Three guesses

A safe fairyland is untrue to all worlds. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

I’ve been reading Tolkien, and thinking about stories and mythic journeys (more on that another time), and puzzles and codes (more on that too), and macrocosms and microcosms.  And the confluence of all of these has steered me creatively towards reworking a fairy tale.

I love a good fairy tale, but don’t be fooled, it’s not all magic wands and princess dresses out there in fairyland.  There are plenty of nasty little blighters with sharp teeth and even sharper wits lying in wait for our unsuspecting characters. But there are also lessons to be learned, fortunes to be made, and hopefully some happy endings, too.  

Fairy and folk tales give us plenty to work with.  I’ve previously penned a flash fic based on a particularly disturbing old story. My vignette takes place entirely on The Stairs which lead down into a very dark place:   

I tread down the stairs, cautiously, testing each one’s soundness before transferring my full weight.  Each step groans a slow warning to me.  It’s dark down there.  I reach the edge of the light, then dip my slippered toe into the pool of darkness.  It rises to my calf, then my knees, then my thighs, with each downward step, closing around me in its silky depth, swirling and enfolding my fine skirts.

I bet you want to know what she finds at the bottom, right?

I’ve also written a conte merveilleux of my own invention. It adopts the shape, style and symbolism of an old folk tale, and weaves together elements of faerie with a love story.  Delivering sweetness and heartbreak in less than 1200 words, Sweet Apple is one of my favourite pieces of writing.

For my next piece, there are so many stories to choose from, and so little time! The source story needs to have enough inherent complexity to permit a meaningful reworking, but enough simplicity to allow the original elements to remain intact.  For a while I was thinking about the two girls, one kind and one mean-spirited, who encounter an old lady by the well. The kind sister is rewarded with roses and pearls falling from her mouth whenever she speaks, but the unkind sister has toads and snails dropping out of hers. 

That’s not all of the story, because their mother is horrible too. (Family dysfunction 101). All is not lost though, because a prince just happens to be riding his horse through the forest at exactly the right time (!). There are plenty of gender stereotypes to chew over in a re-telling, but the most delicious temptation lies in the hilarious story possibilities for things-falling-out-of-people’s-mouths.  

But there is another story I keep returning to, like a task that must be completed by dawn. I’ve spun it round and round in my mind, and it has cast off fine filaments that have burrowed into my imagination and taken root.  As a child, I never liked this story. There was always something deeply unsettling about it.  As an adult, I recognise the themes of manipulation, deception, and greed, and it strikes me as a thoroughly modern tale. It deserves a more thorough telling, which examines the motivations and actions of all its characters and provides a resolution for each one of them, regardless of their position in the social hierarchy.  But since my denouement leans heavily on the original fairy tale, I’ll keep its name to myself, and leave you to guess which story it is.  

Excruciating

It’s Friday, and the weekend looms ahead of me, filled with that most excruciating of experiences:  the getting of feedback.  I’ve submitted a couple of my more recent short stories to a writers’ group, and I will be hearing their unabridged opinions at our next meeting.

Feedback isn’t always pretty.  Writers’ groups contain people with a variety of experiences, opinions, and differing levels of writing and critiquing skills.  While some people like to try to understand what the writer was trying to do, and attempt to pitch their feedback accordingly, others come from the hold-nothing-back camp.  Of course, we’re all there to learn and to understand our own writing better so that we can improve it, so the forthright opinion of our peers is valuable.  But it needs to be constructive, not destructive.  It is possible to be honest without gouging out the tender roots of a beginner writer’s confidence.  

What do I mean by this?  Studies have shown that it's usually the more experienced learners who want to hear negative (but specific) feedback.  People who are just starting out welcome more positive comments, because they need the encouragement.  In a group with a variety of experience and, more importantly, confidence levels, it can be quite tricky to know which end of the continuum to pitch your comments to, so inevitably there will be some misfires.  It pays to put on your psychological flak-jacket before seeking feedback from a group, in case you’re on the receiving end of an enthusiastically well-intentioned mortar attack.

So, armed with my bullet-proof silk & mohair fingerless gloves, I have submitted two short stories for the consideration of the group. I wrote the first of them several months ago. I loved the process of writing it, and felt very pleased with the result.  Since then, the satisfied glow of completion has ebbed a little, leaving me wondering how successful it really is.  Re-reading it, I’m not sure it is as smooth as I’d first thought.  It’s short, very short, maybe painfully so.  But I think it might still contain enough cleverness and charm (and “punch”) to satisfy the reader.  

The second story is brand new, and much rawer as a result.  It started, as many of my stories do, with a single burning scene in mind, and the rest of the narrative has grown around it in misshapen concentric rings.  I’m still much too close to that interior place of creation to have any ability to judge either the story or the quality of its delivery.  In my inner eye, the salt marsh locale is beautiful, desolate, and gloomy, but I’ve described it sparingly, and maybe some readers will want more physical detail.  I do know it’s still quite rough in places, the pacing is a little clumpy, and I really need to learn a whole lot of new words that mean “grey”. 

