Flash Fiction Chronicles

On Monday, I promised to take you through my writing process from challenge to finished product, from 1253 words to 500 words. The challenge words were ambassador, taint, sprocket, faux pas, wanderlust, and valedictorian. Yesterday, Wednesday, I gave you my first draft and today is my second draft.  My final draft will be posted tomorrow, Friday.

You will see that in this second version I tried to collapse the back story down. The first paragraph is reduced from 70 to 23 words. But there is still a hint that we are not on Earth in the words marked in green. Now, 697 words is better, but that still left almost 200 words to get rid of and that is a greater challenge still.

Version 2

Ekbert cleared his possessions, disengaged the environmental system and called security. ‘So, that’s all,’ he said into the translator.

‘Vor,’ came the reply.

I honed the second paragraph to less than half its length too whilst keeping the essential cue words in place. If you have to half a piece that you’ve already written, it’s usually best to do the précis one paragraph at a time to make sure you’re keeping the balance of all the original elements and you should give each new version a separate identity – Sprocket1, Sprocket2, etc so that you can print off and compare versions if you feel the piece has lost vital elements at the end.

The taint would remain in his mind. He’d resign quietly, acquaint a successor with all cultural requirements. He was a mere sprocket; neither the driving force, nor the end result in this endeavour. His faux pas was probably of little importance outside his immediate circle. Provided he left quickly and was replaced soon, nothing would be lost; except to him.

In Draft 1, I had put a lot of detail in about the language and customary greeting that didn’t really need to be there. The audience will fill in a lot from imagination if you just hint at otherness. So although I’d spent time dreaming this stuff up, my darlings had to go. And you will also notice that 4 paragraphs now get compressed into 3 – 564 -224 words. Looking at them here, I can’t see that anything was lost.

His first word had been a simple hello, ‘Yeai’; no body language, minimal eye contact, avoiding preconceptions with regard to time, space, gender or any other value or construct. The Golath had circled him slowly, clockwise, then anti-clockwise, then touched his forehead with one long, blue finger-like limb, almost a benediction, in a long, graceful motion of mesmerising calm. Twenty attendants had done the same, passing in endless dance. He grew accustomed to the slight tingling as they reached out. It took longer to identify their collective and individual colours and feel the vibrations of emotion in each subtle greeting.

His inaugural speech as ambassador was the culmination of months of translation.
‘There comes an epiphany in any interaction, when barriers are broken down and true friendships form. This is what I hope for our two planets. It does not necessarily follow that the stranger the culture, the longer it takes. It has an agenda none can predict and can be measured only in terms of enlightenment. Today – may I call you friends? – the darkness has rolled back.’
He stood naked as they were, and accepted the accolade with pride.

He studied every complexity of their melodic language, gestures and colour changes. When they paled to white something was wrong. However, they could detect no emotion from him, for he didn’t change colour.

The story pivots here and so at this point I had to make some radical changes because in Version 1 the story is as long from here to the end as the entire word count should be and I already have a 307 word count! I began to mark things I could easily lose.

One day, circling two friends in the market whilst buying schbOr he felt suddenly, completely at home. It took him by storm. Far from Earth, under a golden sky, with beings floating around him, imitating their intonations and gestures, at that moment, he would have thought another human, a strange creature indeed. It had been six years. In his dreams, he floated too.  “So, that’s all,” he thought. But it meant a myriad of things – wonder, resignation, regret, surprise – even endearment. Tiny tonal shifts here changed meaning, combined with colours which he could not affect and that gave him the equivalent of an accent and a slightly untrustworthy air.

Then he saw Agat, daughter of a high ranking official. She was like pearl, slender, wavering; demure even by Golathe standards. Some frisson passed between them and he met her eye, could not look away and so failed to begin the clockwise dance. He had never thought any romantic attachment probable. It overwhelmed him. His body reacted and Agat paled. Then her father paled. Other guests picked up the vibration and turned.

Eckbert was ejected. The Golath requested an audience.

He remembered his father, ‘So, you’re joining the diplomatic service to satisfy your wanderlust?’ His father had always put him down despite his magna cum laude in Intercultural Competencies. ‘Unlikely choice given your predilection for solitude.’
But Ekbert knew he could never be happy doing any other work. He was the young man who’d stood on the podium exuding self-confidence, about to embark on a promising career, addressing his peers. But his first words were drowned out by cries of:
‘Hail the Valedictiorian!’ And caps raised in the air in praise.

Now he must face the Golath.

