Travel Broadens The Story

"There's A Story In That"

If you're a reader or a writer, you must know the experience. You're travelling or on holiday somewhere, sitting at a cafe in a small village square. A group of locals are sitting opposite and begin a heated debate about something. The tempo rises. All of a sudden one man jumps to his feet and begins remonstrating with the others, making hand gestures you may not know but which you can guess the meaning of. You don't know the language well but you don't need to. You can guess what is being said. Not that you will be right – but you don't need to be right. Your version of what is being said could well be more interesting than the real one. Perhaps you are in Corsica and you know the reputation for family feuds and murders. The swarthy man has been accused of not avenging the murder of his cousin, Alberto. He has shamed the family. The sister says she is ashamed to be his sister. The swarthy man accuses her of having had an affaire with said dead cousin. Now the mother is on her feet. "Is this true?"
"No of course not, he would say anything to divert attention from his own guilt. He's a lying dog."
"It's true enough," says another woman, "Alberto promised he'd marry me but she wanted to keep him for herself – her bit on the side!"
"Don't you speak about my sister like that, you lying bitch!" says the swarthy man, "I'll kill you!"
"Yes you would, you bastard," replies the woman, "like you killed your cousin because you were jealous. It's well know that you were infatuated with your ugly sister. You wanted to keep her pure, like a princess, you weirdo!"
The argument continues with various members of the cast restraining each other until finally they are buying more drinks, hugging and celebrating their love for one another. You turn to your partner and say, "God, there's a story in that!"

Of course, many such opportunities are lost. I always used to try to keep a notebook with me to avoid forgetting, but often found myself without one. Nowadays, I nearly always have my i-phone with me so can add it to my 'Story Ideas' within Notes. Sometimes I don't find these notes until a year later, by which time the story has changed in my head. If they were the notes of a police constable that would be a problem, whereas with a writer of fiction it is a positive advantage.

Most of my short stories these days come from this kind of situation. When I first began writing short stories, I had a lifetime of remembered experiences to work with - an early life living in countries not of my own culture - but those mines have probably already given up most of their greatest riches. These days I need to find inspiration from elsewhere, and cafe tables are a good source. I have other favourites. The residents' lounge of an old people's home, where people are desperate to tell someone their story. Transport cafes where truck drivers and commercial travellers regale each other with tall tales of the road. The unemployment benefit office waiting room. Police stations. Railway carriages and buses – these are especially fruitful on market days in rural areas, where gossip among passengers is rife. Park benches where old people and winos congregate. Bars late at night are superb places for story inspiration. A weathered man, hung over a metal counter with a pained expressions of regret. What is his story? An ageing women with badly applied make-up, relentlessly stirring a cup of coffee. Does she have a family? Why is she alone? Sometimes I find a way to strike up a conversation with such people, but it's not necessary. Imagination can fill the gaps. Fiction is stranger than truth, as they say.

"Might one ask what you're writing about?" croaks the woman opposite.
It is 2am at an all night cafe in Pigalle, a seedy red-light quarter of Paris. The lines around her painted lips suggest her voice is the result of a lifetime's dependency upon the Gauloise cigarettes I can see in her cheap plastic handbag. She looks poor but she's drinking a cocktail with all the paraphernalia in it – fruit, mint, twizzle stick, parasol. She was probably beautiful once. Now her hair is growing thin from years of peroxide abuse.
"Of course. They are just notes I make when I have ideas."
"Ah bien sure, cheri," she replies, taking my hand gently, "but what sort of ideas? Ideas for what? Are you a policeman – a detective hunting for a murderer, perhaps? Or do you make movies maybe?"

She smiles as she strokes my hand. Her teeth do not do her any favours.
"I write stories."
"Ooh," she replies, as if with a relish for something mysterious, "detective stories? Des histoire erotique peut etre?"
"Excursions into the lives of others," I reply. I translate it to be sure she has understood.
"Yes I understand," she says. "I have been on many such excursions. I have looked through the windows of so many souls, good and bad. Bad mostly.... Paff, no no it is not true! I have loved many men you see. Women too. They are my constant companions, and yet I remain alone. I have come to prefer it that way. Or perhaps I have no choice – it is my destiny. Tant pis. I share their journey for a while and then we part. It is my life, voila!"
"Why do they leave?" I ask, "Or why do you leave?"
"They die. These days anyway, mostly they die. It is my destiny, and theirs. But they die happy. I no longer have the power to attract young men like you."

