I like this photo of me in action, but it’s such a shame about the background. So busy and meaningless: the blue and red of the puppet taking up all the oxygen, and detracting from the more subtle reds and blues of my jacket. In just the same way as details can crowd and clog my narrative.
How do I streamline my story? How do I clean up the background so that the heart of the narrative beats stronger?
Sometimes the tale requires a mob scene: if a small group is to become the Gannet Clan of the Bear Tribe, then I must expand my cast from four main characters to many more. Ten grown-ups seems a credible number.
Add their youngsters and babies and dogs; their tribal mentors; their enemies; the locations of the clan and the tribal gathering. And then the seasons, the rituals, the tools, the cosmology. And the questions: what does a Mesolithic boar spear look like? What time of year do gannets nest? What are the medicinal uses of gold?
It’s a lot to wrangle and sometimes I find myself bogged down. One metaphor I use is ‘the red thread’. In a tapestry, even small touches of red will stand out, and the lines and balances between the red fabric will hold the ‘fabric’ of the narrative together.
I’m working hard to pare away the unnecessary details; to choose details that have emotional and ethical resonance.
As a reader, I find it difficult to relate to the modern trend to sound up to the minute: characters wear face-masks and AI and punch numbers into their mobile phones. I’m afraid I can’t see face-masks, vaccinations and mobile phones carry much poetic, emotional, aesthetic or moral freight. As for AI, I want to choose my own words, and feel deeply affronted when I google ‘stone-age hunting techniques’ and AI immediately offers to write me a paragraph on the topic.
Red is blood, is heart, is feeling. I try to choose tools or actions which can carry a moral and emotional impact, or at least a poetic one.
Thread 1: Paddling a canoe in heavy weather requires cooperation, harmony, determination, courage. Especially if a storm blows up.
Thread 2: A leader who is willing to dig a latrine is showing humility as well as leadership, in contrast to the enemy who thinks such work is beneath him.
Thread 3: Massaging the Chieftain’s arthritic hands is an opportunity for Sulaire, the healer in my story, to show kindness, to win affection, and also to work her way round the enmity of the High Priestess, who may hang onto her rank, but has no real capacity for or interest in healing.
And all the time, I’m unpicking threads that have less resonance. There’s not enough emotional or moral significance in cooking yet another stew, or harvesting yet more shellfish, or scraping back yet another hide. Does it really matter if my hero caught a capercaillie or a mountain hare? Is there a way of making that scene work harder? What if it is a boar hunt? My hero is slight, with one arm shorter than the other after a bad break in childhood. So he can be a runner in the hunt, while the villain is shoving forward, killing the boar and taking the kudos.
It’s hard work. Sometimes I can spend all morning working out exactly when, where and why a character puts down his spear so that he has two hands free for his next action, and so that the putting down of his spear means something beyond mere administration!