When the water turned solid he knew things were getting weird. Elongated raindrops hung from the branches like stretched taffy. He wondered if they might taste sweet. The air itself crystallised out and dropped in blue-white chunks from the sky, shattering musically on the ground.
So, it wasn’t really a surprise when a unicorn stepped into the clearing.
“Hello unicorn” he said.
“Hello man,” the beast replied.
“What’s happening?”
“You’re having an episode.”
“Oh, okay. I hope it doesn’t stop. It’s pretty.”
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.
Fancy sharpening your skill with writing exercises? The Scrivener’s Forge offers a new exercise every month to hone one aspect of your craft. Take a look at this month’s exercise on creativity
It’s been a lean year for writing plaudits. In the 12 months to the end of November only 6.2% of the stories I submitted were published, compared with 14.7% for 2016. To be fair, this doesn’t include the analysis piece I wrote for Writers’ Forum, and also I’m now submitting to magazines with lower acceptance rates. But despite all the quibbles, it’s glum-making.
So, I was encouraged to get the e-mail telling me I’d won the Plot of Gold Challengewith the outline of my work in progress, The Tears of Boabdil, which I mentioned in an earlier post. This contest run by two literary software companies, ProWritingAId and Beemgee, was open during October and November. Using the Beemgee outlining package, contestants developed characters, plot outlines, and synopses.
This was the first time I’d used Beemgee (short for Boy Meets Girl) and I was impressed, for two main reasons. Firstly, it connects character organically to plot, embodying the principle that, if you know what your characters want, you have a plot. Secondly, because it invites you to think about your expectations of audience response to your characters and how this might go wrong. I’ve been using the ProWritingAid editing package for several years now, and swear by it as an effortless way to check grammar, punctuation, and word-use.
“Ideas were unconventional and daring, narrative strong and complex, characters were sympathetic and compelling. Stunningly ambitious with great literary potential.”
The elevator pitch for my book was “When a policeman infiltrates a terrorist group, he embarks on a doomed taboo liaison with a beautiful quarry. He must choose to betray his love or his duty. This story, about politics and passion, tracks the magic and tragedy of a lie.” This isn’t a spoiler because I followed the principle of “if you have a secret, give it away right at the top”. We learn in Chapter 5 that he is an undercover police agent.
The judges said of my outline and that of CL Lynch with whom I shared the winning spot “Huge congratulations to both of these hugely talented authors. Their ideas were unconventional and daring. Their narratives were strong and complex. Their characters were sympathetic and compelling. One is superbly structured and instantly moving, the other stunningly ambitious with great literary potential.”
Winning boosted my flagging spirits. And I take home a lifetime licence for Beemgee and ProWritingAid. Congratulations to my co-winner, CL Lynch, and thanks to both companies.
You can have all the technique in the world, but it won’t help without a great story idea. Luckily, there are techniques than can help you create new ideas. A big part of creativity is about making new links between old things. Metaphor, that staple of poetry, does exactly this (“shall I compare thee to a summer’s day”).
Exercise
Write a scene in which you take two unrelated things (a swan and a company takeover for example) and make one flow from the other. The craft is in making the connection seem natural and urgent.
Jerry was always … different. Once when we were kids at the swimming baths he came up for air, pushed the black hair from his brow, and said “wouldn’t it be cool to grow gills?”
Now he’s proposing to do it.
“Jerry, you can’t,” I say. “It’s not right.”
The syringe is poised in his hand. “How so? It’s my body. I can tattoo it, pierce it, so why can’t I modify my DNA? I can cure my colour blindness and add vision into the ultra violet.”
“You won’t be you any more, not fully human.”
He just laughed.
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
Fancy sharpening your skill with writing exercises? The Scrivener’s Forge offers a new exercise every month to hone one aspect of your craft. Take a look at this month’s exercise on point of view.
You have to love any sentence that starts that way, don’t you? It conjures up delightful fairy tales and the deepest philosophy.
“… the whole universe is a story?” she said.
“Okay,” I said. “So who’s telling it?”
“Nobody. There’s no narrator or listeners. Only the story.”
That’s why I adored her. She lived in a different world; more magical, more complicated.
“Once I open the box, I know whether the cat is dead or alive. But you don’t know until I tell you,” she said
“Ha! So the observer exists and creates the tale.”
“Damn!”
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.
Fancy sharpening your skill with writing exercises? The Scrivener’s Forge offers a new exercise every month to hone one aspect of your craft. Take a look at this month’s exercise on point of view.
George Monbiot’s book, Out of the Wreckage, is the second this year to explore the idea that what the planet needs is a new story. Like Alex Evans in The Myth Gap, Monbiot suggests that people are mobilised to action by stories, not by facts and evidence.
