Developmental Editing: All in a Day’s Work

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Collaborations, Creative Process, Developmental Editing, Emmanuelle De Maupassant, Gothic Fiction, On Editing, women writing sex

People often ask me how developmental editing differs from standard, or line, editing. Sometimes, I’m surprised how many writers are either unfamiliar with the term, or have little idea what it entails. Then I remember – until I took a short editing course a few years ago, which focused on different types of editing, I too had never heard of developmental editing.

It’s also called “structural editing”, but I prefer the term “developmental editing”, because the root verb “develop” describes the process more accurately.  Evaluating the structural elements a of a fiction manuscript, through examining plot, use of prologues and epilogues, chapter division and chapter order is just one aspect of a much larger process.

 

When someone asks what I do as a developmental editor, I tell them that I workshop the theatre of the story on the page.

Halfway through my first developmental editing project, I started to see similarities between how this process worked with a narrative on the page, and how I used to work with narratives for the stage as a theatre director. I’d been struck by the fact that so much of what I was doing felt  “natural” to me. Then I realized I was using much of the skill-set I’d developed over decades in my theatre training and practice.

Sometimes, when someone asks what I do as a developmental editor, I tell them that I workshop the theatre of the story on the page. Or that I work with the author to enhance and develop their voice and style. Another developmental editor might describe their work differently, but both of these theatre-based metaphors speak to me, and to what I bring to the process.

I’ve always been an analytical thinker – theatre directing helped me strengthen my ability to think visually, so it’s easy for me to translate words on a page into a three-dimensional image of a scene and characters. I can then ask myself: “What’s working? What’s missing?”

I also see similarities in the way I’d work with actors in rehearsals as a director to the way I interact with authors as an editor. However, the author is the uber-actor – the embodiment of all the characters. A balance of encouraging, coaxing, inspiring and challenging seems required to foster both processes of creativity.

Alan Rinzler, a developmental editor who’s clearly been in the business a long time, describes the role elegantly and succinctly:

“Developmental editors offer specific suggestions about the core intentions and goals of the book, the underlying premise, the story, character development, use of dialogue and sensory description, the polish, narrative voice, pacing, style, language – the craft and literary art of the book.”

Having just completed a novella manuscript a few days ago with my long-term client and dear friend, Emmanuelle de Maupassant, I’ve been noticing how the story-world is still alive in my mind and imagination. The story of Italian Sonata, with all its layers of meaning and metaphor, its panoply of characters and their individual desires, the ancient castle within which much of the action takes place, are all still vibrating in my psyche, like an image on a screen affected by slight static. It’s as if I can’t quite let go of it yet, and with that realization, came another.

Fiction writing is for most writers, a solitary task. The importance of undistracted time, and the self-imposed isolation this often necessitates, is something many writers struggle with, at least some of the time.

In the role of the developmental editor, you actually companion the writer along the way. You enter the story-world, and interact with the characters, alongside the author. As the project progresses, you might even begin to have in-jokes with the author about their character’s traits and actions.

The writer is receiving regular feedback, and support as the chapters are revised and revised again, and as the work comes together. They are no longer quite as alone in the creation, and I wonder if this would assist some types of writer personalities to complete their projects more often, or more successfully. A developmental editor would have certainly helped me as a younger writer and a social extrovert. Carving out the essential periods of solitude was once something I struggled with.

As the characters and story-world of Italian Sonata seemed reluctant to evict themselves from my psyche, I thought it might be an ideal moment to record some of the things I did, working as a developmental editor, and all in a days’ work. I’d like to thank Emmanuelle for giving me permission to “deconstruct” elements of the editing process to reveal more about the role of the developmental editor in guiding the work from draft to publication.

Before you read further, I’d like to clarify that I’m discussing the work-in-progress of someone who is an extremely talented and capable writer. Emmanuelle writes evocative, compelling prose, and presides over her story-worlds with a queenly grace. She possesses a brilliant ability for social critique and her sometime cynical humour is often mischievously afoot in her scenes, as she explores the hypocrisy inherent in the machinations of polite society. She is mistress of complex plots and even more complex characters. Her imagery is often resonant, and is, at times, capable of evoking visceral reactions in me. I particularly admire her prowess when writing in the Victorian era. She and I share a love for the Gothic fiction aesthetic and genre, so I was very excited to embark on this project with her.

For a writer, I believe working with a developmental editor is like donning a magic cloak that enhances your writerly super-powers, and minimizes or neutralizes your weaknesses. Wherever you are in your development as a writer, the right developmental editor should lift your work to the next level. Additionally, through the process of working with an editor, your writing skills should improve, so you begin your next project a stronger, more capable writer. Developmental editor Alan Rinzler calls this “constructive collaboration.”

Wherever you are in your development as a writer, the right developmental editor should lift your work to the next level.

In other words, the draft of this manuscript was already, on many levels, in good shape. Yet most writers know that overwhelming feeling of holding so many details in their head at once: it’s easy to overlook flaws and inconsistencies in the draft.

Lists are a succinct (and fun) way to capture lots of information. As the skill-set of individual developmental editors will differ, depending on their background, talents and training, I’d expect another editors’ list to have common elements, but also contain elements unique to their approach.  An editor must be able to be responsive to the needs of the individual writer, and the manuscript.  This list is not intended to be definitive: rather it’s a snapshot of elements I contributed to this manuscript, this story. As developmental editor, I:

• Re-ordered some chapters to more clearly show the passing of time and build suspense more effectively between linked sub-plots.
• Contributed some chapter titles, and re-worked others.
• Chopped up some chapters and advised upon new ordering.
• Evaluated one mini-scene in a certain chapter which seemed unlikely, conceived a plot outline that placed that scene more credibly amongst new action, and guided the author to write a new chapter that revealed more devious elements to “the villain”
• Reminded the author of plot elements that had not been carried through in a credible way.
• Advised when characters were acting “out of character” and created plot notes to help get them back on track.
• Affirmed the author’s use of metaphors to express certain themes, and helped her refine and develop them, also acting as “location scout” for places throughout the novel for these themes to be elaborated on.
• Suggested actions to better reveal complex, conflicting emotions for the character(s)
• Ensured character’s entered and exited rooms when it was important to show they had done so.
• Wrote the occasional line of dialogue when a character (and the author) was stuck for words.
• As it was a story set in Victorian times, I advised on a few elements to more clearly evoke time and period. (Although, I didn’t have too much to do here, as the author is brilliant at writing in this era).
• Read out parts of prose aloud, and corrected to enhance the beauty or clarity or rhythm of expression.
• Helped author find a different approach to sections of descriptive imagery when they “snagged” and couldn’t quite complete something.
• Picked up minor story elements that held tantalizing erotic potential, and encouraged the author to follow this through in action, over several chapters, what one character initially, only playfully, mentioned in dialogue.
• Noticed when a character was doing too much talking, with no indication of actions.
• Took the final lines of the last chapter, and re-situated them as the last lines of the Epilogue ie the final, last words.

It seems apt to end my list there.

These tasks sprung out of the fundamental task of working through the manuscript, chapter by chapter, revising each sentence and paragraph, referring at times to a plot synopsis for the bigger picture.

I hope to have captured something here of what a developmental editor actually does: most things on my list would be beyond the role of a line editor.

Your developmental editor should provide that fresh objective eye; assisting you to hone your story-world and your characters, allowing you, the writer, to relax a little, stop sweating the details, and get on with the output and completion of the prima materia.

