The Elevator Pitch

"Once upon a time, in a far away land, where the streets were paved with gold, there lived a lady writer called Amelia. Her cat, Puss in Boots had made friends with the local Emperor, who liked to walk naked through the town. Her best friend Rapunzel had been imprisoned in a nearby tower and lived her life waiting for a faithful prince to come and rescue her. In the garden of Amelia's house, the house she had bought from Jack's mother, a cutting of a beanstalk leading towards the sky often echoed with the sound of overhead giants.

Sometimes, Amelia felt like she was living in a strange fairytale..."

It's a given that fairy tales have a happy ending. It's more or less understood in chick lit that the girl will get her man and in a tale of good versus evil that good will win out. So spinning a yarn on paper, should be simple. Easy peasy.

The reality is that we writers have many moments of being in the horrors. Days, weeks, spent wondering what the hell we are doing.Times when we doubt ourselves, tell ourselves to stop this madness and move on - do something else with our time. If I had a pound for every time I felt those feelings, it would provide (at least) a part time income. If I had a pound for everyone who looked blankly at me saying 'You're a writer, have I heard of something you've written?' only to follow it up (before I've had a chance to reply) with 'I've thought about writing a book, they say everyone's got one in them, don't they?'

Yes. 'They' frigging do.

So it must be a cinch really, this writing lark. After all, everyone's got a book in them.

Well I've had three actually. All of them pretty steep learning curves in this apprenticeship. But if I'm honest, I can now see their faults clearly and before/if I embark on another novel, I'm determined to try one extra thing I haven't previously done - What’s that? Answer in one to three lines what the story is about... I now believe every novel should have a succinct elevator pitch - saying exactly what the story core is. A pared back pitch from which everything else hangs, the bones without the meat - you get the picture. What is the book REALLY about?

For example, in the case of my opening paragraph:

Rapunzel – A beautiful young woman is trapped, then, realises she already holds the means of her escape in her hands.

The Emperors New Clothes - A vain powerful man is conned by people who know his weakness.

It's easier to do with fairy-tales and of course it can always be done after you've read a novel you love. It is however not easy to do before you write one, or even during the structured writing process. It's different to ‘theme.’ You have to pare the layers away to get to the story core. I could write a book about love, identity and healing friendship - all wonderful themes, but if asked to elevator pitch it to Steven Spielberg in one line, I'd probably say 'It's about a friendly alien who lands on earth and needs to find a way home'.

So what's your current WIP really about? Be it a short story, a poem, a novel, could you have that short succinct reply ready if you met Le Spielberg in an elevator and he asked you that question. Or, despite what I now think, does it even matter?

The Strictly Writing Award Shortlisted Story for December - A Little Bit of Soul by Gavin Wilson

Congratulations to Gavin Wilson, whose story is now on the shortlist for the Strictly Writing Award. 

There is only one more month left of the competition, so if you haven't entered yet, give it a go! Details of how to submit your story are available here.

A LITTLE BIT OF SOUL

by

GAVIN WILSON

It is a winter month but I don’t feel the cold that whistles through the house sending dust spiralling in darting, dancing gusts as I stand looking down at the woman lying in her bed. Her eyes are closed now, the faint traces of a lingering smile on her face. Whether this is due to a last happy dream or the beginnings of rigor mortis I wouldn’t know: I would love to say the former.

Cause of death hypothermia. The poor old girl had lived on her own since her husband passed, with no kids to come and visit. Her guilty pleasure had been the odd game of bingo but after her hip had gone the random weekly draw had drawn to a close when she couldn’t get around as much. Only the weekly visits from her friends at the church had carried on to give her something to look forward to.

As I turn to leave I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror: the raven black I think looks good on me, stylish perhaps in a Presbyterian way, but the collar is always too tight, a reminder perhaps of my servitude. I glance back at the old lady. She at least has gone to a better place now. The prayer for the dead has been said, her immortal soul has left its mortal body. Case closed.

Next job, so soon; ah well, no rest for the wicked. A young driver has stolen a car and I give chase. He’s driving like a maniac swerving in and out of the traffic; at any point he could lose control. I always wonder why some people do this, what thrills they get from driving this quickly.

It happens fast; the front tire blows and the car slides sideways briefly before it flips. A cacophony of tormented metal and glass spins and rolls in balletic carnage before it ends on its roof, golden sparks shooting out across the road like a firework as the steel grinds across the asphalt leaving a bloody smear behind it.

