Characters – Page 3 – Nastasya Parker

In the End

This Week’s Bit of String: An abandoned bread roll

There’s a five-storey office building separated from a Cotswold canal by a busy roundabout. It used to be a prominent building society office, and before that was the site of a massive brewery. Now it belongs to the company I work for.

In a bottom drawer of a black file cabinet on the ground floor you will find, as far as I know, a bread roll. It was purchased from a local bakery on the 17th of March. It is probably rigid now. If you pick it up it may crumble completely.

*This year has reminded us you never know the last time you’ll see someone or someplace.*

The cabinet was mine, of course, and I intended to eat the roll on Friday March 20th, but I got coronavirus so had to isolate, and during that time national restrictions began. I’ve worked from home since. My desk might be used by someone else, a new employee I’ve never met, who perhaps has opened my bottom drawer, thrown out the roll, and shifted my cheesy worksheets from mandated meetings (What Colour is Your Personality?), my Christmas decorations and fruit tea. If our roles were reversed, I’d feel like an archeologist sifting through artefacts left by a disaster and mass exodus. Scratching the surface.

The last line of a book is the final clue to uncovering its secrets, to the lives of its characters. We know nothing really ends—next year I might have to resume the long commuting days, might throw out that roll myself. In decades my office building might be something different again. For our purposes though, we have to conclude the plot. We get to decide where to end the stories we write. How do we do this well?

The Grand Finale

As writers we hear a lot about how to start a piece. We peruse lists of classic book openers, and edit our first pages no fewer than 300 times. Endings don’t get the same sort of attention though. There’s a consensus regarding short story anthologies, I’m told, that the strongest pieces need to go at the beginning and you just tack the weaker ones at the end.

*Which end of this chambered nautilus is the finish?*

I was surprised to find this out, because surely leaving a good final impression is nearly as essential as hooking readers in? I understand it’s more intellectually stimulating to leave endings a bit vague and open. However, I like some evidence toward a resolution, and I particularly enjoy works that ensure the relevant characters get cameos, however enigmatic, in the last bit (ahem, Anna Karenina).

In other words, to put this into a 90s classic as I am wont to do (usually in secret, but I’m feeling generous today), “What about your ends? Will they stand their ground, will they let you down aga-ain?” (Thanks, TLC.)

There are a few top closing line lists compiled on the Web, and I agree with them more or less. I don’t necessarily agree with Penguin Books that all last lines should “compel you to wonder what’s next.” If every book ended ambiguously, I’d find that tiresome. An ending that is definitively sad or happy can be memorable too.

Personal Favourites, aka Here Be Spoilers

That said, one of my very favourite final lines is from Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” There’s a gentle finality to it; a kind, if tongue-in-cheek, release for a doomed relationship.

It also gives us permission to daydream while accepting what the reality is, and in fact a lot of endings fall into that category. In Atonement, Ian McEwan pulls a last minute swap on the reader, telling us: “You know that prettier alternative we were telling you about? Never happened.” Home Fires by Kamila Shamsie blazingly illuminates a tragedy but in her last line gives us one searing instant to imagine something happier. Jonathan Safran Foer in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close closes with a rewind, permitting us to linger on what’s been lost.

Many books end with the possibility of a new beginning, not a guarantee but a foundation laid. We know the characters won’t have an easy go of it, but we’re given sufficient confidence in them. I can generally count on Sarah Waters for this, as in The Paying Guests and Fingersmith, and Michael Chabon too. Madeleine Miller’s Circe and George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo are other examples of endings that tease great things to come.

When Will You Make an End?

I’m not always good at endings. The first story I ever wrote went unfinished, because at the age of 4 I couldn’t resolve the little girl’s predicament of being chased by a wolf. I still wouldn’t know how to sort that one out.

*Letting the sun go down on some promising growth*

With short stories, I tend to conclude them at the point where I don’t want to know what happens next. Those characters are for that moment only. With novels, I’ll revisit the people in my head, imagining reunions and revelations that weren’t necessary to the plot but are fun to think of nonetheless. It can help to come back to an image, a detail, in the final sentence or paragraph, something meaningful but light. Lipstick, or crayons, or maybe a bread roll.

At the moment I’m rewriting the ending of my novel The Gospel of Eve. I’m happy with a lot of the tying up I did, however loose some of it is (we have to keep with the trends and leave enough left unsaid), but the mood needs a little lift—tough job when it ends foreshadowing a world-destroying flood. But there are ways, as Hemingway indicated, to pretty things up a little.

After all, some of our key aims as writers are to portray harsh truths, to know how to speak beautifully of them, and to know when not to try dressing them up.

What are some of your favourite endings and last lines?

Keeping Warm

This Week’s Bit of String: Fruit cocktail upstairs

When I was growing up my family rented part of a large, New England lakeside farmhouse. It wasn’t the most meticulously renovated building, and sometimes the winter stole in, down the stone chimney (which bats were also known to use as a passage) and between the log walls. Some mornings were so cold my mother wouldn’t let us come downstairs.

Instead, she’d carry up a little wooden table with peeling paint, and our metal-mesh chairs, and some bowls of tinned fruit or yoghurt. We’d have breakfast like a doll’s tea party in the bedroom, clustered round the small table. We loved it.

*Old England snow doesn’t compare to the New England* *stuff, but it still feels a bit exciting.*

For our mom, it was probably stressful, worrying about our health and having to rearrange things when she had 3 preschool kids with another on the way. But we just enjoyed the thrill of it, while she took care of everything.

Some of my favourite childhood memories involved keeping warm. Car rides wrapped in afghans crocheted by great grandmothers and aunts; coming in from snowball fights to find Dad making pizza with his records blaring. To appreciate these, we had to be cold first. But warming up after is well worth it.

Warm-Up Writing

Warmth is the quality I most cherish in a book, film, or TV series. Some people might say chemistry but that’s a little volatile, and can be cold, manufactured. I’m not just referring to cosiness and security either. I like a crackle beneath the surface. Maybe it’s just a few embers which a piece occasionally circles back to, or steady driving heat.

A warm story doesn’t require the complete absence of cold. Far from it—without hostility or loneliness, how would we appreciate the pockets of warmth?