The ultimate magnum opus should soon be in sight …

What an editor contributes is, for the most part, invisible in the final published piece of work. Perhaps that’s a sign of a skilled editor. Yet, without the input of the editor, a piece of work is likely to turn out quite differently.

Finally, for this constructive collaboration to be successful, there is one vital quality that must be present between the author and their developmental editor: trust. I feel hugely honoured and humbled by this trust, given to allow me to suggest and affect such changes to a piece of work.

Italian Sonata was officially released a few hours ago. A huge congratulations to Emmanuelle, and I’m wishing the novella every success! Head here to pick up your digital copy: https://books.pronoun.com/italian-sonata/ or to Amazon.

More information on my Editing and Writing Services

Read about my “Sample Chapter Edit Offer”

Alan Rinzler’s excellent articles (and his site) on developmental editing and more:

https://alanrinzler.com/2012/07/what-should-you-expect-from-a-developmental-editor/

https://alanrinzler.com/2011/11/when-do-you-need-an-editor/

More about Emmanuelle de Maupassant

 

“Peek Hour” – Featuring with Cosmo UK

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Adrea Kore, Creative Process, erotic fiction, erotica, Female Sexuality, On Writing, Peek Hour, Publications, sexuality, Voyeurism

Sometimes, as writers, we can forget to celebrate our achievements. We might strive for recognition, but when a little of it comes our way, we underplay it, or find it hard to embrace it.

Many erotica writers I know, including myself, take our writiing, our craft  and our subject matter seriously. We work just as hard at it as writers from other genres. We toil into the wee hours over stories, blog posts and reviews. We attend workshops and buy books on writing craft, and agonize over the right words to describe our subject.  We sacrifice parts of our social life in order to carve out a little more writing time. We engage self-awareness around our own sexual landscape, and around where sexuality sits culturally at any given time, sometimes committing to writing and revealing painful parts of our lives or our history.

I’ve been writing and publishing erotica for five years now.  It turns out that it wasn’t just a quick fling with those come-hither, wanton words. I passionately believe in erotica’s role in encouraging those who read it to become more empowered in their own sexual expression.  That writer-reader relationship sits right at the centre of my imperative to keep writing, and is why I value every person who takes a few minutes to comment on my work.

Yet, sometimes, I despair at the comparitively small sector of the potential reading populace that actually find their way to quality, well-crafted erotic fiction. Censorship and complex rules on certain sites around what can be shown on a cover, and what topics are taboo set up further obstacles, and these obstacles sometimes have intricate moral or political nuances. All things the writer of erotica has to negotiate. As if writing about sex wasn’t challenging enough …

So today, I am celebrating the publication of  my short story “Peek Hour” with Cosmopolitan UK Magazine. The lovely editor I’ve been dealing with informed me they have 6.5 million unique users every month. It’s undoubtedly the largest number of potential eyes on my work, and  that is both terrifying and super-exciting. It’s fantastic that magazines with such a large readership, encompassing diverse demographics. are looking at publishing edgier work that isn’t just about millionaires and virgins, and it’s encouraging that they want to support lesser-known authors.

Despite the background anxiety, I took myself out for coffee and cake to celebrate, and my walk definitely had more wiggle in it today. I want to take this moment to remind all you erotica writers out there: celebrate your achievements. You worked hard. You’re brave. And bold. And bad-ass. Even on days you don’t feel that way. You deserve a little decadence.

I wrote “Peek Hour” to explore a subversive little observation that popped into my head one day on the train to work. As women, we learn to deal with being on the receiving end of the male gaze every day; we of course respond to this in a diversity of ways depending on personal factors. Some of it is welcome, some of it is not. And sometimes it just depends on what kind of day we’re having, or who is doing the looking.

How would I explore a story where a woman was doing the looking?

My character, Roxy stood up in my head, and purred, “Buy me a ticket,  let’s get on that train and see what happens.”

So here it is.  A subversively sexy story, exploring voyeurism from a distinctly feminine perspective. For Roxy, a chance erotic encounter might just be the start of a new kind of journey.

Click on the pic (or the title) to read “Peek Hour“.

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The Short Story: First Impressions

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Adrea Kore, Creative Process, Developmental Editing, editing fiction, Metaphor, On Writing, short story

 “To begin at the beginning.”

Under Milkwood Theatre Poster – Clwyd Theatr Cymrd

With this beckoning sentence, Welsh author and playwright Dylan Thomas opens his renowned and much-performed radio play Under Milkwood.

The narrator speaks here, setting the scene for a sleeping town; one “moonless night” in Spring, “starless and bible-black.” Most famously narrated by the resonant, deep tones of actor Richard Burton, the words bid the listeners to pay attention. Here comes a story. The alliteration and repetition already draws us in. For those of us with Christian backgrounds, the words echo the very first sentence of one of our oldest and most epic of stories: the Bible.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

We teeter on that first sentence with the narrator, waiting to step down into the rolling, seething, ribald psyche of the sleeping townspeople; to creep into their cellars, be voyeurs of their wet dreams and illicit affairs, their silent sorrows and repressed desires.

Begin at the beginning …

Described by Thomas as a “play for voices”, Under Milkwood has been produced many times worldwide for radio and stage. I was cast as narrator for a stage adaptation in my first year of drama school, and the opening lines always stayed with me. The play’s language and imagery is rich, visceral and poetic, alive with alliteration and metaphor, onopatopoeia and intoxicating rhythms. For those interested in language, I’d argue the play-text reads just as well as a short story. Vividly realised through both narration and brilliant dialogue, the characters of Llareggubb Hill leap off the page and into your imagination.

A compelling short story ideally can and should make use of the elements I’ve highlighted in Under Milkwood to achieve the same intensity of resonance in the reader’s imagination: opening, imagery, language, characterization and dialogue.

For this post, it feels appropriate “to begin at the beginning”, to focus on first impressions: title, the first sentence and the opening paragraph.

A brief aside: all of these elements are also important in longer-form fiction. Additionally, I’d underline the importance of the entire first chapter to lay the foundations of the story and capture the reader’s attention. But that’s another post in the making.

In a short story, you’re going to have less time with the reader than with a novel. You need to make every word, sentence, paragraph and scene count. First impressions matter.

I’ll say it again:

First impressions matter.

FIRST SENTENCE: THE ENTRY POINT FOR YOUR READER

First impressions are as important in a story as they are in a job interview or a first date. As a university student, majoring in theatre and taking literature as an elective, I studied Kafka’s polemic short story Metamorphosis. Kafka’s story begins with this intriguing first sentence:

“When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”

How could a dull story possibly emerge from that opening premise? I had to read on. It may well have been while studying Metamorphosis that I became convinced of the vital role of the opening sentence to set the short story in motion and to coax the reader inside the story-world.

A strong short story nearly always has a riveting first sentence. A sentence that beckons, or yanks you in by the hair.

To begin at the beginning …

How do we, as writers, find the right entry-point for our story? Where is that place in the charged narrative swimming inside our minds that we can clearly signpost as its unique and compelling beginning? As we know, it’s not always, chronologically speaking, the first “beat” of the story. Some narratives are most effective when they move back and forth in space and time.