She laughs and looks deep into my eyes. Incredible eyes she has. The eyes of a girl.
"So what do you seek in life...I'm sorry, I don't know your name."
"Marielle," she replies. "Enchante."
She performs a kind of childish seated curtsey, which is mor sad than endearing. I tell her my name – except not my real name, of course.
"What are you seeking at this stage of your life, Marielle?"
"The same as always," she says, looking up from her cocktail. "I don't seek wealth, fame or a big house. Just someone who will hold me all night."
"But is that so hard to find?"
"Ah, you would be surprised, cheri!" she laughs. "Men want to jump on your bones and then go. They promise not to – many promise not to. They probably can't help it. Maybe I am hard to love, I suppose? And then the women? There is always a man somewhere who they left behind. They hate them, but when they call they will go."

I thank her for her conversation and go to pay. I try to pay for her drink too but the bearded woman at the counter simply tut-tuts and waves her finger. Despite my desire to close the door gently it closes with a harsh bang. I shudder and get as far as the corner before my conscience gets the better of me. As with her, perhaps destiny drove me back, or a desire to be able to help someone less fortunate than myself. It would cost me nothing to brighten her life just for one night. Arriving at the bar I hesitate before opening the door. Through the condensation on the window, I see her stroking the hand of an elderly gentleman. Her long fingers removing his gloves, the same grey toothed smile. Turning to walk away I catch the eye of the woman at the counter. Again that wagging finger.

If you would like to read the bestselling travel book 'Long Road, Hard Lessons' by Mark Swain, or his collections of short stories (including the prizewinning "Special Treatment"), you can find them on Amazon, Smashwords etc. Click the link:

Mark Swain on Amazon.com

Mark Swain on Amazon UK

Mark Swain on Smashwords

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Stories From Real Life

"How Much of the Story is True?"

People often ask me this question. I am told this is because my characters are very vivid – that they are so defined and individual that they simply must be real. I'm told that the situations in my short stories are so out of the ordinary that they are not something a writer could just invent. But this is not true of course.

There is always an element of truth in everything a writer produces. There has to be – we draw our inspiration from what we know in life. One or two of the short stories I have written over the years are very close to the truth – stories where I didn't have to change much from the event and characters that inspired it – but this is not the norm. In my case, a situation arrises – something someone says or does or something I see on the news for example – that sparks my imagination.

A French friend once told me,
"My brother's not that happy in his life. He's married a North African woman with a big family who all live nearby. In their culture they expect the whole extended family to share what they have. It sounds nice but they used to borrow his nice car and it would always come back damaged. It tortured him."
I thought about this brother – a rather obsessional man of habit – and how a man like him might try to resolve this situation. I imagined him arguing with his wife but realising how she would always see it according to her culture – he was being mean. I imagined what he might do to deal with this borrowing expectation – how a man of his nature might develop strategies and adopt strangely complex systems to make it harder for the family to borrow his things, but without demonstrating a lack of generosity. Before long I had weaved a detailed character in my head and a whole set of bizarre behaviours he might adopt. I imagined him with a valuable classic car he had painstakingly saved for as a younger man – his efforts over years to restore it. I imagined him marrying this beautiful exotic creature and then discovering the family culture thing. He would be desperate not to lose her but tortured by the possible damage to his cherished car. He thinks of selling it but can't bear to part with it. He could say it had been stolen perhaps? He begins by saying it's not insured for others to drive, of course, but these are North Africans. Eventually, in a state of mania, he resorts to taking a part (the rotor arm) out of the car so that it won't work. This means he can't drive it either, but it is a price worth paying, he feels.

