Spilt Milk by Amanda Hodgkinson

Review by Gillian Hamer

5/5 Stars

“Their eyes were the colour of the river. Grey as rain-swelled waters. It was how you knew the three of them were related. Nellie, Vivian and Rose Marsh.”

From the opening line of this novel, the scene is set. The importance of the river, the importance of the characters, and the importance of relationships. It also lays the first hint that not all may be as it seems within this family story.

Spilt Milk is the story of sisterhood and motherhood through the generations of a single family. Starting in 1913 with three sisters living an idyllic life in a cottage near a river in rural Suffolk. As the two youngest, Nellie and Vivian, blossom, their innocent existence is blown apart when a stranger, Joe Feriers, arrives in town. Both Nellie and Vivian fall for Joe and the consequences are devastating, creating a secret the sisters will be forced to carry to their graves, overshadowing everything else life presents them.

We follow Vivian and Nellie’s life stories right through into the 1960s. From their unusual start in life, they do go on to marry and create lives of their own, apart from one another – a fact that would have shocked the women at the outset. The author manages to convey wonderfully that not only do the sins of the father (or mother) echo on through time, but that generations of the same family can often inexplicably face similar life events, and it is interesting to see how each generation deals differently with them as time rolls on.

Nellie and Vivian are interesting characters, strong in their own ways, yet equally vulnerable. At some points Nellie takes the lead, finding strength from her passion for the river, always recalling the sense of power it gave her. At others, Vivian is the rock Nellie relies on to keep her sane, more of a mother to her than her birth mother.

The birth of Nellie’s daughter, Bertha (known as Birdie) and her life path, adds yet another layer of secrecy to the sister’s relationship. Birdie blossoms into a superb character in her own right, and her story is equally as captivating, and at times heart breaking, as that of her mother and aunt. The final piece in the family jigsaw here is Framsden, Birdie’s son.

I thought Amanda’s first novel, 22 Britannia Road, was beautifully written and have eagerly awaited her second. And it doesn’t disappoint. There’s even more of a lyrical quality to Amanda’s writing here, which works perfectly, some scenes are so intense they are almost cinematic. The setting is perfectly described and the sense of time, as we move through the war years and onwards, is breathtakingly detailed and accurate. You feel as if you have stepped right into the character’s shoes and are seeing the world just as they knew it – whether it be the grime and danger of war-ravaged London or the open spaces and simple beauty of rural Suffolk. At the same time, while time moves on, you have a sense the author really wants to bring home the message that age is just a number, a date is just a reference, and that nothing really changes. Not really. Nothing of importance, such as love and loss, grief and happiness.

Spilt Milk is a beautiful novel. I was captivated by the story, the characters and the shadows they carried – and I’m sure you will be too.

Schrödinger’s Steeplejack, a short story by Maureen Bowden

Throughout my childhood my mother refused to tell me my father’s identity. She would put on her hippy-drippy voice, and say, ‘You’re a speck of stardust, my treasure. Nothing else matters.’ But it did.

By the time I was seventeen my patience had slammed the door and bolted. ‘Why won’t you tell me?’ I said.

‘Trust me, sweetheart. You don’t want to know.’

‘Trust me, Mother. I do.’

‘You’re a woman, now, Faye. Don’t call me mother. You can call me Maisie. Let’s be friends.’ She gave me what she, no doubt, considered to be an enigmatic smile. It made her look more like Shrek’s donkey than Mona Lisa. I wanted to punch her.

Desperate to trace my dad, I decided to interrogate my relatives. There weren’t many of them. Uncle Leo owned a damp-riddled, woodworm-infested bookshop that housed as many cobwebs as books. He lived above the shop. Maisie’s brother, Uncle Zak, the steeplejack, made his living scampering around the tops of cathedrals, factory chimneys and the like, fixing bricks, replacing slates and generally larking about. His ex-wife, batty Bronwen the psychic, had scuttled back to her native Wales after they divorced. She set up business with a crystal ball in a kiosk at the back of the amusement arcade on Rhyl promenade.

I explained my dilemma to Uncle Leo, as I followed him up a staircase that Shelob could have called home. ‘It’s not as if I’d get puritanical with her, Uncle. It’s her business who she sleeps with, but I think I have a right to know.’

‘You do, indeed, my dear, but I’m afraid I haven’t a clue. Why don’t you try Auntie Bron? She might read a chicken’s giblets for you.’

Is she really clairvoyant?’

‘Well, she saw right through Zak. That’s why she gave him the elbow and headed for the Land of Her Fathers.’

I took a train to Rhyl, and called on Auntie Bron in her curtain-draped kiosk. She wore a sixties’ kaftan and enough jewellery to stock a craft stall at Glastonbury. A fringed, purple scarf held back her waist-length, Satsuma-coloured hair. She sat, sipping from a hip flask, at a gate-legged table covered in mothball-scented black velvet. A crystal ball and a pack of tarot cards rested upon it. The table wobbled. So did she.

‘Faye,’ she said. ‘What you doin’ by yur?’

