Show #3

Our story this evening was Untouchable by Wendy Clarke, a powerful tale set in medieval France and the winning entry in the 2009 Totnes Bookshop short story competition.
The second half of the show involved a look at lists as a writer’s tool.
Even the most mundane list can be used to present details of a life without telling the reader how to respond, allowing them to make their own judgements about a character. A list engages a reader on an active level, forcing an emotional response to the text, allowing the reader’s own prejudices and opinions to colour their interpretations of the things they see listed - creating an excellent opportunity for the writer to subvert those expectations.
In a functional sense, a list can also get things done quickly. As an example I mentioned F Scott Fitzgerald’s masterful use of a list to create the atmosphere and detail of a lavish party in The Great Gatsby.
I also touched on the use of a list as a way to introduce poetic, metrical rhythms into a prose piece without drawing attention to itself, without breaking that prose illusion of reality.

I suggested an exercise based on all this. Come up with a list for one of your characters, a shopping list, a list of new year’s resolutions, a to do list, or anything really. Try and twist it around, add something unexpected, subvert expectations, tell a story through it. After all, at heart, most stories can be thought of as an expanded list: a list of events and the insights they trigger, one after the other.
This week’s extracts came from two books that rank pretty high on my own all-time list.

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien and Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann

Please feel free to submit anything you come up with here on blog. Or if you have any other comments on the show, again, please post.
Looking forward to the next show on March 8.

Keep the stories coming in.