I Don’t Want To Tell You A Story…

•December 12, 2009 • 1 Comment

Sometimes I go too far. If I’m told things are done such and such a way, and have always been thus, then my natural inclination and my politics are to kick against it. But these are my own little scuffles I am not looking to proselytise or convert. So I throw the following freely into the mix, purely to stimulate debate and provoke consideration of one’s own craft, if only for a fleeting moment.

We’ve talked about the campfire storytelling instinct. When people could enter a collective imaginative space conjured for them by the bards. Tales of monsters, heroes, kings and other recognisable things within their societies; things that aided people to order and arrange the strange and scary exterior world and know their place in the man-made hierarchy within it. But public readings and book clubs aside, storytelling (outside of plays/films) is no longer a communal activity. It is performed solo.

I would also posit that as much as an oral audience enter the story, they were inducted through the characters. Humans, demi-humans and immortals sporting human traits just like themselves. We no longer live in a world of myth and legend, (well we do, but no one seems that bothered to deconstruct these and strip the scales from our eyes). Now, we- that is mankind- seem reasonably attuned to the notion that the only significant agency within our lives, is human, not supernatural. Either we take responsibility for our own decisions, or we ascribe the consequences may be down to other humans within our orbit.

There are supposedly only 7 basic plotlines. Yet these have been spun round innumerable times. Presumably this is because each writer brings their own unique vision to the tale and the varying emotional responses of the characters they create when faced with the same range of scenarios.

So no more communal storytelling (though interestingly we collectively recognise character archetypes even outside of art). No more heroes, kings etc, required to apprise us of our place in the world and no more monsters to conquer other than those definitively acknowledged as emanating from within ourselves (not talking vampires here). All the plotlines have been done countless times. All that redeems them is the diverse input of their characters.  If I can go out on a limb here, we no longer need story narratives to organise the world for us. We are snared between the glut of readily accessible information explaining away everything, with the fact that both we, the world and knowledge itself is atomised and fragmented. That the world is quantum. That it is no longer possible to be a Renaissance man, even if you are called Stephen Fry.

So I would place the character element at a higher premium than the story. Of course I also have problems with the concept of ‘character’ as well. Sat round the camp fire, or sat in the cockpit at The Globe Theatre back in its heyday, the punters were probably booing and hissing, cheering and clapping the goodies and the baddies. Today the distinction between a goody and a baddy is less clear. These divisions stem from a religious/moral view of existence, which has fallen into disuse among great tranches of populations in the Developed world. Morality is ambiguous, when you have a character such as Dexter the serial killer, portrayed as an empathic character whom the audience is supposed to identify with. Hannibal Lecter gets all the best lines that raise a belly laugh.

If through our art, we try and penetrate our adriftness in the modern world, our doubts and ambiguities about our existence, the lack of comprehension of certain technological truths and cultural trends, then we will inevitably tend towards a fragmentary narrative. Partial insights, half-grasped truths. So character to my mind becomes more akin to Voice. Not fully rounded. Not possessed of an omniscient perspective. In such a scenario, the voice may become of more value to the reader than the story, which probably mimics the fragmentary narrative it derives from. If the reader shares our confusion of comprehension, then the comfort to be derived is from a voice that offers to guide us through the morass. A believable voice, one that mirrors our own inadequacy, but offers some hope of enlightenment. A voice rooted in emotional intelligence as it too tries to cut through the crap with a sensory machete. To make some hidden connections at least. But one limited in power and destined to fail in all likelihood.

Now I’m about to argue against myself. Of course such writing may still involve story telling. In my book, you pretty much know all about my (anti-?) heroine’s life by the end of the novel, which must mean she has been relating it in parts throughout its course. But the novel to my mind is not about her story. She is sat at bars, sponging drinks off strangers by spinning these tales, possibly outlandish, possibly true. She is an unreliable narrator. A possible fabulist. But is she an unreliable voice, guiding the reader through a certain perspective on the world? No, her voice yields insights to the world, even if she is incapable of inhabiting them herself. Returning to the notion of a reader being alone when reading, yes a page turning, gripping story may make them keep reading – but I don’t detect too many Year Zeroers are about that. No, in my case I want that central voice in the book to seduce the reader to keep reading. To keep up the conversation, the catechism even. An intimate confab. She is someone the reader hopefully wants to devote 3-6 hours of their time in the company of. You can have  a character without story in a novel, but you can’t have it the other way round (unless possibly your novel is a huge canvas painting a war or a scifi universe). Now replace character with voice and you’ll be coming round to my way of thinking. Not that I’m trying to convert you of course.

Okay I’ll go sit on the heretic step now and take my licks. At least I never mentioned language even once.

Thirteen Shadows Waiting for Sunrise

•December 11, 2009 • 11 Comments

cover image & design copyright 2009 Sarah E Melville

Thirteen Shadows Waiting for Sunrise is the second anthology from Year Zero Writers, following on from Brief Objects of Beauty and Despair. The collection, loosely themed around the question, “can we write a reader’s pain?” will featurte the very best work from this website, and will be available as a free download from smashwords, and as a fully-functioning widget from bookbuzzr on December 18th.

