I’ve just finished editing a 750 word story down to 250 words for a flash fiction submission. Such editing is a good discipline – it forces every word to earn its keep. And that’s what tight writing is all about. When you have 5,000 words to play with (let alone the 80,000 of a novel) the writer can be profligate – many of those words are just along for the ride. This is how superfluous adverbs slip in, along with any number of lazy elongated clauses.

It occurred to me that at some word length, to be experimentally determined (see below), the number of words, smelted and tempered, must be so small that the piece transitions from prose into poetry. My 250 word story is still prose. But what if I reduced it to 100 words, or 50, or 25? At some point an alchemical transmutation must occur. It must become haiku, the Japanese 17-syllable poetry form.

Take for example the poem that is probably the most famous of all the haiku, Basho’s frog. I don’t speak Japanese, so I have no idea what the original is like. But the translation I first came across as a teenager was Nobuyuki Yuasa’s

Breaking the silence
Of an ancient pond,
A frog jumped into water —
A deep resonance.

On my shelves is also an early Victorian translation where the same poem receives this baroque rendering:

From out the depths
Of some old time pond
Is heard the plash
Where some lithe frog leaps in.

And then there’s James Kirkup’s brutally modernistic

pond

frog

 plop!

You get the idea. It’s twilight, it’s eternal, it’s serene. Everything is ripe for realisation. And every word is doing really heavy lifting.

I looked on the Internet to find examples of very short stories. Fifty word stories were at a point of transition somewhere between prose and poetry. For example, this one by Brighid Ó Dochartaigh (http://scottishbooktrust.com/writing/love-to-write/the-50-word-fiction-competition/previous-winners)

I saw it through the swirling crowd. The red carnation tucked into your black wool jacket, just as you’d promised. Then he reached out and plucked it, lifted it to his lips, and smiled. You laughed and slipped your arm through his. I was only ten minutes late

But when you get down to ten words, the alchemy has occurred. For example, this one by pastelbitchquotes (https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/10-word-story):

I can’t keep kissing strangers and pretending that it’s you.

That’s haiku.

This led me in turn to wonder what the technical difference is between poetry and prose. In poetic writing, the words have to do double duty. Basho’s words are describing a frog jumping into a pond, but they are also evoking a sense of serenity. They carry a heavy charge of meaning. Perhaps that is one difference between prose and poetry – in prose, words mean what the mean, while in poetry words mean more than one thing. If you condense a piece of prose, like pressure on a lump of a coal, at some point the residual words take on a new form, and the coal becomes a diamond.

Metaphor, likening a thing to something else (‘shall I compare thee to a summer’s day’), seems to be central to this process. Metaphor goes to the core of how creativity and invention work.

I’m not just talking about poetry here. The same thing happens in science. One of the great unifying theories in science was James Clerk Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory, which showed that electricity, magnetism and light were all manifestations of the same thing. He demonstrated that electrical and magnetic fields move through space as waves travelling at the speed of light. He borrowed the equations for wave motion from the study of water. It was a metaphor to say light is like a wave. This is how we understand new things, by seeing that they are “like” something we already know. Or take Darwin’s key realisation that the competitive struggle for survival drove evolution. He wrote The Origin of Species at a time when the competitive struggle for survival was all around him in industrial Britain.

Metaphor helps us understand the new thing, but it also transforms our understanding of the thing we already know. It creates a new tension between the things, which is not a relationship of identity but rather of kinship.

This may be how words come to take on a double cargo of meaning in poetry – they reveal a kinship we haven’t seen before. A work needn’t rhyme, or even scan, to be poetry, but it must have that double cargo.

Of course, new metaphors fade back into prose. They become so over-used they lose any revelatory power, and become clichés. ‘Emotional roller coaster’, for example. Eventually we forget they’re metaphors at all, and they become literal labels. We’ve forgotten that the words ‘bonnet’ and ‘boot’ for a car were anthropomorphic metaphors. Sadly, in Japan, Basho’s frog is so well known it has lost its power. We are fortunate that, for the rest of us, it still resonates.

I almost didn’t write this particular blog. And that was the clearest signal that it might be important to do so. I felt, and I still feel, there might be something perilous in it.

The topic is simple – where ideas for stories come from. The peril is more complex – the danger of playing the author, that of being thought fey, but perhaps most of all the fear of transgression. But it has interested me this week, and so it might interest you too.

An idea has been coming to me. It has felt powerful, so much so that I’ve roused myself from half-sleep to write notes, which are often incomprehensible the next morning. I think the thing that fascinates me is that I still have no clear sense of what the idea is. There’s a powerful sense of mood, and glimpses of a few scenes. See what I mean about the danger of being thought fey? I’m not a mystic, and I’m not subject to visions. But that’s what it sounds like when I try to describe the process.

