Another bright idea by Rainy City Stories

24th October

Talk of the Rainy City seems somewhat out of kilter today as bright sunshine streams into the new Cornerhouse Annexe through its floor-to-ceiling windows. The turnout is still keen on the penultimate afternoon of Manchester Literature Festival, where Rainy City Stories was launched two years ago. Having already submitted a poem to the website and taken part in one of the regular writing workshops run by the project, I’m looking forward to gleaning further Writing About Place tips from this discussion between some of the more well-known contributors.

Festival Director Cathy Bolton provides a brief background to the “interactive literary cityscape”, then hands over to the panel’s chair; author, Nightjar Press publisher and MMU lecturer Nicholas Royle. Nick is flanked by novelists Jenn Ashworth and Clare Dudman, and kicks off by inviting each in turn to step up to the lectern and read extracts of their work.

Jenn’s first novel, A Kind Of Intimacy, takes Lancashire fishing town Fleetwood as its backdrop, while her second, Cold Light, moves down the coast to Preston. Telling the story of two teenage girls, Jenn explains the importance of outside settings and space in this novel, which is due out next summer. Too young for pubs or clubs but too old for staying at home and keeping out of trouble, the characters take to hanging about in parks and other public places where they can drink and snog in peace. Jenn draws a link between the wildness of the teenagers’ behaviour and the wildness of the nature reserves (“where urban people go to look at grass”) they inhabit.

A little further afield, Clare’s novel, A Place Of Meadows And Tall Trees, is set in Patagonia, and her reading follows the story of Welsh settlers Silas and Edwin. Physical descriptions of the scenery play a big part in Clare’s narrative, with the two men trekking to a place where a perilous precipice overlooks a large lake extending into the distance. She describes a tangible tension, with man pitted against the environment, almost as if the landscape is a character itself. She also admits that perhaps she has an ulterior motive for choosing far-flung places as settings in her books: research provides her with the perfect excuse to go and visit!

Nick reads part of a novel that he is in the process of building up from a short story idea. The narrator, like Nick, teaches creative writing, lives in Nick’s house (albeit with a slightly different layout), sees what Nick sees and goes where Nick goes, which, in this case, is down onto the disused railway line that runs along the back of Didsbury Village. Nick instils in us his love of abandoned places – here the train track, but also dilapidated buildings: “It’s as if the story is waiting to happen; as if you disturb the stories as you explore.”

Each of the three writers is obviously attracted by wilderness in one shape or form, and the discussion which follows takes this as a starting point. Jenn finds wild places dramatically interesting because they are often where people get up to no good; Clare says wild landscapes allow for more interaction and give you the opportunity to let your imagination run free. From this, they discuss how place can be more than just a setting for a story; that it can also suggest a mood or a character.

All agree that it’s important to go to the place that you are writing about in order to immerse your senses and fully appreciate the sights, smells and sounds that can’t be experienced any other way (Clare recounts how, when researching a novel set in Greenland, she got lost but found her way back to the settlement by following the howling of the dogs the villagers kept, and how she wouldn’t have known this otherwise). By having this first-hand knowledge and feeling of a place, you can then evoke it and not merely depict it.

by Sarah-Clare Conlon

Sarah-Clare is a freelance writer, editor and press officer. She is the co-creator of Ask Ben & Clare, author of the award-winning Words & Fixtures, and regular contributor to Manchester Blog Awards 2010 Best New Blog 330 Words.

Rainy City Stories: Writing About Place

A creative writing workshop with David Gaffney

It would be appropriate to begin by writing about the place, but I feel this may mislead you. The weather was dull and wet, appropriate as it was a Rainy City Stories event, the venue itself, Friends Meeting House, was a little bland, white walls, brown carpet, a cluster of tables formed into one large one. None of this reflects the mood of the event. Torn-out pages from a Manchester road atlas lay scattered across the table for no other purpose than to add a bit of ambiance. Pretty soon we were all sat around the cluster of tables and people became the walls, people from a multitude of backgrounds - journalists, screen writers, wannabe novelists, academic writers, self publishers.

Writer David Gaffney, largely associated with the ‘flash fiction’ genre, sat at the head of the table with a check list of points for this flash course in writing about place. Our first exercise was to write down three things we noticed on our journey to the Friends Meeting House, and share our observations. A variety of things were mentioned: big issue sellers, filmy street pavements, the old disused Odeon, the hat shop opposite Albert Square. Most were somehow personal to the person; the places associated with memories or with things that interested them. We learned that in order to write convincingly about place we need to separate ourselves from the environment and put a character in our place. What would they see on that same journey?

Gaffney then proceeded to tell us an anecdote regarding a lady who sadly lost her sight. She asked her husband to describe the streets, what was happening on them, what could he see? He began “Well there’s a sign over there 10 to 1 on United vs Liverpool game. That pub has an offer, two main courses for a fiver,” and so on. She stopped him and said, “Now start again, only this time tell me what I would see.”