The heat source is usually a relationship, though not always a romantic or conventional one. It might be acceptance of a friend’s or sibling’s quirks, or devotion to a particular place (love of home is still a form of relationship), or a driving faith in an idea, even if misguided.

Often, we get a combination of these. Of Mice and Men, for example, is about friendship, tolerance for disability and racial differences, and also the unabashed pursuit of pet rabbits. My favourite writers: Dickens, Chabon, Atkinson, AM Homes, John Irving—I love them for the vast, diverse casts of characters they use but it’s not as if they’re just ticking identity boxes. They’re portraying authentic idiosyncrasies, and other people’s attractions to them. Same with TV shows, I love the recent shift toward ensemble casts, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Brooklyn 99, because it feels appreciative and supportive.

Turning Up the Heat

I’m not reputed for the cheeriest of writings. My two most successful short stories are about a brutal invasion, and a grieving mum. But I think part of what commended those stories to judges and readers was maintaining a dash of warmth. How can we make sure it’s included?

Including all reality: Even during the most terrible events, small good things will still happen. Sunrises, embraces, a cup of tea. It’s not necessary to only show the bad.

Detail work: Quick lines about a character’s manner or appearance can endear them to us. Dickens and Disney understand this; giving even villains catchphrases or sidekicks. It makes us not hate to see them, and maybe even root for them.

Honesty: Fair presentation of our characters’ faults mean they can be more fully embraced, by other characters and by readers. Bonds that have been tested can come out stronger, so we needn’t gloss things over. My latest novel is about Eve, and while she and Adam had seen each other fail spectacularly, this made them rather appreciate each other’s support at new levels.

Relatability: If we recognise something in a story, even in the midst of unpleasantness, we warm to it. And as writers, adding familiarity makes us feel a situation more deeply, and that comes through. For example, in “The Apocalypse Alphabet,” along with the stress of rationing and an approaching invasion, I included images resonant from childhood and parenthood: a little boy with his nightshirt flapping around his knees, battling with wooden spoon weapons.

Imagination: While we like glimmers of familiarity in our reading, what really entices us is that those relatable details clue us in to something bigger. We want to feel part of a grander adventure, so there’s no need to hold back from introducing the weird or wild. Contrast is key. There’s a reason I remember the Upstairs Breakfasts rather than any other picnic at our little wooden table—they were unexpected, urgent, exciting.

Dialogue: Spoken exchanges are some of the clearest ways to communicate warmth, not just because someone’s saying something, but because someone’s listening as well. I miss overhearing dialogue, since my life is so home-based now. Even my walks have to come very early, before anyone is about. Last week I “treated myself” to a lunchtime walk and took my earbuds out while I strolled up the High Street. A scruffy bearded man in pyjama bottoms and worn red trainers boasted to a dog-walking lady with a More Beer hoodie about his wife’s special mince pies. A couple of men with foreign accents talked earnestly outside a closed-down pub about how much one man loved his van. “Dis car is my workhorse, you know?” Nothing intriguing or witty, but it warmed me to know that people are still interacting kindly with each other, right there on the street.

What are some of your favourite sources of warmth in the literary world?

Never Empty

This Week’s Bit of String: The talking shadow

“In Mario,” My eight-year-old used his customary conversation starter, “sometimes there’s a little guy who follows you around and tells you stuff.”

I paused while fixing dinner. “I’ve got one of those, too.”

“What? No, not like that.” He grinned though. He knew I meant him. With strict limitations on time spent actually playing Mario, he spent a good deal of time talking to me about it, and about other things. Every walk, every errand, every chore and the many, various games and endeavours we engaged in happened to the soundtrack of him recounting playground exploits, giving his musical opinions, or providing play-by-play narrative of races.

I don’t recall the name of this Mario character, but I remember my son’s feet on the grey, slate-style kitchen floor as he told me about The Little Guy Who Follows You Around and Tells You Stuff. My son has very long, thin feet to match his long, thin body, and they taper into pointy heels so I’ve always called them “triangle rabbit’s feet.”

Finding Out Stuff

Maybe this particular exchange stayed with me for over a decade not just because of its representation of our relationship but because it echoed a certain idea of a muse. We have this conception when we start out as writers that inspiration is a separate entity leading us, drawing our attention to useful material. Even if we don’t consciously admit to that expectation, I think it’s there.

The word Muse, though, originates from an ancient word for “to think.” As writers, we have to be vigilant for ideas, and spend the time and mental energy refining them into art. There’s no constant chaperone or information source.

Same with parenting. There’s not a single point where your kid decides whether to keep talking to you. There are many little moments which will create a lasting impression. I’d hate for my son to think I didn’t like him telling me stuff, so I took interest, though I couldn’t take in every single thing. I became the Little Mum Who Checks in Regularly and Listens to Stuff. It worked pretty well.

Claim Versus Connection

My sister told me, after a brief stop at home in my freshman year at college, that my mother cried as she put my cup away. This seemed silly at the time. I’d lived away that whole summer for my job, before leaving for university. Why make a fuss now? With the excessive knowledge of a 17-year-old, I thought my mother was making an unjust claim over me. I didn’t belong to her anymore.

Now I’ve just taken my son to university. I won’t have him telling me stuff, although hopefully regular texts will continue. Beyond pandemics, lockdowns, economic depressions, and food shortages (you know, what everyone stresses about now), I’m not too worried about him. He is eager to start his primary teaching course, and excited about the different people he’ll meet.

He’s shown perseverance and talent to get where he is. I’ve never allowed myself to say I’m proud of him because even if I’ve guided and supported, he’s made his own choices and committed to growth. I can’t claim credit for his achievements.

I miss him so much, though. Him following me around telling me stuff was a privilege I enjoyed for all of my adult life, and I can see now that my mother, the most selfless person on earth, wasn’t crying over a lost claim but because from an overstretched connection.

Babies and Books

I’ve written before about how Books Aren’t Babies. We should boldly send them into the world, because submitting our writing is less scary than relinquishing our children. Less sad, too. But our creative endeavours and our progeny both come down to connection rather than ownership.