My mouth felt dry and a trickle of sweat ran down my back. She has that effect on people. ‘I came for a day at the seaside and thought I’d call and say hello. How’s business?’

‘I won’t lie to you, cariad. It’s not what it was. People gets their future read on the net these days. I’m thinkin’ of going that way myself, isn’t it? Arfon Garage from Rhyd-y-Foel says he’ll set up a website for me, see? Tidy.’

I nodded. ‘Tidy.’

‘Oi, Faye. You doesn’t fool me. You isn’t here for the sea air. What’s occurrin’?’

‘Okay, Auntie Bron. I need a favour. Before you go technological can you help me find out who my dad is, please? My mother won’t tell me. Could you read her mind?

She laughed. ‘Maisie’s a cover without a book, Faye. There’s nothing in it to

read. Any thought that pops in there gets lost in the wilderness, like.’ She took another swig from the hipflask. ‘Your dad’s name is probably wandering around looking for an oasis.’

‘You knew her back then. Have you any idea who might be able to help me?’

‘What about Zak? I’d put money on it the old termite knows more than he’s telling.’ She burped, and stashed the flask under her kaftan. ‘Uncle Leo’s nettle wine,’ she said. ‘Keeps the icy blasts from the Irish sea off my chest.’

‘You, were saying, about Uncle Zak?’

 ‘Oh, yes. Used to trail around after Maisie, back in the day, he did. She had a lot of crackin’ looking pals, see? He was always sniffin’ for some nocturnal action.’

‘Do you think he’d tell me?’

‘Get over yourself, Faye, He doesn’t has to. I reads his mind, isn’t it? Let’s go get him.’  

‘Tidy,’ I said.

Auntie Bron insisted on calling to see Maisie before we tackled Uncle Zak. We found her snivelling into a curry-stained tea towel that served as a handkerchief in times of emergency. Auntie Bron said, ‘What’s occurring’ Mais?’

‘I thought you were a bloody mind reader,’ Maisie said, before lunging at me and clasping me to her silicone-enhanced bosom until I gasped for air, ‘There’s been a terrible accident, Faye,’ she said, between sobs. ’Your Uncle Zak was repairing a dent in one of the domes on the Liver Buildings and he fell off.’

‘Is he dead?’ I asked,

‘Dead and spread,’ Uncle Leo said, emerging from the kitchen with a bottle of his home-brewed nettle wine and four glasses. ‘Not a pretty sight. He was apparently feeling over-confident and decided to forego the use of his safety harness. Bad decision.’ 

We drank a toast or six to Uncle Zak’s memory and after we’d sunk into the cosy euphoria of semi-drunkenness Uncle Leo said, ‘I’ll be going, now. If you’re staying around until after the funeral, Bron, can I offer you a bed?’

‘I’ll be right with you, Leo.’ She groped her way to the door and grasped his arm to steady herself.

‘You will make the funeral arrangements, won’t you, Uncle?’ Maisie said. ‘I couldn’t face it, myself.’

‘Don’t worry, my dear. It’s all in hand.’

*

The only family members at the funeral were Maisie, Uncle Leo, Auntie Bron and me. We were joined by a bevy of middle-aged ladies wearing false eyelashes longer than their skirts. They kept away from Auntie Bron and handed the funeral director a floral arrangement shaped like a factory chimney, complete with billows of white smoke. He must have thought it was the first time a corpse had provided its own crematorium.   

We followed the hearse into the chapel. Boz Scaggs sang us in with ‘Fly Like a Bird.’ After a brief service we put our small change in a collection box for the families of steeplejacks killed in action, and Geri Halliwell sang us out with ‘It’s Raining Men.’

Maisie lingered behind, chatting to the eyelash ladies. Auntie Bron, Uncle Leo and I reviewed the situation. ‘He’ll not tell us anything about my dad now,’ I said.

‘Not by yur,’ Auntie Bron said, ‘but has you ever heard of Schrödinger’s   cat?’

‘Yes, we did that in physics. If it’s dead when the box is opened it’s alive in a parallel universe.’

‘Clever girl. Now, all we has to do is get to the universe where Zak decides to be cautious and put his safety harness on. Tidy.’

‘Scientists don’t think that’s possible do they?’

Uncle Leo grunted. ‘Scientists, huh. What do they know? Let’s go back to my place, have a glass or three of nettle wine and do some research.’

Auntie Bron said, ‘Crackin’.’ 

He guided us through Shelob’s lair, brought out the bottles and glasses, said ‘I’ll be back,’ and disappeared into the bookshop’s dungeon dimensions. We were on our second glass when he returned with an armful of books. ‘From the occult section,’ he said. We blew off the cobwebs, sneezed and set to work. Two hours and two bottles later our eyes had stopped focussing, so Uncle Leo hid the remaining bottle and brewed black coffee. When we’d regained our sight and the power of speech, we set-to again.

It was midnight when Auntie Bron said, ‘Got it. We needs a spot where two ley lines cross. You knows any place like that, Leo?’

‘The gates to Calderstones Park. There was a stone circle there until some wassock dug it up and put it in a greenhouse.’