As a writer, the idea for a story often coincides with the words of the first sentence, appearing in my mind’s eyes like burning neon on my retina. Heart pumping, I race to get it down on paper, because I know it’s my ticket into my own story-cinema. If I lose it, I may lose the story, popcorn and all. Here’s one:

“Last week, she tried to leave him on a Wednesday just before dinner.”
– Wet Satin Plaything (2015)

Just like a love affair, there’s a lot of heat in the imaginations’ first encounter with a new story. Other times, when I don’t get the first line, I draft out the story in chunks – whatever is coming to me. Then as it starts to take shape, I pull out my magnifying glass, and go hunting for that first line. It’s often buried somewhere in the body of the draft.

Some writers may relate to this. If you’re not excited when you read the first line of your story, chances are your readers won’t be either. Keep an open mind, and go hunting. Oftentimes, you’ve written it already – you just have to pull it out of the pile of words, set it on top of the page, and give it a polish.

Time for an eccentric writerly confession: I collect first lines of stories. I have notebooks full of them. For this post, I decided to re-visit some of my most beloved short story writers, and pull out some first-rate first sentences.

Let’s begin with the writer who made me truly want to be a writer, and precipitated my love for word-play and images: Ray Bradbury. If you haven’t read him, and you claim to love short stories, please stop what you are doing and go find some of his stories. Now. Start with The Martian Chronicles if you like science-fiction, or The Illustrated Man if strange tales with dark carnival themes appeal.

My well-read collections of Bradbury short stories

“He came out of the earth, hating.”
Pillar of Fire

“The rocket metal cooled in the meadow winds.”
Dark they Were, and Golden-Eyed

“The city waited twenty thousand years.”
The City

All of these first sentences, short as they are, feature important players in the story, and invoke the particular story-world. A man who should be dead, walks and feels again. A rocket has just landed – “cooled” being a telling verb. Where, we wonder, and who will come out? A city is a protagonist. It exists: has memory, a consciousness and a tenacious patience, and something is finally going to happen.

The first example also establishes one of the driving emotions of the story: hate.

Below are some other first sentences, by authors I have long read and admired:

“My father lost me to the Beast at cards.”
The Tiger’s Bride, Angela Carter (from The Bloody Chamber)

What’s introduced here? A desperate father, a wager gone wrong; betrayal of the deepest kind for a daughter. How beastly is this beast? We know we are not in a naturalistic story, at his mention, and that uncanny elements will be at play. How horrific her loss of choice. What happens next?

“Suddenly – dreadfully – she wakes up.”
The Wind Blows, Katherine Mansfield

The main character erupts into consciousness just as the story does, and something awful has either happened in her dream or is happening around her. These five words, and the clever use of the staccato energy of dashes as punctuation create a suspenseful beginning.

“Lilith was sexually cold, and her husband half-knew it, in spite of her pretenses.”
Lilith, Anias Nin (from Delta of Venus)

Nin creates an intriguing beginning that establishes the theme of pretense, and tension between a husband and wife. She wastes no words in getting to the “obstacle” of sexual frigidity, which the narrative then explores.

“First, mother went away.”
Being Kind to Titina, Patrick White (from The Burnt Ones)

An understated rendering of a life-changing event.  We sense this story will be about loss, and survival from the perspective of a child.

“My lover Picasso is going through her Blue Period.”
The Poetics of Sex, Jeanette Winterson (from The World and Other Places)

Here, Ms Winterson twists and subverts several aspects at once with her wry feminist perspective. Picasso is a woman, not a man. The reference to her “Blue Period” seems at first to be about art – but as we read on, she subverts our expectations with a description from her female lover’s viewpoint of  her behaviour when she’s menstruating, creating a secondary word-play on the meaning of “period”.

A strong first sentence finds a way to lean into the themes of the story, to be simultaneously at the beginning, and also at some other important emotional or thematic elsewhere in the story.

All of these examples show the writer’s agility and ability of story-telling. They know how their story unfolds, and they place the reader at the best vantage point to survey the story’s landscape. Prominent characters are introduced and emotional tones are established.

All of these sentences achieve one other more complex thing: the first sentence houses the seed of the story. The microcosm of the macrocosm.

What do I mean by this? Come back with me to the “vantage point” metaphor. As the writer, we locate our opening sentence at a specific point in space and time. We direct what the reader gets to see, but we also look out over the story landscape, noting the important stand-out features. These features can be themes or crucial plot-points or core emotional evocations of a character’s relationship to themselves, other characters or the world.

We describe where we are, and then we project our vison deeper into the story-world. We use words to link where we are (as character or narrator) to one of those prominent features. Or we lean into the metaphorical wind blowing at us from our story-world, to capture something evocative about our story, carried to us on that breeze. A scent of something, or a seed.

In your opening sentence, situate the reader where you want them at first contact with your story,  then try giving the readers a hint of something enticing to be encountered further into the narrative. What your first sentence introduces can then be elaborated upon in your opening paragraph.

I once did a movement theatre workshop around the theme of story-telling. One of the exercises was to find a first sentence of a favourite book or story, and translate that sentence into a movement piece – with a beginning, a middle and an end. The facilitator believed in the power of first sentences; that they could in some way, convey the entire essence of the story.

As a writer and editor, I’ve become increasingly interested in this idea: a strong first sentence finds a way to lean into the themes of the story, to be simultaneously at the beginning, and also at some other important emotional or thematic elsewhere in the story.

Short story writer Eudora Welty conveys a similar idea here:

“A short story is confined to one mood, to which everything in the story pertains. Characters, setting, time, events, are all subject to the mood.”

A large proportion of story drafts that I receive as a developmental editor have not had enough care and attention given to their opening sentence and paragraph. Eighty percent of the time that’s where I begin the work with the author. I’ve read openings of books already on sale on Amazon that have typos and grammatical errors in their first paragraphs. I have read no further, nor have I bought the book. And I would never be inclined to look up that author again.

I’ve nothing against self-publishing as a concept. But, writers, it should never be an excuse for releasing sloppy work onto the market. Use beta-readers, find yourself a skilled editor, or consider developmental editing to hone your work. Ensure it’s copy-edited before you release it. Putting unpolished, un-edited work before the public eye is not going to benefit your reputation as a writer. In fact, it will do the opposite.

From a writer’s perspective, I understand why haphazard, slap-dash story openings happen. We’re in a hurry to get it on the page before the idea fades. We’re impatient to just start the damn thing, and we can’t wait to get into the meaty part of the story. So we bumble and stumble bull-headed through our opening, when this is the part of the story where we most need to take care.

If this is what it takes to get you started, great. But go back and revise your opening once the heat of that first wave of inspiration has subsided. Then sleep on it, and revise again. As you generate more material, be aware that your true beginning could be somewhere in the middle of your draft.

This is one place where developmental editing can really offer something to the writer. I work with the author, giving them permission to slow down, take a breath. I ask questions, give them a framework in which to take a better look at the details of their opening, and I show them what they should be focusing on, or point out details have been sketched too hurriedly and aren’t clear to someone standing outside that writer’s head.

Write. Revise. Write. Revise.

Once you have that stellar, kick-ass beginning, revise it again. How tight can you make it? How clear? How intense” Can you eliminate excess words or phrases that are muddying the meaning or the impact?

In short, will it give the reader the most compelling view of your story-world?

The more essential every word you render in your opening sentence and paragraph, the more intense its impact will be upon the reader’s imagination.

