Debi Alper
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Oh, what fun, Steven. You’ve packed a huge amount in about the hapless Lester, in few words. It’s economical but also highly entertaining. I’ve spoken elsewhere about the need for an idiosyncratic voice to help bring characters to life and that’s what you have nailed here. Crucially, you’re doing it in third person, and yet we feel very close to Lester. You’ve allowed us to see him from both outside (his physical actions) and inside (his internal thoughts), demonstrating that it’s possible to get as up-close-and-personal to a character in third person as it is in first.
The thing that strikes me most strongly is the pleasure you’ve obviously taken in writing this story and character. That’s enabled you to let go and just have fun. There’s no sign of the sort of self-consciousness we so often see when someone is trying too hard to be authorial. When someone enjoys writing as much as you seem to, there’s a very good chance that the reader will share that enthusiasm. With a few small tweaks, this is a wonderful introduction to your main character and his fictional world.
I won’t go into too much detail about those tweaks, because they are the sort of ground we will be covering in the coming weeks, in connection with voice, POV and psychic distance. I’m just going to point out that things like he wondered … he thought … are what’s known as filtering. It’s where the voice in the prose sits halfway between that of the narrator (in third person, it’s implicit that *someone* is telling us this story, even if it’s not stated who they are) and that of the POV character. We get some insights into the character’s interiority but only as much as the narrator allows us. I’m just mentioning it here to get the concept of filtering onto your radar as it’s going to be coming up a lot in weeks 3 and 4.
The other tweaks are associated with a little touch of overwriting, where you’ve tipped over into enjoying yourself a tiny bit too much, and some lack of clarity and punctuation niggles. All easily dealt with. The main point here for week 2 is that you’ve done a great job of introducing your main character. I’ll move now to seeing what we learn about him.
Lester Nunn’s (we have a name to hang onto) most reliable ten pence, (having a ‘reliable’ coin is such a clever way to show a character who fixates on trivia and who abdicates responsibility) tremored on his most reliable thumb (ha! We only have two thumbs, so this reinforces the focus on the coin. It establishes the tone of the story and the gentle humour). ‘Tails, I stay. Heads, I emigrate. (We now know he’s making – or rather *not* making – a major life decision, based on the toss of a coin.) T minus, five, four, three, two, two, one!’ The coin corkscrewed above him and landed on the frame of his Wetwicker watercolour. (Personally, I like that the coin is active in this sentence. It’s a further reflection of his own passivity. The coin spinning out of reach is life having a laugh at him, punishing him for being so indecisive. I might like to have known that he painted the watercolour.) Lester waited. (Yet more passivity. This is a character who lacks agency at the beginning of his character arc.) The ten pence waited. (Ha again! I love this. It’s an elegant and economical way to show that he and an inanimate coin have the same status.) He slanted the townscape (aha – he’s taken action) and the money slid into a crystal fruit bowl (quite a luxurious item) full of loose change. (But life is throwing another challenge at him.) In the bowl, shone a ten pence on tails, and a ten pence on heads. ‘Frankly Fate, please indulge me.’ (It’s not going to work. He’s being forced to make a decision but is still resisting.)
Lester mooched (fabulous active verb, which conveys his lack of energy) to the coffee table and divorced (another wonderful verb) a petal from the sunflower. (There’s a vase with sunflowers here – the cheeriest of flowers. Someone chose them and it’s unlikely to have been him, given that he’s destroying the flower.) ‘Staying.’ He separated another. ‘Emigrating.’ (He’s learnt nothing from the coin toss episode and is trying to find another way to avoid making a decision.) He sneezed twice. Sniffles, he wondered, or worse? (A touch of hypochondria to reinforce his weaknesses. He’s as far from macho as it’s possible to get.)