‘Crackin’. First thing tomorrow. Now, let’s get some sleep.’ They trotted off together and I curled up on the couch.

It was mid-morning when we reached the park gates. ‘Okay,’ Aunty Bron said. ‘Concentrate on getting the right universe. We pictures Zak pratting about on top of the Liver Buildings and putting his safety harness on.’ It worked. A veil of mist appeared where the paths crossed. ‘Crackin’. I’ll go first.’

We followed her through the veil. The mist evaporated and the world looked the same. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s find Zak.’ I felt like Dorothy, skipping down the yellow brick road with her retinue, in search of the wizard.

We were approaching Uncle Zak’s house when we met ourselves coming from the other direction. Schrödinger’s Auntie Bron said, ‘Oi, What’s occurrin’?’

Our Auntie Bron said, ‘Parallel universe.’

‘Who’s the dead cat?’

‘Zak.’

‘Condolences, but what you doing by yur?’

‘Same as you, I thinks.’

‘Come to find out who’s Faye’s dad, right?’

‘Right.’

‘Tidy. Let’s go.’

We turned up mob-handed to confront Schrödinger’s Uncle Zak. A middle-aged lady in false eyelashes and a dressing gown opened the door to us. I thought I recognised her from the funeral.

She looked at the two Auntie Brons, blinked, whimpered, ‘I’m just leaving,’ and fled upstairs. Uncle Zak was chomping and slurping his way through a full English breakfast. He paused mid-sausage. ‘What the f…?’

‘Parallel universes,’ one of the Uncle Leos said. ‘Bron can explain.’

‘We come by yur to asks you a question,’ our Auntie Bron said.

‘Why couldn’t you ask me in your own universe?’

‘You’re dead.’

‘Oh, right. Did I fall off the Liver?’

‘You did. Don’t worry about it. Here’s the question. Who’s Faye’s dad?’

‘Trust me, Bronwen, you don’t want to know.’

‘It’s you, isn’t it?’

‘Don’t be disgusting, woman. Maisie’s my sister.’

Schrödinger’s Auntie Bron tapped our Auntie Bron on the shoulder. ‘We hits him with both barrels, I reckon.’

‘Tidy.’

The front door slammed, marking the departure of the eyelash lady, as two pair of psychic eyeballs bore into Uncle Zak’s mental apparatus.

Meanwhile, Schrödinger’s Faye’s eyeballs were boring into me. ‘Your hair looks awesome,’ she said.

‘So does yours. Where d’ya have your hi-lights done?

‘Heidi’s. Opposite Vision Express.’

‘Me too. Good, isn’t she?’

‘It’s Leo,’ the two Auntie Brons shouted.

‘What? It’s not,’ the two Uncle Leos shouted back.

‘Shut up,’ Uncle Zak shouted. ‘I feel like I’ve got an echo in my head. It’s worse than tinnitus.’ 

‘Start explaining, Zak,’ one or other of the Auntie Brons said. I’d lost track of who was who by this time.

‘You’d better sit down,’ Uncle Zak said to the two Uncle Leos. ’It was that night you took Maisie and me back to the shop to sample your latest decantation of nettle gut-rot. I went easy on the stuff because I had a steeple to climb next day, but you and she were blotto.’

‘I remember the night in question,’ the two Uncle Leos said, ‘but I have no recollection of a seduction taking place.’

‘Neither did Maisie. I hauled her out of your bed next morning while you were still snoring. She couldn’t even remember what her feet were for, and I’m not sure which of you did the seducing, if it’s any consolation.’

‘It’s not.’

‘No wonder she wouldn’t tell me,’ I and I said. ‘She doesn’t know.’ We confronted the Uncle Leos, ‘That’s incestuous. You’re my uncle. Or are you Maisie’s Uncle? I’ve never been sure.’

‘I’m not really anyone’s uncle. I’m just an old family retainer who’s always been around dispensing nettle wine.’

‘For why is you looking so guilty, then, Leo?’ the Auntie Brons said. ‘What is you not telling us?’

The two Leos looked at each other, shrugged, and said, ’Okay, it’s like this. A similar thing happened twenty years earlier, only I was a younger man then and I could hold my wine better. I remember doing the deed.’ They turned to me and me. ’The lady in question was your grandmother.’

‘You mean you’re my grandfather as well as my father?’

They nodded. ‘I’m afraid so, but don’t worry, I come from an excellent gene stock.’ 

‘Right,’ our Aunty Bron said. ‘We got our answer. Let’s get lover boy home. Two of them in one universe in pushing the luck of the cosmos, like.’ She winked at Schrödinger’s Auntie Bron. ‘I reckon he needs taking in hand, isn’t it?’

‘Oi,’ I and I said. ‘What’s occurrin’?’

*

After we passed back through the veil, into our own universe, Uncle Leo said, ‘Fancy cracking open a bottle of nettle wine, Bron?’

‘Crackin’, let’s get crackin’,’ she said.

I didn’t reckon she’d be heading back to Rhyl anytime soon and, with a warm feeling inside, I left them to it. I’d not only found my dad, but I’d acquired something akin to a stepmother. I was rich.