The idea is strongly connected with an untrustworthy narrator, something I’ve been intrigued by for some time. The narrator conducts the reader through the story with godlike omniscience. But what if the reader knows the narrator is not to be trusted, because he’s a fool, a liar, or clearly deluded? How do they make sense of the story then? Can they form an independent judgement of the events the narrator is confusing? I don’t yet know who the narrator is, or what the plot is. But I know it has something to do with the way we spin stories to make sense of our world, or to create an impression of ourselves we want others to have. So the theme is something to do with the idea that we are stories we tell to ourselves and to other people. The structure is one of stories within stories, each mirroring the same tale. I know also that it has something to do with time, and with luck. I’ve had glimpses of a winding alley in a souk somewhere, in which sit two vendors, one selling time and the other luck.

Here’s where the danger comes of playing the author. I would like to be able to say “my characters appear to me, and whisper their stories in my ear” – that sounds so authorial. But it’s not quite like that for me. What comes first to me is an idea, a world if you like. The plot and the characters emerge out of the idea, sometimes only after quite intense interrogation of what the idea means. Somehow that seems inferior. It shouldn’t. Indeed, when I read what I’ve written here, it sounds as if should be quite authoritatively masculine. Nonetheless, to me it’s not how I imagine the act of writing. But, it’s the way I create, and there’s nothing I can do about that.

And I’m intellectually fascinated by the way this story is coming to me, in moods, in fragments. As if the story isn’t mine, but is something out there that I’m catching glimpses of. And this is the third danger, that of transgression. If I’m impatient, if I close on my prey too soon, I fear destroying it. I will give it words which are not its own, but mine.

You know that image of the writer who has struggled for ten years with his book? He spends hours at his typewriter (it’s always a typewriter not a computer). He types furiously, then tears the paper from the rollers and crumples it into the bin. He tears his hair. The words are not the right words – he searches for the perfect words. After ten years, his novel is one page long. At the top of the page is written “Chapter 1” and then a carriage return and then one word, “The”. I identify with that story.

That’s not say that I have writers’ block. Quite the reverse, I write quite fluently. I have a compulsion to write. What I identify with in that image of the writer is the concern not to transgress, not to distort the idea with clumsy inelegant words and sentences of grotesque shape and colour. Close your hands too soon, and the real story will vanish between them like fog.

For the moment, I’m able to be patient. I’m letting the idea come to me. I’m transcribing my handwritten night scribbles into computer files, and resisting the temptation to put too much order on them. I allow myself to believe that eventually they’ll form a pattern I can recognize as a plot, and that from the scenes will step the characters who alone could have performed those actions or had those thoughts. But patience is hard. The temptation of transgression is always there.

I’m holding the temptation at bay with the aid of other writers. At the moment, before I sleep, I’m reading a little bit of Songs from the Laughing Tree by A.U. Latif. A style less like mine would be hard to imagine. His imagery and confection of words is rich and more for tasting than reading. The prose doesn’t flow linearly but is wild as an enchanted forest. In other moments, in other moods, this might irritate. I could imagine being wanting to get on with the plot, and casting the book aside. But at the moment, it’s just right. I’m reading it less as a story than as a tool for exploration. Nightly, I slip into his world, and plunder my own subconscious with snares wrought by Latif. Perhaps, he is writing my story too. I know for sure that I’ve already purloined from him the merchant who sells time.

I still haven’t resolved the dilemma I mentioned in the last post, about whether to switch to pitching The Golden Illusion. But I’m keeping my options open by working on polishing the existing rough draft. Only four people have read it so far, and it wouldn’t be where it is without them. Showing your work at early stages to others can really help.

When I finished the first draft, I had an uncomfortable feeling that the ending didn’t work. My wife was the first to confirm that. I also tested it out as a short story on Webook, and I got the same response. I can’t tell you what didn’t work about it, or I’d give the mystery away.

Then three other writers had a go at it. I want to acknowledge how important their criticism has been. My friend Toni from my writing group gave me a great edit of the first chapters. I posted the first five chapters on Webook and got some really useful feedback. Two of my Webook community, Trina and Alina, have been real champions of the book, convincing me to carry on with it. Alina even persuaded Webook to promote the project on their Facebook page.

Trina helped me make real improvements to the first chapter. The first draft started rather tamely with the main character, a conjurer, performing a card trick. With Trina’s input, I changed this. It now opens like this:

“The man raised the revolver, pointing it straight at my head. His arm didn’t waver. His finger tightened on the trigger.