Mercifully quick…. one easy job; death by driving!

I’ve been watching this one for a while now, but I have time. The man in the smart suit has spent some time looking out over the city, clinging to the tall chimney, tears streaming down his cheeks; for what reason I don’t know.

He’s stepped closer to the edge, looking down. From this height the fall would certainly kill him.

I understand the desire to end, but why this way?

I approach him and he turns around still crying. I have no words for him, nothing that will take away his pain or make him feel better.

He jumps. Maybe he will land in a friendly place.

It’s morning now for some people, but what does it matter? I enter a grocery store: the shop keeper is being held up by a masked man holding him at gun point. I stop and watch but no one notices me, intent on their own predicaments and petty crimes.

“Where is the safe?” The masked man yells.

The shop keeper stays quiet.

“I will blow your head off old man.”

The shop keeper goes for the bat under the counter.

Bang!

The masked man dashes past me and I walk around to the other side of the counter.

A pool of blood is flowing in viscous finality across the floor, the old shop keeper left staring blankly up at the ceiling with his one remaining eye.

There is little I can do other than watch and wait as he takes his final breath.

Murder: it happens and always will.

    

I need a break but it doesn’t seem like I’m going to get one anytime soon. I sit in the chair looking at the old woman lying in the hospital bed. Her husband sits beside her holding her hand.

Bashed over the head because she wouldn’t hand over her purse; it only had a picture of her dead son and a small amount of money. Was it really worth holding on to it? To her, it was.

The heart monitor flat-lines and her husband looks up in disbelief. She can’t be dying; it was just a bash on the head. Medical staff rush into the room and they try their hardest to resuscitate her but to no avail.

In the quiet and lonely aftermath I walk to the side of her bed. Her soul eyes open and she smiles at me. It's not often that happens: I place my hand on her hers and smile back.

“I always wondered,” she says, the ghosts of her words whispering into my ears. “You look a little different to how I thought you would.”

“Are you ready to go?” I ask.

As she nods, I sever her soul from its mortal cage and stopping only to brush a kiss across the cheek of her grief exhausted husband, she rises to the glow above her.

Another day: another death. The prayer for the dead has been said, the soul has left the body. Rest in peace.

When will it be my turn to rest?

I am different now, so different from the being I used to be. I have been known by so many different names. Gone is the scythe and flowing cloak, the gloom and skeletal form.

The mirror never lies. A man to those of you who see: dressed in raven black. Tie, suit, shoes, shirt: although the collar of the shirt is always too tight for some reason. Tall, distinguished and calm, the silver scissors that sever secreted in a jacket pocket. No scythe to terrorise with apocalyptic dread.

Not yet.

Only when the fires fall from the sky and the dead rise will I truly know an end. That will not happen yet, so I continue endlessly. While you believe, I endure. I long for the sanctity of death; an end, but that cannot happen while you are all still here believing and dreaming of your sad little ends. Your sad demises mean little to me.

One day I will know rest, but until then I will be there at every cessation of life. If you see me, you will know me.

For I am Death.

It will be my pleasure to meet you. 

The Strictly Writing Award Shortlisted Story for September - 'My Burglar' by Carys Bray

Congratulations to Carys Bray, whose story is now on the shortlist for the Strictly Writing Award. For more information about the award and how to enter, click here.

My Burglar

by

Carys Bray

The best time to think of hiding places is before you need them. It’s no use hiding things under beds or in mattresses; they’re the first places people look. Unexpected places are best. Sometimes I surprise myself with my ingenuity. Once I discovered my wedding ring in the bread bin. What a marvellous hiding place. Who would think to check there? Certainly not my burglar.

He always comes at night. In the thick of dark. In the solid, black stillness. In the quiet. In the smothering, pitch silence that stifles the house. I hear the pattern of his feet in the wide hush that packs each room. I hear the snap and creak of the floorboards. The whisper of his hands on the banister. The tide of his breath. I smell the stale tang of urine, of sweat, of wide, yawning pores.

I don’t scream. There’s no point. I’m alone. I sit up in bed and push my back to the headboard. I keep still. Sometimes I hold my breath and then let it hiss out of the corner of my mouth in a slither. I strain my eyes as I try to separate the swirling spirals of yellow-black, red-black and blue-black into something static and penetrable. The streetlamp outside has not worked for some time. I must call the council and mention it.  I peer into the squid-ink darkness, searching for a partition of shadow and form.