The cricketer (ah, but that’s tell-y. We didn’t know he was a cricketer and this comes out of blue, the context a bit odd and distracting us from the glorious humour of the action) flopped (another of those active verbs) to the carpet, (it didn’t bother me that he flopped onto the floor, rather than a sofa) and admired (crucial verb – he’s dreamy and easily distracted) the damp outline on the ceiling (he lives in a home that’s far from perfect – might this contradict the impression created by the crystal bowl and the sunflowers on a coffee table?) which reminded him of his late father’s turkey neck. (Not sure about that. Mentioning his father’s neck, without giving us any clues about how he felt about his father, is a bit of a red herring.) One day that ceiling will sag, he thought, and through it tumble all the coins he had tossed. (I like his musing but got stuck on the specifics. It suggests he’s tossed all those coins in the room upstairs.) Improbable? As improbable as his wife tossing him like a coin out the widow? Widow? (I see I’m not the only one who tripped here. We’re supposed to be seeing his thoughts, whereas *widow* is a typo.) He had undiagnosed sniffles, but surely his wife (first mention of his wife) wouldn’t turn off a life support machine? (Flight of fancy. He has a vivid imagination and a tendency to catastrophise.) No, he meant window; and if his wife flicked him out of it, (he gives her all the power) he’d fly over the cricket ground, the English channel, and face-plant in Poland. (We’ll need to understand the reference to Poland very soon.)
This has a lot going for it, Steven, not least the gentle humour. There’s a confidence to your writing which is a pleasure to see. A starting point of a character who is passive and lacking in agency is far from unusual but Lester is so endearing – possibly infuriating – we will definitely be rooting for him to take control of his own destiny.
I’ve enjoyed this a lot, Rich. And how brilliant to have such a strong consensus in the feedback! Pretty much everyone has wanted more … more of the excitement you had at the time; more of your childhood fascination with fire; more that is unique to the location. You have two USPs and you want to tap their potential as much as possible. The first is the premise we could sum up as firestarter to firefighter. The other is the setting in Zimbabwe.
The heading says the story starts in the mid-80s but then there’s an immediate contradiction. It was 1986 when you were coming up to your A-Levels, but then you jump back to when you were aged four. You said last week that you have a personal preference for a memoir told in a linear chronology – but you have a timeline distortion right there on the first page. The feedback from the others has been that they wanted more detail from your early childhood but I’m not sure if anyone spotted the reason it felt like it had been glossed over, which is that it was referred to as back story from the opening timeline, almost in passing. But this is all excellent progress. After feeling something isn’t working for your reader as much as you want, try to work out why. That way, the general lesson will sink in and you’ll be able to spot the same things when they crop up elsewhere.
So, I’m assuming you were four in 1964, when Zimbabwe was still Rhodesia. What a turbulent time those years cover! I imagine Zimbabwe in the ’80s to be a completely different country to the land you lived in as a child. Maybe you don’t want to dwell on the politics and history for too long but I don’t think you can ignore them completely if this is to be an honest memoir of your life, rather than a focus on the life and times of (any) firefighter in the UK. Because here’s the other thing – UK readers will want to know what it was like to live through those times, in that place. It’s part of what makes you the person you are. That’s crucial for fictional characters but it’s even more true for a memoir.
A very quick point to be made here, but an important one. It’s not easy for anyone to share their stories with a bunch of strangers, but it’s even harder when the story is of your own life. Every author needs a rhino hide to deal with the inevitable rejections that are part of every authorial journey but it can feel hideously personal with memoir. Please bear in mind that any criticisms we make here are to do with the reader’s experience and are not personal criticisms of you as the lead character in your own story. It’s stating the obvious but important, nevertheless.
Right, so we’ve established you should start earlier and show more of your fascination with fire. The next thing we come to here is voice. One piece of feedback said it sounded as though you are chatting about your life with a trusted friend. I’m going to disagree there. When you’re chatting with friends, would you use words like pondered … affronted … uncertainty took hold …? I would love to hear a more idiosyncratic and conversational voice. The feeling I get from this extract is that you’re trying hard to sound authorial – or how you imagine an author should sound. But that’s generic and lacks any distinctive flavour of who you are as a person – and that’s what we’re interested in. Finding a voice that’s yours and yours alone is key to the success of this whole project. Next week’s session will focus on that.
I’ll drill down into the detail now to see what we learn about Richard at this early stage in his life. I’m deliberately using third person to refer to you in order to get a degree of detachment.
Zimbabwe, 1986.
‘What do you want to do when you leave school?’
