A Mentee’s Journey 2: First Pass

June 19, 2018 ~ Neil MacDonald ~ 7 Comments

As I reported at the beginning of the year, I was awarded a year’s mentoring by Cinnamon Press for my novel The Tears of Boabdil. I got first comments back from my mentor, Adam, in March, and more detailed comments in May. So I can now honour my promise to update you on how it’s going.

Adam made very helpful observations about a recurring aspect of the novel, which I had rendered as “voices” in the narrator’s head. He pointed out that this was confusing, and I have now turned them into separate characters with a distinct story thread. There were useful comments too on places where the story needed more room to breathe. I’ve added about 10,000 words so far.

More problematically, he has also been emphatic that the opening doesn’t work because it prevents the reader immersing themselves. It jumps around in place and time. He’s right, but the thing is I don’t want the reader to immerse themselves in the first chapter. This is a book about lies and I want the reader to consciously interrogate what is being told them. So, we have different visions of how the book should work.

I was aware how risky it is to ignore the usual imperative to hook your reader. So I tested response to chapter 1, using thirteen independent beta readers on Scribophile, only one of whom had any relationship with me. Over three quarters of them said they would read on. As an ex-scientist, I’m driven by the data. I’ve made the chapter a little less demanding to navigate, but I’m going to stick with my plan.

Of course, you don’t have to agree with everything a mentor says. But a mentor is a trusted counsellor and guide. They will normally have more experience and knowledge than the mentee, though peer mentoring is possible. The relationship is neither that of a critique buddy, nor that of a teacher, though there are overlaps with both roles. I think the difference is the degree of trust required on the part of the mentee, and the degree of nurturing on the part of the mentor.

There is no agreed definition of what mentoring is. So, compiled from various sources, this is my best sense.

The mentor should:

Manage the relationship
Encourage
Nurture and champion
Teach, advise, and coach. Play Devil’s advocate and “truth-sayer”: provide the tough feedback that mentee needs to hear in order to move forward; push the mentee to take risks when appropriate
Offer/ develop mutual respect Support mentees’ own development and resist temptation to create a clone. Help mentee find own solutions
Respond to learner’s needs

The mentee should:

Identify learning goals. take an active role in their own learning and help drive the process
Be open to and seek feedback
Follow through on commitments
Take informed risks as they try new options and behaviours in support of development goals.

This is a complex relationship. And that complexity is probably the reason why both mentor and mentee need to have a role in choosing who they want to work with. Experience is that assigning mentors often does not produce good results. In my case, the mentor was assigned. Time will tell about the results.

Friday Fictioneers – Window

June 13, 2018June 13, 2018 ~ Neil MacDonald ~ 78 Comments

meep-by-the-window — Photo Prompt © Jean L. Hays

Inside every head there’s a world. Simon’s skull was like that–when he looked at you, he wasn’t seeing what you did in the mirror

“Why don’t I raise the blind?” Natalie would always say when her brother stared out the kitchen window, “so you can see better.”

With weary patience, he’d explain the screening pattern of the fabric revealed how things are.

“There goes Mrs Abercrombie,” he said. “She’s one of the lizard people. Her eggs are blowing behind her like leaves.”

Natalie realised just because a thing doesn’t exist this doesn’t make it untrue

Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

106. Story tricks: making surprise work for you

June 12, 2018 ~ Neil MacDonald ~ 4 Comments

I’m a literary snob. I tend to look down my nose at stories with a surprise ending, a “twist in the tail”. They seem to me gimmicky and superficial. And yet, I have been struck by a disturbing question: is surprise, after all, what writing is about?

A good story always has us eager to know what comes next. But now think about a bad story. It’s plodding and predictable. We know what’s going to come next—the bad king will be overthrown, the princess will marry the peasant, who will, of course, turn out to be a prince and the true heir. If we can predict what’s coming next, why would we read on? So, logically, a good story must have surprise.

surprise

This is what cognitive scientist Vera Tobin argues in her book Elements of Surprise. The book shows how the glitches in our cognition works informs the way successful plots are constructed. Jane Austen’s Emma, for example, turns on the consequences of the protagonist’s mistaken belief that she is an accomplished matchmaker. She has great difficulty imagining that, once she has arrived at an interpretation of events, others could think otherwise. The surprise comes when she realises that she, after all, loves Mr Knightly.