Have we made space and time for our writing, have we listened to its essence and then, ultimately, let it unfold as needed? Even when we’re lucky enough to get pieces published, as I was in two recent online literary magazines (this Kafka parody and this personal essay), we’ll always look at our creation with agonised love, wondering, “Did I do enough?”

Nothing can be enough for something we can’t get enough of. I had 6 months working from home with my 18-year-old also locked down. I’m so glad that for one of the first times in his life, we got to visit with each other for three meals per day. Didn’t make it easier to drive away from that uni without him, though. I watched the houses go by and felt ragingly envious of all their inhabitants now in closer proximity to my favourite young human than I am.

I believe there’s only full-time parenting or writing, no other way truly exists. Both are consuming. Parents spending all day with their kids show incredible perseverance. For those of us with extra jobs, our hearts also are with our kids and our minds keep pivoting there as well. Frequent interruptions, every spare minute devoted to family-centred errands and admin work, every reminder of someone else’s children aching the chest. Just as we scout constantly for writing-related inspiration and lessons while at the workplace, we’re also tuned in to anything that will deepen our connection with our children.

The perk of this exhausting triple life? Souls this full of love are never empty. I’ve tried to rest my brain from writing sometimes, but ideas push through. I need to write just as I need to know my son is okay, and fulfilling his goals.

On the eve of his departure, surrounded by full bags and boxes, my son asked me, “Are you happy with all we got done today?” I said I was. We’d worked hard. Only his computer and gadgets—Mario games, for example—to pack the following day.

“Then that’s good enough for me,” he said. Another sweet little exchange marking sharp-heeled prints over my full heart.

Choosing a Bubble

This Week’s Piece of String: Adolescents in a Hospital Ward, 1993

What’s the most diverse group of people you’ve ever been part of? Not just racially or politically, but in terms of experience and beliefs. For me it was hospitalisation when I was 12, in a unit later shut down after a surprise inspection. It wasn’t a nice place, but I quickly learned to like the people I was with.

We were aged 12 to 17, representing all colours, with heritage from Puerto Rico, Greece, and Jamaica. There were teens left there by the state for over a year. Runaways brought in from the street, kids stopping off on their way to longer detention, and private school students whose rich parents didn’t know how to handle them.

One boy, a few months younger than I was, had stolen a gun from Walmart. One girl’s entire family were in detox. There was a virulently anti-racist boy who suffered from muscular dystrophy, a junior KKK member, and a powerful African-American girl who didn’t hesitate to enlighten him. My roommate loved vinegar, Aerosmith, and her little foster brother who had spina bifida.

*This puzzle fit together especially well thanks to its oddly shaped pieces…Must get my cheesiest metaphors out of the way before actually writing the next book.*

We kept count of the times we heard The Bodyguard soundtrack on the radio (“Run to You:” 9 times in 2 weeks), and lived for the pizza bagels we were given on Friday nights. We were united against tyrannical psychiatrists and shared affection for the handful of kindlier workers. We jostled for shaving slots, during the one daily hour when we could access “sharps.” Through major personal crises, we cared for each other, and accepted our quirks.

In the midst of a new global crisis, as the government allows us to form “bubbles” of safety, I fear this will result in further entrenching us in homogenous opinions. Every book or TV series I love (and that seem to particularly resonate with readers and audiences) has a motley, diverse cast who beat the odds to save the day. And that’s how my next writing project will be, even if real life isn’t turning out that way.

Weirdos Assemble!

From The Baby-Sitters Club to last year’s joint Booker Prize winner Girl, Woman, Other, from Star Trek to The Good Place, our hallmarks of fiction showcase diversity. There’s always room to include more ethnicities and sexualities, but it’s also important to celebrate different personalities.

I love how Brooklyn 99 features not just multiple people of colour, but also two characters who are particularly emotionally guarded. Guardians of the Galaxy could be a descendant of Catch-22, in which a group of people with various bizarre passions and tendencies are thrown together to fight a common enemy. Isn’t every iconic friendship a pairing of opposites, an appreciation of certain foibles the rest of the world has rejected?

Scout, Jem, Dill and Boo in To Kill a Mockingbird. The Scoobies in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Huckleberry Finn and his travel buddy Jim, the alliances Oskar builds in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Owen Meany and… you know, his best mate who tells his story.

You’ve probably got some favourite examples, too. As the pandemic shrinks our spheres of existence, makes every day similar to the next, and seems to embitter divisions, contemplating variance is refreshing. Have you found that?

Even now that activities are opening up, I still feel trapped in a waiting game. Wondering when I can see all my family in America. Waiting for results from competitions I’ve entered stories in, and still over a month from A-Levels Results Day, when our son finds out his grades and can then know which university he’s able to go to. In the COVID era, this also means that until his results come, we won’t know whether he’ll be able to visit home during university termtime or whether he’ll have to stay there in an allotted “bubble” of people on his course. So after emigrating from my whole family, I might now have to say goodbye to my child, my best buddy, for months on end… Yes, it’s high time to retreat into fiction and plan the next writing project.

World-Building

Starting a new novel is like designing your own plague-bubble. You’re not considering who to allow in the club, but who’s needed for the mission. I’m preparing to bring characters on board, I’m designing a set for them, and I’m coming up with plot points that ideally I’d like them to hit, but whatever, I trust their judgement.

*Inspired partly by a hike past this unfinished mansion, which seemed to have a couple of young squatters…*

It’s going to be somewhat apocalyptic; it’s more cathartic to imagine a better way through them than to imagine they don’t exist. Here’s my wishlist, because as writers we get to Write the Book We Want to See in the World:

A gothic-style setting, probably an abandoned manor house
A hint of the supernatural, because my last novel was about Eve and once you get to incorporate dragons and talking animals, there’s no going back.
Six main characters thrown together surprisingly, from very different walks of life
- The enigmatic older caretakers of the estate
- A spoiled but charming heir
- His girlfriend, an immigrant who’s sacrificed parts of herself to assimilate
- A recovering alcoholic who’d been homeless for months
- A runaway nurse who just can’t take the front lines anymore
Certain personality traits to share around:
- Someone obsessed with jigsaw puzzles, because that is one of my favourite Lockdown activities and why not use it?
- Someone tuned in to religious iconography and symbols, you know, to heighten the drama
- An element of uncertainty as to who’s REALLY in charge here. Which ones are the manipulators, which are the manipulated? Could they possibly, in some way, all be equally obligated to and fearful of each other? Does that mean they all need each other equally?
Art or music or poetry or exotic plants… the estate is bound to have some unique collections which could become significant. I’ll research obscure artefacts and see what I like.

