Importance of Research - How does an alligator swim? By Tamsin Cooke

How does an alligator swim? Does it use its legs, legs and tail, or tail only?

A few years ago, I was working on Mission Gone Wild, the second book in my Scarlet Files series. I'd written the first draft, and there were quite a few scenes where my main character transforms into an alligator. I had her swimming through rivers ... using her legs. A kind of doggy paddle. Some of you might be saying, 'Oh! So that's how an alligator swims.' Others of you might be groaning, saying, 'Are you freaking serious?'

Later that summer, I was very lucky because I visited the Everglades in Florida. It's a majestic subtropical wetland full of saw-grass prairies, fresh-water rivers, estuaries and mangrove swamps.  I wanted to make the book come alive for my readers, adding rich details, so they could feel like they're really there. I wanted readers to be able to appreciate the wind and spray when you ride on a hovercraft, hear the insects at night, and feel the tingle of ice cold water when you dip your toes into the river.  And what better way to really appreciate how these things feel than to experience them? Although I will admit that I did not dip my toes in any rivers. Alligators are rife there, and while they'll leave you alone above land, you're fair game below it! 

I fully immersed myself in the Anhinga Trail, a place known for spotting alligators in the wild. There are pathways and jungles where they stroll out in front of you. There are boardwalks that stretch over narrow rivers so you can watch them swim directly beneath. 

I was standing on a bridge, when my heart stopped. An alligator glided gracefully towards me, its tail swaying from side to side, its limbs floating behind. There was no frantic paddling. It was smooth and menacing. I felt very honoured to be able to see such beautiful prehistoric creatures so close up. 

As soon as I got back to England, I rewrote certain sections. Scar, my main character, now glided through the water when in alligator form. Even though it was fantasy, I was making my story realistic. If I hadn't, I'm sure someone would have felt cheated that I hadn't done my homework, that I hadn't made the book believeable. 

Research is incredibly important and luckily it's so much fun. And it doesn't need to be so far from home. I  dipped my bare toes in the stream that meanders through my village. The water was icy cold, but at least my toes weren't alligator lunch!

Tamsin Cooke

Author of The Scarlet Files Series and Stunt Double Series

Website: tamsincooke.co.uk
Twitter: @TamsinCooke1 

Thoughts on a Classic

When I was very young, I expected all books to take their time getting started. I would read the opening ten or so pages without really minding that they were slow-going, because I knew that once I’d made my way through them, the real story would get started. It was the price I expected to pay as a reader.

(Not one boy I knew at school. He started every book he read on page 10. He would simply skip the opening pages and he did it, he said, because they were always boring and he didn’t see the point in wasting his time. And this was someone who read for pleasure, not because it was a book we were reading in class.)

The point of this preamble? The Borrowers fits this pattern perfectly. I found the opening chapters a real slog and was seriously considering setting it aside because it didn't seem as though the story would ever get underway. So much scene-setting. Yet when it did, I was hooked. All of a sudden there was tension. Would the borrowers escape from the villains? What would happen to their home? Once the story pulled me in, I could see why the book has become a well-known as it is.

But that slow first third seems – now, almost 70 years after it was first published – so terribly old-fashioned. It doesn’t fit our shorter attention spans, our being accustomed to every story racing away from the first page. Back in 1953, a writer could take their time setting up characters and backgrounds. Nobody complained – except perhaps my Start-on-page-10 classmate.

I wonder whether it could get published today? Or whether an editor would be composing lengthy emails arguing for extensive cuts. Would it even get the chance to become a classic?

 

My Interview with Brian Sibley by Steve Gladwin

 Hello, Brian. We've agreed to a two-part interview here, so in the first part we're going to talk about the theme of landscape and your work and interest in both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, and the Narnia books. We will sadly have to leave Pooh for another time.

Hello, Steve. Well we have to start somewhere and I'm looking forward to the journey...

When I was about thirteen my dad put the fire on in the front room each night for a fortnight, and he read his new book club edition of 'The Lord of the Rings' from cover to cover. Picking up that he had really enjoyed it, and having previously delved into Mr Sharpe's English cupboard and found 'The Hobbit' a few months earlier, I followed in dad's footsteps soon after. I remember that I enjoyed both books in entirely different ways, but my most vivd memory was of sellotaping together six sheets of paper and drawing the wonderful map that folded out at the front. I'm no artist, and as far as I can remember have rarely done anything remotely like it since. I didn't do much with it afterwards either, this was something I had to do. From your own experience, Brian, and from what you've learned about others, would you say this was fairly typical of the condition which we might call 'Tolkien Fever', which - so it seems - can strike at just about any age?

It was this book club edition that both my dad and I read when I was thirteen.

 

At any age? I imagine so: My own experience was complex: I read and really enjoyed The Hobbit - borrowed from the school library when I was, perhaps, 11 or 12. So far so good, but then I spent many years struggling to get into The Lord of the Rings. I had bought the mammoth one-volume paperback with Pauline Baynes landscape- the Shire on the front, Mordor on the back - but every time I started in, I'd get slowed up by the foreword and bogged down by the prologue (you'll recall 'Concerning Hobbits and Pipeweed', 'Of the Ordering of the Shire', and 'The Finding of the Ring', not forgetting 'A Note on the Shire Records).

I was, from my earliest years, a slow reader and, indeed, still am (great for retaining detail, but not so good for zipping through mega-paged epics); I found big books really daunting; still do! I finally succeeded in grappling with The Lord of the Rings when, aged 21, I was confined to a hospital bed for several weeks with a duodenal ulcer; hours and days of tedium would have to be endured. The paperback went in the bag with my pyjamas and, this time, I skipped all the prefatory matter, began with Book One, chapter one: 'A Long Expected Party' and, by chapter two, 'The Shadow of the Past', I was hooked and reading under the bedclothes after lights-out with a torch like a six-year-old. I can therefore recommend The Lord of the Rings as the perfect therapy for a duodenal ulcer!