On the other hand, some aspects of this story are quite nuanced, requiring the reader to make a leap.  I know from experience that not all readers are able or willing to do that.  Some people expect to have every last, excruciating plot point fed to them, with a disposable plastic spoon, no less.  And after a beta-reading by a family member who expressed denouement disappointment, I suspect there will be quite mixed feedback on this one.  And that is a good thing, if it helps me to understand how it is received variously in the mind of the readers.

3,500

3,500.  No, this isn’t the title of an upcoming sci-fi series on telly. It’s not the number of days until Armageddon (though, I suppose, it could be). It’s not even how much I charge per hour to be my own fabulous self, although that would be nice.

It is, however a magic number.

For starters, it’s divisible by seven, which is a sure sign of magickness if your favourite number is seven.  But that’s not the reason it’s magical.  I’ll explain why.

For the past year or so, I have been writing short pieces, mostly for my monthly writers’ group.  The criteria there is that they must be readable within about 5 minutes.  So I’ve nigh-on perfected squeezing my stories onto a single piece of paper, printed front and back.  This typically means that these short short stories, or flash fictions, are around 700-800 words in length. If I manipulate the page margins, flout the time limit and read really quickly, I’ve topped out at 1,100. (Naughty, yes. But it was a particularly strong piece).  Which is still a very short story in a genre that requires spaciousness for interesting details and imagined realities.

The result of this is that I have a burgeoning collection of short pieces, which are now arriving at a very polished point. But I’ve no clue where or how to find a home for them.

All of this changed recently when I went along to a Writing fantasy, horror and science fiction workshop with Lisa L Hannett. 

Lisa said that 3,500 words is the magic number for short stories in the speculative fiction paradigm.  It’s the peak word count for publication, and very attractive in competitions.

Neat. Desirable. Magic, even.  

3,500.

I suspect this magic number was buried somewhere deep in my consciousness, because I had one of those zinging moments of recognition.  Did I read this somewhere?  Did I learn it at TAFE 10 years ago?  Or did a parallel self hear it in a writing workshop in an alternative universe? 

Who knows?  All I know is that it was an epiphany. 

This single number awakened in me a way forward.  It is time to break out of the short form, and start moving towards longer pieces with greater complexity.  In her feedback, Lisa gave me some useful tips on how to build on existing pieces to move them towards this goal.  Build the central scene, add another scene on either side of it, layer some nuances into the plot, and voila! 3,500 words. 

To someone else, this might not be a big deal, but my toes are bruised from long dancing past an elephant, so a way forward is worth its weight in steel-capped boots. 

And now, for all the magic number enthusiasts out there, here are some more: 

Magic Square by chrisinplymouth @ Flickr

AND I SHOULD ADD:
Besides the illumination, Lisa also provided some suggestions for markets for the very short pieces that I already have.  Apparently it is not an easy thing to do, to contain a whole story within a small word count, and publications that want short pieces are always on the look out for good ones.  Stay tuned... 

Writing fantasy, horror and science fiction with Lisa L Hannett

I seized an opportunity recently, and I’m glad I did.

I chose to drag myself out of bed on a Saturday morning (which is just as difficult for me as it is for Neil Gaiman) and schlep all the way into town, to enclose myself in a room with strangers for several hours, while the first decent sun in months shone brilliantly outside without me. 

Why?  Because it was a workshop about writing fantasy, horror and science fiction short stories.  And that’s what I do.  Or at least, it’s what I’ve started to do, and very much the direction this Denouement gig is taking me.  

The workshop was presented by Lisa Hannett, who is particularly deft with short stories of a speculative ilk, and I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if I throw in some words like dark, imaginative and bent to describe them.  Lisa is fabulous enough to have gone along to Clarion South (pause for a moment of envy) back when Clarion South was still a thing.  Of late she been picking up handfuls of shiny awards and nominations for other shiny awards, and she also happens to reside in our fair city.

Besides all of that (and once my Saturday morning cappuccino had kicked in), Lisa gives a cracking workshop.

The first session covered ways to stimulate story ideas and develop plots.  Lisa emphasised the need to focus on the “single element” in a short story.  You may catch glimpses of the larger imagined reality, but the job of the short is to explore a single idea with depth, in a readily digestible chunk. There’s an elegance needed to include what needs to be there and omit what belongs to the larger picture, offstage.  The art of the strong beginning was demonstrated, along with succinctness of description and avoiding the dreaded info-dump. 

Lisa came armed with stimulating exercises and thoughtful handouts.  Throughout, she referred to esteemed writers (Sean Williams got a mention), and backed up all of her points with examples of excellent writing within the genre.  Finally, she issued a challenge – to submit a draft for workshopping by a small group in the second session, along with a critique by Lisa herself.

I went away filled with enthusiasm and ideas, which must be the best recommendation possible, right?  Not only did I add to my knowledge base, but the convergence of creativity and cleverness in the room stimulated my own imaginative energies. 

I even had an epiphany.

This was one of those workshops that will stay with me and continue to inform my thinking and writing for a while yet.  Definitely worth peeling my eyelids open early on the weekend for.