When I arrived home, Maisie said, ‘What you looking so smug about, Faye?’

‘Trust me,’ I said. ‘You don’t want to know.’ 

Maureen Bowden is an ex-patriate Liverpudlian living with her musician husband on the island of Anglesey, off the coast of North Wales, where they try in vain to evade the onslaught of their children and grandchildren. She writes for fun and she has had several poems and short stories published. She loves Rock ‘n’ Roll, Shakespeare and cats.

Life After Publication - Amanda Hodgkinson chats to Gillian Hamer

It’s been a whirlwind two years for Amanda Hodgkinson – and of course we’d like to put that down to us here at Words with Jam. Since appearing on our cover in April 2011, Amanda’s career has gone from strength to strength. Alas, we can’t take full credit. A New York Times best seller spot for her debut novel, 22 Britannia Road - plus worldwide book tours - may also have something to do with it!

Amanda has reached the giddy heights many writers can only dream about. But how is life under the wing of a huge publisher like Penguin, and has the writing dream lived up to expectations?

Now, with her second novel, Spilt Milk, published this month, it’s probably a good time to be asking those questions.

(See our Reviews for Gillian’s thoughts on Spilt Milk.)

You’ve had an exciting couple of years since we last spoke, how has your life, and your writing, changed since the success of your debut novel?

I’ve learned a great deal about the world of publishing since my last interview in WWJ. Back in April 2011, when I was on the front page of this magazine (still rather proud of my cover girl moment) 22 Britannia Road was just published and I was beginning to understand how much publicity a writer is expected to do.

I’m quite a shy person and I found it fairly uncomfortable initially, having to give interviews and do talks and signings. Now, after book tours across Europe and two extensive tours of America, I think I have gained confidence and have learned to talk more freely about books and the writing life. I have also learned how to use my time carefully. I began work on my second novel shortly after 22 Britannia Road was published and I quickly found I needed to cut down on distractions in order to get it finished. I think I have become a great deal more organised and disciplined as a result.

What have been the highlights of your career since the publication of 22, Britannia Road?

There have been many wonderful moments. 22 Britannia Road was chosen as a Waterstones best debut novel 2011 on publication and an Orange New Writers selected book. Both these accolades made me very proud. The day before I set off on my first US book tour, I found out 22 Britannia Road was on the New York Times best seller list. It had only been out on sale in the US for a few weeks. I was staying with friends at the time and I sat on their stairs, trying to let the news sink in while they ran around opening bottles of champagne!

Have there been any negatives, maybe low points you weren’t expecting?

I think you dive into your first novel without much more expectation than the hope you can finish it. When I began writing my second novel though I was very aware of my publisher waiting in the wings and that felt uncomfortable. I began to stress a lot about the book and that got in the way of writing. In fact my editor was very patient and any pressure I felt was of my own making. I realised fairly quickly that the important thing is to concentrate on the writing and forget everything else.I was also lucky enough to have some amazing friends who are novelists themselves and they helped me to put things in perspective.

Has your love of writing changed since you began your journey?

I’d say my love of writing has got much stronger.  I am obsessed by the desire to find the right way to tell a story.  And the only way to do that is to write more novels. More than ever, I believe you must write because you are driven to do it.

How do you feel when you read reviews – good or bad – about your work?

I try to remember that reviews are about a reader’s experience of a book and not a comment on the writer themselves. Or at least they should be like that! Everybody has a right to say what they think of a book and it is understood, rightly or wrongly, that writers should not respond personally to reviews.  A novel, once it leaves the writer’s hands and becomes a commodity – ie, a book to be sold in bookshops etc., no longer belongs to the writer in the way it did during its writing.  Of course a good review feels wonderful. And a bad review, whether you believe it is fair or not, tends to hurt or feel uncomfortable. Happily, books are the most subjective things in the world. One person’s five-star-favourite can be another person’s one star-awful-couldn’t finish-it-novel. I can find an odd kind of comfort in that!

How was the experience of writing your new novel, Spilt Milk, in comparison to writing your first book? Were there differences?

They are two quite different books and so they presented me with two different sets of problems to be solved. 22 Britannia Road was a novel that spanned a relatively short amount of time whereas Spilt Milk tells the story of two sisters over a period of sixty years. The structure for 22 Britannia Road, chapters that moved from the past to the present, felt right for that book. With Spilt Milk I wanted to move more fluidly through time and it’s structured more loosely to reflect the novel’s themes and time spans.

Tell us a little about Spilt Milk.

Spilt Milk is the story of two sisters Nellie and Vivian, who grow up in a small cottage by a river. When the sisters fall in love with the same man, a mysterious traveller passing through their village, their lives change forever.  Spilt Milk is a novel about sisterhood and motherhood, and also about the way we live our lives, the stories we pass on to the next generation and the ones we try to forget.

 You have some fantastically strong female characters in this book, what makes a perfectly formed character for you? How do you approach characterisation?

