Narratives from the riverbank.

Of all landscape features, it seems to me a river is the one that lends itself best to carrying a narrative, either the whole story (Three Men in a Boat or Deliverance), or departures and episodes that hook the reader like a helpless fish. Think how Dickens starts Our Mutual Friend with Lizzie Hexham and her father rowing along looking for dead bodies in the Thames, and how in Oliver Twist the events leading to Bill Sykes murdering Nancy begin at London Bridge. (The Victorian Web has a fascinating discussion of the setting.) Alice in Wonderland begins on the banks of the river Isis, which is where the real Alice and Lewis Carroll sat as he told the original tales, fortunately over a century before Inspector Morse started fishing bodies out of it. Mole starts the The Wind in the Willows  by falling in, Ratty saves him, and then they just go with the flow.

More grimly The Bridge over the River Kwai was a bestseller, about POWs in the Far East, and competing for grimness is Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, set in the Congo. Surely it’s no accident that these settings have inspired such successful films.

More books set on or by rivers are discussed here, and picture books here. For older children I’d add two favourites. Black Hearts in Battersea by Joan Aiken is the second in a long series of wonderful adventures.The rightful heir to the throne is rescued from a sinking barge on the Thames by art students in a hot air balloon! Only Joan Aiken could fit so much drama into one chapter – and that isn’t really a spoiler, as there is so much else in the story both before and after that episode.

“Battersea Castle”  from “Black Hearts in Battersea”, 1992 Red Fox edition

The second is Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie. Her family have to cross a river on a hastily made raft of wooden logs, in their covered wagon drawn by ponies. (Memory says it was the Mississippi, but the book’s gone on a journey of its own so I can’t check.) During the crossing the river rises in a flash flood and the ponies must swim for it. On another occasion the horses pull the wagon across an apparently ice bound lake. Half way across the ice begins to give way…These stories were based on true events of her pioneer childhood.

Unless there’s a drought, a river flows along episodically, with a start and an end (an open end, as it flows into the sea), changing as it moves along, a place of work and pleasure, danger and refreshment. The river at Hiroshima represented salvation to victims of the A Bomb: For my burning body the cold water of the river was as precious as the treasure. Now it’s a calm, serene and beautiful place, with cranes (birds not machines!) and riverside walks.

The Map that came to Life sends two children on a walk with a large scale Ordnance Survey map. On the way they cross, encounter, climb and wade through various landscape features and pass significant and domestic buildings. Similarly, in Kyoto, Japan the Kamogawa River came to life as we walked along it and I tell the story in the photos below. It flows between wide sloping green banks. We descended steps to the path beside it, and immediately the roaring traffic was quieter, the air cleaner, and the sky wider. It’s too shallow for boats, but stepping stones led across and we saw them in use. We met a man walking his dog who was delighted I wanted a photo (I think they both were).

There is only one wooden bridge left among the stone ones, but there were rows of old wooden teahouses, bars and homes, and because Kyoto has  a “no high rise” policy the modern flats were not (too) intrusive. After bowing our thanks to the man with the dog we came to another man doing T’ai Chi, echoing the serenity with his controlled, beautiful movement. By the next bridge a flautist trilled on one bank, playing call and response with a violinist opposite. Herons, very close, swooped to pull gleaming fish from the water and there were butterflies with huge orange wings. A volunteer (I presume) group of elderly Japanese were out weeding and picking up the rare litter, too busy to greet us. On the far bank we saw an artist painting the riverside buildings, his back turned to a second artist… who had set up his easel in the water itself, the bottom edge of the canvas barely above the surface.

And then we came up the steps, past the tramp with a huge pile of bags in a trolley at the top, and back into the heat and traffic above. We’d been offered an oasis full of characters. Long may their stories continue, and may the river add new ones every day.

© Jessica Norrie 2016

On packing for a novel

Although I love trips away and I’ve chosen to be a writer, packing a case and planning a novel both fill me with dread. But I’m not one to waste a good analogy.