So far he has left me alone, been content with trifles: my Accurist watch, an emerald necklace, a pen, my address book. But I watch television. I know about burglars. A man from Birmingham said he was burgled twenty three times last year. He claimed for twenty three televisions and the insurance company was very angry about it. I saw it on the BBC. Burglars keep coming back.

I am beginning to suspect that my burglar is looking for something. I don’t believe he is creeping about my house on the off chance. I think he is after my locket.

‘Don’t be silly Mum,’ says my daughter Charlotte, on the telephone: very bossy and officious. ‘How on earth would anybody know about your locket?’

But I wear it don’t I? How easy it would be for someone to catch a glimpse of it around my neck in the grocers’. Or see it sparkle in the large print section of the library. How straightforward it would be to wait with me at the bus stop, board with me, alight with me. How simple it would be to follow me down Topsham Road and watch me enter number forty. And how effortless to return later, in the dark, to search for the locket.

‘You are being ridiculous Mum,’ says my daughter, Charlotte, on the telephone: unsympathetic and sceptical. ‘You lost that set of keys, they’ve not been stolen. You keep saying you’ll get the locks changed and you haven’t. I’m going to have to look on the internet; send someone round to do it. There is no burglar.’

Charlotte lives in Ireland. She’s been very rude recently.

Night doesn’t fall in the late autumn, it plunges. It catches me unawares. It crashes around me, throwing itself through the house like an unstoppable, black breaker and I chase after, switching on lights in its wake until the whole house is shining like a warning flare. For all my burglar knows, I have guests, a party, family visiting. I feel like Cinderella, safe until the clock strikes twelve. No-one of my age would be entertaining after twelve. I always turn the lights off and hurry to bed before midnight strikes. The only thing worse than hiding from him in the darkness would be confronting him in the full glare of light.

My television breaks the broad silence of evening. So many channels. Just enough time to make a cup of tea during the adverts, so long as you remember to switch on the kettle after filling it. I like programmes about Americans with obesity. They do these operations on them to stop them from eating. Sometimes they suck the fat out of them with a tube like a vacuum cleaner. Afterwards they all cry and hug each other. It’s very entertaining.

Tonight I am not watching television. Tonight I am looking for a hiding place for my locket.

My locket is silver. It is Victorian, oval-shaped. It belonged to my mother. It is such a long time since I took it off that it was extremely difficult to undo the clasp. But it’s done. Here it hangs, in knotty fingers that I can hardly believe are my own. The locket is worth a lot of money.

‘For God’s sake don’t lose it Mum,’ said my daughter, Charlotte, on the telephone: impatient and brusque. ‘You seem to be losing all sorts at the moment.’ I dare say Charlotte is looking forward to inheriting it.

The kitchen is a good place to hide things. The locket dangles as I examine the worktop: breadbin, biscuit tin, kettle. I plop the locket into the kettle. He will never look there.

Midnight.

The chimes of the dining room clock carry up the stairs. If there had been time I would have changed the bed. There is nothing like sliding into sheets that have been dried on the washing line, soaked in the season, fragrant and fresh. Perhaps tomorrow. The darkness presses me flat to the sheet. I breathe softly. I listen.

Morning.

Morning perforates the darkness, prickles across the daybreak sky. Morning and the shadows would be relieved if the streetlamp were working. I must call the council about it today.

He has been. He has been and the stench of him fills the space where the darkness was. Fetid urine. The sheet is moist. Perhaps it was still damp when I changed the bed last night.

I clean the teeth that are mine, insert the teeth that aren’t. Stare into the bathroom mirror at the bloodshot eyes and furrowed face reflected there.

My locket!

I check the bed. Pull off the sheet. Perhaps it came off in the night. But no, the clasp was far too tight. Oh, the smell. He has been here, in my room while I slept. He has fumbled sweaty fingers around my neck, removed my locket and stolen it.

In the kitchen the water tinkles into the kettle. I watch it boil. I make tea and dial my daughter’s number. Her name is Charlotte. She lives in Ireland. 

In the Attic by M Wilkinson ( July's shortlisted story )

In the Attic

We’ve been here a long time now, my daughter, Madison, and me. I’ve lost count of the days. Madison writes in her diary. Her long blonde hair hangs over the page and she licks the end of her pencil before she writes, forming the childish letters with care.

The attic door is re-enforced with steel bars, and six padlocks hang like heavy fruit, grey circles against dark oak. Shutters keep out the night. That’s when they come, slithering, sliding, long arms hugging the brickwork as they make their way up. Distended bellies scrape the walls and leave a silver trail to mark their passing.


Before we came up here I showed Madison the trail. She didn’t believe me at first.

‘That looks like an old snail trail,’ Madison said, and touched it with her fingertip.

‘That’s what they want you to think.’

Her blue-green eyes opened wide. ‘Who are they?’

‘Things that suck at you until you disappear.’

‘Mummy disappeared. Is that what happened to - why she didn’t take her things when she left?’ She looked down at her nails, her lips drawn in tight as if to hold back a sob.

‘I don’t know what happened to Mummy, darling, but we have to be careful - prepare things.’

‘Prepare what?’

‘The attic.’



***

I close my eyes. Strange shapes flicker behind my closed lids. Fountains throw red water high in the air. Hammers flash silver in a macabre dance. I see them too, long grey maggots feasting on a blonde head, one brown eye staring from below a crushed cheekbone. I try to shut them out and picture my wife, but the 'Mummy' Madison talks about has faded from my recollection.

The bottled water is almost gone, perhaps enough to last us a few more days. Madison wants something to eat. I can’t go downstairs because they’re in the house now. I hear them move about. Whispers and clicks. Clicks and whispers.

Madison is ten and too young to understand danger. She's going to open the door. I know this because I read her diary.

There is something wrong with Dad. He has locked us in the attic. He says there is something on the other side of the door, talking in whispers. I can’t hear anything. There was no breakfast today. The cornflake boxes are empty. My stomach is rumbling. When he is asleep, I will get his keys, go downstairs, and make a cheese sandwich.

I’ve thrown away the keys to the padlocks. I watched them flash through the air and land in the shrubbery. There’s a knothole in the shutters. It’s a perfect round. That’s good, because my eye is a perfect round, and a perfect, perfect fit. I can only see straight ahead and it’s dark. I’m waiting for the moon to cross by – that’s a perfect round too, like cheese, pale with blue-green tinge. Madison likes cheese and crisps – She wrote in her diary.

I’m so hungry I wish I had some cheese sandwiches and crisps - or cake - Mum used to make cherry cake. I wish she hadn’t run away. I wish she would come back and let us out.

I flip back the pages. It’s filled with words, but I can’t take in the meaning.

Since Mummy left he keeps washing his hands, over and over.
He empties the rubbish every day but the house still smells bad.

Who is the 'he' she was writing about? The inside of my head feels as if it's filled with cotton wool and I search in among the empty folds for answers.

Madison doesn’t write much now. She sleeps all the time. She talks about food in her sleep.

They’re inside under the floorboards now. They’ve seeped in, greasy, grey bodies twisting through electrical wiring and water pipes.

They came while we slept and sucked at our flesh. They did it slowly, savouring a little of us every day. They think I don’t notice Madison dissolving. Her bony wrists lie on the coverlet and she hasn’t moved today. They’re feasting on me too. My clothes are too big. I rub my face and skin falls like grey snow onto my lap. I sit on the floor facing the door, waiting, waiting.

I saw one of them last night, in a circle of moonlight and my heart contracted. On a crushed cheekbone, a brown eye swung from a thread. Somewhere a memory stirred, I grasped at it, but it slipped away.

I draw my knees to my chest and rock. Rocking is such a comfort. I’m back in my mother’s arms. She wouldn’t let them hurt me.

My heart pounds and I look around the empty attic. ‘Big boys don’t cry.’ That’s my dead mother’s voice. My cheeks are wet, so I must be crying.

I hear voices in the garden, the distant clamour of an ambulance, the wail of a police car.

Madison opens her eyes and smiles. ‘They’re coming to rescue us, Daddy,’ she whispers.

‘I don’t think they’re coming here, Madison.’

‘They are, I pushed a note through the hole in the shutter when you were asleep. They’ll break down the door and rescue us.’

My heart jack-hammers and I don’t know why.

Jack of all Trades...

Something’s happened to me over the last couple of months. I am no longer an aspiring Women’s Fiction novelist with simply four unpublished books under my bed. Now I’m an aspiring writer.