I have to comment on that wonderful memory of your youthful attempt at recreating Tolkien's Lord of the Rings map. We now know that your approach was very similar to Tolkien's own map-making process in which new or amended sections were repeatedly attached to a very large, ever-growing patchwork.

Every map, of course, is a diagrammatic representation of a landscape and, in the cases of imaginary realms, serves the dual purpose of providing the reader with ways of negotiating the events in the story as well as giving the fiction a sense of legitimacy.

Like many classic works of fantasy literature, maps are an important feature in both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as well as in several of C. S Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, although Tolkien certainly  adopted a more rigorous approach to the business of cartography, as can be gauged from his recollection: "I wisely started with a map, and made the story fit, (generally with meticulous care for distances.) The other way about lands one in confusion and impossibilities, and in any case it is a weary work to compose a map from a story."

My long-standing fascination with literary maps led to a happy collaboration with Tolkien artist John Howe, on a series of illustrated map-books exploring the various regions of Middle - earth described in The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. These publications later found their way into a single volume that featured an additional map, (and accompanying gazetteer of the lost island of Numenor.

At what stage did you realise that you and Tolkien were going to become so involved? Was there an actual point, or was it more of a process?

Having conquered what to me was an Everest of a book-print, I began reading Tolkien's other writings and even - daring for a boy from a Secondary Modern school - peeped into one or two early books of Tolkien criticism. I invested in the three volume hardbacks with their fold-out maps and I wrote a letter to the professor (which included a few squiggled lines of Quenya on notepaper that I'd bordered with dwarfish runes) asking if he would sign my copy of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, which was cheaper to post than the trilogy. To my great delight he obliged and corrected an error in one of the poems. Years later, Pauline Baynes added her autograph to his on the title page and it is, you won't be surprised to know, one of my most treasured possessions.

So that was the gradual process of my involvement, but the turning point was when, having written my first radio dramatisation for the BBC, the Corporation asked if there were any other books I'd be interested in adapting. I drew up a list, jestingly adding at the end, The Lord of the Rings. What a ridiculous proposition! But, as it turned out, not so... The BBC was, at that precise moment, in negotiation to acquire the rights for a Rings serialisation. And there I was, ready and waiting...

Now we're here - in this first part of our interview - to talk about landscape and your experience, and, I presume, love of it, as part of a large number of fantasy books and their authors, which you have more or less made your life's work. Before we get there it would be good to hear about the young Brian and the landscape you grew up in. I usually ask people to imagine that they're either looking out from their own front door, or perhaps on a familiar walk.

I am five years old and, after living among the nondescript suburban streets of South East London, my family has moved to what was then a rural village in Kent. Suddenly I find myself a country child: aware for the first time ever of real beauty and true wonder. I had suddenly been transported to a world I'd only previously seen in picture books. Within this new daily experience of nature and the changing seasons, I was free (for the world was safer then) to run wild, at will: exploring the woods of birch and oak, making a hollow tree my secret home, the meandering fern-bordered paths and the willow-fringed ponds my private realm. And, after my explorations I would wander around the village watching still traditional tradesmen making bread or cutting and hanging meats or, perhaps, I would head for the village blacksmith's shop (now, alas, a boring bank)to watch the horses being shod, and, as like or not, carry home a lucky horseshoe for a souvenir.

And alongside this real landscape exist all those others that I investigated week by week in my local library, as I took book after book from the shelves: plunging in amongst the thronging streets of Dickens's London; losing myself in Kipling's lush Indian jungle; roaming the exciting terrains of Neverland, Treasure Island, or The Lost World; finding a secure and comforting home in Tove Jansson's Moomin Valley; journeying through the outlandish worlds of Lewis Carroll's Wonderland and Edward Lear's 'lands where the Jumblies live', or losing myself amongst the crumbling ruins of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast, or the Martian landscape of Ray Bradbury's tales of the Red Planet; and oh, so many others, to...

When we come to the particular landscapes of  Tolkien, Brian, and 'The Lord of the Rings' in particular, the journeying that the company of nine and the sub-groups that they are eventually broken into do, feels incredible real. Through my several readings over the years, it feels more than ever as if we're taking that long, often desolate journey with them.

The journey - and the very process of journeying - is the engine that drives the narrative in both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. These are classic 'quest' stories. Most quests are concerned with seeking and winning a great prize like The Golden Fleece or The Holy Grail. In The Hobbit the quest is to regain something that had once been won, but since been lost, (the dwarf treasure hoard guarded by Smaug); in dramatic contrast, The Lord of the Rings is an anti-quest, in that it is about the casting away - in fact, the destruction - of something of enormous value and great power: the One Ring. In both stories the landscape through which those who are pursuing their quest make their journey becomes increasingly challenging and hostile.

At the age of 22, it was the BBC Radio full -length dramatisation of  'The Lord of the Rings' which re-awakened my interest in the book and Tolkien. I remember how in 1981 a friend and I listened to the opening episode and how thing after thing seemed right; the casting, which to me was nearly perfect, the sound, Stephen Oliver's music and the very feel of it. In such a massive undertaking how did you all go about conveying something so massive and bringing it all together?

Radio drama, like theatrical and filmic endeavours, is a collaborative process: the work of the dramatist is but one part of that process collaboration and the successful writer needs to learn the balance between 'sound', (words, music and effects) with the absence of sound, (silence or the movement of pause between one sound or another. The producer /director is called upon to be both orchestrator and conductor of the whole composition. We were lucky in having Jane Morgan, the perfect person for that task.

