Better English Writing - Geddes Grosset Webster’s Word Power 2014

Fiction
Writing creatively

Fiction, or prose fiction as it is sometimes called, tends to fall into two different categories - short stories and novels. Fiction means that the story is imaginary or made up - although many writers base their stories on something that has happened. Prose means that the story is written in sentences, paragraphs and chapters. It’s not a play or a poem.

Short stories

Sometimes people think that a short story is a small novel. It’s not. A short story is usually structured around a main conflict that happens near the beginning of the story, and sets the story in motion. We see the main char acter at this crucial point in their lives, where they have to deal with and resolve the events caused by this conflict.

There are lots of different types of short story, and no definite r ules, but there are certain characteristics that all short stories have in common. A short story:

✵ tends to be less complex than a novel

✵ should be brief enough to read in a single sitting

✵ has a single plot

✵ has a single setting

✵ has a limited number of characters

✵ covers a short, or limited, period of time

A short story also tends to have the following plot outline:

✵ There is an impactful, atmospheric opening.

✵ The main character (s) are introduced.

✵ The setting (time, place and relationships in the main character’s life) is introduced.

✵ The problem/conflict the main character is facing is introduced and developed.

✵ The problem/conflict develops to a climax.

✵ This climax has a major effect on the character - for example, they acknowledge or come to understand something crucial, make a decision or take a course of action.

✵ There is a resolution - for example, the character deals in some way with the problem or conflict and there is a natural ending to the story.

Let’s use a short story to illustrate these points. It’s called The Open Window and it was written by H H Munro, otherwise known as Saki. Munro (1870-1916) was famous for writing short stories, and The Open Window, from Beasts and Superbeasts is one of his most popular. It is a story set within a story, and the open window of the title comes to symbolise how it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish between reality - or what we imagine to be reality - and appearances.

Impactful opening

Here’s an example of an impactful, atmospheric opening, where we are thrown straight into an interesting and intriguing social scene:

’My aunt will be down presently, Mr Nuttel,’ said a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen; ’in the meantime you must try and put up with me.’

The reader is immediately intrigued - who is Mr Nuttel, who is the selfpossessed fifteen-year-old young lady, who is her aunt and what is the social context?

Introduction of main character(s)

Our curiosity is whetted even more when we are introduced, in Saki’s inimitable humorous way, to the main character, the rather socially phobic Fr amto n Nuttel:

Framton Nuttel endeavoured to say the correct something which should duly flatter the niece of the moment without unduly discounting the aunt that was to come. Privately he doubted more than ever whether these formal visits on a succession of total strangers would do much towards helping the nerve cure which he was supposed to be undergoing.

Introduction of setting

Saki introduces and develops the setting over the next few paragraphs.

’I know how it will be,’ his sister had said when he was preparing to migrate to this rural retreat; ’you will bury yourself down there and not speak to a living soul, and your nerves will be worse than ever from moping. I shall just give you letters of introduction to all the people I know there. Some of them, as far as I can remember, were quite nice.’

Framton wonder ed whether Mrs Sappleton, the lady to whom he was

presenting one of the letters of introduction, came into the nice division.

’Do you know many of the people round here?’ asked the niece, when she judged that they had had sufficient silent communion.

’Hardly a soul,’ said Framton. ’My sister was staying here, at the rectory, you know, some four years ago, and she gave me letters of introduction to some of the people here.’

He made the last statement in a tone of distinct regret.

’Then you know practically nothing about my aunt?’ pursued the selfpossessed young lady.

’Only her name and address,’ admitted the caller. He was wondering whether Mrs Sappleton was in the married or widowed state. An undefinable something about the room seemed to suggest masculine habitation.

Problem/conflict introduced and developed

And then, devastatingly, the writer introduces and develops the conflict.

’Her great tragedy happened just three years ago,’ said the child; ’that would be since your sister ’s time.’

’Her tragedy?’ asked Framton; somehow in this restful country spot tragedies seemed out of place.

’You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon,’ said the niece, indicating a large French window that opened onto a lawn.

’It is quite warm for the time of the year,’ said Framton; ’but has that window got anything to do with the tragedy?’

’Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their day’s shooting. They never came back. In crossing the moor to their favourite snipe-shooting ground they were all three engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog. It had been that dreadful wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years gave way suddenly without war ning. Their bodies were never recovered. That was the dreadful part of it.’