It was a common question but I pondered whether it was posed out of a need to make conversation, or one of genuine interest. (This sentence feels very self-consciously authorial. The voice is Rich looking back from much later in life, using the vocabulary of a much older person. I would adapt the voice to be the age you were at the time.) Either way I felt affronted. It always caught me off guard and this was no exception. (Same here. I would have preferred to hear the voice of a stroppy teenager. This could also be an opportunity to summarise what it’s been like to grow up in a country that’s been through such a radical transformation. The heading makes that promise but the opening paragraph could apply to anyone, anywhere, at any time.)
‘Umm, I don’t know’ I muttered, aware of the reddening in my cheeks as uncertainty took hold. (These are not the words of a teenager.) I was not a strong academic. I only achieved the bare minimum of five ‘O-Levels’ by re-sitting both Maths and English, and now my ‘A-Levels’ loomed menacingly ahead of me. I searched for a way to escape this line of questioning, and briefly contemplated my life. (Adult authorial words to apply to adolescent angst.) Disorganised, lost and no clear goals, filled with mischievous behaviour. (This too is an adult take and could apply to so many teenagers.)As a four year old, I had been involved in a bedroom fire which had nearly burned down my aunt’s house after the curtains blew onto a naked light bulb. (Now we’re seeing action and you’ve got our attention!) It wasn’t my fault, but I remembered (when did you remember? When you were the age you were in the previous paragraph? Or the age you are now, when writing these words?) the associated excitement. As I grew older I tried to recreate it by setting fire to the garden grass hatches, which my parents erected every winter to protect vulnerable plants from frost. There were plenty to choose from. I started with the smallest: small hatch, small flame but as my confidence grew, so did the size. It soon escalated out of control on my dad’s pride and joy — a grand, Kenya coffee tree and I received their full wrath for that. A few weeks later, my focus turned to the six-foot compost heap instead. Alginate swimming pool granules burned ferociously with a bright orange flame… (More, more, more, please! This is the heart of your story and where it all begun.)
Remember what is most compelling about your story. I would show this escalation, starting with the drama of the first fire, accidentally set but capturing young Rich’s full attention. Instead of telling us about the associated excitement, show it to us as you experienced it at the time. The fascination with the flickering flames; the heat on his cheeks; the destructive power of fire. Use the vocabulary that a young child would use, so that we share that excitement and how it all felt *at the time*. You will want us to relate to you at each stage of your life, rather than later, looking back. That’s not always the case – sometimes you might want to be explicit about looking back with the wisdom of hindsight. Moving between those two perspectives with skill and intention will bring this whole story to life. It comes down to where you’re standing (key phrase there) at each stage: at the time that these things took place, or later, looking back. It’s what we’ll be looking at in the coming weeks but the main takeaway this week is to take ownership of the aspects of your story that will be of wide interest to readers. That means the setting in Zimbabwe, the progression in your exploits as a firestarter, and the unique features of your own voice. We’re more likely to relate to Rich if we can share the enthusiasm he had at the time.
I love the energy of this extract, Gillian. You have a very distinctive style with the sentence fragments. When we’re deep in his POV, we’ll assume this is his voice. It has the flavour of a character who’s brisk, efficient and driven. Like any tool, these non-grammatical sentences could become blunt through over-use. As you’re writing in third person, you might have a narrator who speaks in complete sentences as a contrast, which would have the added benefit of varying the rhythm and pace of the prose. Also, I would hope that scenes in Ruth’s POV will carry a very different flavour, evoking a different character. This is all stepping close to what we’ll look at in weeks 3 and 4, so I’ll concentrate on Simon for now but, before I do so, I want to comment on the tense as I see it’s come up in the comments.
The traditional way to tell a story has always been in third person and past tense. Using present tense was comparatively rare until recently. Some people do find it challenging to read and it’s always worthwhile interrogating our choices about what voice(s) to use, first or third, and what tense. I would hope that everyone here would be open to making big changes if they come to realise their story would work better in a different voice. NB: I’m not saying that applies to you, Gillian. I just want to make sure people make the right choices *for the right reasons*. You said in a reply that you had made your choice based on: … the novel is so much about what is going on in people’s heads. Much of the ‘action’ is interior, and using the present tense gave it a sense of immediacy. I’m also focusing on the processes of psychological change, so need to be working with what’s happening now inside someone’s head.