I stared at him, unblinking, through the sheet of glass that separated us. There was a moment of utter silence.

As he pulled the trigger, I opened my mouth, and then all was noise. The gunshot cracked, echoing round the auditorium, with the tinkling cascade of breaking glass as the plate smashed.

I staggered, my neck snapping backwards. Then I drew myself upright, my lips curled in a triumphant smile that framed the bullet clamped between my teeth.”

Much punchier.

Alina went above and beyond the call of duty. She helped me identify what was weak about the ending. The antagonist wasn’t villainous enough, the final revelation wasn’t believable, and it lacked a concluding chapter. I’m very prone to the bad habit of failing to write the last chapter, and stopping too abruptly. I rewrote the last two chapters, and added a final chapter. And she not only told me the change worked, but spend two days closely editing them.

Alina is Alina Voyce, the author of the Lifelights series, beautifully written sci-fi romance. And I say that as someone who doesn’t even like romance. You can find out about Lifelights on her website http://www.alinavoyce.com/the-series.html.

Thanks so much to all four of you.

Since the feedback I got at Winchester last week, I’ve been thinking about the historical fantasy genre. It’s prompted me to consider what you can and can’t do with historical facts. I contributed to a discussion thread on Goodreads about this. Does a writer of historical fiction have artistic licence to change the facts? The writer’s answer is, yes, of course. Historical fiction is fiction, not academic research. The writer can do anything that he or she wishes. But, the reader’s answer is different. Readers have conventions, just as writers do. The reader of historical fiction expects that the story should stick closely to the known facts, just as in science fiction the expectation is that the story should be consistent with known science.

The reader also has a right to expect something else – namely that the story will be a cracking good tale, observing the rules of story-writing, which lead the main characters in an arc, through jeopardy, to a resolution. That poses a dilemma in, at the same time, being faithful to the truth. The question is, what does truth mean?

Stories have a lot to tell us about what we really mean by truth. They are probably the oldest form in which humans have preserved and transmitted wisdom. Stories are devices that tell us what facts go with each other, what is important and what is less relevant, who deserves praise and who blame. It is quite possible to connect the same facts in different ways, by means of different stories. In this anniversary of the battle of Waterloo, different stories are emerging. Was Napoleon a megalomaniac dictator and warmonger? Or was he, instead, the saviour of France against aggression from the old monarchies of Europe? This debate is both about professional history, and also about stories.

Truth and facts are not necessarily the same thing. That argument would, of course, allow a writer of historical fiction to argue that, by manipulating the facts, they were uncovering a deeper truth, an artistic truth. I feel a little uncomfortable with that argument. I suppose that’s why I’ve opted for an approach in which the readers are left in no doubt that they are reading fiction. Indeed, they never need to know that a lot of research went into the writing of the book, and simply enjoy it (I hope) as a story. Though by the time they get to my Joan of Arc character, Marta, most will probably think “hmmm, I know this story”. They may then wonder whether there is any “truth” in the way in which the Dauphin character, Aurthur, decides to manipulate and then betray her. Some readers may also recognize the strong parallels between the fictional battle of Aldkhor and the real battle of Agincourt, but it doesn’t matter to me if they don’t.

I have now started work on the sequel to A Prize of Sovereigns. It starts about a year in fictional time after the end of the first book. In historical time, it has jumped around 100 years. Clearly, I couldn’t do that, and maintain the same cast of characters, if I was writing historical fiction according to the canons of the genre. But the forces that drive both books responds to a view of history that wouldn’t be necessary if I was writing fantasy. In fantasy you can do anything you like, and of course dragons and enchanted blades are de rigueur. There are no dragons, or elves, or enchanted blades in my books. So, I don’t really believe I’m writing fantasy. Historical fantasy is a convenient genre label. But perhaps, one day, there will be a recognized genre called “historical mash-up”, and then I will with, a sigh of relief, re-shelve my work there.

I guess what, in my own mind, distinguishes what I’m trying to do from fantasy is that I’m interested in exploring the question about history “why did that happen?” and that is the unbending logic that my story has to be true to. I do think that there are forces which drive history, but they’re often hard to see through the accidents of who happened to gain power at a particular time, and the vagaries of their personalities. By creating my own little world, I can strip away those accidents and vagaries, and pursue the underlying story. It’s my own little model historical system in a narrative Petri dish. Are the “facts” correct? Many are, though they may be out of sequence and attached to different characters than those of real history. So, it isn’t a factually correct history. But is it “true”? I’d like to think it has a kind of truth.