Reading A Writer’s Mind
Exploring Short Fiction
First Thought to Finished Story
Linda Acaster
Smashwords Edition Copyright 2011 Linda Acaster
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/lindaacaster
All stories portrayed in this book are copyright to Linda Acaster
For more information about the author and her books visit
http://lindaacaster.blogspot.com
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Linda Acaster asserts the moral right under the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. All Rights reserved.
Table of Contents
Mainstream, 4,200 words. Present tense, first person male viewpoint.
How to build a story from a character. Lyrical narrative versus terse dialogue. Using Tone as a descriptive tool. The importance of interrogating the initial idea.
Horror, 3,700 words. Past tense, first person male viewpoint.
Toning in the dark side of human nature: characterisation through deed and thought. Describing without description. The importance of a plausible back-story.
What Constitutes Women’s Fiction?
An introduction to the next four stories, dispelling popular misconceptions.
Mainstream, 1,200 words. Past tense, selected omniscient viewpoint.
A Tell story using a calendar structure. Being intentionally heavy on narrative. Using distance between the story and the reader as a cloaking device. The importance of naming.
An Interesting Day In The Office
Women’s Fiction, 2,500 words. Past tense, first person female viewpoint.
Keeping the reader guessing to ensure a twist-in-the-tale story doesn’t disintegrate into a tale-of-the-painfully-obvious. Gathering story elements into a workable idea. The importance of pacing.
Women’s magazine fiction, 2,900 words. Past tense, first person female viewpoint.
Drip-feeding back-story to add tension and promote anticipation. The use of alliteration, rhythm and subliminal detailing to bolster the romance. The importance of market study.
Women’s magazine fiction, 4,100 words. Past tense, third person male viewpoint.
An ahh story. A cross-generational storyline using the eternal triangle to emotionally lift the characters and the reader. Producing fiction from a theme. Choosing characters. When it is useful to add back-story at the front. The importance of using ‘show’ rather than ‘tell’ to wring an emotional response from the reader.
Crime, 4,000 words. Past tense, first person male viewpoint.
Building a story from a given line. Using an unsympathetic character to carry a story without the aid of name or description. Motive from character. Manipulating a reader’s reaction. The importance of planning characters.
Science Fiction, 4,100 words. Past and present tense, first person female viewpoint.
Using a parallel storyline structure to convey the current story and a back-story. Techniques used to create a society different from, but recognisable to, our own. The importance of reader anchorage points.
Fantasy, 4,450 words. Past tense, first person male viewpoint.
Making the everyday fantastical by preying on the insecurities of the main character, and by default, the reader. The importance of structure.
Historical, 700 words. Present tense, first person female viewpoint.
Writing for performance and sound effects. When prose becomes poetic through the use of rhythm and repetition. The importance of structure.
Ten common problems that cause a story to fall short of its potential. The importance of being professional.
About The Book
Ever read narrative fiction and wondered how the author came to produce it?
Reading a Writer’s Mind: Exploring Short Fiction – First Thought to Finished Story shows the detailed thinking behind ten stories across a range of genres and differing types of delivery. From the introductory aims of each narrative, through the story itself, to a commentary explaining the decisions made during the writing, Reading a Writer’s Mind offers a unique insight into one writer’s creative process, laying a path to follow and showing the tools to use.
About The Author
Linda Acaster began her writing career concentrating on short fiction before moving to novels and non-fiction articles. Along the way she started teaching adults the art and craft of creative writing, and by accident laid bare the mechanics of her thought processes. Using her own short fiction as dissecting models, she shares some of the ways she distils her craft in Reading a Writer’s Mind: Exploring Short Fiction – First Thought to Finished Story.
‘When creating their fiction, many professional writers make decisions on their craft because of a gut-feeling that it is right for that particular scene on that particular occasion. As a teaching tool, such ethereal reasoning is useless to someone trying to hone their skills. My aim is to be detailed in my explanations, using language and concepts that can be understood by both the new and the more experienced writer of short fiction.’
Linda Acaster has been a tutor with a UK distance learning college, and is a reader for a leading London literary consultancy. She has over 70 published short stories to her credit, four novels, and numerous instructional articles on the techniques of creating fiction. She gives talks and leads writers’ workshops across the north of England.
An Introduction To
Shared With The Light
Many new writers begin to improve their skills levels by attending Adult Education classes, and this is where Shared With The Light was born.
