Showing posts with label elephant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label elephant. Show all posts

Saturday 2 June 2012

Spirit of Summer Set Free

So, four days' creativity, no interruptions! Must get the plot for my 19th century novel down in scene-by-scene form. Britain is in the grip of a once-in-a-lifetime public holiday to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of HM the Queen; ideal opportunity for writers like me to shake off the cobwebs and get out on the streets.


Began with bed & breakfast in the seaside town of Margate. Ye Gods, Margate Old Town serves the largest breakfasts in the world. Hugely full but content, I sit down at my window overlooking the bay, to focus on my story's timeline. It's become a monster, like one of those dogs that has to have counselling because it's become pack leader in charge of the human family.

I tell it to sit, nicely, and divide it into the classic three parts: beginning, middle and end. Traditional model? Boring? Hope not. We expect to know where a novel begins.


 I come up with 20 first lines, each supposed to set the scene for my hero's knife-edge journey through the book. 'Thomas scraped the horse-shit from his coat', maybe not. 'His lawyer was drunk again, and in the gutter,' perhaps. 'He heard the elephant's ankle bells, and dragged his brief from the gutter,' now I'm getting there.



Not aiming for perfection yet - that can come later. Just brainstorming the different ways I can get an over-view. It's a waiting game, sitting it out on the cliff-tops of the imagination. Since the seagulls are screaming overhead, and I've had absolutely no exercise since I got here, decide to follow take the stiff climb to the old castle, for 'Jack in the Green'.

I join the crowds, albeit nervously, for this most traditional of ceremonies - the day the Spirit of Summer is set free. Morris Dancers everywhere.

Challenge myself to jot down at least five different scenes, with summaries. They might be included in the first act. They might not. The point at this stage is get a body of material down, being patient, stalking the tale. I look up, and see that Jack, the old green man of winter, is about to reach a bloody end.



Finally, the summoning. New life is on its way.



Like the Morris Dancers in Margate, I saved the summoning until everything was ready. On the train journey back to London I have two hours, one ham sandwich and three cappuccinos' worth of energy in which to explore my main man, Thomas Tarling, and his desperate bid to escape the law.

You can find Margate here: