Writing – Page 23

I.P. Flash Fiction Piece

Here is my short fiction piece from the Flash Flood Journal

FRIDAY, 19 APRIL 2013
I.P. by F.C. Malby
The cardboard shielded his body from the shock of the pavement beneath his thighs. His trousers alone could not force out the early morning frost. Joe could see his breath disappearing into the daylight with the traffic and the bustle of people, all with places to reach, jobs to begin; lives filled with family, and co-workers. He filled his life with these once. Now it was full of strangers in the street, bodies sleeping on old bits of packaging. Discarded.

She always walked across the street from the bank, eyes focused on the coffee shop behind him. He waited for anyone to notice his hat between his toes – upturned, hopeful.

‘Joe,’ she said as she reached him, ‘can I get you a coffee?’

‘I’ve had one. Thanks.’

She leaned in towards him – her hair curled in bronze spirals, her suit pressed and the brightest of reds – and quietly placed some notes into the hat. Small coins usually clinked as they landed but she gave him notes.

It wasn’t the fresh pressed suits, or the bronzed locks, or the fact that she gave him money that made an impression. She made eye contact. She always offered him coffee. He said no.

As she turned to open the glass panelled door, her bracelet dropped onto the cardboard beneath him, nestling into the crinkled edges like a baby bird sheltering from a storm. He lifted it up but she was gone. In the next few moments the door became jammed open with the force of large numbers of suits either pushing in to the shop for a hot shot of caffeine, or trying to escape with an un-spilled cup. Fish swimming upstream.

Joe looked down at the bracelet, now shimmering in his hand. The initials, I.P., caught the light: Isabel Parker. He remembered his mother’s bracelet because his father had tucked it away into a handkerchief, deep into the recesses of his bedside drawer, and he remembered the look on his mother’s face when he gave it to her, wrapped in red ribbon neatly circling a black box with the silver embossed swirls of a jeweller’s finest.

Isabel Parker didn’t recognise him each morning when she leaned in to give him some notes, and why would she? Separated from each other when they lost their parents, Joe remembers the journey to his new home with the sharpness of an icy dawn.

‘It’s for the best,’ a stranger in a suit had told him. ‘You’ll see your sister when you’re settled.’

He didn’t, not until the day when she first walked into the coffee shop. He had recognised her immediately but he couldn’t share his identity out of shame. Their lives had spiralled in different directions and time had passed. Seeing her each morning was enough.

She emerged from the commotion holding a gingerbread man and a shot of espresso. He handed her the bracelet. Leaning down towards him, she clasped his hand, smiled, then turned away and vanished into the crowds.

FlashFlood Admin at 02:00
Share

1 comment:

Andy19 April 2013 12:56
Great! I love the feeling you create between the characters. I’ve had dealings with a few homeless people, and some of them are rough diamonds. One in particular said his father owned a number of casinos, but I reckon it was one of his ‘taller’ stories.

Writing, Art and Outlining

Rubens’ son, Nicholas, 1916.

Rembrandt’s Elephant, 1637.

I took the opportunity to see an exhibition at the Albertina Gallery in Vienna at the weekend. It is part of the Hofburg Palace and was built during the Hapsburg dynasty. The building itself is beautiful and the exhibitions are varied and interesting. While also viewing an exhibition of black and white landscape photos and an Impressionist exhibition, it was this temporary exhibition of Rubens and Rembrandt which caught my eye and got me thinking about outlining.

I love art and can happily while away hours in galleries given the opportunity. I have painted a great deal in the past, but setting up a canvas and oils takes time and space so I haven’t painted for a while. These drawings are a collection of 170 pieces of Dutch art and were penned or (penciled) at over a period of time, but in the 1900s, drawing was becoming an art form in its own right, as opposed to being used as a preparation for larger paintings.

Outlining is an important part of the writing process and, as I wandered around the gallery gazing at the drawings, I was struck by the similarities between the two forms: Writing and Art.

Writing and Outlining

Many would argue that writing needs an outline, although not every writer works this way, and that it is an important part of the process of your work. I recently wrote a post on structure and plotting.

Outlining your work can be really helpful and speed up the process of novel writing, avoiding the need for major editing towards the end. An outline is a sketch, if you like, for the finished painting and an image of how your story will hang together, how it will look in the final stages, with its cover.

Art and Outlining

Although these sketches in the exhibition were mixture of both drawings in their entirety and preliminary sketches for a finished painting, I thought about how an outline is needed in both cases. If you look closely as many impressionist paintings, you will see the outline drawn or painted onto the canvas before the layers of oil paints are added with a brush or a pallet knife.

This process is similar to the layering effect of writing a book. You begin with the bare bones and the image in your mind, and then go back and add detail, scene setting, character idiosyncracies, plots twists and, in some cases, flashbacks.

The similarities between outlining in art and writing interweave in a way that clarified the process for me in writing.

Do you outline? If so, what are your methods and do you have a clear idea in your mind of where you are going? Can you see the finished picture?

Warning: Structural Work Needed – Plotting Your Novel

I drove past a beautiful old building this morning with incredible detail around the windows. When I looked again, the inside had been completely demolished and was being gutted and restored. From the outside it was a beautiful picture of fine architecture and decadence, an eye-catching building which stood out from the rest, but from the inside there was nothing, just rubble and empty space.