As the group’s tutor, I was giving pointers on how to build characters from scratch rather than writing about someone students knew. Real people we learn to understand from the outside in, usually from years of close proximity where we witness their reactions to outside forces and gradually gain a better view of what makes them tick. Fictional characters we need to understand from the inside out so that their written reactions to what happens around them is based on what makes them tick. To break it down to a sound-bite: with a real person we see the effect and try to understand the cause; with a fictional character we need to understand the cause to be able to write the realistic effect.
For ease, I asked the group to contemplate one character. I was determined to make this character genderless so that members of the group could make their own decisions on this person without being influenced by me or by pressure from the group. I asked for suggestions as to likely occupations of people we might see working on the street. A list was drawn up and a vote taken. The character everyone would write about was to be a busker.
Then I threw in a What if..? What if someone approached to speak to the busker? Who would it be, and why? Members of the group had a week to come up with an answer.
Of course, not all Adult Education groups are passive. Mine was adamant. If members were being asked to produce a short story using this premise, they wanted to see my version. So here it is.
Shared With The Light
I don’t know why I picked this tune. I play it sometimes for practice, for a memory of the old times when the walls crowd in and I begin to yearn for the sharp taste of a beer, but I never play it to an audience, not this audience at least. They’re not real; not feeling, thinking beings who can offer a smile or an acknowledgement of talent that is there. Or was there, once. They’re as lost as I am. At least I have this tune. They, probably, have nothing.
I draw the sax into my body, hugging it like a slender lover. Filling my lungs for the final phrase, I move towards the climax, finishing the run on a long note squeezed between drying lips and the quavering reed. Perspiration stands on my skin, beading across the small of my back as the muscles strain. Like the old times there is a tingling in thigh and shoulder, and I cradle the sax as if it is made from filigree glass. But it isn’t the same with my eyes open, even with them slitted. It isn’t a tune to be shared with the light.
Disappointment grows as the note fades. There will be no emerging from exquisite ecstasy, only the familiar dragging from the depths of despair.
I’m not sure if it is the uncertain applause that snaps me back or the chinking of the coins as one falls upon another. Fifty pence pieces are distinctive, and this is different. The sound of pound coins reverberates like small arms fire in the domed arcade, and I raise my arms expansively to smile and take a bow, the theatre of playing an audience kicking in automatically. They stand before me, clutching tight their festive gifts, dripping rain into bright puddles on the checkerboard of polished tiles.
‘That were great.’
‘Thank you,’ I say, sweeping my gaze across the smiling faces, wanting none to miss the appreciation I’m broadcasting. ‘—thank you, thank you—’, but the moment is already passing. They’re shuffling away, embarrassed at listening, embarrassed at being touched.
‘That were great.’
I swing round to the voice. He is younger than me, half a life-time younger, gingery stubble patched uncertainly on his throat and lower cheeks, but I know the eyes. As bright as cut diamonds. As piercing as the knife he undoubtedly carries in a back pocket.
He takes a step towards me oblivious to those he cuts across, grey people in their grey world now oblivious to me in mine. His step lengthens into two, and I feel my every muscle tense.
‘That were absolutely fan-tastic.’
I don’t recognise the accent; try to memorise him – his blue eyes, his taller height, his limp fair hair – so that I’ll recognise the mugshot, but my brain doesn’t want to take it in. His lips part in a grin and the familiar smell of strong mints overwhelms me.
‘You were really lost in that one. You were brilliant.’
I wish he would go, know that he won’t. It’s my move.
‘Thank you,’ I say.
His gaze begins to drop, and the remnants of my soul drops with it. We stand together, our toes separated by the thin line of the sax’s case, its red plush interior marbled with bronze and silver and gold. He is counting. I know in the flick of a practised eye. Enough to eat for a week. Not enough to get knifed for.
‘Good pitch, eh?’
‘The rain,’ I say. ‘It drives them inside. Luck.’
I glance at his feet, at the white trainers with the blue bindings, at the lack of water puddled around them. He will know about the coins I’ve tucked into my pocket. He’s been watching me that long, at least.
‘D’ya read?’
My gaze flicks back to his face, to the arrogant openness of youth.
‘Read?’
‘Is it by ear, or d’ya read the music?’
He’s left it too long, lost his bottle.
‘Both,’ I say.
‘That one?’