I don’t know what to include. I’m worried I may end up marooned without something crucial, or humping around a dead weight of miscellaneous junk. Will my choices complement each other, or will they be out of place and pointless? What mood will I be in – light, careless, stressed, excited, energetic?
Will I stride up mountains and pen epic passages? If so I’d better take my strongest boots and most heroic thoughts. Or will I get stuck at some bureaucratic roadblock, with no way through from one chapter to the next without endless examination of my narrator’s identity and reasons for passing through? Will my inner critic let me vault such hurdles, only to shrug her shoulders and say, I’m lost?

For realism and to set the scene, a writer can note the climate. But how will the weather behave? Will my characters and I need rain coats or diaphanous gowns? How will I fare when the pests of the air sting on the long itchy nights / typos adn infelicities infest my exiled prose? I can pack mosquito repellent but I can’t pack my editor.

Who and where are my secondary characters? Will they just happen along, or have I planned to meet them? It’s the author’s privilege to ditch the Brexit bores, if that’s who the company turns out to be, but they can be tenacious chaps who hang around dulling my polished prose. A good guide book may help me avoid them, so in it goes.

How quickly will time pass? Do I need books, sketching materials, puzzles – aka subplots, illustrations, and red herrings? Or will my trip and my story be entertaining enough alone? Would such distractions impede or embellish?

I dither and wander and find displacement activities. Make a trifle, sand the kitchen counter, catch up with the book reviews I promised months ago. Anything but commit to what is going in that case/novel. (Tracy Chevalier describes this well in the Guardian.) In the end I wildly throw everything, essential or not, on the bed. I hurl more on top, chuck it out, bung it in again.. It’s a depressing muddle that will never fit and I sleep in the spare room that night.

Anyway, what case? I forgot I’d thrown it out as it was splitting. Ditto what flight bag? What about those transparent moments when everyone can see my intimate creams and ointments as I go through security? Am I writing a novel at all, or is the idea just too leaky and revealing? Would it be wiser not even to embark ?

Departure day arrives. I must commit. I have a list on the computer, some of it out of date (cassette tapes? Trainer cups?) Likewise there’s a list of requirements for a novel: genre, characters (all grown ups now), setting, inciting incidents, five acts, themes, and – when I can finally leave the house – resolution. Nothing must be left behind.

At the airport I’m anxious and buy more paracetamol, forgetting I already have enough to kill off a whole series of victims.

Let’s cut to the last day of the trip/the end of my current writing journey. I’m pleased! I vow to visit again, spending more time in one place, paying more careful attention. I’ve acquired so much I have to force the case shut and buy a strong strap to keep everything together. The paraphernalia I added early in my stay are still protected by tissue wrappings: I’ve forgotten what these items are and they’ll take me by surprise when I unpack back home. Most are no good: what I thought an ideal Christmas present is actually tacky; that poignant incident I wrote the night we drank cocktails is schmaltz. The volatile scene created on the flight out will work, with some of the turbulence tamed; but the meandering chapter of the thirty-two hour Friday you live through when you get on a plane at midday in Tokyo and disembark at 3pm in London is too long and tired.There’s dirty washing to be done and careless prose to clean up and the only thing that will help is a cup of tea that tastes of home. My analogy has been baggage handled to breaking point, but souvenirs survive: a fine wine, a garment of exquisite comfort to be worn until it falls apart, photographs of beautiful, strange people and places. Enough to frame the rest of the story. Welcome to the start of making sense.

© Jessica Norrie 2016

Serving a narrative ace

Some writers are fascinated by football (Albert Camus, Julian Barnes, Nick Hornby). For others the temptation is tennis (Vladimir Nabokov, Martin Amis, David Foster Wallace – described here in the Guardian). I’m an unseeded member of the second group. The grass court tennis season is underway! And each match tells a story.