 

 

It's forty years ago now, but I still remember the huge thrill on hearing that the radio dramatisation of The Lord of the Rings was going to feature on the front cover of the BBC's weekly TV and radio guide, The Radio Times, with artwork by Eric Fraser, one of the great illustrators of the twentieth century and someone who had already illustrated The Hobbit. I zapped off a letter to Mr. Fraser courtesy of Radio Times art editor, asking if I could purchase the original art only to receive the puzzled response that Fraser was surprised that I wanted to buy a picture he had yet to draw! We navigated that obstacle and it now hangs on my wall as a reminder of an amazing project that - thanks to the work of Professor Tolkien - changed my life.

I'm including the original cover art as an illustration here, because it is of interest, not just as a memento of what was, I believe, a historic production, but also because it is an attempt to create in a single image, an emblematic interpretation of the story's landscape, incorporating Mount Doom and the door to Sammath Naur, the Black Gates; Sauron's stronghold, The Tower of Orthanc; The Dead Marshes; Fangorn Forest; the River Anduin and Shelob's Lair, along with Gandalf, Frodo and Sam, a Nazgul and an Orc. Fraser also produced a small piece of black- and- white art illustrating each of the 26 episodes for the weekly programme pages in Radio Times, and many years later I managed to purchase those at auction together with Fraser's preliminary sketch for the cover design

Conveying the idea of landscape, maybe particularly that vast emptiness and stillness, punctuated by terrifying sounds from nowhere and with that the threat of discovery or being trapped or taken - that's almost an ever present in a book like 'The Lord of the Rings' where the reader spends much of the narrative on tenterhooks! The part I've always found the most thrilling is the passage of the fellowship over the mountain pass of Caradhras and then into the mines of Moria. How did you go about achieving something like that section?

There's an old saying in the broadcasting business: 'The pictures are better on radio.' and certainly radio allows the listener to be part of the process in a creative experience. In the theatre or in the cinema, everyone watching has the same experience; in radio, the listener hears a combination of sound elements and translates them into images in the mind. No single radio listener views the characters or their surroundings in exactly the same way as another. We needed to find ways in which to give our audience the shapes and colours with which to create the landscape and characters in their mind's eye.

If we can turn to C. S. Lewis for a while, Brian, I'm fairly ashamed to say that I've only recently realised that you also adapted all seven of the Narnia books for the radio. Now that's clearly another type of challenge - not least because these are seven very distinctive books with seven very distinctive feels to them.

Well, yes and no! The tone of Lewis writing is quite different to that of Tolkien - just as were the expectations of their audience; but while each of the seven Chronicles of Narnia does indeed have its own individual landscape, (or sea-scape), the challenge of the dramatist is much the same as that faced in adapting The Lord of the Rings, since that epic story unfolds across a longer time-span and a constantly changing landscape shaped by geography, geology, climate and culture.

 

 

 

So, if I can ask you about the seven books as a whole and if there's one you're more fond to or drawn to? It was interesting to discover in my recent interview with Kath Langrish about her own forthcoming book on Narnia, 'From Spare Oom to War Drobe', that we share the same enthusiasm for 'The Voyage of the Dawn Treader' and 'The Silver Chair'.

Whenever Lewis's biographer, Walter Hooper, was asked which of the Chronicles was his favourite, he would answer, 'The one I'm reading now,' which seems like a pretty good reply! In truth I have a special relationship with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: it was the first of the books I read and it made a huge impression on me. I was entranced - and still am - by the description of Narnia in Winter and it's depiction by Pauline Baynes, who many years later, would become a much-loved and personal friend. I can't overstate the importance that The Lion made on the impressionable ten-year-old me: as I confessed in my preface to Katherine Langrish's remarkable book. I actually climbed into my parent's wardrobe in the hope of finding the way into Narnia... Was I successful? What do you think.

There was a famous squabble between C'S. Lewis and Tolkien because the latter voiced his objections very loudly that his friend was denigrating the meaning and power of myth by bringing in such incongruities as Father Christmas in 'The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.' Whereas Tolkien was a professor of philology, who was painstakingly creating an alternative mythology for England, Lewis was more of a magpie in that he begged, stole or borrrowed from all over the place, like most of us writers do. Would you take anyone's side on this?

No, because, as you say, writers generally pick up inspirations (consciously or unconsciously) from many sources - there's currently no better example of that than J. K. Rowling. Tolkien also gathered ideas and concepts - even borrowing names - from his wide reading; the one difference between Tolkien and Lewis is that the latter's sources (ranging from Biblical stories to such books as Hans Andersen's The Snow Queen) are more obviously spotted by the general reader than Tolkien's more obscure and esoteric lifts.

 

 

I've been talking to people in the arts about landscape for over a year now. I've discovered how difficult it often is to stick to one particular subject when there are so many exciting pathways to follow with each and every one of them. In your case can we now turn to the landscapes which both Tolkien's and Lewis's work provide us with so much of. What is it that draws you, or indeed, any reader, to these particular landscapes?

Tolkien's landscapes: now there's a topic. It would be easy to list the most appealing: the innocent charming rural world of 'Hobbiton' and the surrounding Shire; 'Rivendell', the Last Homely House East of the Sun', where "the air was warm. The sound of running and falling water was loud, and the evening was filled with a faint scent of trees and flowers", where, according to Bilbo, "time doesn't pass, it just is"; who wouldn't want to vacation there? Or Lothlorien, the ageless city of trees, an idyllic, sequestered realm of which Tolkien says, "in winter here no heart could mourn for summer or for spring. No blemish or sickness or deformity could be seen in anything that grew upon the earth. On the land of Lorien, there was no stain.'