‘Long ago. I can’t remember.’
His gaze moves to the sax and I tighten my grip on it. Only once has it been wrenched from my grasp, and I was lucky that time. I won’t be lucky here. I feel the dent beneath my palm, smooth the lasting blemish as if it might lift through the heat of my hand.
‘Alto, right?’
‘Right,’ I say.
‘Not usual, that, is it?’
‘’tis for me.’
‘I mean for that kinda tune. I ’eard a tenor tackle that one, but not as good as you.’
‘Where did you hear this tenor?’
‘Oh, years ago. It were a record me Dad ’ad. Used to play along.’ He laughs. ‘Sorta. The neighbours complained like crazy. That’s ’ow I got sent to lessons.’
The truth begins to filter through. ‘You play.’
I watch him cock his head. A couple of years ago I guess he would have blushed.
‘Well, they all wants to play guitar, don’t they? Like fleas on a dog. But a sax, well... The record gave it life, but you made it soar.’
I look at him and he at me. I’m not sure what I’m feeling, and can read even less in his youthful face.
‘Your audience is waiting. Gonna play another?’
I have an audience of one. The rest is a flowing mass. ‘Any requests?’
He grins again, looking more the excited boy. ‘D’ya know What’s My Name?’.
I smile and wet my lips, placing the reed comfortably between my teeth. I was born knowing What’s My Name?.
He steps back to lean on a shop window, and it is only now that I remember the pound coins sitting at my feet, but it is too late. I’m pumped and primed and the notes are ringing in my head on their way down the tube to the bell.
*
I garner maybe two-fifty from it. The youth seems impressed. He comes to stand over me as I fish the big coins from the case.
‘Never busked, meself. Lucrative?’
‘Not so you’d notice. Do you gig?’
‘Yeah. It’s that I wanna talk t’ya about. D’ya fancy joining us? Meet the others an’ ’ave a jam?’
I look into his face to see if he is pulling me along. I can no more read his thoughts than I could before, but he can obviously read mine.
‘On the level, like. Honest.’
I laugh. ‘Oh, sure.’
‘Oh, sure what? You ain’t ’eard us. You don’t know ’ow good we are.’
‘I know how old you are.’
‘We’re a mixed group. A quintet. Gary’s twenty-eight. That can’t be much younger than you.’
It isn’t. ‘I can’t even remember being twenty-eight,’ I say.
‘Bullshit!’
I don’t lie. Lies get a person nowhere but in a hole. ‘What do you play?’
‘Jazz. Blues. Some big band.’
‘Big band?’
‘You can get a lotta noise from a five-piece. You get a lotta noise from a one-piece.’
I don’t deny him that. ‘Two tunes and you are asking a busker to join your band? You must be a pretty desperate assortment.’
‘We’re a good assortment. Why don’t ya come and listen?’ His hand curves round to a pocket at the back of his jeans, and the unexpected movement chills me to the bone. When he produces a photocopied handbill I take it out of sheer relief.
‘We’re on at eleven. Not first act, you’ll notice, so management of Red Duster can’t think we’re that desperate. Bring yer sax or leave it be, there’ll be a ticket on’t door f’ya.’
‘You don’t know my name,’ I tell him.
‘Marl Kerran,’ he answers, and he leaves me to the grey mass shuffling through the arcade.
*
I push the key in the outer door and out of habit put my shoulder to the swollen wood. It screeches its welcome note and I cross the threshold into the dimly lit interior. Late night shopping is a killer, but there is no ignoring it. The week after Christmas takings will dive like a suicide from a bridge.
I drag myself and my packages up the uncarpeted stairway wrinkling my nose at the familiar smell. It is always worse after rain. The man from the pest control said it was the age of the house, the age of the plumbing. I’m sure it’s a dead rat somewhere.
A child is crying, its noise drifting in and out of focus each time I turn a landing. It sounds oddly like a siren, and then I realise I’m hearing that, too, permeating the bricks like the rain and the stench of dead rat.
The flat is so cold my breath stands white before my lips. It didn’t do that outside, I’d swear to anyone. Perhaps it did and I just didn’t notice. I slip out of the raincoat and hang it behind the door to continue its quiet dripping onto the scuffed floorboards before switching on both bars of the fire and emptying the carrier. Two tins of lamb hotpot, teabags, dried milk, a small loaf. The usual fare.