I would argue that this sort of interiority is vital for any novel. It’s the way readers get to know characters from the inside, and not just from their external actions and dialogue. In fact, it’s the thing that makes novels unique, compared with stage and screen, where we only see characters from the outside, unless they break the fourth wall to address the audience directly. So that, on its own, would not be a justification for using present tense. Nor is immediacy, which would be a factor for most novels. My feeling is that there needs to be a *narrative* reason to use a divisive tense, eg where you want to create a sense that the character might not survive beyond the end of the story. It can also work well for a main character who’s a young child, because children tend to live in the *now*, or a character with amnesia, who has no sense of their past. Can we talk about it more? As I said, I’m by no means saying it’s wrong for this WIP. That’s not for me to say. I just want to carry on the discussion because it’s so fundamental and you have to be 100% sure you’re making the right decisions.
Having been talking about interiority, it’s interesting that this excerpt is so dialogue-heavy. Simon’s spoken voice is full of excitement and enthusiasm – an energy that’s almost childlike. Ruth’s sounds similar in that she also speaks in short, almost breathless sentences. You might want to think about varying that. But the real point is that the interesting stuff in novels lies in the gap behind characters’ spoken words, especially if there are contradictions there, like the metaphorically bared teeth behind a pleasant smile. It seems to me that everything Simon is here is on the surface. Is he superficial? Might it be hard to care about a character who’s shallow? Because there’s so little prose, we drink up all the hints we can get about him. That’s why so many people picked up on the seeming contradiction between his aching legs and being barely out of breath. We *want* to know who this is. Is he out-of-shape and rarely exercises? Or is he fit, hence not being out of breath? We know nothing about him yet, and we don’t yet know if we can trust you as the author. A mixed message in the opening sentence carries the risk of an agent losing interest straight away. And what a shame that would be, when you have such an interesting story to tell.
Let’s see what we learn about Simon and, via her end of the conversation, Ruth. My comments in italics.
Simon reaches his office on the top floor (he has an office in what sounds like a prestigious location) legs aching. Barely out of breath. (See previous comments about mixed messages.) He dumps a heap of papers on the desk (it’s an office, so we would expect paper – might be worth making them blueprints or architectural drawings or something else to indicate his profession) and turns his back on the traffic creeping across the Hammersmith Bridge below. (Definitely a prestigious location, riverside. He’s a successful professional.) Opens his phone.
‘Ruth! I’ve won the Thames Footbridge prize! The judges were unanimous. Said it’s completely original.’ He laughs, shrugs off his jacket, loosens his tie and walks to the window. One hand runs through his hair. (I really like the way his body language reinforces his enthusiasm, which is quite endearing. He’s not being cool about this achievement. His excitement is infectious and his first urge is to share it with Ruth – presumably his wife.)
‘Wonderful,’ she says. ‘Amazing. Well done. I’m so glad.’ (Her speech is also clipped. There’s no reason to believe she’s not equally excited for him but her spoken voice does sound very similar to the narrative voice in the prose.)
‘Come and join us. (He wants to share this moment with her.) We’re about to start celebrating. The whole team.’ (He includes her. We have no reason to believe there are any problems in this relationship.) His eyes follow the bright orange vest of a wind-surfer bouncing over the corrugated surface of the river. (Might indicate he’s easily distracted, but might also be a sign that he’s fully engaged with life.) ‘When can you be here?’
‘You’ve forgotten where I am.’ (Ouch. The first hint of potential instability.)
‘What?’ He stares at his screen. ‘Oh my god! I wasn’t thinking. You went to Birmingham. When will you be home? (This might not reflect badly on him. He’s excited and, in the heat of the moment, may have just forgotten. He’s apologetic and still looking forward to being with her. It all depends on what she went to Birmingham for. If, for example, she was visiting a sick parent, he should be asking her about that. He doesn’t, so we’ll assume it’s not terrible that he forgot. His urge was to share his good news with her.)
‘I’m on the train. I’ll drink to you. In Virgin tea.’ (She’s quite witty. Conversation seems easy between them.)