The Short Story: from First Sentence to Final Words

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Adrea Kore, Creative Process, Creativity, Developmental Editing, editing fiction, Fairytales, Greek Mythology, My Bookshelf, On Writing, Published Fiction, quotes, short story, Women Writers

I’ve always been a voracious reader. I learnt to read a little earlier than was usual, and after that it seemed I couldn’t get enough words inside me. As a child and teenager, my reading habits bordered on addictive, and maybe that’s why I loved short stories; as for most children, these came at first in the form of fairytale and myth.

Image Credit: Brooke Shaden

Their brevity and the fact that they were a complete experience in themselves meant I could consume more stories in the amount of stolen time I had to read: under the desk at school while it was officially maths, beneath the bedclothes with a torch long after my parents thought I was asleep, even occasionally (though less successfully) in the shower. Following my mother around the supermarket. Sometimes I’d lose my mother, but never my place.

When it came to short stories, I guess you could say I was greedy.

Writer Ali Smith expresses this idea succinctly, and with a wry twist of logic:

“Short stories consume you faster. They’re connected to brevity. With the short story, you are up against mortality.”

We don’t just consume short stories; they consume us. It’s an interesting idea. Even at five years old, I seemed to sense I would only have so long to read in my lifetime, so I’d better get to it.

Myth and fairytale beguiled me as a little girl, and they still beguile me now. I don’t think it was ever the happy endings I craved, but more the sense of magic and the uncanny. Now, I enjoy reflecting on the archetypes in myth and fairytale, that resonate through different centuries and cultures. I like to muse on their themes; themes that swim; primal, invertebrate, deep in our psyches. Love. Belonging. Loss. Yet before I ever knew the words archetype or symbol, I sensed the wicked witch was more than she appeared to be, and that forests were governed by different lore and logic to houses or towns.These are the treasures hidden in fairytales and myths. Upon entering these story-worlds, as a very young reader, I believe I first comprehended the power in words, the pull and expansiveness of story on my imagination.

The world didn’t stop at the end of my street.

As the wonderfully imaginative writer Neil Gaiman observes:

“A short story is the ultimate close-up magic trick – a couple of thousand words to take you around the universe or break your heart.”

I could visit other times, places, civilizations, and planets. I could be a princess, a witch, Thumbelina – all without leaving my backyard, and return home in time for dinner.

The myth of Persephone, first read when I was five, translated into a short story and included in the Childcraft Encyclopedia volume on stories and fables, has been whispering wisdom and insights to me all my life. What I related to in the story as a child is different to what I related to as a young, sexually adventurous woman in my twenties, and different again to how I relate to her story more than a decade later.

The theme of mother-daughter love drew me in as a child. The tantalizing sexual and psychological symbolism of the Underworld that Persephone is made to spend part of every year in fascinated me as a young woman. The idea that Persephone represents the sexual and psychologically integrated woman from a feminist perspective intrigues me now, and compels me to keep writing about her.

Like a set of Russian dolls, the other parts of me at different ages are still nestled  inside me, and re-visiting stories that have companioned me through my life-journey is one powerful way of accessing these other selves. Changes of perspective in how and what we see in a story, are like sign-posts, or scars, marking the places of our own growth or change.

My well-read collections of Bradbury short stories

As a teenager, I continued to read fairytales, but also developed other tastes – for science fiction, mystery, the macabre and ghostly, the absurd. I devoured the short stories of Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allen Poe, and Roald Dahl. All of these authors approached the short story with their own style and signatures of their era. All of them taught me something about the qualities of short story writing.

Writer Andre Dubus professes that he loves short stories because  “they are the way we live. They are what our friends tell us, in their pain and joy, their passion and rage, their yearning and their cry against injustice.” For certain styles and subjects of short stories, I think he’s right.

We live our lives day by day, and a short story is an apt framework to capture what happens to us or our lover or a neighbour in the commute to work, or late one night, or over a week. Short stories don’t just encapsulate how we live, but the way we recount how we live to others:

“A strange thing happened on the train to work today.”

“So, I met this guy last weekend at my local cafe when I accidentally spilt my take-away coffee over his shoes.”

These kinds of short stories are close relatives to the conversational anecdote. If they are good stories, they will inevitably play with the tension between the everyday and the profound, the trivial and the significant. The teller is not quite the same person they were before the story happened. And they will have that same potential for the reader or the listener.

Short stories don’t just encapsulate how we live, but the way we recount how we live to others.

In this series of posts, I’m going to be exploring the short story up close. I’ll be peering inside, prying the pages apart, savouring sentences upon my metaphorical tongue, and inviting you to do the same. How they differ from longer forms of story, such as novellas and novels, will also be touched upon. Writer Lorrie Moore makes apt comparisons between the short story and the novel:

“A short story is a love affair; a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.”

I’ll be exploring the writers of short stories who have inspired and informed my own writing, and I’ll be musing on what works and why. To do this, I’ll be calling on three different perspectives I have into the short story: as a life-long reader of them, a published writer of them, and most recently, a developmental editor of short stories by numerous other authors.

Over my four decades of reading life, the number of short stories I’ve read would have to be in the thousands; maybe even the tens of thousands. Two literary theorists whose work I admire greatly were enthusiasts of lists to bookmark various ideas: Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes. So, here, I’ll list the authors of short stories that have inspired, intrigued or affected me:

• The brothers Grimm
• Ray Bradbury
• Roald Dahl
• Edgar Allen Poe
• Oscar Wilde
• Franz Kafka
• Anton Chekhov
• Patrick White
• Katherine Mansfield
• Angela Carter
• Jeanette Winterson
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• Anais Nin
• Tobsha Learner

Some of these, such as Gilman and Kafka, are there for singular, stand-out stories. Most of the authors listed are there, because I’ve read many of their short stories, often returning to them again and again. Then there are the many anthologies I’ve read; attracted more to a genre or theme than a particular author’s voice. Ghost stories, Australian short stories (we’re pretty good at them as a nation) stories about the ocean, stories by women authors.

Try making a list of your own short fiction inspirations – just for fun, or to see who your influences are.

As a writer of short stories, I won first prize for a short story competition when I was eleven. I wrote a few decent short stories at high school, getting some published in the annual school magazine. Then, a long hiatus from any fiction-writing, where I took to copious journal-writing, poetry and snippets of memoir. I’d often had people say I had a gift for writing, but for a long time, I was too focused on pursuing my passion for theatre.

Since I started taking my writing more seriously just over four years ago, I’ve written twenty-two short stories (if I include flash fiction) and had seventeen publications, with a few other offers that didn’t eventuate. The first story I ever submitted for paid publication got accepted, the next one was also accepted, and currently my acceptance versus rejection rate is about 4:1. I think Ray Bradbury would be proud of me for having the courage to submit as soon as I started writing. I’m not one to let finished stories moulder away in a bottom desk drawer for years.

About two years ago, I started working as a developmental editor and have worked with numerous authors across different genres, editing some thirty short stories to date. My first editing project happened somewhat by accident, but was definitely fate in motion. I was asked by friend and writer Emmanuelle de Maupassant to critique one story for her new collection in progress. She liked how I approached it and asked me to work with her on the whole collection. It was a dream first editing project for me. Inspired by Eastern European and Russian superstitions and folklore, Cautionary Tales had macabre and erotic elements, and archetypes and symbols galore.

It’s extremely rewarding to see, through the developmental editing process, a story go from sketchy to stand-out.

Consider this post as an introduction to the series. From my own reading and writing of short stories, but also particularly from what I’ve gleaned through the drafting and editing process with other writers, I’ve compiled a list of seven elements I think are crucial to the writing of a compelling short story, and I’ll explore each element in more detail in a subsequent post.

