Good Valentine’s day news from the Beeb yesterday; of the almost 3,000 script submissions to the BBC Writersroom scheme, my screenplay, ‘The Hole in the Moon’ has now shortlisted to the final 5% full read. Another month before final decisions are made – but I’m happy to have made it thus far.
With my radio series ‘The Daffodil’ kicking off next week – 2014 is striking a good pose.
A Truthful Shop, Brighton.
Truth is not fact. A fact is, well, a fact – something undeniable like ‘the sun rises in the east’. Truth is far less easy to quantify, to prove, to grasp. Truth is more subjective than fact, and depends on the belief system of the beholder.Truth is the reality you feel it to be and the artist’s job is to capture and communicate that truth.
Writing from truth, what you feel passionate about, can lend work real emotion, emotion difficult to conjure otherwise. Tears in a writer will bring tears to a reader. And as an artist, it is often your job to stand naked in front of the world, truth in hand. Truth is writing what you believe.
Writing from fact is reportage, when you write using ‘truth’ you add extra spice and colour to the mixture to make it fiction, more interesting, and more moving.
And remember, an issue with writing from reality is that ironically, fact is often too weird and too unbelievable to work as fiction. Your readers will say, ‘oh, come on, that would never happen.’ And you can’t phone them all up and say, ‘actually, it did. I’m not making it up. I once knew this bloke…’ Instead, you’ve often got to tone down the story to make it more credible. Real-life coincidences can be particularly problematic here.
So, be careful with facts… but always write with truth.
Wise old trees
Writers worth their ink need to be making some point with their story. Beneath your storyline, there should be a deeper message. It is a writer’s (or artist’s) job to present the human condition as they interpret it. So, once you’ve shaped the general idea, you should sit back and consider what it could be saying on a universal scale.
Consider Aesop’s Fables; each one is a tale that could be enjoyed on a superficial level by a child, yet there is a deeper meaning, or moral, which endeavors to teach the child some universal truth about life, i.e. being slow yet determined is often better than being hasty and fickle (Tortoise and the Hare).
A good place to seek inspiration is a list of proverbs. A proverb is usually a metaphor and encapsulates in simple terms, a lesson from the common experience of humanity. Here’s an exercise that might get you going: sit down and have a think about the specific meaning of the following and then go freewrite a story illustrating this philosophy.
Graveyards are full of indispensable people.
You can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.
A little learning is a dangerous thing.
The belly has no ears.
Trees don’t grow to the sky.
A dumb priest never got a parish.
The only free cheese is in the mousetrap.
Eaten bread is soon forgotten.
The squeaky door gets the oil.
It’s 2014 – a year that still sounds to me like the title of a Sci-Fi movie. And I’m hoping the spaceships I encounter over the next twelve months will be of the friendly variety .Veterans of this blog will know that when I refer to ‘ships’ I’m talking about all the texts/scripts which I’ve sent out on spec re publication, staging or broadcast etc… I have always liked the idea of my work as ‘ships’ as it somewhat relieves me of responsibility – once launched, they are out there and I can only hope they return to port in some form, preferably laden with a win or publication.
Last year I sent out a total of 59 ships. Some 17 returned to port, 39 never made it. Rejections/disappointments/ non-runs/PFOs are part and parcel with the writer’s lot and learning how to handle them is one of the most important (and difficult) lessons a novice writer faces.
I when I was 22, I wrote seven short stories. They were bad, really pretentious, decorated with adjectives and adverbs and with no theme or character development or point to any of them at all but I thought they were pure genius. I sent them off to every magazine I could find in the bookstore. And waited. And waited. And waited… until I became convinced that they had all been lost in the post. It was the only explanation, surely, as any editor would recognize my genius immediately, no? A couple of months later, I received a single rejection letter. And the truth dawned. No one else even bothered replying. It was 100% rejection. I was floored. I burned the stories I was working on and I didn’t send anything else off for another ten years.