Thirteen Shadows will be the centrepiece of a series of Year Zero words & music events in 2010, including a big bash at Rough Trade Records in Brick Lane on February 4th, featuring singer-songwriter Jessie Grace, and bands InLight and To The Moon. Start spreading the word! Literary fiction is alive and screaming, and Thirteen Shadows is about to give it not so much a shot as the full H-bomb in the arm.

Contributing Year Zero Writers: Penny Goring, Daisy Anne Gree, Anne Lyken-Garner, Marc Nash, Larry Harrison, Marcella O’Connor, Oli Johns, Jenn Topper, Sarah E Melville, Dan Holloway, Heikki Hietala, Simon Betterton

Watch this site for further information in the coming days and weeks.

Spend less on Christmas Presents: Indie Christmas Presents

•December 10, 2009 • 3 Comments
  

  As Anne has given us her amazing opening to Sunday’s Child, this week I’m going to post something in the spirit of her How to Spend Less column. One of the very best ways to spend less on Christmas gifts is to buy Indie. I’ve scoured the web over the past year discovering some extraordinary – and great value – things for the “View from the Shoe” column on my personal blog. Here are the top 10 Indie Christmas presents I’ve found. Click the links to visit the sites.  

   

customised fascinator from hatastic

Hows the Weather T-shirt from Squid Ink Kollective

knitted wristlets from Awkward

     

    

    

    

    

Spend Less On Christmas Presents: Indie Christmas Presents 2

•December 10, 2009 • 1 Comment

Rice n Roll hand/clutch bag recycled from rice sacks by For the Love of Law

meerkat nativity from Nifty Knits

    

handmade leather journals from Susan Green Books

handmade glass jewellery from Verre Design

Spend Less on Christmas Presents: Indie Christmas Presents 3

•December 10, 2009 • Leave a Comment

The Fiction Project: give someone the chance to be part of art & literature history

Stack Magazines: 1 subscription, a different great Indie mag each month
Kindle covers from Busted Typewriter
 

SKIN BOOK #8

•December 10, 2009 • 10 Comments

You say I want to wear you like the skin stretched on my cheekbones. I say no you don’t, you want to hang me

In your head

And drape me in mourning-cloth like some fucking icon or a dead pet or any other pair of tits you hide to excite-guilt-dare-fear-make your slave. You say those are goldfish delusions swimming

In your head

So I say why don’t you and you say I can’t touch and I say you won’t touch and you say I can’t and down the ether, quantum, firbreoptic forearm fire lines I hear the endless loop I can’t and type you won’t and hit return and hit and hit to fight fist fuck the echo

In your head. Continue reading ‘SKIN BOOK #8′

Urban Renewal

•December 9, 2009 • 20 Comments

I’m answering an ad for a char in Shadwell. Bounding up the wrought iron stairs of a Peabody block of flats, I’m slammed hard into the clammy wall and pinned there. My chest poked rigid against my diaphragm like a sergeant-major’s baton. There is no breath there to release my imprisoned knot. Behind the retinas of my eyes I feel a thousand stabbing pricks, as if each one is a cajoling spur, towards what I know not. My legs feel like anchors, tugging on me as if to suck me back down towards the sweep of the stairwell. And yet I instinctively perceive they will not bear the weight of my trunk. I manage to sink to my knees, the instantaneous remonstration of abrading skin, being overriden by the inundation of all my mass centripetally flying into my stomach. I haul myself down the stairs as if on a sledge, only my frame is of flesh instead of wood and the surface I’m moving across is concrete, rather than compacted snow. I didn’t pursue the job that day. Continue reading ‘Urban Renewal’

Sunday’s Child Opening

•December 8, 2009 • 6 Comments

After much ado, edits, re-reads, and word-spitting, I’ve got a permanent opening for my full-length book, Sunday’s Child (written in the voice of a little girl). I was at first adamant that the start I had was going to remain that way, but quite a number of people on Authonomy agreed that this beginning is better than the one I had before. This episode was originally towards the middle of the first chapter, but I was convinced it made a striking opening. What do you think?

SUNDAY’S CHILD (THE OPENING)

My usual shortcut through the building site for the new school seemed like a good idea, on account of it being so late and all. The evening sunlight glowed orange, signalling that dusk was crouching round the corner.

Piles of rubbish and concrete were scattered everywhere, but the men weren’t working anymore – something about shortage of materials or other. Even the grass had packed up and left the parched ground, leaving the entire site something of a mountain of brown and grey mess.

I mustn’t get home late, but with after-school lessons every day, I don’t know how I could help that. At least I only have one more year at primary school, after which . . .

A noise behind me snapped me out of my thoughts. It was coupled with panting – loud panting – and heavy, running footsteps on the hot, hard concrete. Continue reading ‘Sunday’s Child Opening’

Belated Postcards

•December 7, 2009 • 12 Comments

Belated postcards: all the things I wanted to say, and never did, to the boyfriends of the past. It’s time to tell the truth.

The Dispatchers

•December 6, 2009 • 13 Comments

On the night of November 19, 1943, the airspace above Germany at midnight was a bleak place. At 22,000 feet the sky was very dark and dotted with stars, no moon was visible and down below all of the nation at war was blacked out. The local wardens had done an excellent job in monitoring compliance – the ground was more of a known fact than a visible reality. Far in the north it was possible to imagine or even glimpse the lights of neutral Sweden, a dream of a peaceful existence in a world at war. Continue reading ‘The Dispatchers’