Completion - Fiction & Reading into Writing Modules

Happy New Year to one and all. I'm still a bit dizzy from the festivities (though I was the nominated driver and drank nothing). We attended a formal dinner at a lovely French restaurant - Frere Jacques - along the river in Kingston upon Thames, only to discover it had gone a little down market for celebration time. Initially we moved the tat, party hats, poppers, streamers, cheap wind-up cars, bowl filled with tiny coloured balls and two multi-coloured blowpipes - yes, blowpipes! We felt certain that no one would take up this rather mental idea of wearing hats and parping at each other. We were all civilised adults (excepts for the kids, and even they'd dressed up).

So it was, by 10pm December 31st, we realised we'd been sat in the worst of all places. Two factions had been established between the right and left sides of the restaurant, and we were smack bang in the middle, taking flack from both sides. The coloured balls were tightly wound spitballs, meant for use in the blowpipes! We needed cover and we needed vengeance for being pelted on the heads.

When those dining outside felt the need to come to the doorway and join in, I ducked under the table and began retaliatory fire (you can fire up to four spitballs and once from those things, you know). I quickly discovered that from my mostly-safe vantage point on the floor, a pillar at my back and a line of tables and chairs to protect my front I took advantage of rebound shots - being able to judge the right point at which to fire a volley and ricochet it off the ceiling.

Similarly amusing then was to fire on the waiters and waitresses who had served up the most exquisite Breast of Pheasant with grilled Portobello Mushroom, Red Onion compote honey-roasted Parsnips and Rosemary Jus, and a divine Rack of Lamb: Roti Dijonnaise,Gratin Dauophinois & sautéed Salsifi with Red Wine Jus (naturally I had to finish Laura's meal off), and who were still stuck with taking orders for drinks and having to dart back and forth across the battlefield.

My knees were scuffed up something rotten and I've never spent so much time scrabbling around on a restaurant floor fighting an 8 year-old child for control of spitballs!

Anyhoo, on with the writing:

I have just packaged and posted my two module assignments and am now looking ahead to the Professional Development module (still much to do, and much to be done while away in New Zealand - side note: you can catch up with our antics over at http://discovernewzealand.blogspot.com where I will be blogging about our travels).

So, in the meantime, you can catch up on what I've been doing for the past four months over on my website's NAW page, or you may wish to peruse the module's pdfs:

Reading into Writing
You can now read the full short story of Morgan le Fay (that I have been badgering on about for weeks).

• Morgan le Fay and the Green Knight - Creative Response.pdf
  - A 3,000 word creative response to the Sir Gawain and the Green Knight text - the machinations of Morgana.
  
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Account of Literary Qualities.pdf
  - Assessing the literary qualities of the Sir Gawain text and how I've interpreted and utilised them in my response.
  
• Reading into Writing - 4 Reviews.pdf
  - Four reviews. Three of the four books we read on the course and one as chosen by myself.

Fiction
And included here is what was originally the opening to an urban-fantasy novel, and has now become a short literary story.

• Pride and Pretence.pdf
  - A 6,000 word short story on love, licentiousness and loss in the 1950s.
  
• Pride and Pretence - Commentary.pdf
  - A commentary on my short story, considering its conception, creation, placement, weaknesses and themes.
  

Figurative Language

This from one of the NAW tutor (had to steal and post here because it's possibly just what I've been looking for):

First, a proviso... it is easy to get carried away with the magic of language and 'write over our heads'. The first business of writing is to be clear about meaning. Meaning, sense and clarity is our primary activity. Tom Bailey, in his excellent book 'On Writing Short Stories' (in the library), puts it like this:

Symbol

Metaphor

Subtext

Voice, Tone, Mood

Meaning, Sense, Clarity

This is a pyramid and you must deal with the bottom layers first.

i.e. unless you get the meaning, sense and clarity down, then the 'higher' stuff has no foundation and the reader will fall into a hole of incomprehension (and therefore boredom). Bailey talks about the 'loose reader' who is able to make the most fantastic cathedrals in the air out of the smallest slips of the author.