What kind of reading and writing makes you feel better about the world? May your bubbles be safe but exciting, your books and your life studded with colourful characters.

Finding the Happy Ending

This Week’s Bit of String: Half a Donut

I used to work in a nursing home. One day we walked into the staffroom for a quick morning break and found a box of donuts on the table. “It’s Carers Appreciation Day!” said a note taped to it. “Feel free to cut yourself half a donut as a reward for your hard work.”

We were underwhelmed. The large, privately-owned home was always trying to save costs, cutting down on PPE and hiring only minimal staff. They saw no problem with providing just two carers to wash, toilet, dress, and feed eighteen residents at a time. We often had to leapfrog toilets: hoist one resident out of bed, leave them half-dressed alone on the commode with their call-button, run to the next room, repeat, return to the first resident leaving the second alone… The owner flitted about in his personal helicopter while we didn’t have the luxury of shutting ourself in one room with one person to properly clean and dress them.

But we got half a donut, once a year.

This was ten years ago. As we clap for frontline workers, I’m mindful of how difficult their jobs were before COVID-19 appeared. We need to make more noise than just applause to ensure conditions for some of our most valiant workers and their vulnerable clients improve.

Assessing the Wreckage

I worked in the nursing home after a few months’ employment at the Lidl supermarket chain, and before being a teaching assistant. All these are now frontline jobs, and they were overloaded already. Before, no one noticed. People don’t like to dwell on what becomes of the elderly once they’re tucked away in a “home,” and people don’t want to consider how some shops manage to sell a pack of chicken for three quid. It’s mainly working classes and immigrants in those roles, so who cares? Now, we have to think about it, because when other people aren’t looked after, they can unwittingly pass illness to our loved ones or ourselves.

*Rainbows, rainbows everywhere, nor any pot of gold*

These are the kinds of jobs my characters have, their energy replaced by a frenzied faith in their labour. In my novel The Wrong Ten Seconds, which I’ve been reading out on YouTube, the action starts straight away. Frustration overcomes supermarket worker Charlie, causing him to do something a bit reckless.

This starts the plot, but the conditions provoking it already existed. A crisis isn’t isolated. It’s a culmination, and sometimes a necessary catalyst to put things right. We’ve got to boldly scrutinise this disease not just to stop the pandemic, but to learn about neglected parts of society. Have we been so busy ensuring we can afford lots of holidays and home improvements, we’ve created nations too cripplingly basic to cope with an emergency?

Be Alert

Apparently this is the British government’s new mantra. It’s not entirely clear, but I guess they want us to listen for people coughing, mind our own temperatures, and possibly notify the authorities of any neighbours who allow a loved one inside their house. (Don’t worry if the house is For Sale, though, because then it’s fine to have people poking around!)

We should really be alert for governments downplaying the suffering of key workers and vulnerable groups.

*“To Be Normal is Not a Healthy Aspiration” from an exhibit at the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol 2019*

Watch for wordplay: Boris Johnson said there won’t be a return to austerity following this economic downturn. But austerity is just a word. If pay is frozen for the public sector—including healthcare workers who have worked so hard—and budgets are slashed even further for counties and schools, that’s the same thing. Force him to pull the money from somewhere else. Back taxes, maybe? Has everyone forgotten the Panama Papers? (In America, watch out for healthcare premiums going way up next year, and states having to cut budgets dramatically.)
Make a list, check it twice: Who can you think of that might be disproportionately affected by this crisis? I made a hit list before we went into lockdown of who would need checking up on. Keep Googling for what’s going on for the homeless, for refugee camps, for Native American tribes. Check that someone’s reporting on it, share widely.
Vote. For the love of this planet and every being on it, especially with our American elections coming up. There are people who will make this hard for you. Start planning now; assume there will still be a rampant virus and get your hands on a mail-in ballot. For downballot positions where there may be progressive candidates available, vote for people who will raise minimum wage, ensure paid sick leave, and genuinely fight for affordable healthcare availability.
Pester. Where the elections have already happened, or where a party’s establishment has put forth a compromise candidate who’s simply promoting a return to normal, vote for the least of any evils and then make noise. Call, Tweet, agitate. Remind the world and especially politicians and business owners that “normal” was just an annual half-donut for a lot of people!

Happily Ever After

As I promised when I started reading The Wrong Ten Seconds to viewers, it will have a happy ending. It’s a realistic contemporary book, so the tough lives the characters already had aren’t going to magically change. But the crises in the book force them to face problems more honestly and with new, unexpected alliances.

That’s the best we can hope for. In real life, nothing just ends. Any awareness we manage to raise, we have to ensure it remains in focus. So let’s delve into the conditions that made this virus so dangerous when it came along, and let’s come together—from two metres apart of course—to put them right.

Where the People Are

This Week’s Bit of String: Three kids and a saw

Visiting my parents’ New Hampshire town several summers ago, my husband and I wandered down the pre-re-vitalised Main Street. In front of a once fine, colonial-style house now leaning and peeling, a little boy stood barefoot on the drive, twirling a rusted coping saw. Two small girls watched from the weedy front lawn, their expressions grave.

A scrawny mum in a nightdress shouted at them to get inside and watch TV. My husband and I exchanged looks. Were these the Small Town Values politicians always banged on about?

Trees at dawn, towering over traffic lights — The Leafy Suburbs.

What bothers me about the Small Town Values spiel isn’t that it writes off the city as immoral; morality is irrelevant. (How dull would our writing be if everyone were moral?) It’s that it abets the impression that small towns are idyllic places where nothing bad ever happens. It minimises the challenges faced by those living there.