Agat and her father were there. She stirred in him the same reaction as before and he blushed. He circled her and her father without a word and then he allowed the Golath to circle him.

‘You are emotional,’ said the Golath.

‘Yes.’

‘You turn pink.’

‘Yes.’

‘What meaning?’

‘Shame – love.’ He glanced at Agat.

‘What has shame to do with love, Ambassador?’

‘You’d be surprised.’

‘So, that’s all. My people thought this a violent display. Instead you want to mate?’

‘Mate? Is it…’

‘It is up to Agat,’ said the Golath.

Agat reached out and touched Dillon Eckbert’s body. He was home.

Friday, Draft 3

_____________________________

Oonah V. Joslin is the winner of three Micro Horror prizes and  judge of this year’s competition at www.microhorror.com where Nathan Rosen and Oonah have a video running to annouince the contest.  She was also an honoree in The 2009 Binnacle Competition.  Full lists of what went where available on at Oonah’s Every Day Fiction author site. She also served as judge of  The Shine Poetry Competition 2008 and is managing editor of Every Day Poets.  Anthologies: The Best of Every Day Fiction 2008, The Best of Every Day Fiction TWO, Toe Tags, and A Man of Few Words. Oonah blogs at Oonahverse.

On Monday, I promised to take you through my writing process from challenge to finished product, from 1253 words to 500 words. The challenge words were ambassador, taint, sprocket, faux pas, wanderlust, and valedictorian. What follows over the next few days are versions of my story with edits.

If you want to observe the process, print the various versions, take some highlighter pens and follow the cuts as they are made.  I hope you find the exercise a useful one and that you will let me know if you do.

Here goes.

Version 1

1,253 was a tad longer than the 500 word limit for the challenge set on our forum. The words marked in red were to be included in the text so I had to retain those whilst more than halving my count. Quite a challenge.

Ambassador Ekbert put the last of his possessions into the transfer holds. ‘So that’s all?’ Then he disengaged the environmental adaptation system with a 5 minute delay code and called security. ‘So, that’s all,’ he said into the translator he’d spent years developing – not that he actually needed a translator any more but protocol demanded a certain distance at this moment.

‘Vor,’ came the reply.

“So – that’s all!” he thought.

The taint would remain in his mind. He had little choice but to resign quietly. The work might continue if he was able to acquaint a successor adequately with the cultural requirements of the mission. After all, he gave no direction to the way this species interacted with humankind. He was a mere sprocket; neither the driving force, nor the end result. His job was to keep the chain of events leading to cultural understanding on track and thus his faux pas was probably of little importance outside of his immediate circle. Provided he left quickly and was replaced soon, nothing would be lost; he must keep sight of that – but he would miss these lovely beings and their strange ways.

‘Vor,’ he affirmed.

‘Yaie,’ had been his first word – a simple hello, without use of body language of any kind and with minimal eye contact, no preconceptions with regard to time, space, gender or any other value or construct. The Gola had moved from its platform and circled him very slowly, clockwise, then anti-clockwise, then touched his forehead with one long, blue finger-like limb, almost a benediction, and mounted the platform again in one long graceful motion that mesmerised and sedated. Each of the twenty or so attendants had done the same and as they passed in endless dance, he grew accustomed to the slight tingling of his skin as they reached out to touch him. That was his first lesson in standard greetings among the Golathe. But it took a long time to identify the collective and individual colours and feel of the vibrations in each subtle greeting, as an emotion.

‘There comes a moment of epiphany in any interaction between beings, be it linguistic or empathic, social or personal, when barriers are broken down and true friendships and lasting liaisons become normal. This is what I hope for our two planets – for our two peoples.’

His inaugural speech as ambassador had been the culmination of months and a triumph of translation.

‘It does not necessarily follow that the stranger the culture, the longer that takes. It depends upon variables that none can predict and can be measured only in terms of enlightenment. Today friends – may I call you friends? – the darkness has rolled back.’

He stood naked before them as they always were, and took the accolade with pride.

As ambassador, Dillon Eckbert pieced together every nuance of their melodic language, dipping gestures, colour changes and came to appreciate their complexity. They were graceful, calm creatures for the most part. When they paled to white something was wrong. He was an experienced diplomat who detected the first signs of trouble well. For their part, though they could detect no emotion from him, for he didn’t change colour, but they gradually became less suspicious.