Where Foster Wallace loved the geometry of the court, and could manipulate intelligent victories through mathematical strategies, as a very poor player and mathematician I’m more attracted by the structure of the narrative. Even the language is the same – where writers have three act or five act structures, in tennis three or five sets build from an introductory warm up through a steady start to maximum tension at the finale of each. A perfectly crafted two set victory is  a short story, polished in itself but with glimpses of many layered possibilities. A five set titanic battle is the War and Peace of the court: adversaries counter, bludgeon, outwit each other, decimate lovingly nurtured territory with their scurries and stampedes, proceed fast or painfully to the final match point and strut the grass in triumphant panache. The boundaries of the court contain the action within strict conventions which players must find ever new ways to exploit. Our short or long chapters translate into their love games or those with multiple deuces; the tie-break’s a mid point climax, and the final set swift and clinical or an epic struggle with an abrupt denouement. The scoring system is in itself an attractive narrative structure: what spectator hasn’t played with the maths of games won and lost, as a reader doodles in the margin?

Tennis has character arcs too. Whether grumpy, cheerful, languorous, spoilt, gay, straight, multilingual, corrupt or joyous, players all start a match wanting to win (we assume). They deploy their individual armouries – a thumping serve, backspin and topspin, devious lobs or an emphatic smash – to gain the upper hand. They may start at a  disadvantage or pride may come before a fall. The exhilaration of an ace swerves into a spate of double faults: they crow and they mope and they skid and recover. Sometimes they understand what’s happening to them, or they’re disbelieving, of the umpire, of the gods, of themselves. Through their moments of inspiration, exhaustion, disillusionment, calm, the spectators greedily lament their weaknesses and salute their highs, agog to read the next episode.

What a cast! There are stars and character actors, heavyweights and also-rans, newcomers and clowns, the modish and classic, the familiar and outlandish. Each has a back story to guess at and dig out. Some become more fascinating and complex with time; others should have been cut from the plot long ago. The post match interviews aren’t very illuminating (bland platitudes, massive overuse of the word “unbelievable”) but then that’s not what the players are there for. Their gifts are physical, mathematical, strategic and emotional and they tell their stories not through words but actions: tics, triumphs and all.

I got a bit stuck myself here. But – C’mon! Regroup, and off we go again:

Tennis makes clever use of the apparently trivial the same way writers use small details to embellish their stories. Check out the perfect manicures and classy French plaits. The number of variations on a simple white tennis dress fashion designers can achieve is nothing short of remarkable (almost nothing and short being the operative words). This year graceful diaphanous tunics, half Greek goddess, half baby doll pyjama are a foil to the toned muscular aggression they just about cover.  How do some of these structures stay in place? In this context, the woman who wears shorts is making a massive statement. The men too have achieved multiple variations on a simple outfit, from the wincingly tight tailoring of the 1970s through Rafa’s early pirate style to the drawstring comfort of today. Who needs adjectives when you can delineate a character just by dressing her in Ginny Hilfiger?

The umpire is the main supporting cast member, with the ball boys and girls more appealing extras than the portly line judges whose insignificant looks belie the influence of their decisions. Recently Hawkeye has taken on increasing importance, capricious Zeus of the mortal world. The coaches chew and mouth intensities. And of course the crowd can take over with a Mexican wave or the spotlight may fall on a dexterous individual catching a wayward ball. But what of the matches with no crowd, no Hawkeye, no ball girls? Our heroes and heroines struggle on with or without us, circumnavigating the globe, accruing debt and displacement, age, injuries and disappointment. There’s an epic novel in that alone.

 

Before I leave the court, I’ll add that I’ve been experimenting with ways to illustrate my blog posts. Unseeded as a writer, I’m even further down the rankings as an illustrator, so I’ll award a (notional) trophy to anyone who can identify the subject of my silhouettes and drawing. Meanwhile if you want to see another match, Trip Fiction has a pretty good list of tennis related novels. Thank you for watching.

© Jessica Norrie 2016

 

Words set in stone

It’s all very well creating expressive sentences by juxtaposing words, but sometimes I switch to shaping bits of stone into mosaics. The two processes are similar, and I thought I’d see how far I can push the analogy. I’m less experienced with mosaic tiles than words, so I’ll need to go back to first principles. But readers should find the parallels easily enough.