This is clearly an idea whose time has come, and one which resonates with a “post-truth” world. I won’t rehearse again my concerns with the anti-rationality of the idea, which I covered in a review of Evans’ book. And, in fairness, Monbiot advocates a new story based on science. I do agree with both authors that we need new stories to confront the challenges of our times.
Stories, as I said in my review of The Myth Gap “are among the oldest human devices for encoding and sharing knowledge. They have the huge advantage over collections of facts that they tell us what goes with what, what is important and what is unimportant, who to praise and who to blame.”
Monbiot goes further than Evans in suggesting the structure of this new story.
“Disorder afflicts the land, caused by powerful and nefarious forces working against the interests of humanity. The hero – who might be one person or a group of people – revolts against this disorder, fights the nefarious forces, overcomes them despite great odds and restores order.”
He calls this the Restoration Story and says “stories that follow this pattern can be so powerful that they sweep all before them, even our fundamental values.” He suggests that this is an archetype, which is common to both social democratic and neoliberal narratives, and he may indeed be right in saying this.
However, the interesting thing about the idea is how timid it is, with its narrative of “restoring order”. And it isn’t the only archetypal story we tell about the future. I know this because I did some research a few years ago, analysing 64 futures scenarios (“Futures and Culture”, Futures 44 (2012) 277–291). All these stories fitted into four broad classes – Progress, Catastrophe, Reversion and Transformation.
Progress is, as the name suggests, one where existing trends lead towards the expected goals. This story was dominant during the brash optimism of the nineteenth century.
Catastrophe is also simple – the outcomes prevent us realising our expected goals. In the darker years of the twentieth century, dystopian visions became more common.
Reversion, which is essentially Monbiot’s Restoration, is a little more complicated, and involves a return to previous conditions in order to maintain viability. These stories often have a sentimental view of a simpler earlier time.
Finally, the Transformation story involves, as the name suggests, a fundamental change in the “rules of the game“, leading to a new and unexpected end-state.
I would suggest that to get out of the wreckage we need Transformation stories not Reversion stories. Monbiot would probably agree, but perhaps he might want to rethink his narrative archetypes.
She lay beside him, sleeping. The respirator of her chest rattled as it rose and fell, the breath rasping alien through sunken tubes. In terror, he believed he heard a mechanical hum and then a click at the end of every in-breath.
Beyond the fevered bedroom, the church clock struck thirteen.
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.
Fancy sharpening your skill with writing exercises? The Scrivener’s Forge offers a new exercise every month to hone one aspect of your craft. Take a look at this month’s exercise on point of view.
He said the usual silly things men say – What? How? Why? Are you sure?
‘It will be all right, won’t it?’ she asked. ‘You must marry me.’
‘Your brothers will never allow it,” he temporised.
“My brothers and father will kill me if I have a baby and I am unmarried.”
The moment of betrayal is always agonising. You recite for yourself all the reasons that make it right. There’s duty. There’s the uncomfortable truth that you already have a wife and two vaguely C of E kids. And those are good justifications. But you can only betray what you first love.
He walked away. He looked back once, and shed a tear.
…………………………………………………………………..
Ayesha tracked him down.
“Zami, I’m pregnant.”
She searched his eyes as he stammered and asked all the stupid, obvious, irrelevant questions. She wanted to see love there, concern, and maybe even joy. She saw fear.
‘It will be all right, won’t it?’ she asked. ‘You must marry me.’
‘Your brothers will never allow it,’
How could he not understand? “My brothers and father will kill me if I have a baby and I am unmarried.”
The sound of her voice came to her through the numb bone of her skull flat, factual, unemotional. But her body shook.
She saw it in his eyes before he said anything. She saw his need for her, perhaps even caring. But his love was insufficient. Or maybe his duty was misplaced. Either way, she understood this was going to be her problem, not theirs. Men were animals, just like Mama said. Her arm lashed out, intending to slap him.
He flinched but didn’t draw away. She stopped her hand, an inch from his face, caressed his cheek and then spat in his face.
Whaddaya mean I can’t be here? Whodyathink you are? Oh, you’re the doorman? Well, whoopiedoo, I’m a street-sweeper! You ain’t no better than me. Whodyathink keeps the pavement clean for the lovely ladies ‘n’ genelmen?
What? Of course I’m dirty, you eejit. Muck does that to a bloke. I’m good enough to keep your customers from stepping in poop, but not good enough to be one? Get you!
Silly hat but nice coat, by the way. We’ll see how pretty the jacket looks when you have to clean up your own crap because I ain’t gonna ever again.
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.
Fancy sharpening your skill with writing exercises? The Scrivener’s Forge offers a new exercise every month to hone one aspect of your craft. Take a look at this month’s exercise on point of view.
Neil MacDonald Author 
