Captain Najork

Or, to give the book its full title: How Tom Beat Captain Najork and His Hired Sportsmen.

Book is actually stretching it, since this is really a short story, and very short, short story at that. You can read it in less than ten minutes.

But it’s my favourite children’s story of all time and one I have read over and over. It’s witty, absurd, charming and endlessly inventive. Not to mention remarkably economical in its storytelling. And I will freely admit that when I was writing the first of my two Aunt Severe books, this story’s Aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong was a great help. I’m not going to say I stole her, but she was a very definite influence.

Though I first read it in a standard paperback with black and white drawings, this newer edition is printed on glossy paper and has Quentin Blake’s marvellous illustrations in vivid colour.

I can’t recommend it highly enough.

 

Events Vs Stories by Claire Fayers

 I was sorting through my old notebooks recently when I came across a question I'd scribbled down during a workshop:

When does a series of events become a story?

I hadn't written down an answer at the time so I've been trying to answer the question this week. I've read lots of stories - often written by children, but not always - where the main character wakes up, gets out of bed, goes out, talks to someone in the street, carries on to school or work, has lunch, fights a dragon, discovers a haunted mansion, comes home etc etc. The individual events may be exciting, but there's no sense of a story unfolding.

E.M. Forster in Aspects of the Novel wrote: "The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died and then the queen died of grief is a plot."

I hate to disagree with E.M. Forster but I don't think his first example is a story. It's a pair of events. The second example feels far more like a story to me, although I'd really like to know who the main character is, given that both the characters mentioned so far are dead. Which makes me think I really need to reread Aspects of the Novel to find out exactly what Mr Forster was getting at.

For me, a story needs to have a main character I can identify with, a sense of causality from one event to the next, and a character arc where the main character becomes a different person through the events of the story. The king died in mysterious circumstances and then the furious and grief-stricken queen set out to discover the identity of the murderer. That sounds a bit more like a story.

But I'm already thinking of exceptions. What's the character arc in 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt'? 

(A good friend of mine, by the way, regards this book as the most terrible example of negligent parenting.)

Come to think of it, sometimes the point of the story is that the character is unable to change, and that becomes their tragedy. So a revised definition is in order. 

A story requires a main character the audience can identify with, a sense of causality from one event to the next, and the events challenge the character to grow and change.

Is that closer, do you think? Is there anything else a story needs?

Claire Fayers

www.clairefayers.com

Our new book! by Sue Purkiss

 Some of you might remember posts I've written before about the writing group I run in Cheddar. Earlier this year, we decided to do something different - instead of having a different task each week, we would write a book - together.

Some members of the group with copies of the book - Jennie, Richard, Margaret, Sally and Heather.

The plan was to create an imaginary village - which, however, is set more-or-less in the area where we live in Somerset, the Mendips. Each of us would create a small cast of characters who would be living in the village, and we would each write three or four stories about these characters.

We soon realised that, though we weren't attempting to write a novel - rather a collection of short stories - we would have to collaborate. It wouldn't work if the characters were confined to their own particular stories; they needed to move between stories, to influence each other, to chat to each other. 

We decided we'd have an underlying problem/situation, and that this would be a proposed new housing development. Some of the villagers are very against this: others have a different view. Against this background, we have all sorts of other dramas. Many are personal - rebellious teenagers, newcomers to the village, elderly inhabitants who have to face difficult choices, racial prejudice, snobbery - but we also have unexplained (and unrevealed) deaths, a spy, a witch (that's no stretch, we live near Glastonbury, which is full of them), and a wise old woodsman called Joe. (We did have several murders, but when the freezer was getting to be full of bodies, we decided it was all getting a bit too Midsomer Murders, so reprieved a couple of the victims.)

It was a very interesting process. The writing took about six months, and there were rebellions along the way: anguished cries of  'But I want to go back to writing something new each week!' and, 'Oh, it'll never work!' But fortunately, we didn't get everybody rebelling at the same time, and the group rallied round in a very nurturing sort of way - 'It's all right, the stories don't have to be the same - you can have a spy/fire/seduction if you want'; 'It'll be over soon and we can go back to normal'; 'Just think, all your Christmas presents'll be sorted...' (Sorry, friends and relations.)

But in the end, it all came together. We wrangled the stories into a sensible order, we gave our village a name - 'Stoneyfield', I edited them, Richard managed to con/persuade his nephew-who's-a-cameraman-at-the-BBC to help us with the cover, we uploaded the lot onto Kindle Direct (that sounds simple - it wasn't all that) - and, well, yer tiz. (That's Somerset for 'here it is'. Sorry if you already knew that.)

Should you wish to buy a copy, (brilliant for reading a story a day over coffee - how can you resist?) it's available here. 

The Stories That Shape Us, by Saviour Pirotta

 When readers ask me what books from my childhood inspired me to become a writer, my answer is always the same. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Treasure Island and Rosemary Sutcliff's The Eagle of the Ninth. The reasons I give are as follows: CS Lewis introduced me to high fantasy; In Treasure Island I met the first antihero; a baddy that had elements of good, someone I actually wanted to meet in real life. And Rosemary Sutcliff taught me that good historical fiction can be timeless. It uses the past to speak about the human condition in the present. 