It’s the same on this side of the ocean. I worked in one of the biggest secondary schools in a large county, but our school was populous mainly because it drew on twenty-something ‘feeder’ primary schools, some from very small towns. Government inspectors seemed dismissive of our students’ issues because we were based in ‘the leafy suburbs.’

However, our area is also classed as one of ‘rural deprivation,’ with an exceptionally high incidence of substance abuse and mental disabilities. These places are still riddled with real people, living hard stories.

Finding the Ideas

In my writing, I like setting longer projects in small towns, or at least not very big cities. Yes, my life experience has been gained there, but also it’s easier to tie threads together. You get added layers when your characters already know each other, or at least pass each other by with some regularity.

Blackboard outside pub reading: Vacancy, Customers Required... — Also the Leafy Suburbs.

For shorter projects, though, the city is magic. Every person is a puzzle, and the way they brush by creates a range of potential interaction. It’s easy to find surprising juxtapositions: A mobile lingerie fitting shop setting up next to some well-jacketed, buttoned-up Jehovah’s witnesses and their pamphlets. A vegan Indian food stall next to one selling leather goods. Everyone is a stranger and capable of surprise; a twist here can easily be summed up in a sentence or a symbol.

I’m currently reading Flaneuse, Lauren Elkin’s tribute to women who don’t just explore the city, but absorb it. I picked this book up inspired by a recent Women Writers Network Twitter chat (see other great recommendations here) about women writing the city. Our reasons for celebrating this are best summed up by Sarah Waters in The Paying Guests. “She loved these walks through London. She seemed, as she walked, to become porous, to soak in detail after detail; or else, like a battery, to become charged. Yes, that was it, she thought as she turned a corner: it wasn’t a liquid creeping, it was a tingle, something electric, something produced as if by the friction of her shoes against the streets. She was at her truest, it seemed to her, in these tingling moments–these moments when, paradoxically, she was at her most anonymous.”

It’s possible that the more our selves diminish, the more our surroundings gain stature, free to sow new ideas.

With their relentless array of sights and sounds, urban areas are perfect for very short, or “flash” fiction. A flash piece is a kernel of story, minute and representative of possibility. The best ones are so tightly packed, you can’t unfurl them without damage. All you can do is peer at the coiled layers from the outside, maybe roll it on your tongue to taste the bitter or the sweet, never daring to crunch.

Bristol Flash Walk

I recently had a piece featured in Bristol’s Flash Walk, an event with flash fiction stories read at different points between the Harbour and Bedminster. All provided fascinating, quick glances into city encounters—past, actual, or merely longed-for. We strained over traffic and alarms and rivers and inquisitive children to hear each story, and this added to the excitement.

Bristol Harbour reading — Actor Christopher Ryan reads “The Prodigal” in the iconic Bristol Harbour, with Colston Tower in the background.

My contribution hovered dangerously near the maximum word count of 400 and was called “The Prodigal,” about the famous slave trader/ Bristol benefactor Colston. The opening line launches right in: “When Edward Colston revisited the city of his birth some three hundred and eighty years later, he saw his name etched blood-red across the sky.”

After the reading, which met with great laughter and applause at the right places, my husband asked me, “So where did Colston appear from? The afterlife?”

“Oh, I don’t know. You don’t have to, with flash fiction.” I could be totally wrong about this. But to me, that’s what suits flash fiction to city writing. You don’t have to look too deeply because something else comes along. I don’t know if I could finish a long project based in a city; I’d become distracted, I’d sink beneath the weight of all the what-ifs.

Escape to the Country

I tend to leave a city with a handful of kernels as well as some possible story-seeds. If I transplant a person or scenario from a more populous area to a smaller town or to a rural spot, it has room to grow. I can also gain a little control over other affecting factors and narrow down plot ideas.

Tail to tail, the swans fortify their nest. — “No luck hatching them swans, then?”

When I polled Twitter, more than half respondents (58%) said countryside wanders were better than city ones for gathering ideas. I love the countryside, but I often need an idea already germinating in my mind for these hikes to be fruitful in terms of story development.

I just can’t invent things without people to base them on. Though it’s lovely walking with no one else around, I find myself assigning human psychology to my surroundings anyway. The other day on a canal walk, I wondered if the young swan families at different points along the journey receive news of each other. Does Mrs. Stratford Park Swan know she’s the last one waiting for her eggs to hatch? Do Mr. and Mrs. Dudbridge Swan know the Eastington cygnets are only just learning to dive, and that the group has dwindled to 4? And do any of them know the whereabouts of the missing Ebley Swans? I imagined cunning mallards passing these tidbits on. Possibly trading gossip for a prime beakful of algae.

I don’t know if this shows a lack of imagination in me, or a surplus of projection. But this is how I tend to work: tugging bits of string out from the city and puttering with them in as close to the wilderness as I can find. Or, in my daily smaller-town life, suddenly realising that the customer or bus passenger I keep seeing is a massive multicoloured spool of thread just waiting for my mind to get tangled in.

Writing in the Wild

This Week’s Bit of String: Faux cave paintings and hilltop views

“So what sorts of things do you write?”

Do you dread this question like I do? I’ve learned to summarise individual novels I’m writing, to develop extra-short hooks and elevator pitches. But describing my entire work, from plays to novels to flash fiction, from speculative fiction to mythology-based to contemporary settings—that’s hard.

I find myself saying, “Oh, I sort of focus on people, family relationships… life, really.”

Paintings and pages and sketches laid out over the tables at the Arts Centre — All our work on display at the Arts Centre

Last Friday I joined an Art-Making Walk around the nearby town of Wotton-Under-Edge, kindly invited by the sculptor Martin Clarke, co-chair of Under the Edge Arts. Three miles in the hills, 6 stops along the way. At each stop, participants got fifteen minutes to create a piece of art.

The walkers were primarily artists, rendering scenes in pencil or paint, a couple venturing into brief verse. The first person I met was local artist Nicky Hill, who’s come out with her own illustrated children’s book boasting loads of vibrant animal characters. Check out her page to see her wonderful paintings.