Twists and jokes

Twists, or surprises, can work in different ways. In the classic version, the reader is led to believe things are one way, and then that belief is turned on its head. The scattering of clues must be sufficient for the ending to seem inevitable, and yet they must be sufficiently disguised not to be noticed. This, of course, is the recipe for the detective story. It is also the recipe for the joke.

Two gay men watch a beautiful woman hipping her way down the street. One sighs and turns to the other, saying “it’s at times like this you wish you were a lesbian”.

The mind is led down one path, only to be shown at the end a completely different meaning to the chain of events. The natural physiological response is the sudden explosive exhalation we call a laugh.

The problem with this version of the surprise is that it only works once. There is nothing to the lead-up that would hold our attention once we know how it will end. Once we know the punchline, once we know the butler did it, the magic is gone.

Twist in the tail and twist in the character

But I now realise there other kinds of surprise. And Tobin holds the key to them. She argues that two “flaws” in cognition are at the heart of stories, and at the heart of social interaction. The first is our difficulty in understanding that others may be different from us. The second is the “curse of knowledge” – we find it hard to model the mental states of people who don’t know something that we do. There is infinite room for fashioning dramatic misunderstandings in these two facts.

Since a character with a desire creates a plot, I suppose a character change is a form of “twist in the tail”. But it’s a more satisfying one, and one to which we will return again and again. Our reaction is less like that to a joke and more like that to a loved one.

But, I think there is more than just surprise available here. There is also delight and understanding. Fiction allows us to experience the one thing we can never really know—what the inside of someone else’s head feels like. When a character in whom we are invested undergoes change we experience a twist in the character. And, if the author has achieved the trick of making the change both inevitable and surprising, we understand something profound about ourselves and others.

It all makes sense

There is, perhaps, yet a third kind of story. It’s like a numinous form of the first, the twist story. In this kind, the writer reveals to us how the world works, or at least how their world works. There is an aesthetic pleasure of discovery when we understand how all the pieces fit together. Vicariously, it’s like experiencing the “aha moment” of a scientific discovery. When we have the whole picture, suddenly it all makes sense.

What kinds of surprise work best for you in a story?

Friday Fictioneers – Capitol

June 6, 2018 ~ Neil MacDonald ~ 82 Comments

the-met-roger-b — Photo Prompt © Roger Bultot

The first remarkable thing about the space was its spaciousness. Hall after colonnaded hall receded into the far distance. Clouds obscured the vaulted ceiling. Even Marcus, safe big Marcus holding my hand, was diminished.

The second remarkable thing–the Capitol refracted identity. Mirrors on every wall reflected mirrors, and I saw myself seeing.

The third thing, well, everyone knows that –the mortality of gods. They killed the Emperor that day, right in front of me. And the mirrors multiplied his dying into a massacre of thousands, one death for each of his crimes.

Now we must learn to worship ourselves.

Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

Friday Fictioneers – Holes

June 1, 2018 ~ Neil MacDonald ~ 19 Comments

russell-working — Photo Prompt © Connie Gayer

Russ started in the southeast corner. By year-end, he’d reached the far side of the field, which looked like a Somme battlefield.

Eventually curiosity got the better of me “Whatya doin’, Russ?”

He didn’t even stop digging. “What’s it look like?”

That seemed a trick question, so I didn’t say. I tried a different tack. “What for ya diggin’ holes in the ground, Russ?”

“I’m not.”

He was knee deep in the pit so that seemed a stupid answer.

“It ain’t the holes, idiot, it’s the rims,” he said. Snow began to fall.

“Like lace,” he said.

I’m afraid Russell’s picture tickled me so much I had another go at it. Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

Friday Fictioneers – Personalised Medicine

May 30, 2018 ~ Neil MacDonald ~ 72 Comments

He had a white beard, a red suit, and a twinkle in his eye. Yeah, that was my first thought too. And, of course, his name was Kris.

“Look,” he said, beginning the consultation, “the more statins you take, the less likely is cardiovascular crisis, but the greater the chance of cancer.”