With the contents of a tin fizzing in a pan, I go through the nightly routine of cleaning my sax. It is only when I’m nestling it back into its crimson lining that I notice the folded handbill the youth pressed on me. I read it while I stir my meal.
** For One Week Only **
The Mickey Lyons Quintet
Plays
The World Renowned RED DUSTER
I smile at the pretension, and wonder if that is his name, Mickey Lyons. It doesn’t ring any bells. Neither the club, the Red Duster, world renown or not, but its address makes me draw breath. Bridgewater Place, North Causeway. It’s the Tin Pan Alley in another guise.
A door opens onto a memory so clear it could be a heart-beat away. Skeins of tobacco smoke curl through the crisp light of spotlamps, filling my nose, catching my throat. The clink of glasses, the scuffing of chairs, the low babble of voices lost in a darkness peppered with dull red lamps and the sharp yellow flaring of cigarette lighters. A silk shirt bonded, like a second skin, with sweat. And the whole lost to the tune, to my solo, to—
A crescendo shakes the ceiling, but it isn’t mine. Johnson has been away for three days and now the blissful peace has ended. His music, his rave, fills the hollow above my room and floods down to engulf me. A child cries louder. A door on the landing below crashes back on its hinges. A woman shrieks abuse. Heavy footsteps race past and there is hammering on the door above. A man shouts violence in stark bass tones. The child cries louder. The woman shrieks. Hardcore rave sears through my veins like an overdose, and it is all I can do to reach for the bread and dip a slice into the part-heated stew.
*
The rain has stopped, but the crystal cold grips the damp raincoat and makes me shiver. I’m at the bottom of the street before the rave slips from my hearing, into the neon-puddled thoroughfare before it leaves my head.
The smell of fish and chips and curry runs fingertips over my taste-buds, and I hunch into my collar and cross between the buses to get away from it. Music pours between two black-suited guards on the door of a pub. Heavy rock from a jukebox. Laughter. Warmth.
I haven’t brought the sax, wasn’t intending to go to Bridgewater Place, but I’m heading that way, and what will it hurt to see the old facade again?
I remember the gutter, still full of water, but the cobblestones throw me. The entrance to the Tin Pan Alley had been down the passage between the old warehouses, but the Red Duster welcomes its clientèle on its main approach, up steps and through gaping double doors wide enough to take a small truck. Bond House 17 is stencilled in glaring white on the bricks below the first floor windows. I don’t recall that, either, but it looks new, at least repainted.
I hang back in the shadows of a nearby building, my hands driven deep inside my raincoat pockets. No one goes in. No one comes out. No one in black stands conspicuously at the door. There is nothing to smell but the decaying damp; nothing to hear but the distant drone of traffic and the occasional sing-song of sirens.
I walk up to the steps but don’t climb, turning, instead, down the alley. A stark security light shines from high on the far wall casting spider-like shadows. There are boxes and overflowing waste bins on wheels. Behind them, wisps of steam rise in the chill of the night.
I lengthen my pace, feeling my excitement quicken. The grille is still there, at the bottom of the wall. The same tapping fan throws out the smell of stale beer and cigarette smoke, but drifting on the warm air is the music. Faint, so very faint. I lean my hands against the cold bricks and turn my head to catch the sounds. A big bass, thrumming gently. A piano, yes, tinkling on the high notes. A guitar? Perhaps. It’s difficult to tell. And then the sound of a sax bursts through. My gut turns. Perdido. I ache to be there, to be with them.
‘Hey! You!’
I move quickly. Bouncers can be like lightning; hit first, ask questions later. The boots are steel-capped, the trousers loose, the coat dark, stained, half its buttons missing. Thin straggling hair creeps from beneath a blue wool skullcap to touch patched jowls part-hidden by an upturned collar. I blink at him and see consternation in his red-rimmed eyes, watch a thread of spittle creep over pasty lips.
His bearing changes. A finger rises to meet a nod of his head. His smile is wide, benign, all theatre.
‘Sorry, guv. The ol’ eyes, y’know. Not good in this light. Got a quid, like, for a man lost ’is way?’
Is that what he’d seen? Another alckie on his patch? Is that what I look like?
I give him a couple of coins and leave him to sort the bottle bins for the dregs of his life.