Here the child’s voice lost its self-possessed note and became falteringly human. ’Poor aunt always thinks that they will come back someday, they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and walk in at that window just as they used to do. That is why the window is kept open every evening till it is quite dusk. Poor dear aunt, she has often told me how they went out, her husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm, and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing “Bertie, why do you bound?” as he

always did to tease her, because she said it got on her nerves. Do you know, sometimes on still, quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling that they will all walk in through that window - ’

Problem/conflict develops to a climax

It’s obvious that Nuttel believes this story, because when he meets Mrs Sappleton (the aunt) and she tells him that her husband and brothers will be home soon from snipe shooting, his reaction shows that he thinks she is insane:

She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity of birds, and the prospects for duck in the winter. To Framton it was all purely horrible. He made a desperate but only partially successful effort to turn the talk onto a less ghastly topic, conscious that his hostess was giving him only a fragment of her attention and her eyes were constantly straying past him to the open window and the lawn beyond. It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence that he should have paid his visit on this tragic anniversary.

’The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, an absence of mental excitement, and avoidance of anything in the nature of violent exercise,’ announced Framton, who laboured under the tolerably widespread delusion that total strangers and chance acquaintances are hungry for the least detail of one’s ailments and infirmities, their cause and cure.

So Saki leads us brilliantly to the climax.

At this point, we believe like Nuttel that Mrs Sappleton is insane - her husband and brothers are dead and won’t walk through the open window. So the next following three paragraphs have a powerful impact:

’Here they are at last!’ she cried. ’Just in time for tea, and don’t they look as if they were muddy up to the eyes!’

Framton shivered slightly and turned towards the niece with a look intended to convey sympathetic comprehension.

The child was starting out through the open window with a dazed horror in her eyes.

In a chill shock of nameless fear Framton swung round in his seat and looked in the same direction.

In the deepening twilight three figures were walking across the lawn towards the window; they all carried guns under their arms, and one of them was additionally burdened with a white coat hung over his shoulders. A tired brown spaniel kept close at their heels. Noiselessly they neared the house, and then a hoarse young voice chanted out of the dusk: ’I said,

Bertie, why do you bound?’

Effect of this climax on the character

The effect on Framton Nuttel is immediate - he is scared out of his wits because as far as he is concerned he is seeing ghosts:

Framton grabbed wildly at his stick and hat; the hall door, the gravel drive, and the front gate were dimly noted stages in his headlong r etr eat. A cyclist coming along the road had to run into the hedge to avoid imminent collision.

Resolution

The resolution is clever and unexpected, and takes the reader completely by surprise. The narrative is in the third person throughout, which means that the narrator portrays everybody’s point of view, though as the story unfolds it’s mostly Framton’s thoughts and feelings we’re given access to. Saki is really clever, because until Mr Nuttel runs out of the house and out of the story, we share his point of view, and we believe the story. But after he has run off, we stay in the house and find out that the open window was in fact the focus of a practical joke - a symbol of deception rather than a symbol of grief and unhappiness.

Now we’re in on the prank that Vera played on Nuttel, and she has played it on us too. The clues are scattered throughout that Vera has noticed Framton’s nervous streak. It’s only at this point that we realise that she was having some rather cruel fun with that failing. And it doesn't end there:

’Who was that who bolted out as we came up?’

’A most extraordinary man, a Mr Nuttel,’ said Mrs Sappleton; ’could only talk about his illnesses, and dashed off without a word of goodbye or apology when you arrived. One would think he had seen a ghost.’

’I expect it was the spaniel,’ said the niece calmly; ’he told me he had a horror of dogs. He was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the banks of the Ganges by a pack of pariah dogs, and had to spend the night in a newly dug grave with the creatures snarling and grinning and foaming just above him. Enough to make anyone lose their nerve.’

Romance at short notice was her speciality.

Did you realise all the time that Nuttel was being deceived, and that he was having a practical joke played on him? Or were you, too, taken in by the story? Did you distinguish between appearances and reality? Did your view of the open window change at the end of the story?

’Romance at short notice was her speciality’ - a euphemism for ’she was a compulsive liar ’. When it comes to creative writing, avoidance of ’plain English’ can be an effective humorous effect.

Framton grabbed wildly at his stick and hat; the hall door, the gravel drive, and the front gate were dimly noted stages in his headlong retreat.

This is a far more creative and humorous way of saying ’he ran away as fast as he could’, and yet over-description is avoided. The image of him flailing up the drive is effectively represented in a short, succinct and funny way.

You can read the whole of this clever short story and some more classic works from Saki in the book Beasts and Super-Beasts, at:

www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/269

Novels

A novel is an extended piece of fiction, usually with a number of differ ent characters, a central plot that builds up to a climax and at least one sub-plot. There are many different types or genres of fiction. Here are just a few:

✵ mystery

✵ romance

✵ historical

✵ thriller

✵ science fiction

Although there are lots of different types of novels, there are certain elements that all novels have. These are as follows:

✵ Setting. The novel is always set in a certain time or place.

✵ Plot. This is the story that the novel is telling.

✵ Narrator/voice. This is the voice that’s telling the story - it can be a first person narrator or third person narrator.

✵ Dialogue. This is the conversation that the characters have.

✵ Characters. These are the people in the story.

✵ Theme. This is the idea or message that runs throughout the story. Sometimes there can be more than one theme.