And so Eckbert fashioned himself a life amongst this alien race and thus came to that epiphany himself when, circling two friends he recognised in the market whilst buying schbOr, a local delicacy he’d come to love, he felt all at once, completely at home. Despite his own words, the sensation took him by storm. Here he was, far from Earth under a golden sky on a planet whose inhabitants floated around him and he was almost dancing around them, turning his head this and that way, never looking into their eyes, making small piping sounds with his lips to imitate their intonations and if any other man had appeared there, he would have thought it a strange creature indeed and perhaps have required the use of his own translator. It had been six years. Now, in his dreams, he floated too beneath a golden sky of shifting hue. “So, that’s all,” is how his thought would have translated in that moment but it really meant a myriad of things – it was a term of wonder, resignation, regret, or surprise – even of endearment. The slightest tonal shifts changed meaning, combined with colours which he of course, could not affect and that gave him the equivalent of a foreign accent and a slightly untrustworthy air, for those who were unacquainted…

Then he saw Agat. She was the daughter of a high ranking official. The function was informal. As the higher in rank, he was supposed to circle her slowly in the usual manner, then touch her forehead lightly with his finger. But she took his breath away. She was like mother of pearl, tall slender, wavering and demure even by the gentle standards of the Golathe. Yet something, some frisson, had passed between them and he met her eye and could not look away and so failed to begin the clockwise dance – a thing no Golathe would ever do. But they were well prepared for such a circumstance and not for one moment had Eckbert ever countenanced any romantic attachment in his own case. It was electric, overwhelming. His body reacted in the normal way and Agat paled. Then her father paled. The other guests picked up the vibration and turned and saw the three stalk-still and realised that something had occurred. Eckbert was ejected from the domicile and made his way home in a state of confused arousal. He could not banish Agat from his mind. The Golath requested an audience.

He remembered the boy. So, you’re going into the diplomatic service? That should satisfy your wanderlust.’ His father had had a way of putting him down without saying much and it would take more than a magna cum lauda in Intercultural Competencies to change that. ‘An unlikely choice given your predilection for solitude.

The combination of allophilia and wanderlust were such persistent voices inside him that Ekbert knew he could never be happy doing any other work and this had been a unique opportunity.

He remembered the young man, Dillon Eckbert who’d stood on the podium exuding all the knowledge, empathy and self confidence of a popular student about to embark on a most promising career. He’d always stood out, and addressing his peers he began to speak but such was his standing amongst them that his first words were drowned out by cries of:

‘Hail the Valedictorian! Hail the Valedictorian! Hail the Valedictorian!’ And caps raised in the air thrice in deliberate and universal praise.

Now he must face the Golath – alone.

To his dismay, Agat and her father were there. Agat stirred in him the same reaction as before and he blushed but he did not meet her eye again. Instead he circled both her and her father four times without a word and then he allowed the Golath to circle him.

‘You have emotion,’ said the Golath.

‘Yes.’

‘You turn colour.’

‘I go pink, yes.’

‘What meaning?’

‘Shame – love.’ He looked at Agat.

‘What has shame to do with love, Ambassador?’

‘You’d be surprised.’

‘So, that’s all! My people thought it was the violence your kind sometimes displays. Instead you want to mate?’

‘Mate? Is it…’

‘It is up to Agat,’ said the Golath and Agat reached out and shyly touched Dillon Eckbert’s body. He had come home.

Thursday, Draft 2; Friday, Draft 3

_____________________________

Oonah V. Joslin is the winner of three Micro Horror prizes and  judge of this year’s competition at www.microhorror.com where Nathan Rosen and Oonah have a video running to annouince the contest.  She was also an honoree in The 2009 Binnacle Competition.  Full lists of what went where available on at Oonah’s Every Day Fiction author site. She also served as judge of  The Shine Poetry Competition 2008 and is managing editor of Every Day Poets.  Anthologies: The Best of Every Day Fiction 2008, The Best of Every Day Fiction TWO, Toe Tags, and A Man of Few Words. Oonah blogs at Oonahverse.

I belong to a writer’s forum where we set challenges every week. I like the discipline of it – plus sometimes I come up with an idea I can run with.  I found this one particularly tough though.

The challenge was to use these six words: ambassador, taint, sprocket, faux pas, wanderlust, valedictorian

Usually I have the number of words in my mind and I can pretty much tailor my writing to that, but in this case I had a sci-fi idea and that involved creating an entire world for the reader, as well as a background and personality for the character and a problem and resolution.  The result was that I first had to create that world for myself.  500 words was a tall order.

I find as a writer I have to know the world I’m talking about and I have to see a character, hear a voice, in order to deliver to the reader a plausible and well-furnished plot. Thus on this occasion, I explored that world thoroughly as part of the process and found myself disastrously overdrawn on words.