I’m glad you find my female characters interesting. I am drawn to protagonists, male or female, who might be filled with good intentions but nevertheless make mistakes. I am interested in writing about the complexities of life I suppose. I take a long time to get to know my characters and I tend to write many more scenes for them than can ever realistically fit into a novel. That way, as a writer, I can be sure about them. I know things are going well in my writing when I begin to care deeply about the characters and they feel real to me.

And so to book three, any ideas bubbling away you can tell us about?

I’m working on the third book now, planning, writing small scenes, getting to know the characters a bit. It is set in rural France and centres on two stories, one that takes place in 1943 and the other which concerns a young English woman in 2002. I am in the honeymoon stage with the writing– it’s early days and everything is possible so the novel might well change a lot by the time I get a first draft done.

Having now experienced all aspects of a writer’s life, do you have any words of wisdom you’d like to pass onto aspiring authors who may be reading?

I am sure everybody knows that to be a writer you must be a reader but I cannot overstate that enough. Read widely and always carry a book with you in case you can snatch extra reading time in your day.

Know that it is normal to hate what you are writing at some point along the way. This is ok. But you still have to keep on writing. Things will get better if you keep writing.

Lastly, write because you have something to say and make sure you have a good support group of people you trust. They will see you through the difficult times and celebrate with you when the writing flows.

Finally, what are you reading at the moment?

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton. I’m loving it. Wonderful writing.

Question Corner with Lorraine Mace

What’s the Point (of View) Problem with Head hopping?

Geoff from Barnsley says: I want to write my novel using omniscient point of view, but the friends who have read a few chapters say they can’t follow what’s going on. I want all the characters’ emotions and thoughts to come to the fore, so that my readers know what everyone is feeling. Can you help me to write using this technique? I really don’t want to use limited point of view.

First and foremost, you have to give due to consideration to why you want to use omniscient point of view. Only by knowing why can you decide how and when to use it.

The structure in a novel using this technique is vitally important – even more so than when using third or first person point of view. This is because it is so easy to confuse and/or alienate the reader. You have to know when and where to use it and what effect you are aiming to achieve.

If you have information to impart that is vital to a scene, you need to open that scene in omniscient, so that readers know immediately they are being narrated to by someone who is not one of the characters in the book. If the omniscient narrator is a character, readers need to know that too, so that they can accept this voice intruding from time to time, or filling them in on details the other characters don’t know.

Don’t open with a character’s actions or dialogue, because readers will believe they are in that person’s perspective, which is then thrown off balance when an absent narrator, or one of the other characters, lets us in on their thoughts and feelings within the same scene.

If you want to use omniscient so that you can tell the reader about a period in time and its history, or a new world and future technology, it is fine to use an absent narrator, but you have to use it in the right way. You cannot drop an omniscient voice into the middle of a scene and expect the reader to know that is what you are doing. Open scenes with it and even close scenes in the same voice, but when actually in the scene itself, pick one point of view and stick with it.

Whether you have finished the novel or not, I feel you need to draw up a complete outline of the story. When using omniscient point of view, you have to bring your reader up to speed on the vital aspects, but leave out any details that are not important for the reader to know. There will be masses of information that you (as author) need to know, but that doesn’t mean your reader has to be informed of every tiny detail. You are there to entertain, not to lecture.

You still have to develop your characters or your readers won’t care about them or what happens to them. The reader has to identify with the characters, not the absent narrator. For each scene, pick one main character to follow. Don’t head hop around the minor characters.

Omniscient point of view does not mean giving all the characters the same importance in the story. It means using the unseen narrator’s voice wisely to impart knowledge that you cannot otherwise let the reader in on.

Read Joseph Conrad. He was brilliant at limited omniscient point of view.

Limited omniscient means you limit yourself to being in one character’s head at a time. If you really feel you simply have to change point of view within a scene, do so by showing the reader you have moved to a new point of view.

In a romantic scene, for example, you could open from the girl’s point of view. We see and hear what she sees and hears. We are her as she looks at the love of her life who she feels has betrayed her.

Then the boyfriend could reach out and take her hand, while telling her he has been faithful. In the next sentence you can move into his head as he observes her reaction. The rest of the scene can then be shown from his perspective.

However, once you’ve made the switch, don’t be tempted to move back into the girl’s head. Stay with the boyfriend until you move to a new scene.

True omniscient viewpoint (where we know everything the author knows) is extremely difficult for readers to follow and is almost impossible for authors to get right. Even experienced and much published writers struggle with it. By using limited omniscient you’ll find the challenge less stressful, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy.

If you have a question, email it to lorraine@quinnpublications.co.uk.

---

Lorraine Mace is the humour columnist for Writing Magazine and a competition judge for Writers’ Forum. She is a former tutor for the Writers Bureau, and is the author of the Writers Bureau course, Marketing Your Book. She is also co-author, with Maureen Vincent-Northam of The Writer's ABC Checklist (Accent Press). Lorraine runs a private critique service for writers (link below). She is the founder of the Flash 500 competitions covering flash fiction, humour verse and novel openings.

Her debut novel for children, Vlad the Inhaler, will be published in the USA on 2^nd April 2014.