But, writing film synopses for my historical fiction recently, I realised there is another book that has had a direct influence on my work. That's Ben Hur by Lew Wallace. Most people my age are familiar with the story, probably because they've watched the film version starring Charlton Heston in the title role. I too was introduced to the story via William Wyler's 1959 film, although I was only a baby during its first release. I saw it when it was re-released in cinemas in the mid-sixties.  The story was dismissed as passe by the critics even when the book was first first published in November, 1880. But readers, and later, filmgoers too connected with it in their millions.  The larger than life characters, the setting, the photography, the dialogue, a humdinger of a chariot race and a cracking plot involving friendships turned sour, revenge and ultimately forgiveness made a massive impression on 7 year old Salvatore sitting in his local cinema on a Saturday afternoon.

As I grew up and discovered nouvelle-vague cinema, kitchen sink drama and mid-20th century authors, Judah Ben Hur and his frenemy Messala faded from my mind. Or did they?  Looking through my own work, I can see the direct influence of this timeless story on my writing.

In my Stone Age novel The Stolen Spear and my Golden Islamic Age story The Golden Horsemen of Baghdad,  the main characters make a mistake that has terrible consequences and which sets them on a journey of self discovery and redemption. Like Ben Hur, Thrax in my Ancient Greek Mysteries, is obsessed with finding his lost mother.  Jabir's mother and sisters in The Golden Horsmen are exiled to a cave outside their village, just like Ben Hur's family.

Powerful stories from our childhood tend to stay with us even when we think we have forgotten them. Their leitmotifs help shape our thought process and our world view, especially when they mostly deal with universal truths and imponderables. We often feel impotent when faced by a world that seems to be motivated by greed and anger. But there is something vitally important we writers can do. We can tell out stories to help point young minds in the right direction.

Saviour Pirotta's latest book, The Jackal Graveyard is the third instalment in The Nile Adventures. Follow him on instagram @saviour2858, on X/twitter @spirotta, on threads at saviour2858 and on bluesky @saviour.bsky.social.

LUNAR, written by Chris Bradford, illustrated by Charlotte Grange, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart

 

‘I’m stranded on the Moon. With nowhere to live, nothing to eat or drink and no means of communication. Even if I could contact someone, any hope of rescue is at least three days and 400,000 kilometres away …’

            This is a truly exciting read. With fast paced first-person voice, Luna tells how a sudden meteor strike destroys the satellite which in turn destroys the Moon mining base where she and her father live. Impact is seconds after she has failed to get onto the escape craft, and now just about everything is destroyed. With oxygen and power and food (and astronaut nappies!) running out, Luna thinks of just one small chance to make contact with Earth and ask for rescue. 

            We leave her, still alone on the Moon, but with hope after speaking with her father on Earth … as the clock keeps ticking. 

            Told with energy and humour as well as thriller level tension, this quick read of a story includes all sorts of fascinating facts about life on the Moon. Short chapters and excellent graphic novel style illustrations make this a very attractive and original read; just right for those who find reading a struggle or not usually worth the effort.   

A New Circle of Friends or One Reason I Write for Children by Joan Lennon

 

Pigeons. They weren't exactly news. But since I've been helping look after almost-2-year-old Arran, they have become a highlight of every visit to the park. We feed them bird seed and we go 'WOW!' a lot and we take our time and his pleasure quadruples my pleasure. Hanging out with kids does that. And writing for them is a special form of hanging out.

P.S. Pigeons DO NOT poop on your head. They don't poop when flying at all. This is because their legs are tucked in close to their bodies when flying and are over the cloaca, so if they DID poop while flying, they'd poop on themselves. Gulls - now that's a different story...

Joan Lennon website

Joan Lennon Instagram

MyNoWriMo - Rowena House

My admiration for people who are undertaking the full 50K of NaNoWriMo this month has increased  exponentially since the start of November as I've tried my own pared-down version of it: a 10,000 new words challenge for the witchy WIP. 

Below is the table of the position at the midway point. Not too far behind target, which is a relief, especially when it is the result of a lot of editing down as well as building up the total. Still, it pales into insignificance when I think what the true competitors are doing. 

What would it take, I wonder, to clear one's desk and shut the door on everyday life sufficiently to be able to attempt this 50K feat and create something even vaguely resembling a story at the end of it? More than planning, it must take ruthless dedication.

For me, it's life's demands that are the enemy of writing, but what is the point of writing without people in one's life? And dogs, natch, who's had her walk pretty much every day. And the birds have been fed. There's even fresh milk in the fridge. 

So, in case I can get a bit further back on track tonight, I'll sign off now, with a warm salute to NaNoWriMowers everywhere. [It needs the 'w' imho.] Very best of luck to you all. 

MyNoWriMo 2023 target count: daily target 333 words, total 10,000 words

 

Date	Start	Target	Achieved	Net daily count
1	23,297	23,630	23,651	354
2		23,963	23,837	186
3		24,296	23,969	134
4		24,629	24,770	801
5		24,962	25,230	460
6		25,295	25,630	400
7		25,628	26,028	602
8		25,961	26,239	211
9		26,294	26,423	184
10		26,627	26,640	217
11		26,960	26,640	0
12		27,293	26,798	158
13		27,626	26,973	125
14		27,959	27,497	524
15		28,292
16		28,625
17		28,958
18		29,291
19		29,624
20		29,957
21		30,290
22		30,623
23		30,956
24		31,289
25		31,622
26		31,955
27		32,288
28		32,621
29		32,954
30	33,297	33,287 + 10