‘Love you!’
‘Me too.’ (No alarm bells. All seems well for him, both professionally and personally.)
He frowns at his reflection in the window. Serious stuff this. Biggest win yet. Wish Ruth could be here. She’d make it feel more real. (He seems almost childlike. Clearly, he has some dependency issues. He struggles to own his own success unless she’s there to reinforce it.)
He sidesteps the sharp corner of the glass coffee table.
Brilliant. Only got to win the Portuguese competition and I’ll be joining the great and the grand. (He’s ambitious but there’s no hint of him being ruthless or cut-throat in pursuit of recognition.)
At this stage, I’m finding his boyish enthusiasm quite endearing and it’s interesting that some of the other people in the group seem more ready to judge him for being over-ambitious and thoughtless. I wonder if that opinion is coloured by what we learnt about him in last week’s discussions. You’ve shifted from third to first person in the last sentence. I presume that was intentional but it would need to be handled with great care. No problem because it’s precisely what we will be looking at in weeks 3 and 4, so hold onto that thought for now.
So much to admire in your writing here, Katie, and it makes me happy to hear that you’re re-energised and itching to bring your fascinating story to life. That’s largely thanks to your coursemates in this fabulous group and their astute and insightful feedback – left before I even got here. To clarify one thing: when we say don’t fiddle, we mean don’t change anything in the draft itself yet. There’s nothing to stop you creating a new document and playing around with ideas, redrafting what you post here and trying out different techniques.
I wanted to pick up on this, which you said in a reply to one of the comments: So much of the writing that I did for this first draft was me feeling my way through and letting ideas emerge on the page. That’s exactly as it should be. I’m a great believer in letting go when you spill out a first draft, allowing the story and characters to lead us. We use different parts of our brains when writing a novel, often thought of as left- and right-brain functions (though it’s not actually that neat). A first draft is a purely creative process (right-brain). It’s only when we come back to edit what spilled out in that messy first draft that we employ our left-brain functions to deconstruct and analyse what’s landed on the page. I think this might hold the answer to the question you raised elsewhere: … how to tidy up a bunch of disconnected fragments of text I’ve slapped together and called a chapter will be greatly appreciated. That’s precisely what we will be doing on the course – and it starts here.
Both you and Chithrupa, whose feedback I’ve just done, are writing in first person, so much of what I’ve said to her about voice being an integral part of character applies to you too. Until you grasp who a character is, you can’t hope to nail their voice. The voice of a first person narrator hads two discrete roles. They’re the storyteller, responsible for carrying us through the story, setting scenes, letting us know who/what/when/where etc. But they’re also the charcter-in-action – the person acting and reacting in response to the things they’re given to handle, character and plot being flipsides of the same coin. This also crosses with showing and telling. (Told you all these areas intersect.) A narrator can *tell* us things. Their actions *show* them as a character. More on this next week and in week 4.
The point is that in this passage, she’s firmly in her role as the narrator. There’s a distance – almost a detachment – in her voice. The only action is her pouring (sic – should be poring) over her application and that’s general, stretched over a period of time, rather than pinned down to an unfolding scene. There’s a stiff formality to her voice. That might be right for her character, but it does make it hard to warm to her. As I’ve said, we don’t necessarily have to like main characters but we do need to be sufficiently gripped by them to want to know what will happen. She’s narrating in past tense, so you need to ask yourself where she’s standing when she’s telling us this story. If she’s standing at the point in the future when she has totally bought into the cult, wouldn’t her voice be filled with fervour and passion? She’d be convinced that, at this early stage, she was on the brink of something life-changing and wonderful. We might have a feeling that we wouldn’t agree … some niggling concern that we can’t trust her judgement.
While a lot of the writing is sumptuous, it feels to me like you might be trying to pack in too much, too soon. Let’s look at how many ingredients there are in these few short words:
- an application – for what?
- ‘women of a certain age’ – what age? We don’t know how old the narrator is.
- she and her mother are ‘isolated’. In what way?
- hints at conflict with her mother. The two have rarely been apart. Is the mother protective? Or possessive? Is she right to be cynical and the narrator is naive?