 

Then there are other places, such as Edoras and Minas Tirith, centres of power and community that represents an impressive unity of landscape and purpose. But for me the regions within Middle-earth that I find the most enticing and memorable are those that haunt me, not with their beauty and magnificence, but with their terribleness: the Dead Marshes, with its submerged army of Elven warrior corpses, the decaying stronghold of Minas Morgul; Cirith Ungol - 'Spider's Cleft' - and the tunnels leading to Shelob's Lair, and the bleak and wasted land of Mordor with it's Black Gates, the dark fortress of Barad-dur and smouldering, ash slopes of Orodruin leading to the Cracks of Doom. Tolkien embodied these landscapes with an evil malignity and they serve the Dark Lord as much as his living emissaries and at each stage of Frodo's journey they conspire to imperil and defeat his quest.

I find that fascinating, Brian, that it is the haunted and dark landscapes and evil, abandoned castles that draw you the most. Personally I would have to add the Mines of Moria and it's enigmatic entrance. Again as in Frodo and Sam's journey to Cirith Ungol, it's the close terror of walking in the dark which fascinates me again and again.

But let's turn back to Narnia.

From Narnia I will select just one image: Pauline Baynes's wrap-around cover illustration for the 1963 puffin paperback edition of The Magician's Nephew with its aerial depiction of Digory and Polly astride Fledge, the flying horse - and with - laid out below them - the Narnian landscape: seashore, downland, mountains, rocky outcrops, woods, forests, lakes and mountains. Holding this book in my hands today, I am instantly a child again: huddled in front of our kitchen fire on a snowy winter's day, poring over this very image and wishing that I might be swept away to this land that I so desired. It is one of the truly great book illustrations of all time and the memory of its beauty will live with me until the hour of my death.

Sadly, I'm not so fortunate as to have that one, Brian, but I do have the Puffin editions of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader', 'The Silver Chair; and 'The Last Battle' - all arresting and beautiful in their own right.

And for you, are there any landscapes you find particularly inspiring and why?

I will speak of two. First, the rugged coastline of North Cornwall: as a young man, I fell under the spell of those sheer 400-foot-high cliffs, the finger -bones of black rock reaching out into churning surf, far, far below: the purple heather, low scrub and twisted thorn trees leaning against the wind beneath vast skies. In my twenties, my best friend and I spent several holidays in Morwenstowe, a remote Cornish village, (once the home of the eccentric parson poet, Robert Stephen Hawker) on the stretch of coastland between Bude and Hartland Point. I was passionately in love with the wild and isolated timelessness of the place and, over fifty years later, I still visit it in my dreams.

 

 

My second landscape is, actually a cityscape. I speak of that maze of narrow streets and canals, bridges, squares and churches that is La Serenissima...Venezia...Venice... a noble, romantic, dreaming city of monumental proportions, built upon - and intersected by - water; a place of scattered light, deepening shadows and countless, constantly shifting reflections: timeless, inscrutable, illusory. My husband and I have visited Venice very many times in something over twenty years and we never leave without the conviction that we will return to be beguiled by its enigmatic personality and bemused by its rare beauty... There are some who travel seeking ever-new-vistas and there are others of us passion is to keep going back to explore somewhere again and again. 

 

 

 

Photo by Brian

 

Let's take leave of the inspiration for Middle- earth and cross to the other side of the world where it was recreated in perhaps it's most memorable incarnation, in New Zealand. You've written the authorised biography of Peter Jackson, and what I loved most about it was how generously he gave of himself, so that the reader just gets the idea that you're just letting him talk. How did your whole relationship begin?

 

 

I am glad that's how the book comes across. It didn't sell very well for whatever reason, but it is very much told in the voice of The Man Himself. People will be surprised to learn that the many interviews that make up the narrative were not, for the most part, recorded when I was in New Zealand, because Peter was always too busy. It comprises a series of two or three-hour- long very long distanced phone interviews conducted either at 8.00 at night UK time, (before Peter, in Wellington, began his morning shoot or edit) or at 8.00 in the morning by my watch after Peter had completed a day's work! Occasionally people tell me that they have found the history of how the Jackson Rings film trilogy came to be made- with all its twists and turns as exciting and suspenseful as any adventure story; I find that really gratifying.

There's a lovely story that the late actor Peter Woodthorpe told, who conveyed so completely the complexity of Gollum in the BBC Radio 'Lord of the Rings', alongside the equally memorable Ian Holm as Frodo and Bill Nighy as Sam. Here he was, the veteran who had trod the boards in the first English language staging of Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot', and he's there writing to ask Peter Jackson if he might possibly be of assistance again. I know that Peter Jackson is a big fan of your version, but I presume when you and Michael Bakewell were adapting that version you could not possibly have seen into a future where you are watching the film version being made in New Zealand?

No! Such a thought, of course, could never have crossed our minds! As for Peter Woodthorpe, well he twice voiced Gollum (in the Bakshi animated version and the radio dramatisation) and it would certainly have been fun if he could have given us a Gollum hat-trick! Peter's vocal performance was incomparable but Andy Serkis's total physical embodiment of the role was equally astonishing. I always resist the urge to compare Rings casts with one another, because it's like comparing different dramatic interpretations of Hamlet. That said, I'd absolutely take a ringside seat any day for a few rounds of a Gandalf bout between Sir Michael Hordern and Sir Ian McKellen.

And landscape - We're here again. You must have spent a good deal of time in New Zealand watching and conversing and the rest of it. As soon as you saw some of that landscape, did you feel that Tolkien's book might have finally come home. 

I'd love to be able to talk about the New Zealand landscape from my personal experience, but I honestly can't! Across the production of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies I spent several months in the country but always in Wellington, where I was interviewing cast and crew along with Peter Jackson's present and former friends and colleagues. I love the city and its people; but, needless to say, it would have been great to visit the kiwi versions of Hobbiton or Edoras... There's no doubt, however, that the magnificent - and diverse - scenery of New Zealand provided the unquestionably perfect location for Middle Earth.