For this event, I didn’t trust my brain to kick into gear six separate times inventing new scenarios for each location. So I’d invented a character, devised some backstory, and brought her along with me. It would be easier, surely, to make each stop an episode in her story.

Sign commemorating the trees on Wotton Hill. — Site 1: Wotton Hill

Our first location was a windy hill crowned by a fenced cluster of trees—the originals were planted to commemorate Waterloo. We all found those first fifteen minutes too quick. For me, I barely got my characters started. But the limitations forced us to be efficient.

En route to the next stop, an older lady with a felt flower on her hat posed The Question to me. I embellished my standard answer with, “Some of my stories are more far-fetched than others.”

Charcoal sketches of sun and wild animals on the rock face — Quarry art: Site 2

“Well, people are quite far-fetched,” she observed. “So of course their stories will be.”

Clearly I was in the right sort of crowd.

The second stop was a quarry, one of the only sites I’d seen before. Quarry visitors, probably youths, had used charred sticks to decorate the rock face, not just with the usual pentagrams and melodramatic song lyrics, but also with cave painting-style art. I pictured one loner, maybe a somewhat dorky teen separating herself from the pack to create them. That previously gained image was instrumental in forming my character ahead of time.

Wild garlic lining the woodland path — Trekking to Site 3.

We hiked through the woods, surrounded by wild garlic blooms like fallen stars, to our third site. That’s where the fifteen-minute stops, surprisingly, started to get too long. I would jot down the bare bones of my character’s encounter or revelation for that setting, and have a few minutes left, so I’d keep waffling, wishing instead it was enough time to properly edit what I’d done.

The third stop was also where I met Edna. She was perhaps the eldest of our group, with the most difficulty walking—which only proved she was the most determined. She was very self-critical, but I liked her painting of the forest trees; their straight dark trunks criss-crossed with dashes of green leaves.

Materials arranged for work during our session in the clearing — Site 3: Coneygres

“I like how you captured the haphazardness of it,” I said.

She was pleased. “It’s encouraging when someone recognises what I’m trying to do. And it is haphazard, the springtime, isn’t it? That’s a good word. I think it’s absolutely delicious, all these greens.”

Delicious. I thought she’d hit on rather a good word, too. We journeyed to a new hillside lookout for our fourth stop, above a slope still bearing the terraces where monks tended vineyards centuries ago. Now, velvety-looking black cows and calves amble there.

Terraced hillsides — Site 4: Coombe Hill

One group member was primarily a photographer. I asked her how she got on at this stop. “Well,” she replied, “We’ve already done hilltop views, so I decided to take pictures of snails on cowpats, since it’s not something we usually think of.”

Makes sense to me.

Old stone house with rows of hedge garden — Site 5: Coombe House

Our fifth stop was a fine stone home with gardens in ‘shelves,’ as its artist owner described it. I sat with Edna and she asked, “What’s your story about? Is it sad?”

“It’s got sad bits, but it’s not all sad. It’s about life, you know?”

“Yeah.” The old woman nodded wisely. “It’s shit, isn’t it?”

I thought I must have misheard, but she clarified. “I mean, even if you’re filthy rich, I reckon life is a bit shit.”

There’s an excuse for “dark” writing, if anyone needs one.

Our final stop brought us to a picnicking area with neighbouring ponies sulky for attention. My character’s journey ended with the walk. I’d thought of a pivotal moment for each stop, taking my protagonist from preschool, to teen years (at the Quarry, of course), to university, engagement, the failing health of a parent, and then motherhood. The story might not be worth polishing, but it did make a complete first draft with a few salvageable parts.

Display of paintings and pages — Final installment of today’s story

I’d like to try the same sort of thing with maybe a better backstory or character; visiting select locations to represent different points in the plot. It’s a useful device, and I recommend it.

The writing, in the end, was rather like how we’d described people and spring and life throughout the day: sometimes far-fetched, sometimes haphazard and sad, and sometimes, yes, a bit shit. It’s not just me, is it?

Animals are Characters, Too

This Week’s Bit of String: Crying over cats

‘Miss?’ the Year Eleven boy asked me, tossing his carefully sleeked hair without looking up from the doodled serpents invading his Science BTEC exercise book. ‘Do you ever start randomly crying while you’re petting your cat, because you wish so much they could talk to you?’

I don’t think it’s ever brought me to tears, even when I was sixteen myself, but I definitely used to look in pet cats’ eyes and sense much present in them that we, their humans, missed.

The boy’s question brought to mind a passage from Muriel Barberry’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Renee refers to her ‘appreciation’ for her tenants’ cocker spaniel as: ‘that state of grace attained when one’s feelings are immediately accessible another creatures.’

Guinea pig terminally dissatisfied by food dish. — ‘Here goes nothing.’

We now have only guinea pigs as pets, but their feelings are pretty darn accessible. They’re an important if timid part of our family, an affectionate interest uniting us as our son gets older. And if anyone doubts that animals are sentient, I defy them to look at a guinea pig, any guinea pig, and not be struck by the chronic consternation on their faces. It’s as if they’re constantly in dire need of food but always expecting to be disappointed.

Since animals cause us to reflect on what makes us alive, what makes us sentient (to use a rather unattractive, clinical-sounding word), and they bring us joy and unity—isn’t it right they should feature in literature?

Animal Voices

It’s easy to find animals in the fantasy genre. The dragons of Pern, the owls and thestrals of Hogwarts, the daemons of Lyra’s Oxford, the Noisy animals of New World in Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking series (oh, Manchee!)

So too they should be present in mainstream literature, sincewhen we write we attempt to reflect and learn from real life. Certainly animals have served as set pieces and symbols in literature since Homer told of Circe’s pigs and Polyphemus’ sheep. But in using them only as such, do we devalue their contributions to our lives?

Pictures in Warner Bros Leavesden studios paying tribute to animal actors in the Harry Potter series — Unsung heroes of the Harry Potter films.

There’s the pigeon offering occasional commentary in Pigeon English, and the freed parrot in Michael Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue. The parrot gets a chapter of his own: one long, continuous sentence. His thoughts fly free as he leaves the home he knew for decades, after his owner’s death. It’s nice to get these extra, imagined perspectives, but by making animal characters simply witnesses to the humans’ folly, they remain a little flat.