- why would the mother be concerned they would be unable to survive being separated for a few weeks or months? Is she right to be worried about her daughter?
- the info about the demotion is intriguing but we don’t know the context or anything about her or her job.
There are loads of questions raised there which, in theory, could be intriguing but we can’t yet know if we can trust this narrator. It seems to me that you’re overloading us with information, rather than hooking our interest with something more simple: a compelling voice, or a single aspect of her life, or an unfolding scene, eg one in which we see her interacting with her mother. That brings us back to the structure discussions. I think we need to keep talking about where and how we start.
Anyway, having said that, let’s see what impression we have of Mary (worth pointing out we don’t know her name yet) in the passage you’ve posted.
My mother told me that this was the end. (I know how wedded we can be to our opening sentences but this feels vague.)
It began (the previous sentence had the non-specific *this* – how we have another non-specific *it* – ending and beginning of what?) with an open call for applications (for what?), offered only to women of a certain age (what age – we don’t know how old the narrator is, though we do know it’s a woman), who could meet certain requirements (more vagueness). Isolated as Mother (the formal title suggests a lack of warmth in their relationship) and I were (isolated how? Geographically? Socially?) it found me late (why was that the result of their isolation?). By the time the news had spread, its spores (actually, I like that – there’s a tinge of malevolence, which could work well as a hint of darkness) landing on my screen, (assuming this is a phone or computer screen, the narrator has access to the internet) it had already wormed into the minds of other young (only now do we know she’s young – twenties, maybe?) women across the country, distracting them from anything else their lives had to offer them. My mother was not impressed. (Not sure what she’s unimpressed by.) Not by the bright future they (who?) offered. Not by the weeks or months I’d be away from home. It was a separation we’d rarely known; (mother and daughter have rarely been apart) one she didn’t seem sure we could survive. (She was right! And narrator Mary, looking back, would know that. How does she feel about it as the point she’s narrating from? Vindicated? Triumphant?)
That winter, mist danced over the fields (lovely image but it sounds idyllic – as some of the others have said, a darker image of gathering clouds and storms might be better for conveying the tone of the story) and dust gathered in the corners of my room. (Does she care about the dust? Did she at the time?) Out there, something was waiting for me, something I might claim as my own. (I like this sense of longing. She’s been leading a half-life and wants to explore the world out there. This is the strongest sentence in the passage.) I poured over my application in the dim hours between shifts (she does have a job, and it involves shiftwork. The conjunction of this with the application gives the sense that she’s applying for a job which involves travelling away from home) until it became a mutilated thing I associated with finely-tuned headaches. (I like this intensity – *finely-tuned* is a brilliant adjective – even her headaches are controlled.) I ignored Mother’s requests (that sounds querulous – is it at odds with the control you’ve spoken about elsewhere?) to ask work to reconsider my demotion (from what to what?). That was not the word that had been used, but that was what it was. You don’t get pulled from the same shift pattern you’ve held for years for nothing. I’d given them enough reason, both work and my mother, to send me away, (what? Why?) yet I was still there, hanging on by a twisted thread. (It’s hard to assess the significance of this because you’ve given us so little to go on.)I absolutely love the concept of your WIP, Katie. I hope you won’t be disappointed to hear I don’t think you’re there yet with this as an opening though. There are a lot of mixed messages about both plot (the application) and character – both hers and her mother’s, and the voice could be a lot stronger. If I were you, I would have a rethink. Two options to consider – there are others, but this could be a starting point:
- You could take ownership of who she is *after the story finishes*. Her voice might be dripping with malevolence. Or perhaps filled with self-righteousness. You could really go for it with something like: What a naive young fool I was back then. The chance to change my life landed in my inbox and did Mother like it? Of course, she didn’t. She knew that once she’d let me go, I’d be unlikely to ever come back. ‘Mary,’ she said to me, ‘don’t be a fool. You’ll never cope in the world out there without me.’ Huh. Dearest Mother was right to think I wouldn’t come back, but not cope? I thrived. I found myself. And now I love my life. NB: I’m not suggesting you use those words! Just giving you an example of the *kind of thing* you can do.
- You could help us to engage with her *as she was at the time*. Perhaps she could be sitting at her desk, poring over the application, maybe wincing at a pain in her belly, when her mother comes in and we see them interacting and in conflict.