Writing as Frances di Plino, she is the author of the crime/thriller series featuring Detective Inspector Paolo Storey: Bad Moon Rising, Someday Never Comes and Call It Pretending.

Writing Critique Service

www.lorrainemace.com

www.flash500.com

Frances di Plino

The Emperors New Franchise – Is there even any point in attempting to be original?

By Derek Duggan

Here’s a fact – not everyone looks sexy in a thong. Just saying. Here’s another one – eight out of the top ten grossing movies last year were franchise movies, sequels, or based on existing properties. And none of them wore thongs.

So, that means if you’re thinking of writing an original screenplay with a view to selling it for millions you are already at a disadvantage. There’s not really any point in slaving away, developing characters and carefully crafting your plot, if in the end the only films that anyone goes to see are ones where  muscly men and women in lycra (also not something everyone looks sexy in) knock seven bells of shit out of each other, or out of robots or something.

Just how important it is to attach a franchise to one of these movies to trick people into thinking it’s in any way good only becomes obvious when they use precisely the same formula as the big box office winners and come up with a dreadful flop. Nowhere was this clearer than in that film last year where Nelson Mandella fought the big monster things while wearing the giant robot suit. It was called Pacific Rim Job or something and it bombed, despite Mr Mandella’s appearance. If it had been called Godzilla (slated for release this coming summer) Versus the Transformers (also slated for a summer release) then people would have been falling over themselves to see it.

And the quality of the writing has nothing to do with box office success – Star Trek into Darkness was recently voted by fans at a Trek Convention in LA to be the worst Trek Movie of the entire series which takes some fucking doing – and it was beaten by Galaxy Quest which isn’t even a Trek movie. It still made a lot of money. We’ve also had The Amazing Spiderman which had a good cast, decent special effects, but a story that was thinner than William Shatner’s actual hair (allegedly). We’ve got the next installment of The Amazing Spiderman to look forward to this summer along with another X-Men, Captain America, Robocop, Frankenstein etc etc etc.

Indeed, it’s beginning to look like Hollywood is trying to get rid of writers altogether. Even Joss Wheedon, well known for such nicely written pieces as Buffy and in particular Firefly, recently was much lauded for the script of Avengers Assemble which might have read for large parts –

EXT DAY NEW YORK

People in lycra and some aliens and Norse Gods beat the shit out of each other and smash the place to fucking bits for the next hour. Someone in the background wears a thong.

(Note to producers – that will be ten million dollars, please. Thanks, Joss)

This trend is not restricted to movies. Take something like Dexter, for example. It’s based on a book, and that’s fine. The first series was clever and tense with good characters, a great idea and some nice story telling. The second was OK. The third had the same actors in it, but may as well have been a different show altogether for all the resemblance it bore to the original series. But it didn’t end there – it went on for a further five or six seasons. And this is where the difficulty enters – you begin to feel as if you’re in the Twilight Zone (which is surely due for a reboot) as you seem to be the only person who notices the massive drop in the quality of the writing. You begin to think you’re going crazy and feel the need to wrap your head in a sanity towel (you may even feel the need to crowbar really dodgy word-play gags into articles). It seems as if you’ve been sucked into a parallel universe where critical thought causes your toilet parts to fall off or something because everyone is falling over themselves to say how good this thing is despite the fact that it clearly isn’t and has more holes than a week in Vegas with Tiger Woods (probably).

Of course it’s easy to laugh at Hollywood, but before anyone gets on their high horse let’s have a look at some of the recent big hit franchises on British TV. There are currently three Sherlock Holmes things on the go – An American TV thing with Lucy Lu as Watson, a film series starring Tony Stark and directed by Guy ‘Fa faaack sake’ Richie and Sherlock from the BBC which stars Benedict Cumberbatch (excellent as Holmes, but coincidentally one of the stars of the worst Star Trek film ever made, apparently).

What was interesting about the first two seasons of Sherlock was the way the script was cleverly put together to show us the workings of the great detective’s mind. We got to see him making the connections we mortals would never spot unaided, and we delighted at how the only thing he seemed to enjoy was showing us how brilliantly brainy he was. And then we got the third season which everyone seemed to think was superb, but which was, in fact, tremendously disappointing. It may as well have begun with him in the shower with Bobby Ewing. Wearing a thong. Every move was telegraphed to the viewer hours before it happened. There was no satisfactory explanation of how he managed to survive his apparent suicide at the end of the previous season which is precisely the sort of thing the character would have loved. It just looked like the writers couldn’t be arsed to think up anything. A couple of really lame ideas were offered, but nothing that went anyway towards being as clever as the previous series.

And all of this is reminiscent of that moment in Catcher in the Rye, when Holden remarks that Old Ernie, the piano player that everyone adores, is so used to listening to the applause of his fans that he no longer knows what’s good any more. Read the bit yourself on page 84.

So, let’s get our heads down and write something truly original. And let it involve thongs.

Glad I could help.

The Abandoned House, a poem by Naomi Poltier

On a hill of teal grass

There’s an abandoned house with all my things still in it

I tried to maroon the memory of you there

To shove your deep voice and manly scent through the door

But it escapes shutting by centimetres.