Gaffney spoke comprehensively on the subject, mentioning how other authors approached writing about place. How authors such as Ballard and Will Self would use psychogeography and algorithmic walking. He also showed a few examples of how not to write about place. Much to my personal pleasure one example was taken from Dan Brown’s The De Vinci Code . We discussed a passage and decided it was too heavy in information, it didn't tell us anything about the story or how the protagonist was seeing the surrounding section of Paris. Gaffney then informed us that it was what is known as a ‘research dump.’ It doesn’t really have a place in the text, but it does show that the author has researched.

Another ‘how not to...’ came from Bill Bryson. We all scowled when Gaffney spoke of how he dismissed our beloved city in print. His point was that everyone perceives things differently, so when writing about place try to explore the place yourself, do not rely on the words and opinions of a (unreliable and very very incredibly wrong) travel writer.

Our final task was to write a few sentences about a character and their mood within a place. Gaffney handed us a list of variables which we then selected and swapped with our neighbours. I was handed this combination of variables: a 20-year-old girl, who is an art student, situated in a snowy church yard, feeling happy. I had it easy, I was a 20-year-old art student not so long ago. Others found themselves writing about divorced 40-year-old taxi drivers in an art gallery or an unhappily married man on a Sunday afternoon in Eccles. We shared our flash fictions. It was great to see that in the space of ten minutes everyone had managed to conjure up a glimpse of a story and the beginnings of a character.

If you want to know how to write, well, I am afraid nobody can answer that. If you want to know how to write about place, David Gaffney can take you halfway there. There are no rules, but there are devices, tools and methods that can help you. The best way to write about place is to experience the place yourself and view it through another's eyes. That, and this little equation I wrote down: Story + Character + Place = Whole.

Now I am off to write a short fiction which I will the submit to rainycitystories.com

___

Mandi Goodier is a graphic designer and artist bookmaker.
www.stickittothemand.blogspot.com
www.mandgoodier.co.uk

"There’s a little Livingstone in even the youngest Mancunian so we go explore."

Walking in the Rain: Rainy City Stories Live! (October 20)

The quote in the header is from Mike Duff's excellent short story, Rats and Mice, which he read in Victoria Station, but we aren't there yet.

Let's start at the start.

We meet up at Urbis. The tears of rain dripping onto the floor from people's umbrellas hint that we might be taking the concept of walking in the rain a little too literally for my taste. It would be fittingly poetic to accompany our walk with a downpour but it would also be wet. Luckily, as we wait for stragglers, the clouds clear. It looks like I’m not going to spend the next couple of hours regretting removing my detachable hood because it makes me look like a quilt. Fashion 1: Weather 0. In your face, weather!

So, following the twin markers of Kate Feld’s umbrella and Chris Horkan’s beautifully luxurious beard, we set of on our literary tour of Manchester. Kate and Chris are the people responsible for the Rainy City Stories website, a collection of writing on Manchester. If, or rather when, you visit the site, you will be greeted by a map covered in little clouds. Each cloud is a story or a poem and it hovers over the location that it is written about. Today, we are visiting some of the central Manchester locations, and at each one there will be a reading from someone published on the website.

First stop is Victoria Station. There, in the bar, we hear Mike Duff's tale of unpoliced-youth, Rats and Mice, the coarse language of the story’s protagonists cutting like a knife through the chatter of businessmen and tourists. Next, we fight against the traffic and the clatter of diners in Croma to hear Anyonita Green reading her lovely poem, A House of Cards.

This tour is quite exciting. Seeing the work read in its location, in its inspiration, makes it that much more intimate. It is one less barrier between writer and reader.

The location of the next stop is a real treat, for we descend into the central courtyard of Manchester Town Hall. Here, in the belly of this opulent Victorian Gothic revival masterpiece, even the drainpipes are ornate, their length a lazy mulberry spiral attached to the wall by eight symmetrical curls. We are surrounded by mosaic and stained glass. As Anne Hill Fernie reads Big Shout to Malmy Hatchman, the bell in the clock tower tolls.

We move onto Manchester Art Gallery, where David Gaffney reads Live Feed. In the next gallery, a party of schoolchildren, fascinated by the possibility of mischief, stare at us through glass doors. In David's story art is as popular as football, and attracts the same level of partisanship and violence. It is witty and fun and again the location adds to the experience of listening to the reading.

Our final port of call is Chinatown, where we hear Socrates Adams-Florou read his very funny poem called, rather appropriately, Chinatown. The tour over, we spread out over the map of Manchester with new eyes and ears for this wonderful city. The stories have given us a new glimpse of our home and the passersby and the cars and the drills, the noise, competing for our attention have not distracted from but added to the experience. Rainy City Stories has produced what the website so often does; a mini masterpiece from the chaos of the city.

Benjamin Judge collects his thoughts on his blog Cynical Ben, which has been shortlisted at this year's Manchester Blog Awards. He also writes very short fiction at Carp Glob.