I’ve just returned from an inspiring stint at Faber Academy’s “The Five Day Short Story” course. Here’s my low-down on highlights and things I learnt from the week:
Day One
After a near-hiccup trying to find the Faber Academy (the building was camouflaged behind scaffolding!), myself and the thirteen other lovely participants arrived and got stuck into introductions.
We kicked off the course, led by tutor Shelley Weiner, by discussing what actually makes a short story. Ideas ranged from length, to plot, pace, theme, characters, and epiphany moments. One of my favourite quotes from course was “a story begins with a recognition of the strange” (Graham Swift, I believe), and a sense of what if…
Each day focused on a particular short story, the first being ‘The Book of Ruth’ from the Bible. We looked at how a writer can effectively cover an extensive time-span in a short number of words, and how to approach writing compelling beginnings. We then undertook a character-themed writing exercise, choosing a photograph and imagining who that person was, what they wanted in life, and what their obstacles were. I decided that my picture of an elderly lady in a fur coat would be a hard-working Russian called Miriam Ivanovna!
Day Two
The second day of the course focused on Chekhov’s exquisite story, ‘The Lady with the Dog’. This tale of a man incapable of settling down, who (seemingly) finds love with a woman for the first time was my favourite piece of the week. It opens in the Russian seaside resort of Yalta, and we observed the importance of setting and a sense of place to a story. I particularly love Chekov’s advice about description: “Don’t tell me the moon is shining, show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
We also talked about how Chekhov’s writing follows the pattern of real life – meandering, aimless, and not always neatly tied up at the end. The discussion led onto point of view, and who tells the story. Our task for the day was to re-write it as Anna in first person – I attempted to make the lady with the dog a more empowered and active character, who is secretly leading the man Gurov along.
By this point I had also begun writing my own short story, with just two days to go until the deadline for the anthology at the end of the week! Afternoon sessions became a chance for others to share their varied short stories for feedback from the rest of the group.
Day Three
On Wednesday, the group dissected Hemmingway’s masterful short story, ‘The Killers’. This tale of two hitmen walking into a diner left several people cold, but if offered a perfect lesson in writing killer dialogue, the theme of the day.
Author Elizabeth Bowen wrote that dialogue is “the most vigorous interaction.” We bounced ideas off each other about the purpose of dialogue, from revealing more about characters and their relationships, to conveying a sense of time and place. One of the top tips that I got from this session is that it’s fine to use the speech marker “said”. I used to try and find more creative way to express this in my short stories, such as “she mumbled”. But as evidenced by ‘The Killers’, which uses “said” over 100 times, it works well as an invisible word, allowing readers to make up their own my about how characters say something.
Afterwards, we split into groups to get stuck into a practical exercise on writing dialogue. The prompt was: imagine three people at a bus stop— then someone asks for money for the fare home. It was amazing how many different scenarios that came out of this.
Day Four
Today’s sessions were all about crime writing, with reference to the intricate short story ‘Death and the Compass’ by Jorge Louis Borges. I found it somewhat contrived and pretentious (perhaps this was a translation issue?), but I can appreciate that the plot is supposed to be as labyrinth-like as the crimes and motivates within the story.
The group mapped out the conventional structure of a typical detective story, and how it’s as much about the detective themselves as the crime being solved. We then undertook a surreal task, where we were given absurd crimes, and had to invent suspects, motives and the “ah-ha” moment when the detective solves it. Let’s just say my group’s involved a man in a bath, a breast pump, and a dummy….!
Thursday also saw the moment I received feedback on the first draft of my short story, ‘Diminishing Returns’. It follows an elderly widower struggling to come to terms with his wife passing away from cancer. Strange occurrences begin to happen around the house, and he starts to question whether they’re down to his memory problems, or if his wife really is communicating with him from beyond. I was really pleased by the positive response it got from the group, and also the constructive feedback about cutting one of the extra characters out to make the story tighter.
Day Five
The final day of the course came around far too quickly. Before we knew it, the group was chatting together about Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Monroe’s ‘The Beggar Maid, as if we’d known each other for months. It was incredible how well Monroe seemed to understand her characters, and they felt like real people when she got inside their heads and walked them around the pages.
Tutor Shelley then led us into a discussion about beginnings and endings. We looked at what makes the opening and closing sections of the stories we’d read that week effective. Some key thoughts on how to make an ending stick in someone’s mind included; give a sense of life continuing afterwards; leave moralising to fairy tales; think of the structure in advance and don’t rush towards your destination.
We rounded off the afternoon with a session bouncing ideas around about how we could all motivate ourselves and keep up the momentum with our writing. I suggested (rather geekily!) that I’d set up a spreadsheet of publications and submissions to keep track, and also that I’d write a letter to myself outlining my goals, and ask a friend to post it back to me in six months.
*****
At that, it was time for a meal at the pub, and the presentation of anthologies (after some technical difficulties at Faber—something to do with printer and stapler issues!). As we tucked into our grub and caught up about the week, we realised how much food for thought the course had left us with. I can’t wait to keep in touch with the group, and see where the Faber Academy leads us all!
With thanks to New Writing South’s New Buds Award for supporting me to attend this course.
Cover Girl 