*
The weather has turned crisp by the morning, frost still clinging in shadowy nooks on the roof opposite when I pull back the curtain. The sunlight is dazzling, the sky as blue as the Med. The punters will be out from their offices during lunch. I’ve got to move if I’m to catch them. The motivation is easy enough. I’ve no tokens for the meter.
They are here in their scarves and their gloves, clutching their bright plastic carriers, but they’re moving fast, their eyes on the windows, their minds on the time.
I trip like an amateur, miss four notes and fluff a run. I don’t feel all here; hope to God it’s not some virus. I collect three-eighty and consider myself fortunate.
I take myself into the cafe at the end of the arcade and sit in a corner with a bowl of soup, a cheese roll and half a pint of steaming tea. I’d be able to pay for a plated meal if I’d not given the wino so much, but the soup is warming and thick, and I try not to begrudge him the comfort.
My reflection bobs and spoons in the mirrored wall beside me. I try to ignore it, but it beckons and waves, and in the end it has to be faced like so much has been faced in the past. I’m still thin. I haven’t replaced the weight. I missed a patch on my neck, too, when I shaved, not much, but it stands like a dark signal against my skin. Pasty. Like the wino’s.
I see the youth standing there, a reflection by the door, the blue eyes piercing, as bright as cut diamonds. I push away the empty bowl and start to undo the roll. He’s at my table in a moment, blocking out the artificial daylight. He doesn’t ask, just pulls the chair and sits.
‘You didn’t come.’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
It isn’t a polite question. He’d told them I would.
‘Busy.’ I take the knife and cut the roll.
He looks down, places his fingers on the edge of the table, careful not to encroach my space.
‘Look, I know the Red Duster ain’t top rank.’
‘The Duster’s fine.’
He looks up at me, surprised I’d interrupted. I hold his gaze.
‘Audience, is there?’
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Full last night.’
‘Appreciative, are they?’
A smile creeps across his lips, the memory so close I can taste it. ‘Yeah. Great.’
‘Management pays up, does it? In full? On time?’
He gasps a single chuckle and nods like an amused two year old. I open my hands and grin at him, huge, benign, all theatre.
‘Then you’re fine.’
I watch his smile fade, his lips draw tight. From inside his jacket he brings a rectangular card and places it on the table between us. The words Red Duster stand bright and accusing in the centre.
‘We can’t do justice to Autumn Leaves wi’just one sax.’ He holds me with those diamond eyes. ‘It’s our last night. I hope you ain’t gonna be busy.’
*
Autumn Leaves goes down well with the shoppers, despite only one sax, despite it being an alto and not a tenor. I play it once during the afternoon and twice to the late-nighters. Brings me six pounds all on its own.
The notes of that tune ring in my head during the long walk home, right into the street where the cars crowd the gutter and reflect the weak lamplight, right up to the point where the hardcore rave breaks in.
I slow as I enter its periphery, hoping, praying, that the clear night air is carrying it from further up the street, that a distant window is open and an early party in progress. It’s too much to ask.
Dragging leaden feet along the path, I fumble for the keys. The hammering, the crying child, the shrieking woman. It is as if the night has never turned. The uncarpeted stairs reverberate beneath my feet, the walls against my fingertips. I turn the landing clutching the sax case to my chest, trying to regain the peaks and lows of the duet. Hardcore rave pummels my brain, interferes with the rhythms, alters the notes. The man from downstairs is kicking Johnson’s door, hammering the panels with God-knows-what. I don’t want to know, don’t want to see, don’t want to hear, but it’s impossible. I let myself into the flat and snap down the light switch. I’d forgotten. There are no tokens for the meter.
*
I lay beneath the blankets, cradling the soft lines of the sax in my arms, watching blue lights chase round the ceiling. There is no siren, though I hear it in my head. They come up the stairs all voices and boots, pass my door, the man shouting abuse, the woman shrieking. The child mewls unnoticed in the background, a distorted harmony. A call, another call, and the hammering starts again. Down the walls like sickly treacle, through the cold and lifeless air, pours the suffocating rave that calls itself music. It flattens me to the bed. It’s flattening me into insanity.
And then the blankets are gone and the sax is nestling in its case. The door is slammed, the flashing lights passed, and I am striding along the street, the wall of sound subsiding behind the armour of my raincoat. By the time I make the thoroughfare my head is lifting, my senses, too, and the trilling notes of Autumn Leaves are pulsing through my blood.
I rush the steps to the double doors of Bond House 17, rush them in case I falter and turn back.
