The art of the Short Story.

I've been trying to figure short stories out for a long time. I've got a few volumes of short fantasy and horror stories knocking around my flat, and I've spent enough time reading them to have tried my hand at writing them.

But I also have my fair share of issues with short stories. The problem I've always had with a lot of short stories I've read is that they seem to forget they're actually a story. My issues with Booker Prize winners nonewithstanding, that style of writing doesn't fit the short story for. At the end of the day, a booker prize winner has a whole novel to tell their touching tale of a young Asian man scarping a living working as a prostitute on the back streets of Tamworth whilst simultaneously trying to act as the surrogate mother to a Panda cub they stole from the zoo.

Feel free to steal that one, by the way. It's as good as most of the pompous crap that booker prize winners come up with.

But when people try to fit those Oh-So-Clever ideas into a short story, then they end up being dull and disinteresting. Maybe thats the goal. Maybe they like subverting the genre. Maybe they lie pissing me, personally, off. A lot of short stories are like that, 'touching' tales of hardship, usually about people who have been touched. Either way, I read enough of that in University to know I don't like it.

So, horror and fantasy. They're the two Genres I primarily read short stories in, but the problem is that a lot of the time, especially in the horror genre, you seem to get writers who are more interested in showing how cleverly they can write than in telling their - usually quite interesting - tale.

So I've been thinking of some of the key points that I feel are useful in the construction of a short story. To come up with these, I revisited some old friends in the form of The Two Steves: Stephen King and Stephen Donaldson. This is just personal opinion, but I believe these two writers to be masters of the short story form in Horror and Fantasy respectively. I'll be making some references to their work in this little rant, and if you're interested, I suggest you seek them out, they're all good stories.

So, without further ado, here's Bendanarama's guide to the short story:

1) Length.

This may seem like a blindingly obvious point to make, but short stories need to be, well, short. AS far as I'm concerned (and this is something I disagree with Donaldson on) 50,000 words is way too much for a short story. 50,000 is well into Novella territory and, given the existence of "Tuesdays with Morrie" a borderline novel in itself. In my opinion, a short story is potentially anywhere from 1000 words to 25-30,000. That looks like a lot, but is actually quite a small amount of space, which leads me onto:

2) The Premise.

Again, it seems obvious, but it's very difficult to tell an epic tale of the wars of men in a short story. Pick a relatively simple premise, something that allows you to tell a story, but forces you to wrap it up in a short timeframe. In Stephen King's "Nightmares and Dreamscapes" collection, almost all the premises are simple: A couple comes to stay in an out of the way town, a finger begins to poke out of a drain, a vampire with a pilots license. All simple premises that give room to stretch the imagination.

3) The Characters.

You're characters will need to be clearly defined from the start. You don't have a hell of a lot of space to play with their backgrounds and motivations, so give us someone we can associate and recognise clearly. Don't be afraid to use the odd cliche here and there. Cliche's are what they are for a reason, and can be used just as effectively to your advantage as to your detriment: think cowboy movie: The Town Sheriff, The Unnamed Drifter, The Local Businessman. All recognisable archetypes of the Genre, all of which allow you to stretch them as characters in a short amount of space. Give your reader something to latch onto, and they'll repay you by paying attention to what you're writing. In Donaldson's story "Penance" the Main character is a remorseful vampire. You're damn right it's a cliche, but it's one played to brilliant effect in a fantasy environment.

4) Keep it Simple, Stupid.

Stop trying to impress people with your flowerly language. Seriously, this is one of my big bugbears - you've got a limited amount of space - use it to tell your story in a  manner that won't have your reader going "eh?" rather than trying to make the English language perform somersaults for your own self-gratification.

So yeah, I hope this little rant helps some poor person who chooses to stumble upon this blog after a random google search. It happens. In the meantime, I'll be writing my "Cowboys vs Werewolves" short story. Lets see how that works out.

Falling out of the story.

So. Writing. That thing I'm meant to be doing. Yeah.

I'm not going to deny it, I'm fairly inconsistent when it comes to writing to targets. I've struggled with Time and Tide over the last few months, and now that the autumn months are coming round, I'm finding it a real struggle to focus on the story I'm trying to tell.

Primarily, this is because I have a fairly serious aversion to planning my story out. I tend to stick with a looser guideline - I know whats going to happen in the beginning, I know what the characters are going to be like, and I have a pretty solid idea of how they're all going to end up. My problem is whats colloquially known as the "bit in the middle." You know. The stuff that fills up all the pages.