1 First Impressions: Title, First sentence, First paragraph

2. Finding the Right Words: Imagery, Atmosphere & Metaphor

3. Character: Details, Depth & Dialogue

4. Narrative Gaps:  Sleuthing in the Spaces

5. Developing Themes

6. Paring Back & Revision (What Stays, What Goes)

7. Final Words: Finding your Ending

As an editor, working with other authors, I’ve gained what I’d call a privileged perspective into the potential challenges and blind spots that can be seen to recur over a sample of writers. It’s extremely rewarding to see, through the developmental editing process, a story go from sketchy to stand-out. Every writer has their own strengths and weaknesses, and sometimes these will even vary over different stories from the same author. While one story may have a very strong, engaging opening, another from the same pen might splutter and dither around in the first few paragraphs, or seem to start in the wrong place. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

These posts are intended as much to unravel my own fascination with the short story, to discover what I know about them, as to assist those writing them or wanting to write them. It’s my observation that some writers do need ongoing, considered feedback to help them identify (and strengthen) their weak spots. Other writers will have a gut instinct about what their weaknesses are, and take or leave advice accordingly. I tend to fall into the latter category. Whichever kind of writer you are, I invite you to take what resonates for you, and consider that what doesn’t resonate for you may be helpful for another writer.

Possible approaches to generating material for stories and for writing them are manifold. Any exercises I suggest are based on what has worked for me or other authors I’ve worked with, and occasionally what I’ve picked up or modified from a writing craft book or workshop. Take what you feel might work for you, or try something out of your comfort zone.

I’d also hope these posts will generate some vibrant dialogue, as I know many writers out there who enjoy the short story form, and, like me, would agree with writer Annie Prioux:

“I find it satisfying and intellectually stimulating to work with the intensity, brevity, balance and word play of the short story.”

Intensity. Brevity. Balance and word play. I love the qualities she singles out, and I’ll be discussing these qualities through the ensuing posts. I hope you’ll join me.

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Chords of Desire (Erotic Fiction Excerpt)

Tags

Adrea Kore, Cello, Creative Process, Desire, erotic dreams, erotic fiction, Female Sexuality, Fiction Excerpt, Inspiration, short story, women writing sex, Writing Process

Lights up.

There are two bodies, up here on stage.

One is of cool flesh, lavender-scented. Sleek, dark hair, parted perfectly in the centre, is pulled back into a chignon, revealing the white arc of throat, the shadow formed by the sweep of her jawline as she bends her head in concentration. Black silk accentuates the pale sheen of her skin, her dress cut wide against the shoulders to reveal her collarbones, and the stretch of her swan-like throat. Slender hips cradle a spine which draws itself, erect as a candle-flame, towards the ceiling. She has arms of alabaster, impossibly long, arms of a conjuress.  Her eyes are closed, her nostrils open. She breathes music into her, as if it were all she needed to exist. All senses are focused on this other body, gripped between her thighs; this body of violent swells and curves so different to her own.

I am smooth and gleaming, the light from the chandelier creating honeyed ripples on the surface of my flesh, flesh of maple.  I am shaped to hold secrets. I am hollow, yet fecund.  Bodies such as mine are made for the fervent embrace.  Flesh such as mine will not erode easily, even from the rituals of the most devout of lovers. 

My senses are so exquisitely honed that a flutter of fingers at my throat forges fire in my womb. I feel the strength of the thighs which clasp my hips, the tender determination of her hands upon my spine.

I cannot but yield up my music.

Is this how I was born into consciousness, the bow keening across my strings, animating them with music? My cords, through which I sing and speak, and feel. She calls me Seraphine, her burning one, her angel. No matter where we are in the world, I feel as if I am always here; caught in light, cradled in her arms, pivoting on a single point of pain like a ballerina, poised between grace and chaos.

She makes love to me each night on stage, each performance a fresh seduction.  Together, we weave sound and silence into incantations which bewitch and benumb those who listen.

Those who come to sit in the dark and watch are nearly always men, no matter if we play in the theatres of Paris, New York or Cairo.  It is when the lights are directed away from them, when lulled into the roles of mere observers, that the truth of their lives is revealed in their faces, all yearnings and disillusions.  Men with hungering eyes and lonely mouths.  Men with laden wallets and leaden hearts.  There, in the embrace of the illuminating dark, they become my performance.

I am of wood, yet something of me is woman.

 

I love my mistress. But she has a heart made of wood. She does not respond to the caresses of love. It is only music that makes her soft, Bach that brings fire to her cheeks, Schumann that coaxes a languorous curve from her lips. Only for Brahms does her body quiver, her sex yielding to the vibrations of the notes through my body, becoming moist with desire. But for what? Strangely, it is I who long for the touch of a man, I who am fashioned from the finest of maple wood.

Perhaps, one night, whilst playing me in a frenzy of passion, she transferred her heart to me.

There are stories woven into the sinews of my strings. My mistress slices her bow along them like a scalpel.

But there are stories and there are secrets. The secrets I keep deep in the hollow of my body. These she shall not have.

I love my mistress. But equally, I love desire itself, the sensual energy that dances between two beings.  And if I cannot be completely fulfilled myself, then to invoke desire in others is what I will do.

 

* 

‘A dream, like trying to remember, breaks open words for other, hidden meanings.’

Rosmarie Waldrop

This is a curated excerpt of a story that was seeded in my psyche sixteen years ago, when I had an incredibly erotic dream. I was a cello, being played to an audience of only men, in tuxedoes. I could feel the music pouring out of me as if they were physical sensations, my whole body was full of this incredible cello music, and I woke up in the middle of some intense krias (a Tantric word, describing the movement or release of orgasmic energy through the body). I had woken up my boyfriend with my sounds and writhing, and I could still hear the music in my head, as I described the dream to him. The telling of the dream had an erotic effect on him too, and we umm … didn’t sleep for quite a while.

Over the next few days, I wrote about three pages of what the dream had evoked for me. It was the beginning of my first erotica story, and the words felt as if they were pouring out like streams of melody – but I couldn’t tie together the passages. Flash forward sixteen years, with several attempts in-between. I finally finshed it recently. Interestingly, I used almost all of the original material, but found my way into the “narrative gaps” to write a more fully-formed story.

Around the writing of a story, are often other stories.

Plots are something I used to struggle with, as a younger writer. That, I believe, is what hindered me from shaping the “scenes”, moments and characters I so strongly envisaged into stories. So, I am developing my “narrative muscle” with each story I work on – and complete.

To develop a strong sense of resilience and healthy writer-ego, I believe the completion of one’s creative ideas is crucial. Half-finished ideas have a terrible tendency to haunt you.

The defintion of a chord is:

Three or more notes that combine harmoniously.

And Chords of Desire is actually told from the perspectives of three characters: three characters that sound their own unique note on the exploration of desire, three characters bound together by its power. This excerpt is just after a short prelude that begins the story, and is from the cello Seraphine’s perspective. That initial dream, the surreal fact that I was the cello, and could think and feel, always meant she was going to be a sentient character. She could be said to embody feminne desire. Inevitably, this story weaves elements of magical realism into its narrative.

I’m still searching for a home for this story – if any editor or publisher reading it feels it might resonate with their publication, or indeed if any writer knows a place that its style would be at home in, please do feel free to comment or write me here. The full version is around 4000 words. Paid publication leads only, please.