Reception is blinding bright, the walls covered in posters of acts classic before I was born. Matt black doors beckon into the inner sanctum, the lazy strains of Weaver of Dreams tantalizing my ears.
The woman behind the counter asks for my membership and I proffer the ticket. She looks at it in surprise, looks at me and squints.
‘Marl Kerran?’
I blink back at her and nod.
‘Mr Kerran,’ she enthuses, the smile broad and genuine. ‘I didn’t recognise you. Hey, it’s great to see you again. I hope it’s not just a one-nighter.’
I smile as she gabbles. Should I know her? Was she here during the days of the Tin Pan Alley?
‘Just let me call Rosalind and I’ll take you side-stage. Can I relieve you of your coat?’
I don’t want her to take my raincoat, to see my jacket or the unwashed shirt beneath. I wish I’d had some tokens for light to see to shave. I wish I hadn’t come.
Rosalind arrives, a waft of sweet restrain flowing in her wake. Then I am through those sombre doors into a world of smoky darkness and the crisp cut of spotlights, the smell of beer and perfume and aftershave, the hubbub of voices, the clink of glassware. And out of the darkness grows the greyness of figures, the yellow and blue flash of cigarette lighters, the golden flicker of candle-glasses on tables. And the tone, the tone so sweet and perfect of the tenor sax. I don’t want to move, don’t want to breathe in case I spoil it.
The fair-haired youth stands centre stage in the dazzling light, his eyes shut, the tube cradled close as he runs the last notes to the end of the sequence. The audience applauds. The light widens for the others to take a bow: bass, piano, drums, a clarinet. The noise is thunderous, the clapping, the calls for more.
They’re good.
I can’t do it. Suddenly I can’t do it, but the woman takes my arm and pulls me on, and despite my protests my feet carry me towards the stage. I don’t want her to draw their attention but she’s waving, and then he sees me. He’s beside me, they’re all beside me, shaking hands, offering names. And their warmth floods through me, lifting and sighing, bringing me home.
Let’s do one now, they say, do one now.
I shed the raincoat, sloughing it like an unwanted skin. The blood begins pumping, the adrenalin high, and I’m called into the spotlight, the crisp white searing spotlight, to a roll of the drums and a round of applause.
What’s My Name? hits them in the heart and me in the gut. There’s no comparison to playing it in the arcade. It’s another world, I another being.
We storm them with Again ‘n’ Again, and neither the floor nor the band will let me leave.
‘I’m parched!’ I cry above the din. ‘I’m not used to this!’ And a glass of bitter is pressed into my hand.
It is cold to my grasp, cold like the rime in the gutter of the cobblestoned alley. I gaze at the off-white head lapping the rim, and my throat constricts. I glance at the youth with the piercing eyes, his head thrown back, downing his like a man. What am I? What will I become? A shambling figure in a half-fastened coat weaving his way down an alley? Not with one. Surely not with just the taste of one.
It is sharp on my tongue, like a knife, but exquisitely teasing as it coats my throat, a sliver of fiery ice passing through my chest.
The floor is clapping in unison, chanting for more. The band have downed theirs and are retaking their places. The ivories tinkle a merry salute, the bass runs up an octave and down again, an athlete limbering up. And without a word being passed they are into Autumn Leaves.
I stand on the edge of the light and let the tenor take the lead. I see the puzzled look, the frown cutting beneath limp, fair hair, but it’s his band, his gig. All I want is to be a part of it again, a part of the music, a part of the moment that can be held like a bird and released. And so I stand in the shadow and close my eyes on the world, let the alto answer the tenor, court it and dance it and drive it and tantalise, always tantalise, the sax warm to my touch, responding like a lover, until all the notes have bloomed and faded and died.
I peel my lips from the reed and draw a lungful of smoky air, down, deep down, like the breath of gods. The floor erupts. Chairs screech back to hoots and whistles, and I open my eyes to the glaring white of the spotlight centred on me. I put out a hand, fending it away, turn to look for the tenor in my blindness. He is there, right beside me, pressing a glass into my hand.
‘Fan-tastic! Fan-bloody-tastic! Drink up. We’re gonna finish on your solo.’
And I drink from the poisoned chalice, a devotee sacrificing his life for the gifts of Heaven. A tingling in thigh and in shoulder. For a tune to be shared no more with the light, I give my life. Again.