I love writing. I really do. It's one of my favourite things to do. But I've written six chapters of Time and Tide now and I've hit on the problem that hits me with all my writing at some point: It's started becoming a chore. I sit down, look at it, and go "I can't be arsed right now." I love the story and I love the characters, but at the end of theday, I'm not in the mood.

So, what to do instead? I could pull my usual nonsense by slacking off and playing video games. I could do what I'm currently doing and carry on trolling people on Omegle's spy mode.

Or I coulc get off my ass and write something. Last year for NaNoWriMo, I wrote a motorsport story. I've been meaning to do something more with those characters. What better time than now?

Incidentally, the whole Omegle thing? This is the best response so far:

---

You're now watching two strangers discuss your question!
Question to discuss:
Last night, I creapt into your house and spat, gently, in your ear. How do you feel about this?

Stranger 1: I actually enjoyed that. I thought it was the loveliest of dreams.

Stranger 1: Now I know it was real.

Stranger 2: o.o

Stranger 1: Woah! wait, who are you?

Stranger 1: I thought it was this other man who had come to me, now there is this stranger talking to me?

Stranger 1: What is this?

Stranger 1: How could you do this to me??

Stranger 2: Imma woman ...

Stranger 1: Are you the one who spit in my ear?

Stranger 2: no

Stranger 1: Did this being who is watching us come to you as well?

Stranger 1: He must have, if he sent us both here...

Stranger 2: nope

Stranger 1: We were chosen for something.

Stranger 1: no?

Stranger 1: hmmm...

Stranger 1: interesting.

Stranger 2: well i dunno i was asleep

Stranger 1: Did you wake up here?

Stranger 2: ive been out all day ? its like 7:25pm were i am

Stranger 1: YOU'RE SO BORING! WHY DONT YOU JUST PLAY ALONG??

Stranger 1 has disconnected

Monday Mumblings: God is in the Mask.

So, here I sit, cup of tea in hand, trying to work on my Novel, and failing dismally. I don't know why, because I have a lot of enthusiasm for this project, but I seem to have reached, at this point of the sixth chapter, what can be referred to as "The fiddly bit."

See, the problem is, my characters aren't omniscient. Well, most of them aren't. There's one exception, but I wouldn't want to spoil it for you. But the point is that most of my characters aren't all knowing, so at some point, they have to figure out how to get to each other. This is difficult. Bex describes the story as being a bit of a King Arthur fanfiction, and theres a certain element of truth to that, but there are a lot of places I have to take the characters before I pack them in the back of their Skoda and trot them off down to King Arthur country.

So instead, I'm having to rely on my witty dialogue and the sneaky use of Deus Ex Machina. I've always been kind of fascinated by the Sutton Hoo Mask, so given that I'm having my villain and his anti-heroish compadre are currently breaking into the British museum, I couldn't think of a better historical artifact to send them on their merry little treasure hunt. I'm also sort of playing assassins creed Brotherhood multiplayer, but I'm not really paying attention so it isn't going well.

Blogging, writing a novel, and playing video games all at the same time. Who says blokes can't multitask?

This isn't the game I remember.

I came to a horrifying conclusion recently. It hit me quite hard, and made me just a little depressed. I came to the devastating realisation that my beloved Gillingham Football Club will never play in the Premier League.

Now, I'm pretty sure that will come as a shock to precisely no-one, but what got me the most is that even if we had the players, ground, infrastructure, sponsors, training, management and chairman to get to the premiership, theres no way in hell that Gillingham FC can afford to compete in the premier league.

What brought it home was a line in Shortlist Magazine from Robbie Savage. He was talking about Fernando Torres' move to Chelsea and said "He looks more like a Fifteen Million pound player than a Fifty-Million pound player."

And I thought to myself "Holy hell, what has the world come to when being said you're worth fifteen million quid is meant to be a derogatory statement."

I'm pretty sure the Gills entire squad isn't valued at fifty million pounds. Hell, I'm not even sure they're valued at fifteen million pounds. Fifteen million quid goes a very long way in the third division.

And I'm still not entirely sure when football started becoming more about the money than it was about the game. Manchester City is currently having it's sponsors investigated by UEFA - the European Regulators - to see if theres any financial misconduct. In 1999, Gillingham lost to Manchester City in the division 2 playoff finals. I still find that slightly surreal given that they're now the richest club in the league.

It's like the premier league exists in another plane of existence. One where theres infinite money, and no-one bats an eyelid at players earning £200,000 a week. And everyone is asking the question "When will this bubble pop?"