It was a strange sight in some ways and it reminded me of building a novel and the differences in how writers construct their work. I have spoken to people who work in any one of the following ways:

– Inside Out Model – Beginning with the bare bones, getting the story down onto paper, and then going back and layering it with detail and links, flashbacks and subtle hints of what is to follow.

– Outside In Model – Constructing the outside, the look and feel, the genre, narrator, tense, style and character of the novel, and then working inwards to develop the structure, the chapters and the story arc.

– Scatter Graph Model – Starting to write chapters, in no particular order, filling in the gaps as and when the inspiration strikes. This method is often discouraged by agents and editors as it is less structured but some of the most creative writers work this way.

– Sprint Runner Model – Beginning in great detail with a clear idea of your central character, racing through the first 1,000 words or so and then drifting as you get further into the plot, not being sure where the novel will end. Instead of it being a slower and more steady pace throughout, the writing decreases in speed as the ideas thin out.

– Foregone Conclusion Model – Knowing exactly how the novel will end, much like a science experiment with an expected outcome, but struggling to begin or sagging in the middle.

These are just some of the many ways in which authors work and there are many cross-overs in their method. I was impressed by Will Self’s ability to do away with chapters completely in his Booker Prize Shortlisted novel, Umbrella. He is not the first author to do this and I am sure he won’t be the last. Some authors prefer fine structure, plotting meticulously before beginning a single sentence, then there are those who are somewhere in between.

There is no right or wrong way to plot a novel and to construct a story, although there are books which tell you otherwise. You have to experiment with what works. Every writer has a preferred way of working and it changes and develops with time.

I’ll leave you with some interesting quotes from the various writing handbooks:

“A basic structural design underlies every kind of writing. Writers will in part follow this design, in part deviate from it, according to their skills, their needs, and the unexpected events that accompany the act of composition. Writing, to be effective, must follow closely the thoughts of the writer, but not necessarily in the order in which those thoughts occur.” The Elements of Style, Strunk and White

“Very few writers really know what they are doing until they’ve done it. Nor do they go about their business feeling dewy and thrilled. They do not type a few stiff warm-up sentences and then find themselves bounding along like huskies across the snow.” Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott

“Writers of literary and much mainstream fiction usually begin by imagining a character…some writers can’t help starting out with a theme that obsesses them. They imagine characters whose lives might involve the theme, or they work out a plot first. If their allegiance is to character, their theme-based story has a better chance of survival.” Stein On Writing, Sol Stein

“If there are no rules, or none worth [the writer’s] attention, where is the beginning writer to begin?” The Art of Fiction, John Gardner

Argo: What We Can Learn From Film About Not Overwriting

I watched Argo over the weekend, having seen it win an impressive collection of awards. Among it’s accolades were:

Seven nominations for the 85th Academy Awards, winning three, for Best Film Editing, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Picture. The film also earned five Golden Globe nominations, winning Best Picture – Drama and Best Director, while being nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Arkin. It won the award for the Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture at the 19th Screen Actors Guild Awards and Best Film, Best Editing, and Best Director at the 66th British Academy Film Awards.

As you can imagine, I had high expectations and the film didn’t disappoint.

Here is a brief synopsis:

In 1979, the American embassy in Iran was invaded by Iranian revolutionaries and several Americans were taken hostage. However, six managed to escape to the official residence of the Canadian Ambassador and the CIA was eventually ordered to get them out of the country. With few options, exfiltration expert Tony Mendez devised a daring plan: to create a phony Canadian film project looking to shoot in Iran and smuggle the Americans out as its production crew. With the help of some trusted Hollywood contacts, Mendez created the ruse and proceed to Iran as its associate producer. However, time was running out with the Iranian security forces closing in on the truth while both his charges and the White House had grave doubts about the operation themselves.

The film is adapted from a true story, written about in the book The Master of Disguise by CIA operative Tony Mendez.

I spent a lot of time wondering how it would translate into a written story (I do this very often when watching films) and one thing stood out to me on several occasions – None of the script was overwritten. There were a small handful of tense or sensitive moments where, as a writer, it would be tempting to fill the space with dialogue, but that didn’t happen. Instead, there were delightful silences where you, the audience, knew exactly what each character was thinking, purely from the situation and from the expressions on their faces.

There was one key moment at the end of the film where, without spoiling the plot for those of you who haven’t seen it, there was a handshake, and so many things could have been said but neither character said a word. The handshake and ensuing silence was far more powerful than any dialogue which would, I expect, have destroyed the scene.

It has been rumbling through my mind for a while, the film and it’s highlights. Most of the highlight were moments where there were no words, no fill-ins from the scriptwriter to destroy the impact. The topic is of a sensitive nature and it could have easily been crushed with careless writing. It was a stark reminder for me not to overwrite, not to fill the moments with words and flowery descriptions. Sometimes, when you are writing, just a snapshot of a character’s movement or their body posture can be enough.

Guest Blog Post and eBook Giveaway

This is just a quick post, as I have already posted today. I wanted to let you know that I have written a guest blog post on writing and inspiration over on Jon Rance’s website if you would like to have a read.

I also wanted to let you know that Take Me to the Castle is free to download from Amazon as an eBook until Friday 1 March. If you don’t have a kindle device you can download the app onto your smartphone, PC, MAC, or tablet.

Here is the book trailer to wet your taste buds: