before the end of the narrative, as close as possible, but never after it. Note that the two examples I’m about to give both happen to come from The New Yorker, and the website often arbitrarily says you can’t read any more articles without paying.

The first one is The Lottery by Shirley Jackson. For me, the Satisfaction Line comes a few paragraphs before the end. Structurally, it’s one of my favourite short stories.

The second example is the notorious Cat Person by Kristen Roupenian from 2017. The story ends with a string of phone messages, which I found vaguely threatening but hardly a resolution. My own Satisfaction Line might have been crossed if the author had continued to a more dramatic ending.

I’m going to park this thought for the moment with the intention of returning at some point in the future, however distant.

Uncategorized

When Non-Fiction Might be Fiction

When I was growing up, I ploughed most of Roald Dahl’s output and selected titles from Enid Blyton. Additionally, I kept returning to a children’s publisher called Antelope Books – not to be confused with the political publisher Antelope Hill – which would feature works by authors such as Penelope Lively and Anne Fine.

But as much as I enjoyed novels, I definitely spent more time reading factual volumes. On visits to the library, I’d stay around the non-fiction section, finding books about subjects like why the weather acts like it does, how nuclear energy works, what happens at an airport, and so much more.

I owned a lot of books as well. Easily the best one was a thick A4-sized Reader’s Digest collection called How Is It Done? with simple explainers about the logistics of staging an Olympic Games, how a building is demolished with explosives, how and why Christo and Jeanne-Claude would wrap landscapes in material, &c. From what I can gather, no updated version has ever been released.

All the non-fiction books I’ve mentioned so far have one factor in common: they were from reliable sources. They would typically be assembled by established publishers and/or have a bibliography for further reading. Even today, my non-fiction YouTube subscriptions are carefully curated from established channels and/or who link sources in the description.

However, I owned some books that played fast and loose with such standards. The pages would often contain lists of nothing but facts – and I use that word loosely – along the lines of:

  • From 1 June to 30 July 1987, a schoolgirl completely wore out a pair of shoes.
  • In 1970, Clive Bunyan robbed a shop in Scarborough. He hid his face with a motorcycle helmet but was caught because his name was printed in large letters on the front.
  • There is an African village where the women have to catch a once-weekly bus to go shopping, but it stops for only three minutes.

Looking back, I can imagine the authors going to the pub, sinking five beers and writing the most outlandish nonsense they could get away with.

However, while young readers tend not to have the type of critical thinking skills that older ones might, I was always happy to take what I read at face value and be entertained by all these ridiculous nuggets.