I wrote down the story and developed it. It seemed like it had legs, as they say. I built up the characters of the man, his wife, her family, the man's work colleagues etc. I described their apartment and the car – it was a Porsche 365 Roadster. The story was set in the UK and the woman became Afro-caribbean. When a few years later the story was published in a book of short stories, I sent a copy to my French friend. Later I asked him how he liked the stories. I waited for him to remark on the character based upon his brother, which he did not. I asked him which of the stories he liked best and he said he loved the one about the guy with the Porsche. I told him this was unsurprising since it was based upon what he had told me about his brother. He was confused. Nothing in the story seemed to him to relate to his brother, he said. I mentioned the car and the cultural issues with his wife's family. He saw the link but insisted it was such a different story that his brother's life was unrecognisable in it.

The above example is typical. Generally it is unlikely that anyone is going to accuse me of making public their closely guarded secrets to my readers. My wife worries about this a lot, I have to say. But the characters and situations are too much changed. They absorb characteristics of other people I have known or heard about. The circumstances and backstory changes. The environment changes and so does the main story – all embellished with things I remember from my past, from films, from television programs and even from other books. Yes, I have a good memory!

You might find it interesting to know, that my French friend told his brother what the man in the story did to avoid having his precious possessions borrowed. His brother tried it out, with some success. I'm very happy to have acted as his therapist in this case.

By the way, for those who are wondering, the story in question is named For The Love of Marsha.  It  is one of the stories in the book, Special Treatment and Other Stories.

The blog about this book and the link to its listing on Amazon is here

Show Don't Tell

In Praise of Shorter Stories

Ernest Hemingway famously said,

"If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water."

It has been pointed out by others, that 'showing' takes more words than 'telling'. I disagree. Poetry manages to convey so much in so few words. By employing certain powerful words that trigger emotions and memories in the reader / listener, the writer can open up a myriad of thought and feelings that do not need to be written down. It is the reason we enjoy quotations so much. To convey the sentiment of an entire tome within
a few well chosen words. Powerful. I try hard to remember this principle in my own writing process. It is far from easy. Firstly you tend to slip back into 'telling' without realising it. It's less effort. With dedication and a certain amount of luck (feeling right at the time), I might spot my errors of 'too much telling' during my editing process and improve them. The great Raymond Carver wrote a wonderfully straightforward essay on this subject entitled, unsurprisingly, 'On Writing.'

Generally I get most pleasure from reading short stories. Chekov, Raymond Carver and Richard Ford are my particular favourites although I have many more. Many novelists also write excellent short stories, or have done in the past. Steinbeck, Hemingway, Orwell, Katherine Mansfield, John Updike, Norman Mailer are just a few. I read a Margaret Atwood short story recently that I especially liked. Steinbeck and Orwell in particular, seem to me to write novels in the condensed style common to short story writers. It is often thought of as characteristic of American writing and Steinbeck appears to utilise the 'show don't tell' principle very effectively. In his great novella, The Pearl, Steinbeck manages to convey so much of the emotions, the cultural background, the sense of family that is fundamental to the motivations of the characters, without actually telling us in words. It is the 'less is more' rule demonstrated at its finest. Steinbeck plants a seed with an image, a perfectly chosen simple word or two and the reader's imagination does the rest. The Pearl is only 90 pages long but those are some of the most powerful 90 pages I have ever read. Incidentally it has been pointed out to me that some of Hemingway's prose runs into some lengthy drawn out passages of agonising detail. I confess I do not like all his work and I think he could have learned a lot from the likes of Steinbeck. Perhaps his impulsively bullish character made up for it in charm, however.

Often when I write a short story, I end up editing it into several versions of differing length. Initially I did this in order to enter my stories into writing competitions, which usually require stories limited to a maximum number of words. It took me a little time to discover that readers always seem to get most from the shortest versions. Stories I have refined and refined, condensing them down to an essence. Sometimes these are short enough to be called what have come to be named 'Flash Stories.' In this form, the story seems to more effectively capture people's imagination. Some readers, I find, have interpreted the story differently to others. This is bound to happen with the 'show, don't tell' technique, where people are using their own background experiences to fill in the gaps. Some writers might balk at this. They want their readers to understand exactly what is in their (the writer's) mind. This is not a problem I suffer from. I am happy for my stories to be a trigger that opens up a number of slightly different stories in each reader's mind.