You came back for the Hobbit filming of course, which was originally meant to have been directed by Guillermo Del Toro, who clearly had already prepared an awful lot for it, but in the end a contracting delay forced him to pull out. Do you think anything was lost when Peter Jackson, the producer, had to take over himself, or was the film just more like part of The Lord of the Rings family?

Del Toro's Hobbit would have been very different and - I have no doubt - very exciting; so, yes, it is a loss that we didn't have the chance to experience his idiosyncratic interpretation of the book. Jackson certainly embedded The Hobbit very firmly within his already intricately woven tapestry created across the three Rings films; but, for many, the overlong, over-elaborated trilogy placed too heavy a burden on the original narrative as to all but overwhelm it completely.

Well, Brian, I could happily talk to you a great deal more. We'll have to pause there, but I wonder if I can invite you back in a few months time - hopefully when things are a lot easier in general - to talk to us more about your career and a few other great loves like 'Winnie-the-Pooh' and 'The Wind in the Willows' and Disney?

Certainly, Steve; it's a date! We can talk about Pooh and his 'Hundred Aker Wood', and about Mr Toad and the world of the Riverbank and even Uncle Walt who, in turn, gave us his own interpretations of both those locations and dozens of other filmic landscapes. Maybe, since I'm president of the Lewis Carroll society we might even squeeze in a quick chat about Alice and her friends down the rabbit hole and beyond the looking glass? Or indeed any of those other fantastical characters and their bizarre and beautiful worlds with which I am still madly in love? 

Thanks, Brian. It's been really good to talk to you so far.

My great pleasure!

And I'm happy to say that you can find out a whole lot more about Brian, his life and projects on a whole host of sources here.

https://www.facebook.com/BrianDavidSibley/

http://briansibleysblog.blogspot.com/

http://briansibleytheworks.blogspot.com/

https://soundcloud.com/brian-sibley/tracks

https://www.flickr.com/photos/brian_sibley/album

 

 

 

	Coming soon in May, more landscape interviews with Malachy Doyle and Catherine Fisher and a celebration of the wonderful Albert Campion and his creator Margery Allingham.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stealing Stories by Claire Fayers

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Litfilmfest a few months back. One of the questions they sent me in advance was:

'How come you are allowed to steal old stories - myths and legends - and change them? Is that okay?'

I wish we'd had more time to discuss the question during the event because it's such an interesting subject. We all know we're not allowed to steal other people's work. I'm sure I'm not the only writer who avoids books that look similar to whatever I'm working on because I don't want to pick up accidental influences.

And yet, old stories are fair game. My 'Accidental Pirates' books borrow from Greek myth, the stories of Sinbad and tales of lost worlds. Mirror Magic uses Celtic fairy folklore and every fairytale that has ever mentioned a magic mirror. Storm Hound features Odin and the Wild Hunt, the Welsh sorceress Ceridwen and several local folk legends. And my latest book is a collection of Welsh myths and legends, all shamelessly taken and retold.

Folklore. Fair game?

Copyright only lasts 70 years, and we're unlikely to get a 2,000 year-old author banging on our door, complaining that we've stolen their ideas. But it feels to me that permission to use these stories goes beyond the fact that they're not protected by copyright.

Once upon a time, stories were community events. Told to an audience, who would then go out and retell it to their friends. Every time a story was told, parts were forgotten, other parts were changed or added. Whenever people left their homes and moved to new places, they took their stories with them. That's why you find the same motifs cropping up over and over again. Stories were meant to be taken, retold and changed.

I think that's one of the reasons these old tales speak to so many people. They didn't have a single creator, but they took shape over time, coming out of the collective consciousness of the people who shared them.

To take one story as an example, the tale of Beddgelert tells how Gelert, the favourite hound of Prince Llywelyn, saves his master's baby son from a wolf. Llywelyn, retuning from a day's hunting, sees the upturned cradle and his dog covered in blood, assumes Gelert has killed the baby and kills his faithful dog. 

Gelert's Grave in north Wales

There's a memorial to Gelert in the town of Beddgelert, named after the brave hound, so the story must be true. Sadly (or maybe happily), it's not. Gelert was probably a local saint and the story may have been made up by an innkeeper who wanted to attract visitors to the town. Who knows where the innkeeper got the story from, but maybe he'd heard the Indian version of the tale in which a Brahmin's pet mongoose saves a baby from a snake and is mistakenly killed by the Brahmin's wife.

If a mongoose can become a hunting hound and a Brahmin's wife can become the Prince of Wales, then we can surely take these stories and make them our own? One of my favourite school activities is to take well-known fairytales apart and use them as inspiration for new stories. It's always a joyful activity, made better because the children are creating stories together, bouncing ideas across the classroom. 

Maybe then, if you're feeling stuck for ideas, spend some time immersed in myth and see where it takes you. I love the thought that, in telling stories, we are part of a global conversation; a conversation that stretches back to the time the first person gazed into a fire at night and said 'Once upon a time...'

Claire Fayers writes fantasy and adventure stories for 7-12 year-olds. Her new collection of Welsh Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends, published by Scholastic is out now. www.clairefayers.com

UKYA Spotlight: Clare Owen, author of Zed and the Cormorants - Q&A with Holly Race

Clare Owen's debut novel, Zed and the Cormorants, is released on 29th April - just four days' time! It's a gorgeously evocative story set in Cornwall, full of loving but messed up families, ghosts and warm bread rolls. Clare kindly agreed to chat to me about her inspiration, her thoughts about YA as a genre and what she's working on next...

Please also enjoy some of the stunning illustrations by Sally Atkins, which can be seen in the book.

Hi Clare! To start us off, could you tell us a bit about the story of Zed and the Cormorants?

Zed moves from London to Cornwall with her family. Her dad is convinced that a fresh start and a simpler lifestyle will improve their mother’s mental health and stop her sister Amy going off the rails, but Zed is riddled with anxiety about starting a new school and really misses the friends she’s left behind, particularly her best friend for whom she has quite confusing feelings.

