Report by Sarah Noon
Adrienne is a great friend of both Hampshire Writers’ Society and the Winchester Writers’ Conference. Her latest book, due out in 2024, is called Storysmith, The Craft of Storytelling for Writers and explores the writers’ craft. She has worked in all manner of places, from schools to high security prisons and delivered talks at a variety of conferences. She is here today to talk to us about the art of storytelling.
Adrienne shares with us how she began giving talks about writing after meeting Barbara Large at the Writers’ Festival. She tells us how Barbara was about to start interviewing Adrienne when a man “…threw his arms around me and shouted ‘Thank God you’re alive.’” It transpires that he had witnessed Adrienne get her skirt caught on the door of the Tube and did not know what had happened to her. This, Adrienne tells us, was when Barbara declared, “Oh, I think we’re going to be friends.” Although already an English teacher, Adrienne credits Barbara with encouraging her to teach the craft of writing and storytelling.
Over the years, she tells us, she had collated so many notes, she felt she needed to put them together and define “what exactly is the craft of storytelling made up of?” She gave her manuscript, Storysmith, to an agent, and she reminds us that you then wait “…as long as you need.” She goes on to clarify, “…because as long as they have it, they haven’t sent it back,” urging us never to give up hope, “That’s one of the rules.”
Adrienne’s book is written in seven sections. She is focusing this evening on the beginning of it. It concentrates on the confidence to begin and the confidence to keep going. She describes the writer’s process as “bipolar.” Writers can be full of ideas and positivity one minute and full of despair the next. “…I would get more money if I were stacking shelves in Waitrose …”. Reminding us that “Writing doesn’t pay.”
Adrienne explains how we need to value our imagination, “It’s at the heart of everything we do.” Her first three books were published very quickly. She describes this as “terrifying.” She goes on to tell us a story about going out for dinner with “John and Margot.” Margot was a magistrate and talked about this throughout dinner. It was during coffee that she finally asked Adrienne what she did for a living. The fact that Margot had not heard of Adrienne suggested that Margot believed Adrienne was “A figment of my own imagination.” She said to Adrienne “You must have a very big imagination.” She tells us that she “… still has no idea…” as to whether she was insulted or complimented by that. However, Adrienne tells us that Margot was right; storytellers do indeed need big imaginations.
Big imagination, she says, is not about “loads of stuff coming out of it…” it’s about “…loads of stuff going in.” She compares her brain to her husband’s – a mechanical engineer. Their brains work in very different ways. At this point, she puts a sieve on her head! She describes the sieve as her imagination. Everything she experiences goes into the sieve. However, because it is a sieve, not everything will stay in there. Many things go through the holes (“white noise”) but some things (like Margot) will stay. Those things, she says “…compost down, and become the rich soil from which we develop our stories.” She also recalls an early HWS meeting in The Stripe where the writer PD James (then in her 90s) was asked how she could “…write murderers” because she was the last person one would expect to be able to understand the mind of a murderer. She replied “…every murderer’s rage is my own.” Adrienne explains that this is how it works with storytellers. “Every emotion that will appear in the stories that you write, has to be your own.” It’s about knowing and feeling the emotion as a writer. She describes a fine line where the writer is not purely making it up because the emotion is there already.
How do I want my character to feel at the moment? This is what we should ask as writers, when we are struggling. Adrienne advises us to take the emotion and “…make it bad, make it worse, then make it personal.”
The second part of Adrienne’s book is about “…telling lies for a living.” Adrienne describes how she met someone who was writing his memoir. He was not interested in “telling lies.” Adrienne’s response was “There’s more truth in fiction than there is in memoir.” Memoir writing is very subjective. She goes on to explain that actually she is talking about authenticity rather than truth,
At this point, she pulls a story out of her imagination (the sieve!). She tells us about an incident when she and her sister went to a school reunion. Although the school itself is no longer there, three paths remain that were originally part of the school. These were known as Hell (the lower path), Purgatory (the middle path) and Heaven (the upper path). Adrienne and her sister stood on Purgatory and discussed when they stood there as children. Adrienne described it as her ‘prison’, but her sister described is as her ‘nest.’ “Which one of us was telling the truth?” says Adrienne? It is all about point of view – which stems from how one is feeling at any given time. Adrienne advises that if you are struggling with a story, change the point of view.
To illustrate this, Adrienne gives the example of Little Red Riding Hood. She asks us to retell the story – which, of course, we all know. She then asks us to consider the story from the mother’s point of view. “A woman who won’t go and see her ailing mother and instead sends her daughter – it’s about mothers and daughters.” She points out that the “psychopathic” mother sends her own daughter through a wood where she knows there is a wolf – and if that isn’t irresponsible enough, she dresses her in bright red.