Commentary
If the Adult Education group picked a busker, why did I pick a saxophonist? Because a colleague of my husband’s played a saxophone in his spare time, which is true, but not notable enough to fix itself in my subconscious as possible writing material. I knew this man ‘in passing’ as shy and unassuming. Seeing him play in a pub was a revelation. With eyes closed he began making love to his saxophone from the very first note, and he had no idea that he was doing it. That is notable writing material.
Having a piece of notable writing material lodged in my subconscious does not immediately lead to a story, even when dredged up some months later by the requirements of a group exercise. Questions needed to be asked and decisions made. Time to call upon the writer’s chattering friends: who, what, where, when, how and why.
Why decide my busker should be male? The real-life saxophonist was male, but I’m female. Isn’t it given wisdom to write about what you know? I wanted the character to be vulnerable, at some sort of turning point in life. Vulnerable females are ten-a-penny. A vulnerable male holds more intrigue for me as a writer, probably because I’m female.
Why was he busking? Busking on the way up a musician’s career is fairly normal, so I decided he was busking on the way down, or was at the nadir attempting to get his life back together.
What had happened to him to cause this? Pass. At this point I’d no idea.
Where was he busking? Somewhere warm, yet I wanted the weather to be bleak to resonate with his mindset. In the city near where I live, close to a modern shopping mall, is a late 19th century domed arcade. The difference in the acoustics of the two venues is spectacular and, as the story is about a musician, I chose the better acoustics. I decided it would be raining, hence pushing shoppers into the arcade, but why would he be there on a wet day, why would they be shopping on a wet day? Because it was the countdown to Christmas – the when. And that was the setting of the opening scene decided.
What type of music was he playing? A saxophone is not a normal instrument for a modern boy band, it is an instrument of a session musician, but I didn’t want the character to be an also-ran, I wanted him to be a fallen star. It is here I should mention that what I know about music, or the playing of any instrument, can be written large on the reverse of a postage stamp. Not so much write about what you know as write about what can be learned. Time for a bit of research.
A query about saxophonists to a record-listening associate pointed me towards jazz, and a comb of the jazz CDs in the library not only established that saxophone solos were a recognised part of the form, but that there were different types of saxophones. Those CD jackets also provided music titles, and listening to those CDs provided tonal background – which tunes were jumping, which were lazy, which were duos. A book in the children’s section named the parts of the instrument and explained how it was played. I could run with this research. My character was definitely playing jazz.
So who was he? I didn’t want him to have been an international recording star, but I wanted him to have been far enough up the scale to be recognised and his talent acknowledged by an aficionado – and it was at this point that the person who would speak to him stepped into my mind. I knew that he – another he – was an aficionado, someone who had been brought up on the music and was also a musician, but in a lesser way – a younger self.
Teasing out the facets of a leading character and the main thread of a storyline is often this step-by-step tapping at the coalface with a bent spoon – it can take hours, or days, or weeks – and then, miraculously, perhaps inspirationally, the face is tapped as before but this time the coal not only crumbles, it packs itself into containers, lifts itself to the surface, finds its own customer and delivers a profit, all in the taking of a single breath. In that breath I knew, just knew, that the younger self would be playing in a venue that had been a favoured spot of the lead character, that they both lived only for the music, that they would be sharing the same problem except that the younger self would be barely aware of it – alcoholism (note the early line … the familiar smell of strong mints overwhelms me) – that the chain of events the meeting triggers would lead to a life or death decision by the lead character. And I knew which he would choose.
Having all the facets of the storyline unfold at once did not mean that the story as read unfolded at the same pace. There were other decisions to be made, starting with Viewpoint.
First person viewpoint was chosen because I wanted to get under the skin of the main character. I wanted to feel his every worry, see others as he would see them. I wanted him to have suffered so much in his recent life that he was not only alone, but distrusted others to the point of paranoia.
The choice of Tone aided this. I wanted his outer world to be depressing so as to feed his poor self image, the two acting one upon the other in a vicious circle. Tone comes across in the choice of words and phrasing. Taken singly the reader could step over each without conscious thought, but by loading certain paragraphs with negative images the tone becomes unremitting: dimly lit…late night shopping is a killer…takings will dive like a suicide from a bridge…the man from pest control…dead rat somewhere…
For the character, the one thing that was safe, that was comforting, that he could rely on, was his music. It is his reliance upon his music to the exclusion of all else that determines his thought patterns, and thus the technical use of symbolism and alliteration that I, as the writer, use to bring those thought patterns to an acceptable reality for the reader. His dialogue might be short and terse, but he notices the little things – the white trainers with the blue bindings, the lack of water puddled around them – and any noise is mentioned in terms of musical references – man shouts violence in stark bass tones. These are decisions which help give the character depth and create a sense of unity in the text.