A beginner mosaicist may have no idea of her subject or what she can achieve the first time round. She’s faced with a blank baseboard and a choice of small tiles, called tessarae, in myriad colours, matt or shiny, transparent, opaque, metallic… Tiles are her words. Less conventional (or more inventive) mosaicists work with pebbles, gemstones, coins or broken crockery which equate to onomatopoeia, jargon, quotes or neologisms. (Bear with me!)

The wonderful  Roz Wates, our tutor, explains the history of mosaic arrangement.  There’s a standard grid, or more complex herringbone, tessellation, crazy paving and spiral layouts. To achieve these using only square tiles is tricky, so we have nippers to cut and shape them, enabling us to turn corners and make subtle or dramatic changes in shade and colour. At the start it’s best not to use too many colour contrasts. We could experiment with abstract or geometric ideas, but most people choose a figurative theme, maybe an animal or flower, and go for natural or fantastic shades to represent it. Roz can control the nippers to achieve exact shapes, but our more clumsy efforts are often jagged or whittled to an unusable crumb. We jettison them, start again, or take an easier option with more straightforward lines. Does it sound familiar, writer colleagues?

We transfer from paper or sketch directly onto the base. There’s no point making it too detailed or precise, because the rigid stones will never follow our design faithfully. Words too, tend to take their own path. If we choose the wrong tiles, cut or place them badly, they stick out and disrupt the design, but well combined tiles have a spontaneous directional flow. These are our sentences. Clumsy ones jar: those that fit move everything forward.

Next come the prologue and chapters. We can overcome insecurity or indecision, or assert control, by starting with a border. This at least has the advantage of getting something down. The creator is off the mark, the remaining space left to fill is smaller, and also now contained, which many find less daunting. I don’t use borders, as I’m untidy and like a design to spill off the sides. But a border is the equivalent of an outline, for those sensible writers who start off with one. It’s a statement of intent – some wide and plain, others intricate works of art.

Or we may simply stick down our favourites – it’s surprising how quickly one develops affection for the stones: this is a perfect shape, that catches the light in a particular way. We may set our heart on one and find we can’t use it. But, if we place too many without anchoring them, the whole design may descend into chaos when it’s time to glue and we can’t see exactly which one went where.

Border or no border, the point comes when we can’t put off committing the first tiles. Roz is a great help: with one glance at a paper template, she can identify where to start, in order to emphasise the most important element and keep the background in its place. This is the main character and must be given an interesting personality straight away, or the mosaic will have no life. Most women spend meticulous hours on this but I’ve seen men or children sling something on spontaneously and it immediately looks right.

This stage takes most time: cutting, placing, replacing, sticking, as a last resort chiselling, if the glue has set but we don’t like what’s appeared. Then we add other characters – a small mirror glint, a patterned stone, an interesting variant of style or colour. Now the sub plots and secondary themes become clear. The story is almost told, and it may have taken months of poring over and carefully selecting each tiny loved piece. It’s imperative to keep calm, taking breaks and fresh air, or the nippers get in a twist.

Roz guides, sounding like a creative writing tutor: “Yes – there’s a logical narrative forming here. “Ah! Now that line looks more coherent…” “You could echo that idea somewhere around this point” – “Oh! That shade is exactly what it needs!” “Now, which element did you want to bring to the foreground?”

I can only edit a mosaic as I go, so I mustn’t rush the ending. I can’t rewrite once my characters are literally set in stone. So here my analogy ends, since good old Amazon does let us upload corrections when an eagle-eyed reader spots a typo (yes, I know there shouldn’t be any, but stuff happens…) I mix a grout colour, against all my instincts slather it over my design to penetrate every crack between the tiles, coating it with a monochrome mush – the frightening equivalent of throwing a bottle of ink all over my only manuscript. Then I clean it off, polish it and there’s my finished product.

For mosaics courses visit www.rosalindwates.co.uk/ 

For writing courses, I recommend the Guardian Masterclasses. I’m interviewed here on the Guardian blog about one I did with them, a huge help when I was populating my novel  The Infinity Pool with characters as individual as pebbles on a beach. If you want to see how the arrangement ended up, you can get it for only 99p in the Amazon May Madness Promotion from 1st-21st May.

 

© Jessica Norrie 2016