That was very stupid of me. I should have brushed myself off and tried again. I would be in a much better position and be a better writer now if I had. But I wasn’t strong or mature enough to know that then. Ah, well. During my first year on my MA at UEA (2009), I sent out another batch of stories. I’d had a few shorts published at this stage and was confident that I’d now win every competition going and it would pay my MA tuition. And, again I got nowhere. I was pretty down but I recalled how I’d let rejection defeat me before and vowed it wouldn’t happen again. I sent out more, and then more and after six months, I had bagged the Mary and Ted O’Regan Award, and then the Annaghmakerrig award and the Molly Keane Award, the HISSAC, the Sussex Playwrights’, the Meridian, the Escalator Award. I’ve now got two broadcast radio plays under my belt (and am working on a third) as well as signing with an agent and my novel is currently on submission to publishers. My short stories have been published in seven anthologies/literary publications. I’ve had staged readings of my work in Norfolk, Brighton and Cornwall. I’ve served as writer in residence on the Aran Islands, lead workshops in creative writing in Ireland and the UK and teach writing for a living. These are all ships that came home to mama over the past five years but believe me, many had to sink before I saw the slightest hint of success.
Don’t give up – look at how you can improve your rejected story/script/novel/play and send it out again. Remember, much depends on what the magazine or the competition judge is looking for at that particular time, it may not be a comment on your writing skills. It’s all about not giving up.
The 2013 stats:
Ships sent out: 56
Wins/acceptance/short-listings/publications:17
Ships sunk: 39
The 2014 stats thus far:
Awaiting news on 13 ships launched
Wins/acceptance/short-listings/publications: 1
Ships sunk: 3
Van Gogh’s Portrait of Gauguin’s Chair
Setting and character description are linked. A man who favours a torn leather armchair filled with cushions is quite different from a man who rathers sleek minimalist designer furniture. The setting should complement and reflect the character.
It is often effective to draw around the character, sketch them in their absence. What type of chair do they favour? Wallpaper? House? What book is left on their bedside table? Is their office desk obsessively orderly or natty and neat?
I have a background in fine art painting and I find painting is a great way to understand this aspect of character description – the concept of describing your characters by drawing around them rather than delivering a direct portrait of the same. I like to compare these two portraits by Vincent Van Gogh: one a self portrait and the other Van Gogh’s portrait of Paul Gauguin.
What do you think Vincent is communicating regarding his own and Gauguin’s character and personality?
(Bear in mind that Van Gogh and Gauguin were close once but their relationship became strained when they house-shared at Arles – when these portraits were painted.)
And how would you paint these two portraits in words?
Van Gogh’s Chair, Self Portrait
I’ve finally uploaded my debut radio play, ‘Cow’ to YouTube. I’d love you to have a listen…
Storyline: Agi Kovacs, a beautiful Hungarian woman, arrives on Clearys’ farm, Glenmore, Co. Kilkenny, Ireland, to work as a mushroom picker. The Clearys’ already strained, childless marriage appears under further threat by her presence, however an unlikely friendship develops between Marie Cleary and Agi, leading both women to a new world view.
I wrote and produced the play which was directed by Jim Nolan and featured Michael Power (Game of Thrones), Madeleine Brolly and Geraldine Crowley,
‘Cow’ was made with the support of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) for broadcast on KCLR 96fm in April 2013.
Sorry about my silence of late. I’ve been very busy with a number of projects most particularly ‘The Daffodil’ – a radio drama series in five episodes which I wrote, produced and wrapped this weekend in Ireland.
Starring Michael Power and Jenni Ledwell, with Jim Nolan in the director’s chair and Eugene Sully on sound – and musical arrangements by Natasha Purwin and Will Fergusson. It was a blast to make.
Set on the fictional Irish island of Trafadden, The Daffodil tells the tale of the relationship between Eurovision wannabe ‘Liam Egan’ and Eurovision hasbeen ‘Banba’, both mired in denial for different reasons. It’s got laughs (I hope) and music and brio – all of which were brought to the table by a stellar cast and crew.
I don’t have the dates of broadcast yet, but expect it will be in early January 2014. I will let you all know. Promise to get back on top of regular posts very soon.
Did you hear the one….?
A one-act play I penned was recently selected as runner-up in the STERTS annual competition and will receive a rehearsed reading in the Cornish Theatre as part of the prize for the same on December 7th, a night I’m very much looking forward to. If anyone is in the Liskeard area, it would be great if you could come along.