As I said, there are other possibilities but I hope these have sparked off some ideas. The coming weeks should make all the difference. I’m here for it.
Note for Katie: I read everything posted here! There’s no hiding from the all-seeing eye of the editrix. 😉
Hi Chithrupa. What a fabulous introduction to your story and to Xander. I’m glad you chose to post the opening of the novel. As you’re writing in first person, we instantly have a flavour of who this character is via their voice, and so we ‘meet’ them straight away. There’s only so much you can do with the first 200 words of a novel and what you have given us here is a strong sense of the story’s identity, right from that killer (ha!) opening sentence. The concept of the character narrator being dead/not dead is writ large and we know what this story is.
That then brings us to voice, because that’s what lets us know who this character is. I was punching the air when I saw you saying this in reply to one of the comments: … the way I have written about rails stood sentinel doesn’t feel like Xander’s voice- he would say something like yeah right, rail me up, its not like my dead body was going anywhere soon or Jeez, what is this a Prison?
The reason that excites me is because you’ve spotted something for yourself, without me needing to point it out to you. There’s some wonderful writing and imagery in the prose, but I have a feeling these are your words, not Xander’s. We’ll be talking about voice in detail next week but when someone’s WIP is in first person, it inevitably crops up when we’re looking at character. If these beautiful words are not the ones he would use as a character, you’re not creating the right impression of him. Your first loyalty has to be to him, making sure he’s authentic as a character by handing over the reins of the prose to him. You’ve brought him to life. Now give him control of his own story. Make sense?
Funnily enough, I had a feeling about this possible authorial intrusion when we had the discussion about the title. The Life and Deaths of Xander Crewface is genius. Adding the brackets – Death(s) – removes the subtlety. I think what we’re seeing there, and with his voice in the extract, is a sign of you being self-consciously authorial, trying too hard. You have a brilliant concept – and clearly, you have a natural talent for creative writing. Now you need to have the confidence to get out of your own way and let Xander tell his own story.
I’m going to copy in your extract and comment on it in italics, so you can see my feedback in context. Let’s see what impressions we get of Xander, so you can decide whether they’re what you want to convey or not.
I was dead. (A brilliant opening sentence. Blunt statement of fact. We have the apparent contradiction of him being dead but able to tell us that he is. The entire premise is encapsulated in these three simple words.) Not the first time, I should know. (Not sure what those last three words are supposed to convey.) And it was the same every time. The feeling of the dandelion whip’s weightlessness, (beautiful poetic imagery – implies someone who is sensitive and in touch with nature) the elevated view –– as though I grew an inch at death. (An inch is very specific – what does it imply about him? The point is the elevated view as he looks down on himself but it gets a bit lost when the inch is added.) But most of all, the strange calmness, the feeling of snuggly cocooned within a snow globe. The muffled talks and the hazy visions straining through the veil between the realms. (This is a great way to evoke hovering between life and death – but are they the words he would use as a character?) It was all the same, every single time, wobble to wobble. (You’ve already decided ‘wobble’ isn’t right.) I was dead, for now. (Fantastic. When you keep the voice blunt and simple, it works so well. Here, you’re repeating that opening sentence and expanding on it, widening out the premise.)
The medicinal air filled my nostrils with acrid fumes. My eyes burned, stung by even the soft blue glows after the long slumber. (This is great sensory information, and helps us to imagine being there in the room, but it could be confusing because ghosts are unlikely to be able to experience sensations in the way a living person would. And would he use the word ‘slumber’?) I could barely discern (is that a word he would use?) the white wiry frame of a bed. Rails on either side stood sentinel, ready should my limp body regain sudden vigour. (I have the impression of someone highly educated, possibly an academic.) For a moment, that was all I could see, and then the details slowly coloured in. The room itself was clean, but it was neutral at its best. No signs of life, just like me. (I love that wry humour. I think that’s more like the Xander you’ve told us about elsewhere.) It was suffocating – the bird’s-eye view claustrophobic within the confines of a ten-by-ten chamber. The thuds of life-sustaining droplets coursing through my veins resonated like distant thunderclaps, in an otherwise oppressive stillness. The rhythmic beeps now and then from the life-sustaining machines served as the sole reminder of my tenuous existence. (Again, these last sentences are beautiful writing. If you hadn’t told us about him as a character, I would assume he’s an intellectual. A sensitive soul, possibly dreamy, with a love of words and a strong connection with nature.)