Their new home is very isolated and the few neighbours they do have, won’t go near the boathouse down on the river. Then one night during a storm, Zed is attacked by a flock of cormorants and soon after things start to go very wrong for her family and the local community.  She begins to piece together a local story of love, loss and revenge but can she find a way to appease her tormentors? And in the process face her biggest fears?

It’s a book that defies genre - part ghost story, part contemporary drama that delves into some pretty dark issues, and partly an environmental fairytale. What inspired you to bring those different elements together?

I didn’t set out to defy any genres, I just wanted to write a compelling story with a nuanced young woman at the heart of it.  Most of us have to deal with ‘dark issues’ at some time or another and I don’t think Zed is particularly unusual in having a family all struggle in different ways and therefore aren’t always able to give her the support that she needs. The more gothic elements of the story took me a little by surprise if I’m honest, because I’m much more drawn to contemporary dramas in my own reading, but I did grow up reading novels like Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights which are full of emotionally wrought characters in isolating circumstances and often have some kind of ‘haunting’ in the background! 

The Cornish landscape is a huge part of the novel: is that part of the country very close to your heart?

Yes, I live in on a river estuary in Cornwall and my daily dog walk is where the story began to take shape. I haven’t always lived here though, and I think growing up in a city allowed me to really appreciate the beauty of the place and understand the value of the ‘headspace’ that living somewhere rural can offer you. That might not be welcome if your head is filled with anxiety, confusion and fear but if – as Zed does - you can find a way to live in harmony with the natural world; to respect it and stop trying to destroy it, I think it can help you find a bit of peace and positivity too. 

Do you have any tips to writers who are unsure about how far you can go in YA when exploring those darker issues?

Well, the first question here is what is YA? Is it an age group or is it a genre?  And even if we go with an age group there is a big difference between a 13-year-old at one end of the teenage spectrum and a 19-year-old at the other!  Generally, I don’t think anything is out of bounds as long as it is dealt with sensitively and its primary purpose is to serve the narrative. If it’s just there to shock for its own sake, then I’m less interested.  And if there is even a whiff of you trying to work through your own demons, then write by all means – I’m a huge believer in writing as therapy – but maybe it’s better, for the time being, to keep that separate from your fiction.

What are you working on at the moment? Will we be seeing Zed again?

Last year I wrote lots of short stories and I’m actually working on a novel for adults at the moment, mostly from the point of view of an eighty-year-old man, so there’s not a hint of teenage angst! As for a follow up to this book, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about Suki, why she left Cornwall and what coming home might mean for her, Denzil and Tamsin. Zed would definitely have a part to play in that story.

I would love to read more about Suki! She's such a great character.

What are you reading at the moment? Any recent recommendations?

I think everyone should read Liz Kessler’s When the World Was Ours which came out last year. It doesn’t at any point shy away from the horror of what went on at the hands of the Nazis but the compassion and friendship at the heart of the book is such a strong force, it balances out the brutality and loss.  And it’s so relevant to young people today: the rise of extreme right-wing views and refugees needing a safe haven are very much contemporary issues playing out all over the world. I haven’t cried like that for ages, but they were tears of joy, not despair.

Duly added to my TBR list! Finally, which actors would you love to play Zed, Amy and Mum and Dad in a screen adaptation of the book?

I actually think it lends itself to a stylised animation – along the lines of Studio Ghibli (especially since cormorants are very familiar birds in Japanese culture and mythology) but if I had to cast a film I’d have Tom Hollander for Dad, Gina McKee as Mum and maybe someone like Brooke Norbury for Zed and Raffiella Chapman - with a super straight blue/black wig - for Amy.

You're so right, an animated adaptation would be perfect! Clare, thank you so much. Very best of luck for the launch of Zed and the Cormorants. You can find out more about Clare here and order Zed here.

Holly worked for many years as a script editor in film and television, before becoming a writer.

Her debut novel, Midnight's Twins, is published by Hot Key Books. Its sequel, A Gathering Midnight, will be released in June 2021. She also selectively undertakes freelance script editing and story consultant work.

www.hollyrace.com

www.patreon.com/hollyracewriting

Billy Wilder's Ten Screenwriting Tips, by Saviour Pirotta

Billy Wilder is one of my all time heroes. An Austrian by birth, he fled the Nazis first to Paris and then to Hollywood where he quickly established himself as a talented screenwriter, film producer and director. He might be forgotten by many today but his films live on among film afficionados. They include The Lost Weekend, Stalag 17, Some Like It Hot, Emil and the Detectives and one of my absolute favourites, Sunset Boulevard.  The last line in Some Like it Hot is widely considered to be the best comedic end line in cinematic history. When Jack Lemon in drag tells a besotted Joe E. Brown, 'I can't marry you, I'm a man,' the reply is 'Nobody's perfect.'

Wilder always claimed that 80% of a film's success is down to the script, and he spent a lot of time honing the writing, usually in collaboration with his father. In interviews with author Cameron Crowe for Crowe's book, Conversations with Wilder, he listed his ten tips for writing a great screenplay. They work just as well for writing in any genre with a narrative, so here they are:

1. THE AUDIENCE IS FICKLE

By this, Wilder meant that audiences' tastes change very quickly. So don't waste your time chasing trends. Write what you want and feel you can most commit to.

2.  GRAB THEM BY THE THROAT AND NEVER LET THEM GO

Start your story with an eye-popping scene. You have the rest of the book to fill in the 'building up'.

3.  DEVELOP A CLEAN LINE OF ACTION FOR YOUR CHARACTERS

Establish the character's objective and their plan for achieving it. The readers must feel that they are in on the ride. 

4.  KNOW WHERE YOU'RE GOING

This really means where the story is going. It doesn't matter how you plan the character's journey, in a notebook, in a writing programme or on notecards, make sure the characters stick to it and don't wander off.