If I’d been writing a novel that might be okay but I’m inclined not to believe so.  Good writing for me delivers the maximum impact with the minimum force.  Flash Fiction is the perfect tool for learning that art although, as I have said before – I am no novelist – I prefer to write shorts.

When I was in Grammar School, precis was still taught as a discipline.  Orwell’s essays were recommended reading (and I would still recommend them) and “The Use of English” by Lancelot Oliphant was our bible.  Precis was also part of the Use of English examination – I got Grade 1.

Writing this, I thanked all my English teachers through the years for their expert tuition.  I thought that the best way to show this process was by example.  What follow over the next few days are versions of my story with edits.

If you want to observe the process, print the various versions, take some highlighter pens and follow the cuts as they are made.  I hope you find the exercise a useful one and that you will let me know if you do.

You can take the teacher out of the school but you can never take the teacher out of the person.

Tomorrow will be the opening salvo!

_____________________________

Oonah V. Joslin is the winner of two Micro Horror prizes and an honoree in The 2009 Binnacle Comp. Full lists of what went where available on at Oonah’s Every Day Fiction author site. She also served as judge of  The Shine Poetry Competition 2008 and is managing editor of Every Day Poets.  Anthologies: The Best of Every Day Fiction 2008, The Best of Every Day Fiction TWO, Toe Tags, and A Man of Few Words. Oonah blogs at Oonahverse.

The hero sits alone in the dark. The wind whistles and tree branches scratch like nails over the glass of the ancient windowpane. In spite of the roaring fire, the temperature noticeably drops until he can see his breath hanging in the air. Though he knows the house is empty, echoing footsteps can be head on the floor above coming closer. The skin on his scalp contacts and he begins to chew his lip.

As the clock on the mantle begins to strike midnight, a glow appears around the door and something white and luminous begins to appear, walking unhindered through the very wood, a hand and arm floating in the air, then a face shining with putrid radiance and twisted in an agony of despair comes forth as one finger stretches out to point at the hero in mute accusation.

As long as there has been death, there has been the ghost story. The spook, spirit, apparition, phantasm, phantom, bugaboo, marah, giest or any of a thousand other names for the none corporeal being that crosses the supposed impassable barrier between our reality and that which lays beyond the grave. 

But what is a ghost? Salman Rushdie  in The Satanic Verses tells us “Now I know what a ghost is. Unfinished business, that’s what.” This is a simple catch-all definition that has been widely accepted by writers in the modern age, but being an admirer of the classic as well as the modern ghost story, I would go further.

The ghost is guilt made manifest.

The great Victorian ghost hunter, Elliot O’Donnell, wrote extensively on the subject of ghosts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. He collected stories from all over the world, those both mythical and supposedly true, as well seeking out many experiences for himself and meticulously cataloguing them all.

After more than forty years of research, O’Donnell, who popularized the word “haunting” in its modern context, came to the conclusion that it is either a specific place (haunted house, haunted churchyard, haunted ranch house on an old Indian burial ground) or specific people who become haunted (the most famous of these being Ebenezer Scrooge). The haunting of a person, for simple clarity, tends to be known today as a “poltergeist haunting,” though the original poltergeist (meaning “noisy ghost”) could be either sort.

There are three types of hauntings.

Type One—The Auto-Repeating Phantasm

In these case an inanimate physical medium such as a building, a land mark, a vehicle or a item of personal value absorbs a psychic imprint of a highly emotionally charged incident and retains it in much the same way that a photo negative holds an image or magnetic tape holds a recording of a sound.

When a person who is of a compatible psychic nature—that is to say, one who is or can put themselves in to a state of being on that same wave length—comes into contact with these imprints, these “psychics” can receive a playback. The playback can take the form of a picture, a sound, a tactile sensation or an emotional response, or any combination of the above.

These classic hauntings seem to do the same thing over and over again, do not respond to attempts at contact, are unaware of changes in their surroundings and so will apparently walk through walls that were not there when they were formed or float in the air on floors that are now much lower.

In literature, this type of haunting is rare, but two good examples are Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw and Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.

Hill House combines both a classic haunted house story and a modern “poltergeist” story.

Type Two—The Shade

The second type of ghost is a tragic figure and is for the most part what we think of as the “common ghost.” This is the shade of a once-living person, now earth bound, tied to a place or person they were familiar with in life and seeking to communicate or interact with from beyond the grave.

There are four general Type Two subcategories.