What’s changed? It started when I saw the movie Twilight and was captivated by the characters and plot. I scribbled down the first three chapters to a young teen book which eventually morphed into one for young adults. And yes, *chuckle*, there was a werewolf.

Then, suddenly, I thought of a story for a competition I’d been meaning to enter. 1000 words was the limit. Never, in five years of concentrated writing, have I been able to complete a short story as I always failed to come up with of a satisfactory ending. Since completing and entering that tale, however, I have submitted another to Fiction Feast. I am also about to take part in another competition with a limit of 1500 words.

On top of all this, I have an idea for a children’s book based on my current chick lit story, a time-slip novel set in Ancient Egypt. In fact I’m wondering if this chick lit novel is responsible for my recent diversification – I had never attempted historical fiction (albeit very light) before and the whole process made me question where my talents (such as they are) really lie.

So, is this a normal route for a writer? Do we start off focussing on one genre and then eventually find the confidence to trek down other routes? And is this a foolish quest? Is the risk that we become Jack of all trades and master of none?

Most published novelists I know started off writing short stories, so I guess that answers my question. I must be pretty unusual, coming to the whole process back to front. The problem now is that I’m overwhelmed with choices - how do I know I'll make the right one? Although whatever I write - even if it includes werewolves - there'll be something new to learn.

Guest Blog by Vanessa Gebbie - The Art of the Short Story

It’s a slippery thing, fiction! So I looked up a few definitions.

Story: a fictional narrative of briefer length than a novella. Then I looked up ‘Novella’ and discovered that the original ‘novels’ were probably the verbal relating of news from one town to another. The news was told to entertain as well as inform. The sequence of events changed. Some was held back, making the listeners desperate to know more…and so was born the ‘art’ of the story.

Art: the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions.

The short story is one of the most powerful forms of fiction. An arrangement of fictioncraft elements to elicit a response from the reader. ( Something that varies from mere enjoyment through to a real emotional punch in the gut). It is also one of the slipperiest forms of fiction –on one level it is easy to write (anyone can scribble a story in a few minutes – a sequence of events; a beginning, middle and end). But it is one of the most difficult to do well –that is the challenge for those of us who adore the form.

Maybe we love it for its power. The strength embodied in so few words, the way it can elicit a depth of emotional response that cannot be sustained (and rightly, or the reader would collapse!) for a whole novel. The way it can literally be life-changing.

Life changing? What IS this woman talking about?

I am not talking everyday page-fillers here, although they have their place. Instead, read ‘A Small Good Thing’ by Raymond Carver. Or ‘The Ledge’ by Lawrence Sargant Hall. Or ‘The Shawl’ by Cynthia Ozick. If you don’t feel changed, a little, you have not been reading properly. (All in Best American Shorts of the Century, ed: Updike)

Behind those stories is the craft of writing short fiction, applied by the masters.

I wanted a text book that would show me what was possible. Written not by a single writer but by many. By prize-winning writers who are also superb teachers. I wanted a book that did not treat me like an idiot. But neither would it treat fiction as though it was the province of academia, of the intelligent and cloistered few. It had to be fun, encouraging me to explore my own creativity whilst being solid on craft. It would not pretend that writing is a mystical happening. And it would, once I had started my journey, continue to feed me, to give me ideas, and most of all remind me that I am in the company of others.

That book now exists. It’s called Short Circuit. It has been out exactly a month today, and is already on the recommended reading lists of many writing courses. It is recommended by those behind the Bridport, Fish, Asham and Frank O Connor awards, by teachers of writing and by writers. It works.

Vanessa Gebbie’s short fiction has won many awards, including prizes at Bridport, Fish (twice), Per Contra (USA), the Daily Telegraph and the Willesden Herald, from final judges such as Zadie Smith, Tracy Chevalier, Michael Collins and Colum McCann. She is a freelance writing teacher working with adult groups at literary festivals as well as school students. In 2010 she will be teaching undergraduates at Stockholm University.
Many of her prize-winning stories are brought together for the first time in Words from a Glass Bubble (Salt, 2008). A second collection, Ed’s Wife and Other Creatures, is forthcoming.

Vanessa asks you to support independent publishers. The book can be bought direct from Salt with a 20% discount. (Also available from Amazon and the usual suspects.)
http://www.saltpublishing.com/books/sgrw/9781844717248.htm/

Do visit her website www.vanessagebbie.com or blog www.vanessagebbiesnews.blogspot.com and also http://www.theartoftheshortstory.com/