Having said that, metaphor and figurative language (simile, symbol) is the writer's muscle, making writing work double time. Similes use 'like' or 'as' eg. 'she looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water.' The comparison should enlarge our understanding - don't just add one because the rhythm of the sentence demands it.

A metaphor echoes a larger truth. It is the thing being compared to, rather than being like it. Fabulous example is Updike's picture of the Colosseum as a ruined wedding cake. The best metaphors are born naturally out of the story, do the hard work of capturing character first and then go back and examine what's there, what images and symbols you can add too and refine. I wrote a story once called 'Green' because the girls in it are naive, but it expanded to include all aspect of green-ness (jealousy, money, the green sea, they had an avocado bathroom...) Think about 'families' of symbols or metaphors - shapes (a snake, a curly hair).

A symbol is a object or sign which carries its own weight of meaning, like the blue-eyed doll in this story by Robert Boswell.

http://www.pshares.org/issues/article.cfm?prmArticleID=1959

Another example is Raymond Carver's Gazebo (the title of the story and also a symbol for marriage). Watch out reading Carver, there's never a bird sitting on a telephone wire without a reason!

The Proactive Protagonist

In response to Solvejg's post over on the Maggot Farm: I've been thinking about the awful bit of dirge I've been writing recently for the Fiction module of NAW - it's not dirge really, I quite like the opening chapter (I should do, I've been trawling over it since June), I'm just having trouble keeping at it, since I've already made up my mind that I have more interesting projects I wish to work on as soon as the Fiction module is done (I guess I'm not ready to invest too heavily in Second Fist at this time).

So what is my point today? Well...

Solvejg's been talking about protagonists needing to be motivated (thanks Solvey, I do need to get back to McKee's story sooner than later) and it brought up the problem that readers of Second Fist's synopsis had with the whole story:

1. I'd decided to make Jackson Fisk the protagonist - I'd had the original idea for the story with him in mind (wielding two spirits in his fists that turn him into a sort of spiritually/demonically super human)
2. The story is told, alternately, by two other characters in first person point of views - i. Kitty (who wants Jackson to solve a big problem for her); ii. Raziel (who wants to capture Jackson and use him to... well, to stop Kitty, really

Sounds fairly straight forward doesn't it?

I need a single protagonist to garner reader empathy/sympathy/identification. The story isn't so much an ensemble cast list, despite the main three characters (now: Jackson, Kitty and Raziel) all suffering psycholigically in a similar way and their pasts, their choices, their futures all based around the same single theme: life moves ever onward, and no matter how hard you try to recapture what your life was like, you can't.

So, what's the problem?

I've chosen Jackson as the protagonist, yet we never get his pov. We begin the first chapter with Kitty, then move onto Raziel, and through him we meet Jackson. Also, Jackson is very passive throughout the whole story, and, as I realised in a response to one of my fellow students, he's the Mcguffin of the plot - his abilities are what everyone seeks to use to their advantage. I can't have him as the protagonist because he's only ever responding to the needs of others, and is, for the most part, borne upon melancholy for things that have happened previously.

With that in mind, I need to bring the story more to bear upon Kitty. She's really the driving force, making all the decisions.

It was also, thanks to the remarks of a fellow student:

How and why would people / spirits do this? What need would it fulfil generally? And what does it say about the place of humanity in the universe (which is what stories about the supernatural are ultimately about)

that I realised I really need to reassess the purpose of the story as a whole, change the direction and really elaborate on the people and their motivation (their humanity) rather than what was originally and action-led horror-cum-fantasy story with a passive protagonist. Certainly, it makes more sense to have at least one pov character as the protagonist!

Surviving the Fugue State of Writers' Block - Part 2

You see, the key to evading Writers' Block is to plan around it (or be inspired), for planning/inspiration are your only weapons - and planning doesn't necessarily mean never write anything until you've meticulously plotted what your character will have for breakfast after the next scene.

