Tag: stories

Something About April

~ JacciGoodingAuthor

There’s just something about April, dontcha think? Is it gonna be warm? Is it gonna be cold? Is the sun gonna shine? When will it be summer? As I write, despite the horror news of the world burning to a crisp by Christmas it is quite actually properly April out there. You know the kind of thing here in the northern hemisphere, first bit of sun and we all rush outside like idiots getting sunburn while complaining it’s still chuffing cold, or migrating to the pub to quaff vast amounts of ale/cider/gin/something fizzy because it is SUMMER AND THAT’S WHAT WE DO only to discover that as soon as the sun goes down we return to winter and a halter-neck and flip flops just won’t cut it.

But why this nonsense about the weather? How about this is why we should include the weather in our writing:

Thanks NOAA at Unsplash for this great picture

‘On the fifth day, which was Sunday, it rained very hard. I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.’ – Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time

or

‘It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.’ Charles Dickens, Great Expectations.

There was once a school of thought that suggested writing about weather in our work was dull. B Or Ing. Something we shouldn’t do if we wanted to keep our readers engaged. No one wants to read about the sunshine pouring in through the window or the rain battering the door we were told. Why ever not? I think one of the most important elements of a novel or short story or even flash, is, if applicable to the plot, the weather. It can set a mood, break a mood, and is as important a plot device as any of the others. Thrashing storms have to be thrashed out on the page to bring them to life. Simply saying there was a horrible storm at sea and the ship nearly sank doesn’t creative many waves, does it? So bring on the weather.

With climate change and the heating of the Earth many authors are turning their skills to writing cli-fi, much of it not fiction at all, so it looks like the weather in our writing is well and truly here to stay. But not in the way authors 50 years ago expected I guess.

Is cli-fi speculative? Can be. Dystopian? If you want. Utopian? Up to you. But all of it deals with the human fallout of a warming planet.

Climate Fiction: sounds like 21st century gothic horror to me.

Five Tips on Writing Characters

~ JacciGoodingAuthor ~ 1 Comment

Having a bit of a blank when it comes to writing a character? Can’t quite get into their head? Worry not. It’s easy peasy lemon squeezy really. By using one of your best writer’s skills – Observation – you’ll see your characters are all around, fully formed and perfect for harvesting. Reading The Metro recently I was delighted to find five fully-formed characters staring at me from the page, ready to be gathered together like spring flowers and plopped into a novel. Let me share them with you:

Shy Blonde In Red Coat
Very Shy Girl
Brunette With Light Blue Eyes
Rachel The Sleepy Blonde
and my absolute favourite,
The Sweaty Guy With A Runny Nose.

All these are love-lorn commuters looking for love through The Metro’s Rush Hour Crush. So, a sweaty guy with a runny nose. Sounds better than Plague Victim I guess, but what a base to build a character on. Had he been running in cold weather? Or was he ill? On drugs maybe? Blond or bald?  For Shy Blonde read Assassin for sure, and Brunette with light blue eyes – well, not necessarily a woman is it?

Another place to find a character, even if you’re not especially looking for one, is at an event. Last week I was at a Jaguar Car Heritage Day at Blenheim Palace – not my usual entertainment for a Sunday but it’s good to do something you wouldn’t naturally do – and there he was. The Character I had a name for but not an appearance. I have a character that is not a nice person, but I didn’t want him to be a characterisation of a bad person – he has to be real. And there he was, right in front of me.

Picture the scene: millions of pounds worth of vintage cars, polished and buffed to within an inch of their historic automotive lives, surrounded by fans and enthusiasts – mainly dressed in beige slacks and leather shoes or designer jeans and trainers – when into my view swaggered a cigarette smoking man of about 45. Hair still dark, long to his collar and in which he’s parked his sunglasses, designer jeans – but with the hems trodden down at the back, scruffy around the pockets, wearing a jacket that didn’t match nor fit especially well and fraying slightly on one sleeve. He loped around a few of the cars, dropped his shades over his eyes and stood against a low wall for a while. He seemed distracted – he could have been waiting for a bus – but I knew straight away he was the character in my next short story. Gotcha. See – easy peasy lemon squeezy.