A great example of using animals realistically yet appreciatively is Marina Lewycka’s Two Caravans. Her novel about immigrants in the UK encompasses many points of view, including a dog. Different characters rate each other based on their respective reactions to Dog, and he leaps in to save the day at the end.

The novel also features scenes in a chicken-packing factory, which convinced me to buy only free-range products ever after. Her depiction linked callous attitudes about animals to abuse and exploitation of migrant workers. It should hardly have been surprising, but it had a somewhat revelatory effect on me.

Animal Roles

Cat posing in line with flowerpots. — Catmouflage: They see all and know all.

Although these authors have gone to great imaginary lengths to use animals as characters and assign voices to them, there are other ways to integrate our furry (or feathery or scaly) friends. Why is it so rare to encounter human characters who own pets? Allusions to a pet can serve as useful shortcuts establishing character. Are they a dog person, a cat person, a horse person, maybe something more unusual like a snake person?

In my novel The Wrong Ten Seconds, treatment of a dog catalyses the action. Pets are a central part of characters’ lives. Introducing one of the protagonists, Lydia, I described her car:

‘The cluttered Fiesta—Mabel—smelled of takeaway curry and chips, cat litter bought in bulk, and hand sanitiser.’

Beyond representing personality traits of their owners, including pets in stories gives humans opportunity for insight. Lydia is self-aware enough to know that she needs her cat, Slim Shady, more than he needs her. She recognises his purr doesn’t always convey happiness, but sometimes cloaks fear. The purr indicates to her:

‘You only get away with this because I in my benevolence allow it.’

Animals at the Beginning

In my current novel, about Eve and the (presumed) first family of humans, animals have an even bigger role. As much as Eve and Adam’s lives changed on their expulsion from Eden, think what it meant for the animals! Through no fault of their own, they had to leave paradise as well, and were thence forward seen as fair game. Literally.

Surely humans didn’t go straight from discovering wildlife wonders in Eden, to wearing animal hides and eating meat outside its walls. The sudden need to provide for themselves would change things, but it would not be a comfortable adjustment. Tension grows between Eve and Adam when he starts out eating fish:

‘What’s next, killing cows? Lions, lambs? You could roast one of the angels.’
‘Don’t speak to me like that, woman! I’m not the one who ever sought something I wasn’t supposed to take.’

The way each character relates to animals represents and colours the way they relate to others. Adam tells himself he has dominion over the animals, but in God’s curse on Eve, she’s been told her husband will have dominion over her. Does that make her equal to the animals? This is just one reason she has a keen interest in how he treats them.

Further, they have to wonder about God’s purpose in creating themselves and the animals (which, for this work, I’m imagining He did; see my previous post on working with incredible premises). If God is willing for them to dispatch with the animals so easily, what does this say about their own mortality?

It’s like Sirius Black said (somewhat ironically, given his later treatment of his own house-elf) in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, ‘If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.’

Kindling Magic

This Week’s Bit of String: Phoenixes and falcons

Last weekend we took my son and his girlfriend, wearing Hogwarts t-shirts, on the Harry Potter tour at Warner Bros’ Leavesden studio. Several younger kids in the queue sported head-to-toe Gryffindor robes, one boy of maybe seven years old wearing Harry-style glasses as well, and humming John Williams’ Hedwig’s Theme on repeat.

Among fans, then. I was tickled too by a couple in their fifties, scampering around the outdoor sets and giggling while they waited their turn for photo ops. ‘Look at that,’ marvelled the man, peering through the back door of the Knight Bus. ‘You can see the beds, and all!’

Inside the creature workshop, the woman squealed and pointed at the display case where Fawkes stands regally. ‘It’s that falcon! From the headteacher’s office.’

So I got the impression these two fans hadn’t read the books. But they were no less enchanted by the story, perhaps enticed by the added celebrity sparkle of the film studio.

What’s the precise magic of a franchise that enlivens so many people, whether encountered on page, on screen, or in a bright-plumed animatronic bird? Different factors might appeal more to one fan than the next, but I believe even we non-fantasy writers can replicate some of this alchemy.

Harry Potter and the Approval of Twitter

I checked in with Twitter about the boy wizard’s appeal. Susan Macdonald cites the series’ ‘good characters.’ Definitely; they’re vivid, varied, and complete with fully-drawn, engaging background.

I posed with the trolley going through the wall at Platform 9 and 3/4. — ‘Best take it at a bit of a run if you’re nervous.’

Lia, who tweets as @LiaTheBookBat, loves the parallel universe JK Rowling illustrates, and the possibility of ‘impossible things fuelled by magic.’ I agree the juxtaposition is intriguing: relatable characters and specific, just slightly altered details make the wizarding world seem ever so close.

Thriller writer LV Matthews (@LV_Matthews) notes that the ‘good overcoming evil story’ is especially relevant ‘in this crazy world.’ Certainly, Rowling pulls off this epic theme very well, examining different reasons people are attracted to good or evil, confronting friction between different members of the ‘good’ side, and even forcing the protagonist to question whether he himself might have evil tendencies.

Harry Potter and the Recipe for Enchantment

Personally, I was struck by how walking around the full model of Hogwarts felt like coming home. The first view of those turrets and spires, and I might have been Harry or Hagrid or even Tom Riddle, recognising a beloved place.

Hogwarts model — My son reckons this model is about 1/8 the size of the ‘real’ Hogwarts. It was truly stunning.

Strong emotion passed on from characters to readers: that’s the real magic here. Such deep empathy, whether for fictional or nonfictional people—that’s magic, and a mighty, unifying force.

Anyone following this blog since its launch in the wake of the USA’s 2016 presidential election will know creating that kind of magic is my favourite part of writing and reading. But there’s a lot involved in achieving this. All the factors above were instrumental in JK Rowling’s success with it, plus one more overarching element.

Even more than Hogwarts, the part of the tour that moved me most was Platform 9 and 3/4. Toward the back of the train, a car was open to show two different scenes. One end depicted Harry’s first ride on the Hogwarts Express, while the other showed the series’ final scene, ‘Nineteen Years Later.’