5. THE MORE SUBTLE YOU ARE AT HIDING YOUR PLOT POINTS, THE BETTER YOU ARE AS A WRITER.

Some people say there are only seven stories that keep being retold over and over again. The hero's journey to redeem himself, the pact with the devil etc. The audience knows this and want you to stick to the script. But they want to forget they know it while reading. Be original in how you deliver the plot points.

6. IF YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THE THIRD ACT, THE REAL PROBLEM IS IN THE FIRST ACT.

I think this is one of Wilder's best tips. The third act features the resolution to the story. If it feels contrived, it's because the foundations laid in act 1, and also 2, weren't solid enough. I try and solve this problem with careful planning and, if I'm writing with planning, I correct during the second edit.

7. LET THE AUDIENCE ADD TWO AND TWO. THEY'LL LOVE YOU FOR IT.

Let your readers anticipate at least some part of what's going to happen. They'll enjoy it because it makes them feel a part of the story.

8. IN DOING VOICE-OVERS, BE CAREFUL NOT TO DESCRIBE WHAT THE AUDIENCE ALREADY SEES. ADD TO WHAT THEY'RE SEEING.

For me, this applies mostly to picture books. Don't describe what's in the illustrations. Add things the readers cannot see - sounds, smells, feelings.

9. THE EVENT THAT TAKES PLACE IN THE SECOND ACT TRIGGERS THE ENDING

The beginning of the book sets the objective and the journey but something HUGE must happen in the second act that triggers the way the ending happens. 

10.  GIVE THEM THE ENDING, THEN DON'T HANG AROUND

The ending must deliver a punch. A grand finale. Once it's done, that's it. Don't add anything else and dilute the action.

I've used these tips in most of my books, although not always all together, in fact hardly ever all ten in the same book. I hope I've explained them clearly and that you find them of some use...nd now I'm ready for my close up, Mr. DeMille.

Okido –The Arts & Science Magazine for Kids, review by Lynda Waterhouse

 

I stood in the newsagents staring blankly at endless rows of pink, glittery, superhero and Disney branded comics. Most of them had a plastic giveaway stuck to the front. The shiny paper and garish illustrations gave me instant sensory overload. Then, right on the bottom shelf, something different caught my eye: Okido – The Arts & Science Magazine for Kids aged 3-7.

 It was smaller and squarer than the other comics. The feel of a book or magazine is important to me and this felt good. Okido is made on FSC certified paper using biodegradable vegetable inks. It felt solid like a colouring or activity book should feel, built for some serious engagement. There was no free gift but rather the back two pages contained a cut out activity linked to the monthly theme, ‘Seeds’, so the cut out activity was to make a flying seed. Unlike my beloved Bunty cut out dolls (I am that old!), cutting this up would not destroy the magazine.

Okido’s philosophy is a beautifully simple one: every child is a creative scientist. The magazine’s founders are scientist, Dr Sophie Dauvois, and artist, Rachel Ortas, who created this independent magazine over their kitchen table in Brixton in 2007.

Each issue is themed making them fun to keep and collect. The magazine contains a series of themed adventures, activities, a delicious recipe, games, doodles, stories and a poem. Each page is beautifully illustrated. I particularly loved the Rachel Ortas illustrated story Mochi Seeds. It is described like so,

‘This is a two voices story. A story for an adult and a child to share and enjoy together. The adult reads the text and the child says the illustrated word. After a few goes, the child will remember the story and read it all!’

Another bonus is that there is the minimal advertising. The only advertising I could find in this issue was a discreet banner on the front page referencing the companies that screen the animated TV series, ‘Messy goes to Okido. ’

Okido helps children learn through play. It is full of stories, activities and games that stimulate creativity and inspire scientific interest. The fun and games are designed for all children and aims to be a stereotype-free zone. I loved it! A subscription would make the perfect gift.

www.okido.com

Saving Hanno by Miriam Halahmy, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart

 

 

Eight-year-old Rudi lives with his family in a flat in Frankfurt. Just a normal family … except that this is 1938, and Hitler’s Nazi party is on the rise. And Rudi’s family are Jewish.

 

Miriam Halahmy has taken a huge and terrible moment in human history, and scaled it down to a size and treatment suited to readers of perhaps 7-10 years old. She’s focussed Rudi’s story on two aspects of the build-up to World War Two which particularly affected children. 

 

Rudi, longing just to play with his friend and his dog Hanno, finds that life is changing. His nice teacher is replaced by a Nazi teacher who picks on the Jewish children. Rudi’s dad has lost his journalist job. It’s being made hard for Jews to get good food. And the threat is very much of worse to come. So Rudi and his big sister Lotte are put by their parents onto one of the Kindertransport trains to safety outside Germany. Hanno isn’t allowed on the train, but Rudi is promised that the dog will be quarantined and will join him in Britain.  

 

Rudi and Hanno start to settle into life in England (Lotte has it harder in another household), making friends, learning the language, and eating strange new foods. But then comes the second great threat to Hanno. The British government says that pets must be culled in order to preserve food for people when German bombing begins. 750,000 cats, dogs and other pets were killed. Rudi’s nice foster parents intend to comply and have Hanno ‘put down’, especially since Rudi is about to be evacuated out of London to another home. So Rudi and his new friend decide they must save Hanno…  

(Miriam Halahmy’s novel ‘Emergency Zoo’ meshes with this story, focussing on the girls who set up the pet-saving plot that saves Hanno and other animals.)  

 

This story can be read as an adventure about a boy and his dog. Or it can be thought about and explored and discussed as a rare example of historical fiction for younger middle grade readers. Why are those children having to wear a star that marks them out? Why do they all rip their stars off, and trample on them, when the Kindertransport train gets over the border from Germany to Holland? What must it be like to be surrounded by people talking a language you don’t understand? If you’ve seen soldiers attacking innocent people, how will you feel when you next see somebody in military or police uniform?