A lot of the people I work with tell me that this money needs to be paid to keep the league competitive and attract talent. But I say that the world of football needs a wage cap - Let the talent come for the game, rather than the money. Let players play for the love of their club, not the size of their wallet.

Cesc Fabregas left Arsenal this week to play for Barcelona. When you read what he was saying, it was clear that he went to Barca for love of his hometown club. Back in the premier league, Wayne Rooney walked out on Everton, his hometown club, to take the big paycheck at Manchester United. Sadly, there are more players acting like Rooney than acting like Fabregas, and whilst the clubs bank balances swell and the players get bigger cars and bigger paychecks, I sit there watching the results on Saturday, knowing that my club will never be top of the top.

Because we can't afford it.

I find myself in a very odd position.

We all know how Internet trawling goes. You start on one page, you click on a random link, and you end up going to strange and weird places of the Internet that you never expected to. No, this isn't a porn rant. Get your mind out of the gutter.

This is the strange tale of how I found myself in the incredibly strange position of defending Paris Hilton. Still not a porn rant.

So, this morning, I clicked on a random link from F1 Fanatic, and a couple of clicks later, I ended up on this video:

Okay, I'm not the biggest fan of Motorbike Racing, and I can't stand Paris Hilton, and on that basis I was fairly indifferent to the clip, although I thought she sounded very supportive of the team she's backing - Blusen's by Paris Hilton Racing (Catchy) - and very supportive of the 16 year old 125cc racers she's helping race on the MotoGP circuit.

Then I made a critical error.

I looked at the Comments.

Dear. Sweet. God.

"wtf,why she was there? for sex or something?"

"okay....stick making porn videos...."

"What a d**k! I bet she only wants a bike because its something else big and throbbing she can have between her legs!"

"would she give me a blow if i let her drive my bike?!"

"shouldn't this c**t be in the kitchen making us all a sandwhich? lol"

I'd really love to say I cherrypicked the comments here. to an extent I did. But if you don't believe me, go and look at the comments on that video yourself. It is genuinely disgusting. As I've said, I'm not a fan of Paris Hilton, but no-one deserves to be spoken about in this method. I was raised to not talk about people like this, and I'm willing to bet most of those commenters were as well.

A lot of the resentment on there seems to derive from the fact that the commenters seem to believe that she has "no right" or "doesn't belong" on the video from the Grid.

Heres the moment when I pick a fight, because I hate to break it to you, but she has a hell of a lot more right to be there than most of you keyboard warriors out there. I do hope that some MotoGP fans end up reading that and pour hatred out at me.

Your hate tastes like candy. It feeds me.

But the fact is that Paris Hilton is probably pouring a not insubstantial amount of money into supporting two young 125cc riders as they go to different races worldwide. No-one objects to Vijay Mallya, Tony Fernandes or Richard Branson being interviewed on the F1 grid, so why does Paris Hilton, who is essentially a team owner, deserve this abuse. Is it because they command more respect, more prestige?

Or is it because they aren't a 30 year old blonde heiress who once appeared in a porn video.

It's very easy to go for target like that, isn't it? Very big of all of you.

That "I am the Doctor" Moment.

One of my things when I'm writing is that I write to music. I'm pretty sure most people who write do the same - certainly most people I know do. But one of the things I do is I tend to associate music with certain parts of my writing.

Those three sentences were just background, by the way, they have nothing to do with the meat of this blog entry.

Okay, Im sure you glanced at the title of this blog and went "What the hell is he talking about?" Well, I'm a Doctor Who fan, and since the Regeneration into the Eleventh Doctor, the fine folks at the BBC have used a certain musical refrain to indicate moments where the Doctor is about to be exceptionally awesome. This is that piece of music:

Its a live version, so there is the occasional giggle from the audience, but you get the idea. Now, what we have there is a musical cue. If you watch a program long enough, you begin to associate these cues with pieces of action. Another example is the Indiana Jones theme tune. Throughout the movies, when the music begins to kick in, you know that it's about to become a "Indy Kicks Ass" scene.

Now, the Audio Cue of "I am the Doctor" is a bit different, primarily because of the difference between Indiana Jones and The Doctor as characters. Indiana Jones is an action hero, whereas The Doctor is, essentially, a none-violent character. "I am The Doctor" is not an action Cue, but it is a quintessentially triumphant piece of music. Of course, an Audio Cue is nothing without context, so here's a scene from Matt Smith's first episode that illustrates exactly how the audio Cue of the initial strings riff on this track works:

Okay, so now we're all briefed up on the concept of the Audio Cue, what does that have to do with the way I'm trying to write my Novel?