As always, this writer very much appreciates reades who take a moment to let to me know their thoughts on how the story has connected with them.

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Striking Chords of Metaphor in Fiction-Writing (II)

Tags

Creative Process, Figurative language, Inspiration, Metaphor, On Writing, Take Pen in Hand, Writing Process

In an interview in 1981, author William Gass spoke of his “hunch” that “the core of creativity is located in metaphor”. Gass went on to suggest that “a novel is a large metaphor for the world.”

In my previous post on metaphor, I described strong metaphoric presence as casting “a fine web of meaning over the entire story. All its separate strands are also interconnected; the metaphors have their own perfect geometry and symmetry. The strands give both shimmer and strength to the story; they catch the individual perceptions and associations of individual readers within their sticky threads.”

Strong metaphor allows a story to transcend its own boundaries, which is what Gass is getting at when he suggests that a novel is a metaphor for the world. Strong metaphor allows a piece of art to exist in the mind and (I would argue) the very body of the reader in terms of the sensations and emotions elicited upon first contact with the metaphor(s). Metaphors are doorways of and to perception.

 

The babbling of King Lear in the storm, and the sharp, manic grief of Hamlet live in my body. So does the image of Persephone descending into the Underworld, Angela Carter’s dark fairy-tales, Jeanette Winterson’s searing, lyrical metaphors on love and loss, and the painful examination of mortality and meaninglessness in Beckett’s Endgame. I may no longer recall the exact plot, but I retain the themes, the images, the metaphors, for they are connected with feeling, with lived experience.

I’m mixing my play-texts and my literature here because at a formative part of my intellectual life, I read and studied both avidly. Researching these articles, I was drawn back to theatre theory. Theatre is a powerful medium for metaphor, combining both text and the visual mediums. Speaking on the relationship between spectator and performance, director and theorist Eugenio Barba observes:

“There are spectators for whom the theatre is essential precisely because it presents them not with solutions but with knots. The performance is the beginning of a longer experience. It is the scorpion’s bite which makes one dance.”

If we take the spectator here to equally stand for the reader, and the performance to represent the story, this observation echoes what I express about metaphors and images living on in my body and memory, long after I have engaged with the work.

As a former theatre director, I’m often struck by the similarities between the relationship a writer has with a story and a director has with the piece of theatre in creation. Both must have an overarching perspective on their work, and yet a precise attention to every detail. In other words, both macro and micro perspectives are required, sometimes simultaneously. Both must elicit meaning and atmosphere from the text. Both may feel they have ‘command’ of the characters, yet also find that the characters themselves have their own inner life and intentions; exemplified in the first instance by the common writerly assertion that characters ‘take over’ or write themselves in certain parts of the writing process, and in the second instance by necessary collaboration with actors who will bring their own insights to the characters. I share another of Barba’s insights here; this one on the technique required of the director (writer) in working to create the performance (story):

“For me, the director [writer] is rather the person who experiments with ways of breaking the obvious links between actions and their meanings, between actions and reactions, between cause and effect.”

This, of course, is only one way of looking at the aim of fiction-writing. But to me, it speaks to the curating of unique perspective and voice, and the conscious dismantling of clichés, which is the kind of writer I’m working at being. I may not always succeed – but to create work full of clichés would be like a little death to me, and I don’t mean the orgasmic kind.

What is a cliché? It’s often a tired, over-used metaphor. Long ago, linguistically speaking, a cliché was once an original metaphor, but they have been brandished so frequently that they have lost their impact. Encountering clichés disengages me from any text; the more frequent they are, the more likely I am to want to throw the book across the room. Perhaps that’s why I don’t own a Kindle. A careful writer will be vigilant for clichés in the drafting process. My editing clients soon know that I am ruthless about eliminating clichés in their work, and stretching them to find fresher imagery.

This leads me back to metaphor. In the first post of this series on metaphor, I suggested a starting place for drawing out and deepening metaphor in your work: your themes. If you want to know one place where your metaphors are to mine, begin with them.

Themes centre around nouns.

Desire. Loss. Love. Betrayal. Madness.

You could also call these the subjects of the work. The nature of those nouns (or subjects) can be expounded upon to create a theme, and the theme is then mined to create imagery, metaphors, and motifs, throughout your work. So another way of understanding a theme is that it expresses an opinion on the subject. If we go back to my initial list of nouns, I’d expand them to potential themes as below:

Following one’s desires has unexpected consequences.

Loss creates suffering, and suffering creates growth.

Love is essential to the human experience.

Betraying someone knowingly creates negative karma.

Madness is merely an unsanctioned perspective on the world.

There may be major themes and minor themes in a literary work. A writer may express a theme through narrative action and scenes, and through the characters; their thoughts, feelings, and actions. Its function is to bind together various other essential elements of a narrative.

Below is an exercise designed to draw out more information about your theme and deepen your metaphors. I’ll be referring to my two most recent short stories Chords of Desire and The Forbidden Box to illustrate steps of the exercise.

TAKE PEN IN HAND

Have you got a current early draft or idea for a story? Pick out one of its themes that you’d like to explore further. Write it at the top of a blank page /screen. Next, do you have any objects / symbols in your story that are associated with that theme? Add that to the top of the page.

For example, in both of my stories, the impact of a secret is a theme. Coincidentally, both stories feature an important object (also a symbol) associated with secrets. In The Forbidden Box , an old box has secrets, as does the owner of the box. In Chords of Desire, the object associated with secrets is a cello. It’s a major theme in the former story, a minor theme in the latter.

This is a free-associative exercise. Simply allow yourself to write a series of sentences about your theme and /or your object. Think about them separately, but also play with linking them in the same sentence. “Rest” your mind on what you know about your story so far while doing this. In other words, allow your ideas about the theme to be filtered through your story-world. Take about ten minutes to do this.

If you don’t have a current draft, go back to your list of personal themes / symbols from the first post, and choose one or two of those.

(So, while you do that, I’m off to make a pot of tea … Back soon …)

I’m back. I’d love to peek over your virtual shoulder and see what’s on your page, but as I can’t, here’s a selection of my statements from my draft-work.

The Forbidden Box

Theme: Secrets                                       Object: The Box

Boxes are three-dimensional walls.

The lid of a box, when opened, is like a mouth, spilling forth secrets.

Boxes hold the tangible and the intangible: artefacts and memory.

A locked box is like a mystery, waiting to be solved.

Boxes are miniature rooms.

Boxes are for keeping things in, but also for keeping things out.

*

Chords of Desire

Theme: the impact of secrets            Object: Cello                                                            

 I am shaped to hold secrets; hollow yet fecund.

For them, I play an entirely more compelling movement, like a hidden code in a forbidden love letter.

But there are stories and there are secrets. The secrets I keep deep in the hollow of my body. These she shall not have.

*

Inevitably, you will generate some metaphors and some similes amongst your list. You may not use all of them in your stories; some you will re-draft and re-word. But I’ve found I generally use more than half in some way or another, and they can be a great way to generate more material when you stall. How might you use these?

•  As part of a character’s dialogue, or their inner thoughts.
• A repeated thematic motif throughout a work, particularly if a more poetic or lyrical style is what you are exploring.
• As part of the narrative itself – for example, if the story is written from third-person omniscient perspective.