You can see what’s happening here, can’t you, Chithrupa? It’s really gorgeous writing but I think the voice is yours and not Xander’s. Why don’t you try writing it again, but using the words he would use? Sometimes, I will have a go at doing that for someone but the best I can do is an impersonation of what I think another author’s character might sound like. That’s why I was air-punching when I saw your comment. You know Xander far better than I do, so you don’t need me to come up with a pale imitation of his voice. Feel free to post a redrafted version here, if you like. I won’t be able to comment again in such detail but I think it would be really good practice for you in preparation for next week’s session on voice.
Lucia – I let JW know about the coding and they said: ‘We’ll be sending instructions very soon to students on how to fix this. It’s an error where the text box tries to retain prior formatting, but there’s a simple fix.’
Pinning this down is excellent progress, Anja.
Oh, yes, Katie. I like this idea a LOT! This is what I mean about really going for it. It’s an excellent USP. How exciting!
A good prologue can add something important and there are plenty of novels that have them, Gill. I think your idea could work well. Don’t reject it out of hand, just because you’ve heard negative things about prologues and agents’ reactions to them. Your first loyalty is to your story. Hang onto that thought. We can always come back to it later if you’re still unsure.
You’re right not to have a long drawn-out ending. In theory, there shouldn’t be much left in the story after the peak of the narrative arc. That’s the part we still need to think about. Identifying the promise made at the beginning should help you to know where the story ends. As long as we’re sure he’s going to get his comeuppance, we don’t necessarily need to see that happening in detail. The best stories are those that linger in the reader’s mind after they’ve turned the last page and that’s more likely to happen if everything is not tied up too neatly. I’ve done Jericho webinars on both beginnings and endings. If you’re a member, you should be able to hunt them down.
Don’t worry too much about details for now. In week 6, we hand over to you to talk about anything you’re still unsure about. Jot down questions as they arise and see if they’re not answered yet by week 6.
Okey doke, Kate. I can see your thought processes and, for now, I think I just need to watch and listen – unless there’s something specific you’d like my take on.
Honestly, don’t feel bad, Chithrupa. Better to make that mistake here, in this safe space, and remember to take care later, when addressing agents. Plus, you’re not the only one!
Picking up on this, Gill: *Several other pieces of evidence will leave the reader, Laura and journalist Ronnie in no doubt Harry killed Mike. Is this enough? Or does a reader have to see Harry convicted. Or charged at least?*
They know … and we know … but I don’t think that’s likely to be enough. You don’t necessarily have to show him being arrested, but we need to know he’s going to be. He’s a serious wrong ‘un and we want to be sure he’ll be held accountable. I’m still not completely sure if I can see a peak to the narrative arc though.I liked in Peckham/Nunhead in a co-op, 1989-1995. The properties were reposessed and we were made homeless (I was seven months pregnant at the time) and rehoused in East Dulwich, where we are now. Before that, I was in Camberwell for a couple of years and before that, I lived in Grenada and was there during the revolution, coup and US invasion.
Yes! Pour the darkness into your story and allow your life to be cleansed and filled with life!
I have to jump in here, Chithrupa. You said you had *never read an English crime novel with majority indian cast*. All the more reason to break that mould and write one yourself, no? It’s what would make your story stand out from the crowd.
As it happens, apart from Vaseem Khan, I do know of a couple of others. Vicky Newham’s police procedurals feature DI Maya Rahman, a British Bangladeshi, whose family came to the UK in 1982 and settled in Brick Lane. But Vicky is white and, though I can’t recall seeing any accusations of cultural appropriation, there’s a focus now (rightly so, in my opinion) on *own voices*. No one could doubt your right to tell those stories. I also worked with an author called Champak Chauhan, who has since been published with his police procedurals set in Leicester. Anyway, I absolutely love the story you’ve described here in this comment.