Well, that kind of Crescendo moment is something that I've been looking to try and develop in my own work, and I've been looking for examples in other places of how it works. Now, some of these won't work exceptionally well out of context, so you're going to have to trust me on them. I'll try and explain them as best I can.

The first example, I've got, is one that, somewhat fortuitously, I came across today. I'm pretty sure that most people who've read a book... well, who've read a book will have heard of The Hound Of The Baskervilles. If you haven't, you're physically a disgrace to humanity.

But, having heard of the book isn't necessarily equivalent to having read it, so to give you the background to this section, and brief summary of the plot so far: Sir Charles Baskerville has died in suspicious circumstances, and Sherlock Holmes has been commissioned by his Heir, Sir Henry Baskerville, to investigate both the circumstances of Sir Charles' demise and the mysterious warnings that have been sent to attempt to discourage Sir Henry from taking up residence at Baskerville Hall. The Mystery deepens when the Baskerville Family legend of a demonic hellound stalking the family seems to be involved, with the footprint of a Large Dog having been found near Sir Charles' body. Holmes, for various reasons, elects to remain in London for the first part of the story, and sends his Erstwhile companion, Doctor Watson, to Devonshire with Sir Henry. To complicate things further, a notorious murderer has escaped onto the moors, and is involved with members of Sir Henry's household staff. While he and sir Henry chasing down Selden, the escaped convict, Watson spots a figure highlighted against the moon watching them. During his own investigations the next day, Watson has the trail to this second figure's hideout pointed out to him by a local busybody. Following the scent to a group of Neolithic houses, Watson finds a note from the Boy who has been carrying supplies to this mysterious figure...

"Dr. Watson has gone to Coombe Tracey."

For a minute I stood there with the paper in my hands thinking out the meaning of this curt message. It was I, then, and not Sir Henry, who was being dogged by this secret man. He had not followed me himself, but he had set an agent—the boy, perhaps—upon my track, and this was his report. Possibly I had taken no step since I had been upon the moor which had not been observed and reported. Always there was this feeling of an unseen force, a fine net drawn round us with infinite skill and delicacy, holding us so lightly that it was only at some supreme moment that one realized that one was indeed entangled in its meshes.

If there was one report there might be others, so I looked round the hut in search of them. There was no trace, however, of anything of the kind, nor could I discover any sign which might indicate the character or intentions of the man who lived in this singular place, save that he must be of Spartan habits and cared little for the comforts of life. When I thought of the heavy rains and looked at the gaping roof I understood how strong and immutable must be the purpose which had kept him in that inhospitable abode. Was he our malignant enemy, or was he by chance our guardian angel? I swore that I would not leave the hut until I knew.

Outside the sun was sinking low and the west was blazing with scarlet and gold. Its reflection was shot back in ruddy patches by the distant pools which lay amid the great Grimpen Mire. There were the two towers of Baskerville Hall, and there a distant blur of smoke which marked the village of Grimpen. Between the two, behind the hill, was the house of the Stapletons. All was sweet and mellow and peaceful in the golden evening light, and yet as I looked at them my soul shared none of the peace of Nature but quivered at the vagueness and the terror of that interview which every instant was bringing nearer. With tingling nerves but a fixed purpose, I sat in the dark recess of the hut and waited with sombre patience for the coming of its tenant.

And then at last I heard him. Far away came the sharp clink of a boot striking upon a stone. Then another and yet another, coming nearer and nearer. I shrank back into the darkest corner and cocked the pistol in my pocket, determined not to discover myself until I had an opportunity of seeing something of the stranger. There was a long pause which showed that he had stopped. Then once more the footsteps approached and a shadow fell across the opening of the hut.

"It is a lovely evening, my dear Watson," said a well-known voice. "I really think that you will be more comfortable outside than in."

Okay, so the trick when reading that excerpt is to imagine the music coming in at the line "Then once more the footsteps approached and a shadow fell across the opening of the hut." The whole trick of this section, which Conan-Doyle plays magnificently, is that we are as blind to the identity of the stranger as Watson is, but from the moment he speaks, we realise that it is Holmes and that the day is saved, because the Hero has arrived on the scene. We know, from the moment Sherlock Holmes appears, that the endgame is upon us, and everything will be alright.

However, this moment of Triumph and sudden security is not the only way a "I Am The Doctor" moment can be used. Another example is this recent comic from Sluggy Freelance. I apologise for linking to the comic and not putting the image on here for convenience, but I refuse to steal Bandwidth from one of the most popular webcomics on the net.