Not to big myself up then, but I received positive feedback from my short story from the critiquing workshop on the Fiction module, and my tutor for Reading into Writing (who's an author and lecturer of poetics) quite liked some of the imagery I presented him with yesterday - though I did flounder a bit in our discussion with the innate sense that I was an inferior intellect with regard to knowledge of what I was talking about (a lot of mine seems like popcorn knowledge - I never even finished Tolkein). But, good a positive feedback all the same - here's hoping I can live up to it.

Nevertheless, how did I keep myself on the ball with this new piece, and avoid writer's block?

1. Decide upon the scene - it's located at the Green Chapel, so will require relevant descriptions of the feel of the place (not my usual overwrite - which funnily enough, my tutor suggested was the staple of some fantasy fiction and might be a thought)
2. Decide upon the characters and what they're doing there, what they hope to achieve (together or personally) - I've discussed this in my previous post; it's Morgana and Bertilack, mid-way through the Gawain text (and not covered in that volume), discussing their agreement and what occured.
3. Conflict - this comes in the disagreement between the two, and their religions, and Morgana using Bertilack
4. Desciptions - this, I've found is most important, and has helped me particularly in this instance. By securing a big list of descriptive words relevant to the setting and the people, I could dip in and out of them, dropping them into the narrative, rather than pausing as I thought I needed to concoct an explanation/description, which, for me, usually destroys the pace. Here I think it works.

So, in more depth, I took those descriptions directly from the Gawain text. I wanted to rely on it for its language (and tried to mimic also that semi-mythological speak they might use, or at least we might associate with them). So:

Get a sense of the place from the description:
No snow falls. No flowers. No birds or animals. Silent. Chapel is more like a grave, a burial mound - unholy/unhallowed. Openings on all sides leading inside. Down a hill - follow the stream - through a deep ravine (jagged black rocks - shut out the sun). Stream is a raging torrent. Giant oak tree?

Extract specific descriptive words:
Rock, thicket, rugged slope, brook, valley bottom, wild spot, no habitation, steep and lofty hills, rough, knarled rock, rugged outcrops, jutting crags, graze clouds, glade, knoll (rounded mound of side of slope by water), burn seethed and foamed in its bed as though boiling, rough branch of linden tree, old cave-fissure in an old crag, patchy grass

Extract descriptions of the Green Knight:
Square-cut neck to waist; thick-set, long in the loins, arms and legs; half-giatn; handsome; burly body, back and chest; stomach and waist becoming slender, clean-cut features; handsome locks, fall out to enfold his shoulders; great bushy beard hangs over his chest - along with splendid hair falling from his head trimmed equally just above his elbo

And his clothing:
Close-fitting straight tunic; gay-mantle, the inside of which is pure white ermine (the hood too); close-trimmed; tight-drawn hose upon calves; bright spurs of shining gold on silk straps (richly striped); unshod feet; Metal bars on his belt, various bright jewels (richly disposed); silken embroidery; embroidered birds and butterflies (green) amongst the gold

And his horse:
Breast-harness has pendants; splendid crupper; studs on bit, enamelled metalwork; stirrups; saddle-bows; magnificent saddle-skirts - gleaming and glinting in green jewels; great stout green horse - restive in his embroidered bridle; mane (massive horse) well curled and combed; ornamentalknots plaited with green hair; tail and forelock plaited the same; bound with a band of vivid green and threads of gold; decorated with precious stones to cropped ends; tied off by a thong - intricate knot; many bright bells of pure gold tinkled; his glance flashed bright as fire

With these inspired choices in my toolbox I can dip in and out as I choose - without feeling like I have to use a certain choice. Thusly (a first draft):

Over the thunder of the torrent, which twisted down the rugged slope, she’d heard the tinkling of bells. Beyond the glade the bells had intoned of his arrival through the jutting crags and black jagged outcroppings that led into the valley. That was long before she saw him at the knarled rocks. Long before he’d guided the horse down the ravine.

And there he was, a half-giant, brushing a coat of snow from his charger’s green mane, shaking white clumps from his own green shoulders and the bloody stump of his decapitation, which spat flecks of crimson upon his tunic and mantle as he rode. Here in the dell, where the steep and lofty hills rose up like toothed cliffs, no snow would fall. It was deepest winter beyond the confines of the basin but early autumn within. Yet, there came no sound but for the tinkling of those bells and the boiling of the brook, for this was no place for habitation. Not the chatter of mammals nor the song of birds.