How To Make Them Real:

1 Observation. Always. Look closely, if you can; observe the shoes, the hair, the hands that serve you that coffee.
2 Short snippets in newspapers or online. The small bits that are used for fillers are often the gold nuggets where you’ll discover your characters
3 Amalgamation Jigsaws. Take the best of worst of lots of people you know or are in contact with. Squish ‘em together, make a character. I call this my Frankenstein Character – they don’t all turn out to be monsters!
4 Animals. This way of creating a character is usually done when the moon is full and the creative juices have gone off-piste for a bit, but you can have a lot of fun doing it. Old dog, limps slightly due to hip trouble, a bit deaf, square hairy face, independent spirit,
or,
Old man, limps slightly due to hip trouble, a bit deaf, square hairy face, independent spirit. You get the idea.
5 Start with the name. A woman called Star, for example. What would she do? Singer? Librarian? Full-time Mum? Make a list – I love excel for this* – create names in one column, profession/job/life direction in another. Match up as your instinct tells you. Then ignore that instinct and match up differently. Maybe Colin in Accounts becomes Colin the professional tennis player by day and drag queen by night. Up to you. 

Try this fella for size…andrii-podilnyk-1060018-unsplash.jpg
photo by Andrii Podilnyk
on Unsplash

 

 

 

 

*note to self. Out. More. Get.

Wolf

~ JacciGoodingAuthor

What is it about the word ‘wolf’ that conjures up so much mischief? Hilary Mantel’s book Wolf Hall has, in my humble, one of the best titles for a book ever. Yes I know she didn’t make up the title – who but the Tudors would name their homes so? Houses of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were bestowed more pastoral names such as Sunnyside, Rose Cottage, Orchard View; no lupine references there to warn any visitor ofyannick-menard-1272925-unsplash the ambience of the place. Forget entering the lion’s den – the mere assonance of the words wolf and hall tells you all you need to know. In literature, as we know, the wolf has done a marvellous job securing a place in folklore – whether for good or ill – there’s the favourite, little red and all her trials and traumas; that sneaky double-dealer the wolf in sheep’s clothing, Peter and his wolf, which has a sort of nice ending – the wolf doesn’t end up brown bread, but he is wolfnapped and put behind bars in a zoo. Then there’re those house-building pigs and their nuisance neighbour who wanted to puff their properties down, and indeed, thanks to Aesop, the attention-seeking little boy who couldn’t help himself and kept crying ‘wolf!’ until one day there really was a wolf and…well…we all know what happened then, plus any number of other wolfie-related stories, sayings and poems littered through history and literature. ‘Holding the wolf by the ears’ is a great metaphor for things being a bit tricky, and keeping ‘the wolf from the door’ has a delicious medieval ring to it, sounding much better than ‘too much month left at the end of the pay packet’. The most up to date wolf story I found this week (although it may well be old news by the time you’re reading it) is about the young wolf who got himself stuck in a freezing river but thankfully was rescued. Except the rescuers didn’t know what they were rescuing – imagine being in a car with a cold and grumpy wolf across your lap, taking the scenic route to the vet. Dodgy. But it is a heartwarming story, so here it is, courtesy of the BBC.

The wonderful photo above is by Yannick Menard, freely published on Unsplash. Thank you Mr Menard
@yannickmenard

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-47330924

And now a poem by Richard Edwards
taken from
The Thing That Mattered Most: Scottish Poems for Children
edited by Julie Johnstone (SPL/B&W, 2006)

A Wolf In The Park

Is there a wolf,
A wolf in the park,
A wolf who wakes when the night gets dark?
Is there a wolf in the park?

Is there a wolf,
A wolf who creeps
From his hidden den while the city sleeps?
Is there a wolf in the park?

Is there a wolf,
Whose nightly track
Circles the park fence, zigzags back?
Is there a wolf in the park?

Is there a wolf,
Who pads his way
Between the tables of the closed café,
Is there a wolf in the park?

Is there a wolf,
A wolf whose bite
Left those feathers by the pond last night,
Is there a wolf in the park?

Is there a wolf?
No one knows,
But I’ve heard a howl when the full moon glows…
Is there a wolf in the park?