The play in question was initially inspired by a joke so I thought I’d revisit why jokes are such a great source of plot ideas. They are plots in miniature. Stories sealed up and ready to go. You’ve got your beginning, middle, end, your conflict, your characters – flaws and all. All you’ve got to do is flesh it out, expand on it, change gender and setting if possible. And no, your ‘adaptation’ doesn’t have to be funny because many jokes (indeed, stories) need an element of tragedy to make comedy (and vice versa) and you can just crank up the aspect you want to emphasize.
Here’s the joke that gave me the idea for ‘The Angel of Szepfalu’:
“It was Ryan’s funeral and the pallbearers were carrying the casket out from the church. When they bumped into a pillar, one of them heard a moan from inside the coffin. They opened the lid and found Ryan alive. He lived for another ten years before he properly died. Another funeral was held for him and, as the pallbearers were carrying out the coffin, Mrs Ryan shouted “Now, watch out for that pillar!”
OK, it’s the way ya tell ‘em… But the point is that they don’t have to be the funniest jokes – just so long as there is a story in there, a universal truth with which your readers will react and engage. Wordplay/puns won’t work so well, go for the story…
After the whirlwind of an Escalator Showcase reading in London – a launch platform to present us ten Escalatees to agents and publishers up in the big smoke – I’ve retreated to the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig, Co. Monaghan to breathe. There’s a lot to take in, so much has happened over the past six months – not least that I’m now happy to say I’ve signed with Andrew Mann Literary Agency and am represented by the lovely Louise Burns.
I’ve been contacted by some good agents over the past few months and all were nice, interesting and helpful, but I felt that Louise and co. at Andrew Mann were the most excited about my work. This is the essential factor for me. And I really clicked with Louise.
So, I’m here lost amongst the undulating green hills of Co. Monaghan for two weeks, doing final revisions on the novel and trying to digest all that has transpired since last January.
It’s hard to believe that this year alone, I’ve served as artist-in-residence on Inis Oirr, been an Escalator Artist and had my debut radio drama ‘Cow’ broadcast (which I also produced). I’ve seen a staged reading of my play ‘Shellakybooky’ in a Festival of Contemporary Drama, in which I also acted. I wrote a radio drama series ‘The Daffodil’, for which I’ve also now received funding – we hit the studio in Ireland next month. And, of course, I’ve written a novel, ‘The Hole in the Moon’, which will hopefully start doing the rounds of the publishers next month. Not forgetting that I concurrently wrote a screenplay of the same which has been now selected for the Script HotHouse scheme. In December, my one act play ‘The Angel of Szepfalu’ will receive a rehearsed reading in Cornwall’s STERTS theatre as runner up in their annual playwriting prize and lastly my short story, ‘The Boot’ has been shortlisted for the HG Wells Prize and will be published in the anthology, to be launched in Folkestone in November. Yes, all of this has happened this year. But it took years and years of work to get a year like this.
It’s been a whirlwind, thankfully for the next two weeks, this is my view every morning. Ommmm…
A little ship has come home to port, fittingly a Cornish one.
If you follow my blog, you’ll be aware that I liken my speculative writing send-outs to ships. I keep a ‘ship’s log’ of the short stories, plays and other texts that I’ve sent off and their fate. The idea of surrendering my ships to the waves, where I am no longer responsible for them, appeals to me. Once it’s gone, it will either sink or come home to port laden with the encouragement provided by a publication acceptance, an award or recognition in some form. And a ship home to port is cause for celebration, no matter how little the vessel.
Yesterday, I received news that a one act play I wrote, ‘The Angel of Szepfalu’, was runner up in the annual play-writing prize run by STERTS Theatre, Cornwall. As runner up, I receive a small cheque and a rehearsed reading of my play at the theatre. I’m travelling to Cornwall for the same. It might seem like quite a trip (from Norwich) just for a rehearsed reading but any recognition of a writer’s work needs to be embraced. I’m flattered that they like my play and want to support any organisation which does the same.
This will be the third rehearsed reading of my work. Previously, my rehearsed readings have taken place in Brighton and Norfolk. So, if nothing else, my plays are taking me on a tour of coastal England – rather fitting for ships.
suehealy 