Surviving the Fugue State of Writer's Block - Part 1

I list within the vortex, matching sun-blessed days of work against super-nova nights thrashing against the confines of my NAW course, springing more and more exhaustedly between modules, trying to keep ahead, trying to stay on top.

Worst of all has been the past two weeks, my task: to write the next 3,000 word piece of my novel for the critique workshops this coming Wednesday. Could I do it? I'd already written 1,600 words from one point of view; how hard could it be to write it from the new pov I'd chosen?

By the beginning of this week I was desperate. It had come down to that most troubling of matters: Writer's Block. And of course, by now, I know enough to understand why I couldn't write: I hadn't set down any thoughts on the characters involved in the scene; where they came from; where they were headed; who they thought they were; what they wanted; what made them tick; and most importantly, what they should discuss.

I am a fool to still be trying to work without such plans. Though, my tale doesn't end here, for, there is another...

Fortunately at the start of the weekend I had reached the stage at which I felt ready to begin writing my creative reaction to the Sir Gawain text. Unlike with the Fiction module task, I did all the right preparation; I made my plans:

Story Subject

On Wednesday, in class, we discussed the impossibility of the perfect knight; the codes of faith, of chivalry and of the court; of how Morgan le Fay (Morgana) wished to humble the Court of Camelot for their presumptions; and, how Camelot died out because of this presumption - there aren't any kids at Camelot. All the knights are too busy on grail quests and playing foolish games.

What then gripped me most about the Gawain text is Morgana's involvement behind the scenes. She wants to deconstruct their humanity and religion and their violent assumptions over their games, by making one of them (hopefully Arthur, but ultimately Gawain) face his own mortality (to have his head hacked off at the neck) and then be offered to first put his faith in enchantment (instead of God - by accepting the green girdle that will protect him from harm) and then subvert the chivalric code he holds so dear (by not handing the girdle to Lord Bertilack when he ought), making him a liar (not really knightly is it?)

I Wondered what Morgana's intention would be? Surely just to humiliate Gawain (or, at first, Arthur) isn't enough. We know she'd hoped to kill Guinevere with terror at the sight of the headless knight climbing back to his feet, but we have to give Morgana more credit - she knows that the knights will accept the game of exchanging blows, that Gawain will come, good on his word, in search of the Green Chapel for the return blow; she sets up the Lord and his castle for another game (that of the Lord's wife seducing Gawain as per the rules of the courtly code) and that Gawain would accept the girdle and hide it from the Lord, because no man can stave off mortality. Finally she knows that Gawain will survive the beheading and return to Camelot. So why this ruse?

I have decided the following:

Morgana believes that Arthur's court will one day grow bored of their games (for they make games of everything). By involving the Green Knight, she will give the knights something else, something new in which to place their pride and valour; ever ignorant of faith, prudence and the future. She knows that because of their games, their bravado and quests, they will begin to decline and Camelot will fall. She fears that if they are ever aware of the emptiness of their codes, then they will save themselves and procreate, and Camelot shall never fall.

Therefore, she knows that Gawain will take the girdle as a sign of his weakness, his lack of faith, and his forsaking of the chivalric code. But she also knows that because the household at Camelot are so full of their games, they will take the sash and make a new game of it as a sign of honour (over the sign of perfidy it represents for Gawain). This, she believes, will keep the knights from foreseeing their final doom.

My grounding for this idea came from reading around the Arthurian Legend, and Morgana in particular. Though her purpose changed as the Legend was developed by many writers it seemed to settle on her witchery in opposition to Camelot and Merlin. There was mention too that she is a pagan, and this (for those of you in the know, or who've read The da Vinci Code) means that she is against Christianity's canon, its slant on men, and favours the old "women as the focus and nature as the tool" theory - Christianity, as we know, kind of blames Eve for the fall of man, etc, etc. So, Morgana will be at complete odds with this. She wants not only the fall of Camelot but the fall of Christianity, and to this end she will want to prove the inherent fallibility of man and his faith (which lacks at every corner and conflict). The game, as Gawain realises, proves that for he covets the girdle, hoping to save his own life.