I accept that the experience of readers preferring my shortest stories could be peculiar to me, but I do not think it likely. Raymond Carver in his essay, On Writing, talks about how when he was at university, all American writers were trained in this way - a process of continuous condensing and reducing. Checkov and many others also believed this process to be necessary in training writers. Most people find it very enlightening. I certainly do. I would encourage all fiction (even non-fiction) writers, therefore, to try it. I think we should all periodically repeat it as an exercise throughout our lives. Take a piece you have written – a story, an essay or an article perhaps – and condense it. Set yourself a word number as a target. Once you have achieved this, try producing a shorter version, perhaps a third shorter than the last. Continue until you have something of about 140 words, then show it to someone who knows the full length story well, and see what the result is.

Of course an example is perhaps the best means of explanation. Here is an example of a flash story that began life as a short story of around 4,000 words. It has been published at two different lengths but this shorter version tends to receive the most praise:

The Bottle Lady of Luang Prabang. By Mark Swain. From the book 'The Truth In The Lie'

Days pass slowly, most beginning with breakfast at our street café. Lethargic and oppressed by the heat of the day, we take our usual table outside on the street, amusing ourselves with small goings on, exercising our powers of observation and hypothesis.

Today our attention is drawn by the chink of glass from somewhere in the early morning traffic haze. Across the road we see a haggard old woman with a handcart, collecting bottles and sorting them on a small patch of waste ground adjacent to a hotel. A kitchen cupboard lays dumped there. I propose she lives in it. Comic, the others think, until she climbs inside and slides the door shut. We stare, waiting, but she stays put. Our focus shifts to our breakfast. Feu – clear soup with a basket of English country garden to throw into it.

Some time later a policeman arrives. He knocks on the old lady’s door. Abruptly it slides open.

“Look, he’s going to move her on,” I say.

But no, handing her a coffee and a cigarette he passes the time of day and departs, tipping his hat. We pay-up and leave. Normally we might have put forward theories about her – she is his mother, or an informant perhaps, keeping a watch over the neighbourhood. But not today. Today we are unsettled. Quietly we pay and leave.

No decision is made to cross the street, yet we do so without hesitation. Passing her camp we notice a strange phenomenon. Smoke exuding from the plughole of the sink. A silvery plume rising in the still air. An ethereal, swirling rope, climbing to the heavens.

Reluctant, ill-fitting legs carry us back to our guesthouse, our minds still entwined in the rising smoke. Incredulity has left us silent – spellbound.

In 2008/9 Mark Swain cycled from Ireland to Tokyo, a journey of 10,000 miles, with his 18 year old son Sam. If you would like to read their bestselling travel book 'Long Road, Hard Lessons', you can find this, along with his two collections of short stories - including THE TRUTH IN THE LIE, on Amazon, Smashwords etc. 

In the UK his books can also be found in all Waterstones Bookstores.

Mark Swain on Amazon.com

Mark Swain on Amazon UK

Mark Swain on Smashwords

A Good Excuse to Hang Around in Sleazy Bars

Once, after reading a biography about George Orwell, I took myself off to Paris. In the book there were references to the real names of places in his book 'Down and Out in Paris and London.' The hotel where he worked as a dishwasher (Hotel Lotti next to the Place de Vendome). The street where he pawned his shirt collars (in Belleville). The cafe where he often went for breakfast. This was back in the 1980's so I didn't have the luxury of the internet. I had loved Down & Out so much when I read it in the early 70's and I really felt I knew the places he mentioned in the book - many with changed names - so it almost felt like I was going there to rediscover these places from my own past. I spent a week roaming around the back streets of various parts of Paris, feeling a little like a detective. None of these places had plaques up saying 'George Orwell pawned his shirt collars here' or 'was sacked from here' or anything. This was original research, or at least it felt like it. By the end of that week, my feet were sore but I flet like I'd recaptured my youth.

A number of years went by before I attempted to do this again. I was recounting the story at dinner with friends one evening. Later my wife asked me if I'd take her to these places. I said I would sometime, but that I'd rather do something new. How about another Orwell - Homage to Catalonia.  Soon after we found ourselves in Las Ramblas in Barcelona, trying to persuade someone to let us get out onto the rooftops of the old post office building, from where Orwell had fought a gun battle with Franco's troops in the streets below. We sat under the palm trees, eating a simple lunch of tortilla with pan con tomate, as he might have in the Placa Real and we took a bus out into the hills where he spent weeks dodging bullets in the cold winter after the partisans' retreat from outside Valladolid. It was thrilling.