Some statements may also become an idea or image which you will explore and illustrate throughout the narrative of your story, rather than you using those words literally. For example, The Forbidden Box is a re-imagining of the Pandora myth, and the image comparing the opening of the lid of a box to the opening of a mouth and the spilling of secrets is an image that helped me link the idea of family secrets, and of adults not revealing vital information to Pandora until she was ready, to Pandora’s burning curiosity to discover what’s inside the box, and what is revealed when she finally opens the box. The shut lid of the box is juxtaposed with the shut mouths of her grandfather and grandmother.

Below is a small excerpt where I used some of the statements in different ways. In this excerpt Pandora is about seven years of age ( I’ve also re-written one or two words so as not to reveal certain elements of the story – for those who I hope will get to read the full version at some point if it’s accepted for publication):

“The box, Grandma, the box!” was all she could say, when Grandma asked what was wrong. Grandma tried her best to reassure Pandora that whatever she had seen had been a trick of the light, and her imagination.

After dinner, lighting his pipe, Grandfather announced:

“Best not to go near that box.  It’s very old, and very valuable. It’s not a toy, not even for very intelligent young ladies like yourself. Do I make myself clear?”

For the first time in her life, she was only too happy to let something forbidden to her, stay forbidden. But for years she would have strange dreams about the box, where the figures in the carvings would come to life and speak to her, where voices would whisper open me … see what’s inside.

A shut box is just like a secret, waiting to be unlocked.

*

The theme of family secrets, information being withheld is there in the dialogue, and the last line is a re-working of:

A locked box is like a mystery, waiting to be solved.

Note that you can also use this exercise just with a significant object or symbol in your story. I’ve used it to generate the bulk of the material for a memoir short story I wrote about my mother’s life, family secrets, mother-daughter relationships, grief, and her journey with cancer. The two symbols I explored using this exercise were my mother’s hands and an unusual topaz ring.

The theme of the impact of a secret brings intrigue, complexity and depth into the narrative and the characters. It was there in the seed of both stories, yet it could have remained dormant or half-asleep. I consciously put my creative attention on that theme (among others) and worked to draw it out further.

Free-association writing reveals to your conscious mind what your subconscious already knows; it enables you to know what you know. It can help some writers get past internal blocks. What you come up with may surprise you and help you gain more insight into what this particular story wants to express about your themes through your metaphors.

By playing upon your theme(s), you will immediately develop, deepen, and multiply the play of metaphor in the work.In a stunningly written book on the theme of callings, author Gregg Levoy relates this about powerful story-telling:

“A tradition in both Middle Eastern and Hebraic mysticism holds that any passage of sacred text, any teaching, any story, must be examined from at least three points of view: literal, metaphorical, and universal (mystical or wordless). None excludes the others. Meaning thus becomes a thing of layers. Those with a poetic basis of mind understand this. Where science goes for the unified theory, poetry voluptuates in nuances. Where logic studies the wind, poetry regards how the boughs are bent.”

Meaning becomes a thing of layers: metaphors assists you in creating these layers.

(If you find this exercise helpful, I’d love to hear from you.)

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Striking Chords of Metaphor in Fiction-Writing (I)

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Creative Process, Desire, erotic fiction, Figurative language, Inspiration, Metaphor in Fiction, On Writing, Take Pen in Hand

I am fishing. Trying to lure an idea, hook it, pull it to the surface. I want to cut it open and see what’s inside. I want to show what I know about this slippery, incandescent, underwater creature.

In writing this, I use the very thing I want to write about as my way of writing about it.

Metaphor.

Defined as “a figure of speech in which one thing is identified with another”, the word metaphor originates from the Greek word metapherein – meaning “to transfer“.

So how do I write about this creature, this chimera, that has kept me connected to the miracle of words and stories ever since I could first absorb a story whole, and breathe out wonderment? Ever since I first felt the power of story to transfer my senses, my very being, to another time and place? How do I write about this element of language that to me is like alchemy? (That’s a simile, by the way; when one thing is likened to another.) String a sequence of discrete words together and suddenly it’s possible to create meaning, magic, metaphor. Alchemy. Yet only certain sequences of words will speak and sing to us in this way. Some remain firmly in the realm of the mundane and in plenty of instances, that’s all that’s required; to get a character out of a room and into a forest, to indicate where the gun is kept, or how the dress is unzipped.

But I want to talk about the other use for sentences – when they transcend their form and boundaries, and become more than what they appear at first glance. Although i feel I know more than a little about how to weave metaphor into writing, I know less about how to extract it out of the writing process, to hold it up to the light and discuss it in a way that may reveal something to you – the writer-as-reader. This may be my first attempt. I’m sure it won’t be my last.

Why write with metaphors? Paradoxically, describing one thing as another may be the best way to acquaint your idea with your reader. Metaphors can create a sense of the universal in the particular. Your reader may never have gone sky-diving, but when you describe it as being suspended, weightless, swimming through clouds, they’ve probably floated in some kind of body of water before, and experienced that sense of weightlessness.

Metaphors may shine a light onto the obscure; open doors and windows onto an experience deemed impossible to write about. Finding the right metaphor(s) may help you find the right audience.

Look at Patrick Suskind’s Perfume and his intriguingly complex metaphor of the power and impact of scent; scent as the purest expression of life-force, scent as obsession. Suskind immersed us in Jean-Baptiste Grenouille’s perspective right from the opening; describing eighteenth-century Paris via its melange of smells. Why did this work so well? Firstly, because it was an original departure from the predominant tendency for writers to describe setting in visual terms, and secondly because nearly every being on earth has experienced the affective and arousing power of scent in some instance in their lives.

Without this web of metaphor as a driving force in the main character’s psychological and physiological drives, which in turn heavily influenced the narrative action, this story may have been little more than a macabre and unfeeling account of a perverse, amoral serial killer toward which readers may have had little sympathy. Without this evocative use of metaphor, Perfume may not have found its audience.

Having just written two (rather long and significant) short stories that were both rich with metaphor in less than a month, the process left me reflecting on the role of metaphor in my writing; how I harness what might, in initial drafts, be an instinctual (and sometimes random) wielding of them, and develop their presence in subsequent drafts. I also try to harmonise the selection of metaphors I use. This is why the image of metaphors as chords occurred to me as I was searching for a title for this series. The concept was also on my mind, as one of my new stories is about music and was called Chords of Desire.

Chords are defined as three or more notes that combine harmoniously. The notes are melodic in themselves, yet re/sound more intricately when played – and heard – together. In writing, one can work with metaphors in this way, too. The selection of metaphors can create cumulatively harmonious meanings throughout your story. I’ll be discussing the crafting of metaphor, using my work on these stories, in more detail in the second post in this series.

Using metaphor feels instinctual to me. Yet I do encounter work almost entirely devoid of metaphor, or work where the use of metaphor is clumsy or inconsistent; where it appears contrived, or pasted over the top; dislocated from the heart of the story.This suggests to me that using metaphor in writing is innate to some, and not to others. It also suggests that it’s a skill, a way of seeing, that can be developed and deepened. Mark Tredinnick, author of The Little Red Writing Book says this of metaphor:

“But make sure nothing you do just decorates your writing. It should serve your subject matter (by getting at its nature and it soul); it should help your readers (by pleasing them in itself and by making the reading more than a merely literal experience); it should animate your sentences (by giving them colour and attitude and music).”

Your Turn – Flash Me

Tags

Creative Play, Creative Process, Flash Fiction, On Writing, Take Pen in Hand

 

Flash-fiction at its most Zen …

Your turn to tell me a story – try to give it a beginning, a middle, and at least the suggestion of an end. Anyone can play!