Carpeted by discarded cuttings of your hair

And on days where I feel exhaustion on my skin, or miss my bus,

I roll all over in it.

When I turn the TV on, BBC 1 replays the first time we held hands

Like it’s as important as the Royal Wedding.

The bricks in the wall wobble to the rhythm of you breathing

From when I watched you, felt you, all those nights ago.

The bricks tremble and make me shudder

“I’m still there,” their deep echo reverberates through the house.

The dishes are never clean; I’ve tried to wash your mess away

But these things can’t be dissolved in water, in heaving rain.

Still then the abandoned house does not drown,

And when life feels empty, I pay that teal hill another visit

And I feel the edges of the kitchen counters

Like they are the edges of your skin, of your bare hips.

I’ve furnished the memory of you in this way

The bed is special because it has your hands

And wraps me tightly like the days did not race past

There I lie, sodden in this house with no roof,

The rain beating at me in violent strokes.

The pathway out of the door still has your footprints on it

Your tread like acid on my mind

in this house that is horrible, that I cherish relentlessly,

Unwanted, it is all unwanted. Maroon me too.

Maroon me with your arms on a hill of teal grass.

Cornerstones Mini Masterclass

with Kathryn Price, Co-director at Cornerstones Literary Consultancy.

Each issue, Cornerstones Literary Consultancy explore and critique a reader's opening page. If you would like to participate in their Opening Page Mini Masterclass, send your opening page (400 approx words) as a Word Document attachment to submissions@wordswithjam.co.uk with the subject ‘Cornerstones Masterclass’. Pieces for critique are chosen at random from those submitted to Words with JAM.

Submission by Elles van Asseldonk:

Chapter 1 – You’re Drunk Winter, Go Home!

The first day of spring and the world has turned into coffee, energy vibrates of everything. The soundsystem plays last year’s summer songs with a melancholic hope of another season of insanity without casualties. March 21^st, celebrating “You’re Drunk Winter, Go Home!” in one of the dirtiest warehouses –but dirty in a sophisticated underground way- in North London. One of those places where the outcasts who live there revel in their suddenly found status of being at the top of the foodchain. Gobbling up gorgeous girls, rejecting others who do not give the right name at the door. Connections open their gates, passwords to another world. A twenty pound note will also do the trick.

Sophie follows her throng of girlfriends as they beat their wings into one of the side rooms for a “little exploration, see if there’s any fit guys”. The room is painted blue, with a film poster here and there, and two broken TVs in the corner. A giant table is set up in the middle, covered in a white table cloth, on which the most interesting party food is served. A beautiful girl lies on the table naked, bar for a nude thong, and is covered in sushi as an homage to the Yakuzi, Japanese gangster culture. Her black hair is spread out around her face like a dark halo, her face is painted white, with lips like a geisha and her eyes are closed as if to give her viewers the privacy to take in her thin body. A group of young guys stand around her, some twirling their moustaches nervously, many taking pictures with their smart phone. Sophie sees three guys in Hawaii shirts grinning broadly, displaying the bad dentistry England is famous for. This will be The Party, the Event Which Electrified My Life, but Sophie has no inkling of that yet. She’s just attending her first warehouse rave.

A muscular guy with shit for brains –at least that’s what his wife beater, clumsy tattoos and choice of faux crocodile leather shoes suggest- shows his cocaine induced confidence by taking a piece of sushi. He provocatively goes for some sashimi that lies in her crotch. Some of the other blokes laugh nervously. There’s a loud bang coming from the main hall and bits of confetti twirl into the room. “Mmmm, tastes fishy.” Shit-For-Brains says, displaying half chewed shrimp rolling around in his mouth. Everyone starts laughing on cue as if an “APPLAUSE” sign has gone on above Shit-For-Brains’ head. Bits of sushi move nervously on the stomach of the Geisha girl as she tries not to giggle.

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Kathryn's critique:

This is an unusual, captivating opening with a strong, vivid and very contemporary setting. The mention of twirling moustaches and dirty in a sophisticated underground way feels particularly up-to-date and observant, rooting us in a scene populated by wannabe hipsters, people who aren’t quite as cool as they’d like to think they are. Sophie, seemingly innocent in this scene, also has some intriguing contradictions. She’s never been to this sort of party before, but she’s savvy enough to make some arch, knowing judgements about the outcasts hosting the gathering - and many of the punters.

Much of this is achieved by a confident and compelling use of the intimate third person/free indirect viewpoint, where the narrator is very nearly inside Sophie’s head, with the third person narration intertwined with her own thoughts. Aligning her with an objective third person voice has the effect of giving Sophie’s opinions weight and sincerity; we inherently feel she’s a character we can trust, and sympathise with.