The Lost Soul

Someone who may not even know they are dead. Lost and confused they can not comprehend what has happened to them and so can not ‘move on’ their haunting are almost always efforts to communicate and to plead for help or sometimes to try and stop people living in what they still see as ‘their’ house.

The Malevolent

Someone who having died has become embittered, jealous, angry or vengeful at the loss of the pleasures of life and the flesh and so takes it out on the living, sometimes going so far as to try and posses them or kill them.

The Helper/Protector

A ghost who gets across a message for the benefit of those they left behind, often pointing to lost treasure or to warn of the perfidy of another, sometimes even to accuse the ghosts own murderer.

A variation on this is the harbinger ghost, who warns of inevitable doom, death and destruction.

The Mischief-Maker

A ghost, often that of a child, who simply has fun at the expense of those being Haunted, often just simple pranks, but often going to far and becoming dangerous.

Type Three–The Elemental or The Nasty

O’Donnell called this type “The Elemental.” Horror fiction master, Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes, redefined them in the persona of his heroic psychic detective Francis St Clare as “Nasties,” a descriptive title I like very much.

The Nasty has never been alive. He are is spirit being who is invariably malevolent, usually the personification of some very negative emotional state and feeds on that negativity by corrupting the person they are haunting, bringing out their worst traits, wrecking their relationships and destroying their lives.

A Nasty can change shape at will, but can never fully appear as one thing or another.

O’Donnell’s most famous case involved one who appeared as a governess, but with a pigs head. She corrupted the children of the house, who thought of her as an imaginary friend, and encouraged them become cruel and vindictive.

Other versions include men with vultures’ feet, chickens with tentacles, women who are snakes from the waist down. True poltergeists, succubi, and incubi are thought to be this type.

The Generic Rules Of The Ghost Story 

1. The Ghost is the product of its own time and will act accordingly; they do not move with the times.
2. The Ghost is tied to a person, promise, or place and cannot go far from it; however, a ghost tied to a place can latch onto a person and escape with them.
3. The Ghost wants something or wants to provoke something. To this end he draws people in, attracts them, and tricks them.
4. As fear grows, the power of the ghost grows proportionately.
5. Signs of a ghost include a bevy of flies, sudden drops in temperature, howling/whimpering dogs, or clocks that suddenly stop.
6. “GET OUT!” is the ghost’s favourite phrase.
7. If you have a good ghost, be assured a more powerful bad one is just around the corner
8. Drinking strong alcohol or being an alcoholic makes you much more likely to experience a ghost. Spirits like spirits
9. Exorcism rarely works and often makes things worse. The psychic will always know better than the priest.
10. Ghosts can seduce men and women, sexually, morally, and spiritually.
11. Mediums are dotty, professional ghost hunters are eccentric, scientists are fatally arrogant, priests are cowards or inept and anyone claiming to be an expert in ghosts on the basis of ‘forbidden or ancient knowledge’ will be out for themselves. The gifted amateur will always triumph.
12. There is always a guilty secret to be unlocked, often two complimentary ones among the living and the dead. Truth will out

Recommended Reading

A mix of classic and modern genre defining works from the last hundred or so years:

1. The Casebook of Ghosts by Elliot O’Donnell (Non-Fiction treaties)
2. Ghost Story by Peter Straub (Novel)
3. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (Novel)
4. The Haunting of Hell House by Shirley Jackson (Novel)
5. The Legend of Hell House by Richard Matheson (Novel)
6. The Uninvited by Dorothy Macardle (Novel)
7. The Signalman by Charles Dickens (Short Story)
8. The Shining by Stephen King (Novel)
9. The Ghost Train by Arnold Ridley (Play)
10. The Dirk Gently Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams (Novel)
11. The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde (Short Story)
12. Blythe Spirit by Noel Coward (Play)
13. The Stone Tapes by Nigel Neale (Script)
14. Collected Short Stories by Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes (anthology)
15. The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson (Allegedly true but now discredited story of a haunting in modern America, still an excellent ghost story by a master story teller)

 Please do not confuse any of the above recommendations with their film adaptations (with the exception of The Stone Tapes and Hell House), most of which are poor and stray wildly from the original source material.

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Len Hazell is 46 years old from the north east of England, holds a degree in Media, and is majoring in writing for the print and broadcast media.  He has published in various magazines in the UK, fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, and has had several plays produced throughout England.  He is currently working on his own musical adaptation of Arsenic and old Lace which he hope to stage in 2011. Len can be contacted at Bonniefans@hotmail.com. His music is available at http://www.nuzic.net/members/2565