At its roots the Harry Potter series is a Cinderella story, Hagrid showing up on Harry’s eleventh birthday like a Hairy Godmother. (Or something.) Watching Harry’s journey, painful though it is at times, gives us hope, as referenced by my Twitter acquaintances.His story lets us believe that however ordinary-looking, however put down we may be even by the very people meant to care for us, it’s not out of the question that in some alternate realm we are renowned, and we may prove ourselves worthy. Hope liberates our empathy—right or wrong, it’s easier to feel for someone who has an inkling of a chance.

(Side note: JK Rowling didn’t achieve the same heights with The Casual Vacancy, maybe because this essential ingredient was omitted. The characters were wide-ranging and believably flawed, but offered very little hope.)

So we are drawn in, enticed by clever touches like owls and wands, encouraged by The Boy Who Lived until we’ve fallen as hard as if we’ve eaten a box of Romilda Vane’s chocolates. In our own writing, it’s worth remembering the mixture of minor detail, promise of redemption, and characters that inspire deep, true feeling. What would you add to the potion?

Playing God

This Week’s Bit of String: Tidying up the building materials

Once when my son was about six years old, I looked in on him during his evening tidy-up to see him gloomily tossing his Lego into their bucket, punctuating their impact with sighs. ‘What’s up?’ I asked.

‘Oh, I’m just…angry at God.’

He explained his grievance to me: ‘While we were eating dinner, I asked God really nicely if he would please tidy up my room for me.’ Another sigh. ‘But He didn’t.’

I’d seen him in a similar predicament with the magic wand he’d received for his birthday. And when he was a toddler, just learning his manners, there were those agonised epiphanies that saying please—‘the magic word’—won’t get you extra sweets or a later bedtime.

So it didn’t seem the time to put God’s existence under review, anymore than I would tell him there’s no such thing as magic. ‘Sorry, mate. I don’t think He works that way; He likes to make sure we know how to do things for ourselves.’

Losing My (Bias Against) Religion

Religion—and, well, not relying too exclusively on it—has enmeshed itself into a few of my stories. In Artefacts, the first novel I wrote, talking about God embarrasses the protagonist, ‘like talking about someone and suddenly realising they stood behind you.’

I feel that way, a bit, penning scenes with God in my current novel. As it’s Eve’s story, though, and her family’s, He plays a prominent role. I guess it’s the first time I’ve written about a recognisable figure, an entity Who might (who knows?) actually exist. That changes things, doesn’t it?

Carvings of God on His throne — Above the door at Notre Dame Cathedral. Can omnipotence and love really go hand in hand?

Last week I wrote about reimagining the first humans in the Bible, as well as the angels, trying to de-stigmatise as far as possible. These days, at least in our fast-paced, ‘enlightened’ society, it seems God too has become somewhat stigmatised, the focus of blame and skepticism rather than adoration. I don’t want to get caught up in that, even while sympathising with Eve and other characters He punished.

One has to wonder, if God does exist, and is by definition omnipotent and eternal, do all our pleas and tirades sound to Him like a child not wanting to pick up his own toys? I’m trying not to be restricted by pro-human bias in my view.

He’s Got the Look

So far I’ve not gone into great detail about God’s appearance. That’s not the done thing, is it? In our art we tend to come at physical description obliquely, if at all. Likewise with my re-invented angels, apart from the odd mention of their scales, wings, and fire. The humans in the story accept these beings and have no reason to overtly describe them.

Flaming orange sunrise over a hilltop — Like this, maybe. I’m just throwing around ideas here.

There’s mention of God’s immense size, and lack of clear outline. I mean, He’s God. We can be justified in thinking he has humanoid aspects (or commonly manifests them), because He does say He’s made people in His image. But I don’t think He’s just a muscly older man with a flowing white beard, the way Michelangelo depicted Him.

For one thing, He’s not going to have a corporeal body. He’s energy, and why He would choose to generally have a human form, I don’t know. I suppose it has its uses, a certain organisation and compactness. But in my work there’s a glow to Him and a deep, shifting substance that defies boundary. His eyes can turn into oceans, His smile into sunrise.

The King (of King)’s Speech

What I have God say in the book is far more important than how He looks. And I haven’t a whole lot of source material to base it on. I’m not on board with the whole divine scriptures idea. Sorry, I’m a writer myself. I know how easy it is to make stuff up and then it feels like canon in my mind. That doesn’t mean it is. That’s possibly my human bias talking, but for the purposes of this project, I’m going with it.

I’m drawing the line at accepting God’s actual words as relayed in Genesis—but weeding out ideas that are merely imputed to Him.

For example, when He punishes Cain for killing Abel, He says Cain is exiled and will lose his knack for growing crops. He never says Cain is banished from His presence (that would be admitting some limitation to His power). It’s Cain who moans that he’ll be out of God’s sight, and then the narrative picks it up.

Granted, He issues curses at key moments, but He doesn’t just pronounce judgment. He questions those involved, giving them a chance to explain themselves or at least ‘fess up—all the while opening Himself to even more disappointment as they flounder around pretending they didn’t do that thing they really weren’t supposed to do.

He strikes me as part Albus Dumbledore, part Atticus Finch, giving people space and a bit of prodding to see if they’ll figure things out for themselves. Here, Eve’s daughter Ana recounts to Cain how God encouraged her to start her own family, while admitting she too would carry her mother’s curse.

‘So I told Him: “I think You are a brutal Master.”’
Cain gave me one of his rare, full-on looks, allowing me to see the Mark. ‘Then what?’
‘He said, “Well, at least you believe I’m your Master.”
“What choice do I have?” I asked. ‘You gave my parents life out of dust and bone.’
“You have every choice, Ana. You and all your future children and grandchildren, you have a choice.” And His glow seemed to dim slightly. I almost felt sorry for him.’

After all, I feel a certain sympathy with Him, too. Creating people, letting them bumble off on their way doing what they like, forcing You to spring up obstacles in their path to slow them down and get them to look about themselves for once…Ahem. Yes. Perhaps God and us writers have a thing or two in common. What do you think?