 

This is a story about war and racism and being a refugee, about people going out of their way to be cruel, but also of people going out of their way to be kind. It’s about how a big sister’s love and a beloved pet can make all the difference when leaving parents behind. And it’s beautifully illustrated by Karin Littlewood. 

Hot air balloons by day, and Scrabble by night: Lockdown eases. by Anne Booth

Two days ago, last Sunday, our dog Barney made his first visit to a bookshop. It was so lovely for us all, as it was the bookshop our son works in. Because of the pandemic, we had not seen our son for months and months - we saw him last June, then a couple of days in September, but then lockdown came again and we  missed seeing him for Christmas, New Year, my birthday, his birthday,  and Easter - we have sent letters and cards and parcels and Christmas hampers and cards and a birthday cake.

We have had lots of zoom calls and facebook messages, and phone calls, we watched films together in our own homes and have been as creative as we could be in keeping in touch, and have actually had a lot of fun, but we missed him SO much, and worried about him, so, as soon as we could, we booked a self catering house and, together with one of his sisters and our lockdown puppy, we drove a few hours to where our son lives and finally met up again, and it was SO GOOD.

I also got to meet up with a walk with my lovely friend Virginia I haven't seen for a year. It was brilliant.

It was also so lovely going into a bookshop for the first time for months and months , and so lovely to introduce Barney our lockdown puppy to a shop.  It was so wonderful to see all the gorgeous books in their natural bookshop surroundings, and the atmosphere was so great. All the lovely booksellers were so pleased to see Barney, and Barney was delighted to meet such enthusiastic new friends. Barney completely bonded with our son, and I think he was having such a lovely time, with so many new experiences and people to meet. He also met my writer friend Virginia when she came to our holiday home garden, and he loved her. Everything was brilliant for Barney.

Until today. Poor Barney was happily playing with his squeaky ball in our holiday home garden, and a hot air balloon came down very very low, just over our garden, so you could hear the roar of the hot air,  and spooked him. He turned from a very bouncy puppy to a very overwhelmed and subdued one. 

Not the most flattering picture of me - but here is Barney having a post- hot air balloon cuddle (both of us are booked in for hair cuts in the coming weeks!).

We had to stay in the garden and socialise outside tonight , as our son is not officially allowed in our holiday home, so we all spent the evening outside in the garden having a meal and then playing scrabble by the light of mobile phones, and Barney was cuddled in our arms. He really took a long time to feel safe again. I hope that tomorrow he will feel completely better. 

I think this post lockdown experience can be overwhelming for puppies AND people. It is so wonderful to do things like go into bookshops again, and to meet up with people we love, and meet old and new friends. It is wonderful to go to new places, but we mustn't be surprised if at this time, even if we are lucky enough to be happy, we feel exhausted by little and big things. I didn't need to be traumatised by a hot air balloon to feel really overwhelmed  just by going into a bookshop for the first time, even though it was such a happy thing to do. I did what the NHS and government have asked and stayed at home. As a writer who works from home, I have not gone anywhere really for over a year - I have basically stayed in our village, apart from 2 nights away last summer.  I hope if anyone else is feeling very exhausted, they remember that things have not been, and are not yet, completely normal again, so it is normal to feel this way. 

One lovely thing we did tonight, which we have never done before, and would not have done if rules had allowed us to meet indoors, was play scrabble in the dark in the garden - as the night fell, we did it by the light of mobile phones. This time is still uncertain and worrying, and there has been so much loss, and tragedies in this pandemic, but I am so grateful for things like the zoom calls and the creative ways to keep in touch, and that we can finally start meeting up with friends and loved ones, play scrabble in holiday home gardens, and that bookshops are open to visit again.

Still Praising Ruperts, 10 Years On - Joan Lennon

Since I posted In Praise of Ruperts here ten years ago, a lot of things have changed - one of which is I have a much better camera now than I did then.  But some things have stayed the same ...  

I have just returned from a remarkable experience. I spent March as the Jessie Kesson Fellow at Moniack Mhor Writers' Centre. I lived in a cottage on a hill (1000 feet up), with its very own micro-climate - everything from thigh-high snow, to sitting out in the sun watching the daftness of lambs, to the foggiest fogs I have ever seen - and I wrote. When I wasn't writing, I thought about writing. When I went to sleep, I dreamed about writing. I did a day a week in the schools talking about writing and getting the kids to write. I worked with the Highland Literary Salon on their Writers' Retreat Weekend. I was obsessed. I was, in fact, a deleriously happy Rupert.

Let me explain.

Rupert is a crow. He also lives at Moniack Mhor. He sees life differently from other crows. I know this because Rupert throws himself at buildings. Now, many birds will occasionally be confused by the glass in a window and bump into it. Having done so, they will either a) drop down dead or b) give themselves an embarrassed shake and fly away. Not Rupert. Rupert seeks out windows with intent, and when he finds them he throws himself at them like a feathery grenade, bounces off, and does it again.

Bam. Bam. Bam.

If you interrupt Rupert in mid-attack by, say, opening the door and yelling, he'll only go a little way off and then squat on a fence post and swear at you. You just know he's going to be back. He is on a mission - his tiny demented mind is full of conquest ...

Bam. Bam.

At first he specialised in subduing the windows of my cottage. By the time my residency was over, he had transferred his attention to the big house and was attacking that. There are A LOT of windows in the main building, but Rupert is a bird obsessed. I'm convinced he's happy in his work. I like to think we have things in common.

So here's to Ruperts everywhere. Here's to slant vision, quixotic pursuits, perseverance and a hard head.

Here's to obsession.

Bam.

Joan Lennon Instagram