Bringing it all together, writing it line by line on the page, was executed not by writing about the character, but by me becoming the character and acting out the unfolding story from that envisaged opening scene. In that first paragraph I wanted to explain what he was doing, intimate a back-story and a sense of melancholic desperation, and most of all his problem – begin to yearn for the sharp taste of a beer – hidden away in the phrases of a sentence so as to be hardly noticed by the reader.
The second paragraph I wanted to pertain to the sensuality music embraces, what I’d seen in my husband’s colleague as his lips closed on the mouthpiece and he leaned into his saxophone with his eyes shut. Except that my character was not on a spot-lit stage, he was busking in an open shopping arcade with money at his feet, money that could be stolen from him in an instant. The last thing he would do would be to play a tune with his eyes closed, and as I wrote that second paragraph I knew I had the title.
Names are always problematic. Unlike the ones we carry, given to us by doting parents or taken on in marriage, the names of fictional characters have to offer an extra edge. As I began writing the story I had no idea what name my main character was travelling under, but I have enough experience to know that when a story is flowing I should trust it. Even so, when my lead character says to his younger self, You don’t know my name, he was actually saying it to me. It was then, without a single beat pause, that his younger self replied Marl Kerran and the scene finished. I gazed at my computer’s screen, sliding the given name over my tongue. Marl Kerran. It sounded as much a stage name as a real name. The lazy Marl, the sharper Kerran. I accepted it. Sometimes writers just do.
Mickey Lyons was not so easy, either in himself or his name. I wanted him to be bold enough to speak to his idol, yet understanding enough to accept the man’s current lifestyle and still hold him in awe. He needed to speak in a different manner to Marl Kerran, noticeably different, as many of their short exchanges would be without dialogue tags, a positive decision by me to set against the amount of detailed narrative coming via Kerran’s thought processes. Although the dialogue of Mickey Lyons stayed more or less the same, the way it was presented, both the contractions and the syntax, was redrafted several times. If Kerran was thinking in the Queen’s English, I didn’t want Lyons to speak it.
The hell-hole of Marl Kerran’s digs, thankfully I have no knowledge of first-hand. I wanted to make his present life intolerable, and to me lack of heat, lack of comfort, lack of food and the worst, constant noise, was as near a living hell as I could imagine for him at that time. It also served as a dark mirror to reflect back at him all he had once held – and what was being held out to him again, at a price. I wanted the reader to glean the back-story information, hold it up against the current information, and do what was being asked of Marl Kerran, make a choice.
When the story was completed I was pleased with it, but something didn’t lie right. I read it, and fiddled, and read it again and again and again. It was some weeks later that I realised its problem. I’d written it as I write most of my fiction, using past tense. I’d asked copious questions of the characters and the setting, but taken for granted that the story should be written in past tense. Take nothing for granted. Moving the story into present tense gives the tone a clarity that Marl Kerran would demand from his music.
Over To You
Look at a piece of your own short fiction:
* Does the language used mirror the viewpoint character’s occupation or mindset?
* Does the viewpoint character have a back-story?
* What would happen to the story if the tense was changed?
Try the exercise the way the Adult Education group did. List occupations of people you might see on the street. Pick one (preferably blindfold, with a pin) and build the character from scratch. Be that character. Who comes up to you, and why? Write that story.
An Introduction To
Contribution to Mankind
Contribution to Mankind was written due to a cold-hearted calculation. I wanted a story with my by-line in a particular paperback-sized anthology of short fiction. However, the anthology was only published quarterly, had a world-wide readership, and competition for acceptances was, to say the least, tight. Several of my stories had been returned with encouraging comments, from which I gleaned that my writing was up to scratch. The problem lay in their content. They simply weren’t different enough to rise above other submissions.
My cold-hearted calculation? A filtering market study.
The anthology regularly listed all the genres it would accept. Horror was one. I delved through the copies stacked by my bed. In the three previous years not one Horror story had been printed.