Well, that was a kick in the head! I told him to repair the cancer genes. It transpired that meant I’d get dementia instead.

He wound up for the pitch. “Personalised medicine today offers a good death. A massive coronary half way up an Alp is very popular.”

Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

Friday Fictioneers – Magic

May 23, 2018 ~ Neil MacDonald ~ 86 Comments

bowl-and-leaves — Photo Prompt © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

Well, it was an easy mistake—I’d said a crystal ball, and he’d bought me a crystal bowl. But it made me angry anyhow, perhaps just needing someone to yell at.

“I can’t hardly tell the punters’ fortunes in a sugar bowl, can I?”

“Could you read tea leaves instead, spread them on the bottom?” His lowered head and moist eyes almost broke my heart.

The thing hefted heavy in my hand. He cowered. The rim flared blue, reflecting the sky. Yellows of the pine table lurked in the facets. And green. And red.

There’s magic everywhere when you look.

Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

Friday Fictioneers – The Walker’s Tale

May 16, 2018 ~ Neil MacDonald ~ 95 Comments

dadsshoes — Photo Prompt © Photographer prefers to remain anonymous.

When the first pair of shoes turned up, well, I were delighted. I put them on and walked. Them ten league boots took me all the way from John O’Groats to Lands End. I walked clear out of them and settled on the promontory overlooking the bean green Atlantic. Waiting

Today, a second pair of boots on my moss-gnawed doorstep. Sinister derelict things. With a note tucked into the right shoe. I couldn’t pull it out, and anyway I can’t read. But I know what it says.

Pebbles crunching. I walk into the ocean. It’s so very cold.

Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields, who has given us boots before, to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here.

My story is a companion piece to Walker, written in response to the first pair of boots.

Friday Fictioneers – On the Run

May 9, 2018 ~ Neil MacDonald ~ 77 Comments

nyc-jill-wisoff — Photo Prompt © **Jill Wisoff**

Something weird was happening. I just didn’t know what. Since we left Dad, life was odd. We moved three times in twelve years. And each time, Harold was there too.

Mum promised to explain, now I was old enough. She met me in a motorway services, with Harold in tow.

“We’re on the run from the Mafia,” she said. “Your father crossed them.”

Harold gave me a bracelet. A transmitter, so he and other agents could always locate me. He told me to be wary of doubles, people who looked like friends but were really bad guys.

I mean, what would you do? This was my mother.

Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fields to write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here

105. Magic realism vs fantasy vs surrealism

May 7, 2018 ~ Neil MacDonald ~ 9 Comments

I am writing a magic realist novel. So I thought I’d better clarify for myself what the genre is. How does it differ from fantasy and surrealism, for example? Is it another name for fabulism? Where does science fiction fit?

Magic Realist writing emerged in Latin America. An example is Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. The genre integrates, into the everyday world, elements whose logic and rules of causality are different. In magic realism, the fantastic has to be plausible, the impossible is reframed as real. Characters do extraordinary things without realising it or knowing why. Its magic is ordinary and very firmly located in reality.

In this sense it is different from fantasy, whose purpose is to create magical alternate worlds. An example is Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings. Perhaps more importantly, the purpose of the two groups of writers is different. Whereas fantasy authors are generally offering escapism, magic realist authors are often advancing a critique of the real world. In Latin America it has roots in the critique of neo-colonialism.

Marquez, one of the originators of the genre, expressed this in his speech on accepting the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982: “our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable.”

In this, magic realism also differs from surrealism. Both genres explore illogical or non-realist aspects of existence, but surrealism invites us to look inwards to the subconscious machinery of imagination, while magic realism’s focus tends to be on society.

I have written several stories that I describe as fabulism. Some people see fabulism as a branch of magic realism. And that makes sense, if you consider the purpose. Like magic realism, fabulist writing tends to offer social commentary. But the technique is different, Fabulism need not be realist. It draws on tropes of myth and fable, often combining them in unusual ways to create a new, hybrid story.

Finally, all of these genres are different from science fiction, which requires a plausible extrapolation of existing scientific knowledge to explain the extraordinary. A goose that lays golden eggs is fairy tale. A goose, genetically engineered so that it metabolises gold and deposits the metal in its shell, is science fiction.