Themes and Allegory

In order to illustrate all of that I decided that Morgana had to be the focus of my creative response, and what better location to choose than the Green Chapel; what better time than the Green Knight's return from having his head cut off. I could then show how Morgana had wrapped the Green Knight (the enchanted Lord Bertilack) around her finger; how he too has forsaken his faith in favour of her enchantment (I decided he'd only become embroiled in her situation in a compact) - in the Gawain text a squire informs Gawain of the Green Knight's ferocity and murderous nature, and so I used that with the pretense that Bertilack had been suffering at the hands of other Lords wanting to usurp his land. With the Green Knight enchantment, Bertilack would be invulnerable. But then, of course, she still needs him in a year's time, so she needs to user her cunning and wiles and his fear of her abilities to force him to do her bidding - hence the use of the apple (alluding to the fall of man at the hands of Eve) and the suggestion it will ressurect Bertilack's sick wife.

I tried to steer clear of using the words: magic, and spell, because they conjur up ideas of magicians or wizards of the ilk of Gandalf, with great staffs and firebolts from their fingers. I wanted Morgana to remain earthy, and refer instead to her enchantments, as if magic and wizardry are something mechanical and man made. Enchantments and the incantations that Morgana uses in my piece all manifest in appearances more than anything else - the knight becoming a green giant, her own appearance as a child, the tree shedding its leaves, those leaves turning to snakes, the appearance of the apple, even her own explosion and transformation - all are charged with misdirection, striking fear and challenging faith rather than causing harm or producing something physical and tangible. She uses nature to her advantage. The apple, like the girdle, is a cipher. It doesn't serve any real power. The girdle doesn't save Gawain, and the apple won't save Bertilack's wife (though since in the Gawain text, the wife is fine, it is easy to suppose that Morgana's natural skills at herbs/medicine may help - and of course, with my Morgana instructing Bertilack to share only two kisses with his wife, and no more, this sets up a deeper thread in the bedroom/courtship scenes of Gawain - the wife is no longer playing, but desperate for companionship, lustful even - again alluding back to the apple Morgana forces Bertilack to eat).

... Knight and horse wheeled about, all rearing hooves and clamorous bells. Beneath them the girl, resplendent in green sash and naked innocence, was motionless, indifferent to the beast’s flailing feet that might, at any moment, trample her under its weight as it might a hounded deer...

... The Green Knight glanced from girl to apple. He didn’t have a choice for he knew of no other restorative measures. He steadied his head upon the stump of his neck with one hand and threw the fruit into his mouth, swallowing it whole. There was a faint nuttiness within the sweet nectar soothing his throat, the trickle of something perfumed, like crushed lilies and then a bitter tang. Before he could distinguish its taste his body contorted and bent double, wracked by the latent pain of having his head hacked off. He spied the boiling stream, felt its fury eating at his neck and tearing down his arms and back, and bayed like a stuck boar...

... The child imploded in a shower of lights the colour of green’s and gold’s, as if for an instant she had consisted of shooting stars. Bertilack reeled, dazed, too slow as the coloured comets exploded into existence on his right. A wily feminine shape lunged at him out of the phantasmagoria. She struck him down, this lady, with her tumultuous red tresses streaming behind her; felled him, loosing his sword upon the ground. There she stood, over his prone body, in a gown of yellow’s and green’s, her long fingers drawn and crooked, threatening violence. And in her eyes she flashed with cunning.
‘And still your God does not save you,’ she barked.
Bertilack raised his hand to ward away the fox...

- obviously this is the first draft, lots to sort out!

The Fiction Module - Class 1

Yesterday we got the Fiction module under way, and it was an interesting experience to again be able to sit, interact and discuss the issues of narrative structure, what we liked/didn't like about stories, and cover some ground work, all face to face. Here I will try to give a run down of what we covered:

1. Firstly, we were given three items - drinking glass, button, wastebasket - the task being to choose one and write down as many uses as possible:
   
   Button: choke on, as Button Moon, eyes for a teddy, fixing clothing, finish off a cup cake, start/stop machinery, nuke the world, allow/prevent access...
   