I'm also not going to explain too much of the backstory here, because it is ENORMOUSLY complicated. Medical Nanobots are involved, as are alternative dimensions. To fully explain everything would far too long, but the brief notes version is that Riff - the guy in the trenchcoat - has been living in an alternate dimension for two years, and his friend Zoe - the girl at the end of the strip - was transported there with him. due to various reasons, Zoe's mind was wiped, leaving her with no memories or any kind of function; not quite vegetative, but somewhere in between.

Now, heres where the other side of the "IATD" moment comes in. This is a slightly different concept where the hero gambles everything - life, sanity, health and wealth - to achieve one single goal: in this case, restoring Zoe to her original buoyant state. These plots and gambles are, by necessity, highly convoluted and complicated, as the explanation given by Riff in the comic shows. With comic strips, you have to imagine the time delay between frames to give yourself the sort of cinematic flow. The place for the Audio Cue to kick in in that scenario is slightly different - rather than a buildup to the reveal, its the buildup to the Victory, the true triumphant moment, where the gamble is shown to have paid off - when Zoe reappears as herself, rather than in her vegetative state.

These are just two examples, but when I was reading both, I was playing the piece of music in my head as I read them. Now, it's easy to spot this kind of moment on TV or film, but writing them in prose of in a comic the way Conan-Doyle and Pete Abrams did in these examples, is to me one of the best - and most difficult parts of trying to write a story, and something I aspire to be able to do. If I ever read back over what I've written and get the little buzz of anticipation burst that piece of music gives me, I know I'll have done good.

Kids these Days.

Okay, I'm a gamer, and I've been known, on occasion to talk about motorsport on this blog. So naturally, being both a gamer and a Motorsport fan, I was pretty happy to see news of F1 2011 appearing in the gaming media, more specifically, this Developer Diary:

I want the steering wheel Ant Davidson uses in that video SO much.

Now, I first came across that video on a gaming site. As you tend to with Video Game news. What I then did was make the mistake of looking at the comments. Most of it, to be fair, was the usual mix of vitriolic hatred and enthusiastic responses. The one that caught my eye, though was a comment related to the footage from about the 1:45 minute mark of the video, at the VIP developer event.

As you may notice if you look at that video, a lot of the people trying the game out are rather young, which prompted some enlightened soul in the comments to ask:

"That's stupid, what the F**k do kids know about car handling?"

I have, of course, corrected the spelling and grammar.

Now, at first glance, the commenter has a point. What does a young person know about the intricacies of car handling and physics? What could a young teenager know about Racing a car? What could a child know about competitive motorsport and how a car handles under pressure?

What could this 15 year old girl:

(Picture Courtesy: BBC)

know about car handling and physics? And what does this nine year old child:

(Picture courtesy: Youtube)

...Know about how a racing car handles? Look at the pair of them? What could they possibly know about racing car Handling that some gamer commenting on a website doesn't? Everyone knows kids don't know anything!

Tell me, gentle reader, how good are you at spotting incredibly loaded questions?

That first picture? The fifteen year old? Her name is Sarah Moore. In 2009, on Live British Television, she won the Ginetta Juniors championship, one of the best Junior GT racing categories in the country. She was the first female champion in it's then five-year history. She won five races and had ten podium finishes in the 20 race season. Now aged 17 and racing in the Intersteps series, Her ambition is to compete in the Le Mans 24 Hours. She also has her sights set on being the first British Female F1 driver.

Just to illustrate that this series isn't just kids playing around, here's some footage from the 2008 season, as Ginetta Junior footage is disappointingly difficult to find:

Oh, and I bet you're wondering about the young nine year old boy in that photo. Well, that picture was taken in 1989. I cropped it from this footage:

Twenty years later, that nine year old boy did this:

Yeah. Thats Jenson Button. The 2009 F1 world Champion.

So whats the point of this blog entry? The point is that Racing drivers don't just drop into the seat at the age of 25 and start winning races. The point is that Motorsport, like everything else in life, is a craft that needs to be learned.

The point is that some Gamer posting a comment on a website doesn't know more than that 15 year old girl and eight year old boy. They have probably forgotten more about car handling and physics than you will ever know. Sarah Moore is a veteran champion racing driver at the age of 17. Jenson Button has been racing for over 20 years, and is only 31 years old.

So, "What the f**k do kids know about car handling and physics?"

The answer? In the case of some of them, A hell of a lot more than you.