You ask what I meant, and I tell you frankly that I cannot say. When it lived inside me, I knew its shape and smell. But, speaking, I expelled it for you.
I gave it legs to travel, though, inside me, it had no limbs. Wealth it carries in its pockets to pay its way. And I gave it voices to speak, though the language is one not known to me. All of this I did so you might know it. Life becomes something else when spoken.
So, instead, I ask you to tell me what I meant.
Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fieldsto write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here
There are marks on the pages, made by people long, long ago. They trigger electrical discharges in his brain. Not like a seizure, but precise tiny currents. These fluxes form things that cannot exist: a fish breathing air, a wicked witch, snow in the desert. On these little sparks, rising from the bonfire of his mind, he escapes.
Much later he watches a documentary. “They exist,” he cries, “fish with lungs”.
He sells up, and treks the scalding Sahara, searching for snow. Eventually he reaches the white-capped Atlas Mountains and stumbles on to Marrakech, sure he will find the witch.
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
There are spitfires over my garden. Mrs Christie next door cheers.
“Hello,” I say. And then I add “Magnificent aren’t they?”
There’s a pause as she eyes me. “Kept us safe in the War. The Few.”
I sing “There’ll be blue birds over, the white cliffs of Dover.”
That seems to do it. She grudgingly invites me in for a nice cup of tea.
Spitfires don’t bother me. But when the helicopter comes over, I again see the barrel bomb falling and taste the choking gas.
“It must be hard for you people,” she says, and I feel utterly alone.
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
I didn’t plan to steal your dog, it just happened. A watery sun was rising, the morning still largely made of shadows. Slipping between the shadow of an acacia and the one lapping your house, I tried to walk right up without setting him barking. And he came to me, tail going like a metronome.
You must be musical because I saw the Steinway through your window. Perhaps you loved that piano more than your dog, or why was he locked out in the garden? I scratched his ear. He nuzzled my hand.
I left your music, but you didn’t deserve that dog. I call him Beethoven.
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
They say we are never so much ourselves as when we’re wearing a mask. But what do you do when your mask is inside? I feel him slowly filling my skull, peeking out through my eye sockets, wriggling white in the pupal case that once was me.
He started innocently as a pen name. Then he became a younger, more active, version of me. He frequented trendy bars, and sprang lithe across the fells with his Borzoi hounds. Last night, he fucked my wife, and she screamed in pleasure.
I may have to take drastic measures.
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
I am cursed with brevity. It’s really hard for me to write a long book. My novel is currently a svelte 40,000 words. Yet the trend is against me. With long-haul holidays comes the “airport blockbuster”, a novel massive enough to last a flight across the world.
Blockbusters aren’t new. In the days when the reading classes tended to be the leisured classes, blockbusters were de rigeur. Think, for example, of what may be the longest novel in the English language, Samuel Richardson’s 1748 Clarissa, weighing in at 467,870 words. It’s a Sumo wrestler of a book.
Not that shorter books haven’t made the literary prize list. Thomas Love Peacock’s 1818 novel Nightmare Abbey is an anorexic 18,300 words and John Buchan’s 1915 The Thirty Nine Steps is a skinny 29,725 words.
Ian McEwan says “I do love this form, the idea that we are sitting down to a book that you could read at one sitting, or within three hours much as you might go to a movie or opera or long play.”
From the author’s perspective, a book should be “as long as the story needs”. But publishing is a business, and has to respond to market trends. So what are those trends?
Current advice is that fiction for adults should be somewhere in the 70,000 to 110,000 word range, a little longer for fantasy and sci-fi. (See for example Harry Bingham and Chuck Sambuchino)
I took a look at how the trend changed over time, using the Guardian 100 best books listand, for the twenty-first century, the winners of the Man Booker Prize. The trend indicates that the heyday of shorter books was in the hundred years between 1851 and 1950.
From Cervantes’ Don Quixote, published in 1615 (and arguably the first novel) to Laclos’ Dangerous Liaisons at the end of the eighteenth century there are eight books, with an average length of 213,966 words. Only one book is less than 80,000.
In the first half of the nineteenth century, there are 11 books, averaging 130,228 words, with two below 80,000. In the second half of the nineteenth century (16 books) the average rises a little to 176,680 words. But, at the same time there are more books (six) below 80,000 words of which half are below 50,000 words. This may reflect growing literacy among the “lower” classes and tastes for stories like Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
Come the first half of the twentieth century, and the average of the 23 books falls to 104,189 words. Books below 80,000 words make up over half the list, and books shorter than 50,000 words are over a fifth. Oh that I were alive and writing then! The average length for the 39 books in the second half of the twentieth century doesn’t change much, but the proportion under 80,000 words falls to a third and under 50,000 to a tenth. The airport blockbuster had arrived.
In the twenty-first century, this trend seems to have continued. The average length of the 18 Man Booker winners shows a 13% increase compared with the previous half century, and the proportions below 80,000 and below 50,000 words have continued to drop.
This seems to be at odds with some claims that readers’ attention span has fallen and that there is a trend for shorter books. There is some indication of a rebirth of interest in short stories and other short-form styles, particularly in digital format. Agent Clare Alexander says that the marketing challenge may be that of selling middle-sized works.
However, few publishers are seeking novellas. A quick search unearthed:
So the idea of a growing market for short forms may be an urban myth rather than a reality. Agent Kristen Nelson in 2006 noted a trend for authors submitting shorter books, rather than a trend for publishers wanting them. In fact, other surveys have also noted a trend to increasing length. A study of 2,500 titles on the New York Times bestseller and notable book lists found that between 1999 and 2014, average length increased by a quarter, from 320 pages to 400.
Only in non-fiction is there evidence of a trend towards brevity. A study of 272 non-fiction bestsellers on the New York Times list between 2011 and 2017 found a downward trend in average length, from 467 pages to 273 pages.
Do you suffer the curse of brevity? What do you do about it? Do you enjoy short novels? Where do you find them?
Spuggy had run out of time. I don’t mean he was dying. At twenty-four-years-old he had decades ahead. But the age into which he went to war was dead, and his story had ended, leaving him nothing but trekking stubborn through the years, dragging the prosthetic leg behind him.
Once, in the pub, Spuggy spoke about how that hurt. “The only time they ever talk about ‘our brave soldiers’ is the sodding dead ones.”
As he spoke, he drank, like he was firing and reloading a number 8 rifle, technically, methodically. His was a journal of blank pages on which no more words will ever be written for as long as he lives.
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
The drumming starts. A chant rises. I’ve come home.
Almost a lifetime ago, big men drew a line on a map. This, they said, is ours and that is yours. The line cut through our family. With great sympathy they told us uncles were enemies, and sisters became strangers.
And now, at last, we meet again. We no longer share any spoken language, but I recognise you by the weave of your robe and I hear the way you dance. My body speaks in the same rhythms.
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
Oily water slaps glaucous against the barge’s flank. A dead rat floats past. I unload crates of strawberries, already sweet-scented in the early morning sun. By lunch-time, ladies and gentleman in the piazza will remark on the fruit’s succulence as they lean conspiratorial towards each other across starched linen tablecloths.
I was not born to labour. Perhaps my father was a Duke. They tore me from my mother’s arms and gave me to Mabel and Henry, good honest people who pretend to be my parents. This is not my past, but it’s the only one available.
Friday fictioneers is a weekly challenge set by Rochelle Wisoff Fieldsto write a 100-word story in response to a photo prompt. You can find other stories here
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.
Neil MacDonald Author 
