'Heston, we have a problem' - tackling the National Space Centre's short story competition.12/7/2017 Up to 1,500 words. Featuring some real space science, plus something more speculative. And incorporating a historic space artefact. And a proper plot. And did I mention only 1,500 words? That's Sci-Fi Shorts, a FREE competition hosted by the National Space Centre, in conjunction with the Literary Leicester Festival. The deadline is 1st September. I went along to get some food for thought...
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There are loads of not-very-helpful quotes out there about the act of writing. You know what I mean - the truisms. You write to find out what you're really thinking... You write to exorcise demons... Trouble is, it can end up sounding like you do it because it's good for you in some way. Well - personally - I don't do it to help me confront and grapple with something that's screwing me up. Quite the contrary. I take the (possibly dangerous, possibly self-destructive) decision to use and abuse something raw and personal in order to help the writing. If I gain anything from closer scrutiny of that event from my past, or my loved ones, or my lost ones, that's an accidental by-product and it's more likely that it won't do me any good at all. It's the writing that benefits, not me. I can't speak for anyone else but for me it's not about trying to be true to myself, it's about trying to say something interesting. It's taking something from inside me - something that was personal - and hopefully making it a little bit more universal, even if it means losing touch with the original or at the very least pushing it further away. That can't be therapeutic. Except... There's one quote, one truism, I do think is worth remembering. The one about a non-writing writer being a monster courting insanity. Kafka said it. And in those terms, anything that gets you writing, whatever you write, however it plunders your private parts... is therapy. Anyway, I did some plundering for the always-interesting Paragraph Planet website. It's up today. I don't think there's a right or wrong answer here, but I suspect the closest might be gamey (or, yes, gamy) - as Star-Lord would say, a bit of both. We need to know what the detective sees and smells at the crime scene. We may be interested in the textures of that sex scene, or even the tastes (although the smells, I suspect, not so much). And if your character is cracking up in the city street, those sounds - or missing sounds - are going to be pivotal. But if it's not the point of the scene, do we really need to share the full-on, piquant, throbbing, sensory experience? Primary school teachers says yes. Creative writing tutors, no. To the rescue, once again, comes a writing challenge from Chris Fielden's website, this one called Allen's Sensory Overload Challenge. As the name makes plain, it's an opportunity to overdo the sensations and, in the process, to highlight where you might need to exercise more restraint in your 'proper' writing. Or not. Give it a go - it's free and in a good cause. My contribution is Story 065. This is a great challenge. 75 words (including the title) - it can be a piece of flash fiction, the opening of a novel or whatever you like, as long as it stands up as a story.
To my mind, with such a limited word count, I reckon the thing to aim for is to suggest that there's a bigger story going on beyond that one paragraph, without looking like you've tried to cram one in. But that's just my interpretation. Check out Paragraph Planet. They've published my story Seventy-Six today. Here's a bit of an oddity. SCI-FI-LONDON, the international film festival which starts tomorrow, runs a 48-hour flash fiction challenge in association with New Scientist and Urbanfantasist.com. You can read last year's shortlisted entries and winning story here, but this is my experience of this year's challenge... You register in advance (no fee) and just before midday on the Saturday you log in to find the elements that you must incorporate in your story. These include the title, a line of dialogue, and an optional scientific idea or theme. You then have until just after midday on the Monday to write and submit your story. My given title was SIX WEEK SLEEP. The line of dialogue was "Did you hear something? There? Listen... it did it again." And the optional science idea? Looking back to the moment of the big bang, we see a message that says STOP NO FURTHER. Now, I suppose some people might have been able to dedicate the entire 48-and-a-bit hours to the project (there was an infinitely harder and higher profile film-making challenge running concurrently and I'm sure they did) but I imagine I was typical of the writers: I could spare a few hours, here and there. And that's when you realise just how difficult it is to start from scratch, rather than falling back on at least one half-idea you've had gnawing away at the back of your brain for weeks. My first thought - 'well, ditch the optional science idea then' - was swiftly followed by 'and replace it with what, exactly, eh?' What did I have? Six-week sleep suggested suspended animation during interstellar space travel, but it suggested it so strongly it felt like a cliché. The dialogue had me thinking of that Doctor Who episode where they travel to the end of the universe and hear a knocking at the door, which I seem to remember was indeed called Listen... and then I couldn't get that out of my head either. It was lunchtime. The family were calling. I had to seize on an idea, however corny, and - instead of packing it away to gestate/fester - just get started. So I did, and had the first draft finished by mid-afternoon. And it was corny, and too much of a joke, and there just wasn't time to restart. Instead I sat down again on Sunday afternoon and wrote a much-revised (but not much improved) second draft. Then I left it. Of the 2,068 people who were registered for the writing challenge on the Saturday, 418 submitted stories on the Monday, including me, with this: Six_Week_Sleep. It probably won't be shortlisted. (In fact I've just gone and checked again and it wasn't. Bollocks.) It wasn't right and I knew it. But the exercise was definitely worth it. Roll on next year! I'm sure others have said this many times before, and much better, but I'm a bit slow and it has only just occurred to me.
I'm trying to select stories for my forthcoming collection and since they are all themed, and they all interact with one another in a way (in my mind, at least), the running order is absolutely critical. And it came to me that this collection is like an LP. The stories that I'm happiest with as stand-alone stories - the ones I've submitted, entered in competitions, etc. - they're the singles. The others, the ones I'm still happy with but feel they need to be read in their correct place, feeding backwards or forwards into others, setting up resonances and contradictions... they're the album tracks of course. They don't need to stand alone; in fact they shouldn't. For one thing, they can provide some interesting shading for the so-called stand-alones. And, sometimes, they benefit from a bit more freedom, not having to carry the weight of expectations that a stand-alone story might. Often my favourite track on an album has not been one of the obvious ones. Or if not strictly my favourite then the one I come back to time after time, perhaps because - informed by and informing the others - it's both perfect in its proper place and beautifully fragile as an orphan. I'm thinking Teenage Wildlife on Scary Monsters, although there all comparison with the ever inspiring and sorely missed David Bowie will have to end. So, you know, I feel a bit reassured, a bit more hopeful. Although I still can't decide on the right listing... Guilty! I use them. Too many. Too often. I try to cut down, really I do. Sometimes I go whole paragraphs without even needing one and then, suddenly...
Luckily, for people like me, Adverbially Challenged Volume 2 is on sale from today. This collection of flash fiction (and the writing challenge that inspired it) is both a bit of fun and a really useful exercise for anyone who thinks they might be a writer. Instead of just listening to the likes of Stephen King telling you to cut out all your adverbs, you can read something that shows you what happens when you don't, as well as hinting at how, just occasionally, that might not be such a terrible crime... Plenty of laughs. Thoughts provoked. And all profits to a very good cause: First Story. Spot was written as an entry for the 1000 word challenge - specifically the 'Stop!' competition.
It didn't win. The winning story was much, much better and you can read it at http://www.1000wordchallenge.com/ (just go to the Winners page) Or if you like you can download and read my shaggy dog story here. |
My story...I've been writing for as long as I can remember (I think my first letter was a P). I got a degree writing about other people's writing and ever since then I've earned a living writing commercially, one way or another. But I never stopped writing and refining my own stuff. I just didn't do anything with it, until now. Archives
April 2024
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