There are a few elements undermining this powerful effect at present. A few of the turns of phrase feel unwieldy, old-fashioned or out of place, and this diminishes the naturalistic sense that we are ‘hearing Sophie’s voice’. For instance, the world has turned into coffee, energy vibrates of (NB this should be off) everything feels like something a real girl would say; by contrast, a melancholic hope of another season of insanity without casualties sounds awkward, overwritten and overly formal - and is also unclear in terms of meaning. The same applies to a twenty pound note (why not just ‘a twenty’?); an homage to the Yakuzi, Japanese gangster culture (if Sophie knows who the Yakuza are well enough to use them as a descriptive reference point, why would she go on to explain – why not just ‘Yakuza-style’?); displaying the bad dentistry England is famous for (if Sophie is English, which at this stage a reader will assume she is, then this isn’t something she would notice or observe).

Elsewhere, other elements of phrasing sound clunky, and the text might benefit from a copy-edit to smooth out anything which doesn’t read quite correctly. For example, the most interesting party food is served (most interesting where? Is there other food at this rave? This creates a slightly dissonant image); there’s a loud bang coming from the main hall (the continuous present tense here is incorrect as a ‘bang’ is something that happens suddenly and distinctly); see if there’s any fit guys jarred slightly for me too, as I would associate this kind of non-mainstream night out with bonding with friends rather than being on the pull (though beat their wings into one of the side rooms is a wonderful choice of imagery). Watch too for typos: smart phone[s]; Hawaii[an]; the event which electrified her life; tablecloth (should be one word); cocaine-induced (needs a hyphen).

In many ways the colour and description of the piece is one of its strengths. In a very short space of time we have a clear picture of this off-the-wall venue, with the broken TVs … white tablecloth … and beautiful naked girl juxtaposing very effectively. However, there’s room for a few more brushstrokes of specific detail to bring the scene to life and ensure total clarity. For instance, The first day of Spring and Summer songs combine to give the sense of daytime and light; this contradicts our conventional understanding of raves happening at night. Either we need to establish that the timing is unusual, right from the start, by weaving more sense of daytime into the later action; or the contradictory elements should be taken out so that the night time setting springs into focus.

Elsewhere, there are places where more specificity would pay dividends. For instance, what film posters, exactly? The choice of film might tell us more about the atmosphere. And whilst the hipsters with their moustaches and phones give a good sense of the generic crowd, picking out a few individual features would only make the description stronger. Likewise, Shit For Brains in his wife beater and faux crocodile leather shoes hovers on the edge of vivid reality (for me, the t-shirt and shoes are good, solid details but present too conflicted a picture to feel totally convincing) but even more colour might help breathe life into him. A description of one of his tattoos, perhaps?

In the same vein, it should be possible to show rather than tell a few more aspects of this scene. There’s a heavy reliance on adverbs to do the work, which are often weaker than a really strong verb choice. They also lead the author into repetition; nervously, for example, appears three times and in each instance a more careful word choice would give us a better picture of the individuality of the response. Twirling their moustaches nervously isn’t an easy image to picture: twirling suggests the opposite of nervousness: confidence; a debonair approach to the world. An alternative description might be fiddling with their moustaches, or smoothing their moustaches with sweaty fingers. And bits of sushi move nervously could be substituted for bits of sushi twitch (which conveys the feeling of suppressed laughter without having to spell it out).

Often, adverbs can simply be cut, as with provocatively, since it’s already fairly obvious that he’s being cocky and arrogant. But even better, aim to include some supporting action and description which shows us how Shit For Brains is acting. Sophie thinks his bravado is cocaine-induced but what makes her assume this?

The passage currently reads:

A muscular guy with shit for brains –at least that’s what his wife beater, clumsy tattoos and choice of faux crocodile leather shoes suggest- shows his cocaine induced confidence by taking a piece of sushi. He provocatively goes for some sashimi that lies in her crotch.

With a touch more detail and dramatisation it might read something like the following:

A muscular guy in a string vest and crocodile shoes hovers above the geisha’s crotch, bright-eyed and sweating. Since when did wife-beaters come back into fashion, Sophie wonders, taking in the blurry barbed wire tattoo around his bicep, his rigid jaw. Around the same time this guy started turning his brains into shit with coke.

Shit For Brains swoops, vulture-like, and plucks a piece of sashimi from the geisha’s inner thigh, makes sure everyone is looking before smacking his lips. ‘Mmm, fishy.’

His mates snigger on cue, as though an APPLAUSE sign has gone on over his head. Sophie’s surprised he can eat, the state he’s in. The geisha doesn’t seem to mind, though; bits of sushi twitch on her belly as she tries not to laugh.

This opening already makes me want to read on – the foreshadowing statement that this will be The Party creates tension and a compelling question hanging over the action: what exactly is going to happen that will be so momentous, that will change Sophie’s life? Genre isn’t yet clear – this could be urban general fiction with a literary feel or even, given the atmosphere, a thriller. Indeed, much of the success of the piece lies in the way it doesn’t give too much away, keeping us guessing about who Sophie is and where the action is heading. If Sophie’s voice and the third person narrative voice can be made completely consistent and convincing, this should draw the reader even deeper into the scene. By creating a character who we believe in utterly, the question of what is about to happen to her becomes even more potent.

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Cornerstones is a teaching-based literary consultancy. They specialise in providing self-editing feedback on writing, launching first-time authors and scout for agents for published and unpublished writers.