Who knows – your ten-word flash of erotic inspiration could contain the premise for a new longer story – or at least put a smile in your (and my) day.

Just put your ten-word masterpiece in a comment on this post. I’ll jump in and add mine soon. Of course, if you want to show off … it can be less than ten words too.

I can’t wait for you to flash me. 🙂

(Shortest. Blog-Post. Ever.)

 

Beyond the Terror of the Blank Page

Tags

Adrea Kore, authenticity in writing, Creative Process, erotic fiction

It is after midnight here, and I’ve been working on my latest story Wet Satin Plaything for seven hours straight today.

But I finished it.

I finished it by “patiently meting out words on a page” at times today, and also by writing in a fever-fits of inspiration, deep inside the feelings and sensations that were happening to my characters, actually aroused at times by what I was writing. Sometimes I kept writing by swapping to my notepad, and making plot notes in my scratchy southpaw handwriting – with little swirls as bullet points, when I seemed to have run out of sentences for what was happening.

Other times, I kept writing by not writing, and cooking instead. Knowing my mind was turning over the stones which the unwritten parts of the story lay hidden under while I chopped and stirred.

And I got the submission in (I hope, given time zone differences) just in time. We shall see. I’ve never shaved a story submission deadline that closely before. It was literally the stroke of midnight when I hit “send”.

So it seems, as I was exploring in On Not Writing, reasoning with my perfectionist about being strong enough to weather negative or unexpected reactions actually worked. In addition, I created a strong, provocative piece of fiction out of a dysfunctional past relationship with some pretty emotionally damaging aspects. I allowed myself to explore my feelings of anger about being emotionally controlled, and verbally abused, and that felt powerful. I got to step inside the skin of a femme fatale-type character who doesn’t fear the dramatic gesture to make a strong statement about her boundaries, and to reclaim her power.

This is a short post, but an important one, to honour my progress.

I did what I set out to do. I didn’t give up, or distract myself (too much) telling myself my intention didn’t really “matter”. I followed the thread of the story, trusting in its strength, and I sought some support from writer-friends from the sidelines. Thanks to writer Jacqui Greaves for reading my draft-in-progress and providing feedback.

And I can now say, in comparison to when I last posted On Not Writing, when I confessed I hadn’t completed anything fictional for one whole year, that I’ve changed my own narrative.

There’s power in completions. Unfinished stories have a habit of haunting a writer, whereas completions are cleansing to the soul/soil, leaving room for new blossomings.

At twelve pages, and just over 6000 words, Wet Satin Plaything is now my longest narrative effort, more than three times longer than my last completed story Under My Cape. I’ve blasted through a block I had about only being able to sustain much shorter story narratives. I’d like to think that I am slowly developing my story-telling “muscle”, my stamina for sustained, longer narratives, and that, in time, a novel won’t be beyond my reach.  I know some writers believe they are “only” short story writers, “only” novelists. Me? I hope I’m a work-in-progress when it comes to word-counts.

In the first twelve hours or so (sticking with the twelve theme),  I’d also included as part of this blog a sizeable excerpt from my new story. That’s why there are a couple of comments by readers on the actual story. But I’ve now deleted this, because I’m not sure about the story’s fate, and I want to make sure I don’t contravene any potential future publishing agreements.

I will, however. publish a smaller excerpt here. Do you want to go there?

Meanwhile, we keep writing, don’t we? Those of us who, like Ray Bradbury, cannot stay too long away from words.

“You grow ravenous. You run fevers. You know exhilarations. You can’t sleep at night, because your beast-creature ideas want out and turn you in your bed. It is a grand way to live.”
― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing

On Not Writing

Tags

authenticity in writing, Creative Process, femme fatales, Inner Critic, On Writing, Perfectionism, sexual relating, women and anger, Writer's Block, Writing Process

This is a piece of writing about not writing. Every writer experiences this in their own uniquely terrifying way. If we peered into the psyche of every writer, we’d see this amorphous chimera of a creature;  the tangled roots of the writer’s particular creative wounds, childhood patternings, beliefs around creativity, purpose, and work attached to the underside of its ravenous belly, feeding it toxic information that is then passed onto the suffering writer. The litany of  intricate causes and contributing factors in what is commonly known as “writer’s block” is extensive and exhaustive.

Sometimes, all a writer can do is write about not writing.

The curse of perfectionism  is a close cousin to addiction. Combine that with an aberrant condition that I call ” fear of lack of an idea”, and what you get is a challenging psychological bind for someone who loves writing as much as I do.

As a younger creative, I  too experienced it as a BLOCK; a monolith of total and utter nothingness. I would desparately want to write fiction, but my inner critic had strong opinions about the right  kind of ideas that constituted true creativity. Very often I would feel a kind of constriction, like someone had their hands around the very part of my mind where the ideas were attempting to flow out. Pen poised on the page, the sense of an imminent outpouring would be reduced to a laboured trickle of half-birthed sentences, scratched-out phrases and jeering blank space.

So I resorted to copious journal-writing. There, my inner critic couldn’t thwart me, and if I read back over them now, there are so many sections where my recurring themes and emerging style are apparent. For example, I have always written about the sexual experiences I was having at the time in my journals. And its connection to body image, relating, gender dynamics, and love.

As a younger writer/ theatre-maker, I chiselled patiently away at the block I seemed to have around taking my creative impulses seriously, and then cultivating sustained, loving attention to bring them into being. I had enough ‘successes” to challenge my Inner Critic. I doggedly did Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way”, the blocked artist’s rite of passage.

Yes. Every damn list and arduous Morning Pages session, every painfully self-absorbed excavating-your-childhood  AGAIN exercise.

I had to cure myself of my memories of being a precociously bright child, who could create clever, pretty things three times as fast as anyone else my age, winning adult approval with seemingly no real effort on my part. My creativity process up until middle adolescence was like lighting a fire. It started with the spark of an idea, and with easily-found twigs and branches, very quickly flourished into a crackling, marshmallow-toasting fire.

Gather round. Look what I made.

Sometimes it even felt accidental. I did what I did, but I couldn’t really get the hang of how I was doing it before I was winning first prizes in short story and poetry competitions, and representing my primary school for an essay-wriitng competititon on some dull civic theme.

The problem was, I didn’t trust my own creative writing voice as a young adult, and I didn’t value or even see the subjects I wrote well about. I wanted a different kind of creative voice. I didn’t know what that sounded like exactly, but it alienated me from my own developing voice for many, many years. I also hid my creative writing in my theatre-work as an actor, director and publicist. I hid it in the writing of  short scripts, radio plays, monologues, programme notes, theatre press releases, theatre company manifestos, character exploration.

Now, most often, as a published fiction writer taking my writing seriously, there’s actually effort involved. (What?!) I can still fluke a 20-minute publishable flash fiction piece or a decent poem written over a coffee every now and then. But mostly, patience and effort are now involved. Experience has taught me over the last few years that when I tend to any of my ideas for a piece of creative writing, I generally get a creative outcome I’m satisfied with.

So, why, lately, have I regressed to an earlier phase of my creative development, and stopped trusting my ideas? Rather than taking them out for coffee, and listening to what they have to say, I’m circling them suspiciously, trying to glean information from them without getting too close, like an email one suspects might contain a destructive virus.

Why do I feel again the near-lethal grip of my perfectionistic persona around my ideas, throttling them as they attempt to express themselves on the page or the screen?