Since that time I have had a trip to Amsterdam seeking out bars and cafes that feature in Camus' 'The Fall' and to Oran to experience the same author's world of 'The Outsider' (or The Stranger). All have turned what might have been a reasonably pleasurable holiday into something of intense interest and pleasure. It has given the locations real meaning for me and memories that are indelibly burned into my memory. Why don't you give it a try sometime? It's so much easier now with the internet. Of course some people will think it strange. A friend of mine said it was a poor excuse for hanging around in sleazy bars. "Who needs an excuse?" I replied.

N.B. Fired by this obsession, in my own writing I often remember to mention the names of cafes, bars and places I hope readers might be inspired to visit. You'll find plenty in 'Long Road, Hard Lessons,' of course, but also in 'Special Treatment'. If the name is disguised, the disguise is usually very thin.

Others on my hit list for the near future are:

Goodbye to Berlin - Christopher Isherwood (Berlin)
Rock Springs - Richard Ford (Montana)
A River Runs Through It - Norman Maclean (Livingstone, Montana)
As I Walked Out One Mid-summer Morning - Laurie Lee (Spain)
Tortilla Flat, Cannery Row & Sweet Thursday - John Steinbeck (Monterey & Salinas Valley)
Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh (Edinburgh - does 'the worst toilet in the world' really exist?)
The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell (Alexandria)
The Pearl - John Steinbeck (Northern Mexico)
A Time of Gifts - Patrick Leigh-Fermor (a walk from Hook of Holland to Constantinople)
Sailing Through Europe - Negley Farson (Towns & cities along the River Danube)

Photo courtesy theguardian.co.uk

If you want to read stories by the author, or the bestselling travel book 'Long Road, Hard Lessons," click on these links or in the right hand margin of this blog.

Mark Swain on Amazon

Mark Swain on Smashwords

Special Treatment & Other Stories

SPECIAL TREATMENT - and other stories

Mark Swain describes these 12 short stories as excursions into the lives of others. In each story we find ourselves transported – thoroughly absorbed. We are there. Some places we think we recognise, while others are unfamiliar, even mysterious. There are dark corners, but most of all there is humour – poignant and frequently ironic. The locations are illuminated for us. Vivid images; the atmospheres; the smells and sounds. But it is the characters we are drawn to: A divorcee hairdresser who dotes on her son. A resentful victim of a construction-site accident. An elderly man victimised by political activists. A boy’s summer job. Lovers. Adventurers. Workers. Travellers. Prisoners. They open their lives to us. We are let into their secrets.

There is an authenticity to Mark Swain’s characters that can leave the reader feeling almost like a voyeur. We are privileged. We know them; care about their plight; laugh and cry with them. We can certainly never forget them.

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A Compulsive Liar

These days, Mark Swain spends much of his time writing:

"Ideas just keep coming," he says. "I think it's probably due to the intense variety of my early life – well most of it actually. I was born in Singapore while my father was in the RAF. I spent most of my early childhood in exotic locations. I can still smell the magic of those places now. Then I was in Europe as a teenager. Germany and France for a lot of it but I went to boarding school in England. I went to Art College, I joined the Army for a brief spell of adventure, did a variety of jobs, set up businesses, then worked on a cruise ship travelling the world (QE2), before going to work in Japan as an English teacher. I had a wild time and travelled a lot in between. Then I set up a business in Barcelona before returning to Canterbury in the UK where I've stayed while my 3 children grew up. I put my business in the hands of my business partner for a year and cycled to Japan with my son. He runs it now - and very well, I'm happy to say. I've made my own luck. I'm starting to feel the desire to spend my time more in places like India, Morocco and Japan now the children are grown-up. All that variety when I was younger has given me an infinite amount of material to build stories with. Although my first book was non-fiction, it's fiction I feel most at home with. I was a chameleon and a compulsive liar as a kid. Ask my poor mother!"