   You get the point. It's about freeing the mind, getting us to broaden our imagination (whilst also being a warm up exercise to get the group used to one another)
   
   
2. Next, write down a list of concrete nouns:
   
   Water, Bomb, Fireplace, Toilet, Lamp, Car, Bus, Shelter, Button, Echidna, Leaf, Tree, Vine, Boat Sun
   
   Now, choose one: Lamp
   
   Finally, use the word Lamp to describe the abstract noun: Life.
   
   

   Life exists when the lamp turns on. Like the lamp it dazzles when first it pushes back the darkness, drawing warmth and comfort about itself. That lamp may shine on, seemingly forever strong, and good, and bright. But, it doesn't last forever and if the lamp gives out of its own accord, the filament snapped like a snuffed candle caught by a breath, the cold and darkness shall return. And though the lamp may be replaced with the light of another - for light and life do go on - this warning must be heeded: The lamp, like life, can exist in the hands of another, who, by their own whimsy may so switch off the lamp as they please, thus ending its illumination prematurely.

   
   
3. The third task was Consequences. Each person takes a loose sheet of paper. Everybody starts by writing a man's name at the top. They then fold a line of the sheet over and pass the sheet onto the next person. That person writes a woman's name, folds passes on... writes something the man says, folds, passes... writes something the woman says... fold, passes... writes a consequence (or outcome), folds, passes... and the final person, unfolds the sheet and reads out the story.
   
   For example:
   
   Man: Englebert Humperdink
   Woman: T. J. Pink
   Man says: "Hmm, loose lips and wide hips. No thanks, I think I'll pass."
   Woman says: "Don't you like my tight sweater?"
   Consequence: The man gave up fishing.
   
   Not very evocative, not in the least bit exciting, but it shows a basic narrative structure, that all the stories passed (and developed at random) around the group possess.
   
   
4. We discussed two very different short stories, one by Ernest Hemingway and the other by Amy Hempel:
   
   Hills Like White Elephants - Ernest Hemingway
   The Harvest - Amy Hempel
   
   Hemingway's piece is stark in its description, choosing the describe the place in a functional manner, to evoke time and place, but not describing the characters or associating them to who is speaking at any one time. There's no he said, she said, there isn't even the description of the man translating for the girl - he simply repeats what is said before. What is important about the story is that Hemingway has written everything important into the subtext. The characters are at a crossroads - having travelled for such a long time (their suitcases have a load of country stamps upon them) - the girl is pregnant, and they are to seek an abortion (thanks to Nick for advising us all of the meaning of "To let a little air in")
   Of course, neither of them say this. Instead they talk about other things, such as drinking, and whether or not the other is happy with the decision. There's a great moment when he goes to the bar alone and drinks in there by himself, kind of reliving the life they had before complication.
   
   Perhaps though, because the piece takes a couple of reads to really absorb its deeper meanings, it doesn't work as well as it might - but isn't that why so many people are turned off by Hemingway?
   
   In complete contrast, Hempel's piece is American Minimalist. It is a postmodern story about an accident... well it's not, because it's really about garnering sympathy and how to weight a story by bending the truth or lying about the situation to make it sound worse than it was, or to embellish the circumstances to try to ellicit different emotional responses from the audience.
   
   I felt that this was something akin to the style of Chuck Palahniuk (author of Fight Club), to which my tutor said that Hempel's short story is Chuck's favourite - yay! on the money.
   
   There is very little dialogue, and it's a completely different style to Hemingway. Interesting to consider both in this manner - the very antithesis of each other.
   
   
5. Before the lunch break we each discussed a chosen book we'd read recently - and surprisingly out of the entire group of 12, none of us chose the same book. I reviewed John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany - which you can read from some months back, here.
   
   
6. After that, and after none of us could come up with a book that we'd all read (we were going to cover a narrative structure from start to finish using a novel we all knew) - the closest we came was the Hungry Caterpillar! - we entered into our critique groups. More to follow on that later.