The next part of Adrienne’s book looks at plot and emotional arc. She explains to us the difference between our inner critic and inner editor. “The inner editor is always your friend, the inner critic is not.” Adrienne tells us that her inner critic is “Sister Mary Pious” and she holds aloft a small wooden figure of her. Sister Mary once asked Adrienne what she wanted to do with her life, and on telling her she wanted to be a writer and storyteller (or Shanachie) was told, “The idea was ‘ridiculous.’ However, now that Adrienne is doing what she always wanted to do, “I bring her with me and make sure to mention her”. Our internal critic, she tells us, comes from inside our head. It is this voice, she claims, which instructs us to do our displacement activities (ironing, emptying the dishwasher etc.) rather than “checking that chapter that just isn’t working.” She advises us that we need to make our inner critic work for us. But, she warns, do not talk to them too early.
She compares this to creating a recipe and making a mess in the kitchen – we may use every pot, pan, and ingredient in the kitchen to see how we can come up with our desired flavour. This is our first draft – it is a “dirty draft,” (Stephen King also talks about this). Adrienne urges us to think about Michelangelo and a piece of marble. She tells us that until the marble exists, there is nothing to chip away at (the editing process). The danger is to allow the critic to stop us before we have written the story. Another way that we allow our inner critic to hinder us is to continually check that our previous chapters are perfect before we carry on with the next bit “It’s called procrastination.”
Crime writer Meg Gardner, Adrienne tells us, when writing her first draft, would frequently have big gaps in her story where she would jot down what needs to happen, and just keep going with her story. This meant “…her first draft was very patchy and had loads of holes…” but the structure was very clear – something which Adrienne reminds us can be incredibly useful.
Adrienne has been kind enough to judge our competition entries this month, and she explains that some of the entries were, “…beautifully written” but had no emotional arc. Cue another story. This time about her middle son, Tom. When he was nine, he hated sports, “…because he never understood the rules.” However, on this occasion, he participated in an obstacle race. Adrienne describes Tom’s fear as he was lined up with the other pupils, and he spots the penultimate challenge of the race … the buttoning up of the shirt! Tom hated buttoned shirts. Adrienne advised him to not think about it and just run towards the finish line and “…it will be fine.”
She continues to tell us the story in great and amusing detail, ending with Tom managing the buttons on the shirt and winning the race. The point of Adrienne entertaining us with this story is that this event changed Tom. The story has emotional arc – Tom goes from a probable loser to a possible winner and then finally a winner. She urges us to consider the point in our stories where our character changes. She suggests that this is where many people have not quite worked out why the character changes or what makes them change (the peak of their emotional arc).
Adrienne goes on to address structure. Where do you start? Do we front-load or end-load? Do we structure our story chronologically? She encourages us to consider how the story might change if we begin at a different point. This may be a useful strategy if we are struggling – try to turn it on its head and restructure it. She explains that some writers are plot-led, and generally find front-loaded stories easy. Some writers are more character-led. She suggests writing the events of our story in chronological order and then changing the order or considering how one event affects the other.
“Stories have to have an effect,” we are reminded. Stories need to have a message. Adrienne continues, “Every moment in your life that touches you, changes you.” It is these changes, she suggests, that make the scenes work. A useful thing to do is a memoir sheet for characters, with things such as their age, the places they lived, the people who are important, words, events, sayings and lessons learned. Adrienne tells us that the memoir sheet can be a good way to address issues within our writing. The elements can be included throughout the course of the book. By creating these sheets for characters from the beginning to the end of the book, the points at which a character has changed become the chapters.
Adrienne finishes her talk telling us a final story from when she was a teenager. She had worked over the summer and therefore had some money to spend. Her mother had said that she could spend the money anywhere she liked “…as long as it wasn’t The Ritz!” This was a greasy-spoon cafe “…full of undesirables.” She went there anyway, and met and fell in love with Fergus Donnelly. She tells us how she and some friends would go on a Tuesday, when her mother was out shopping. She goes on to explain how they she would sit opposite Fergus Donnelly on a plastic seat in a booth and they would share chips and a coke. She then introduces us to the character of Catherine Ivy who was overweight, explaining how as she was leaning across the table, unwittingly exposed her midriff which Fergus promptly poked. Adrienne was horrified, but Catherine put him in his place in front of the others, telling him “…that’s MY flesh, and YOU aren’t allowed to touch it.” Adrienne tells us that in that moment, everything changed and Fergus Donnelly became “Catherine Ivy’s cast-off,” and Catherine became “…an object of desire…” for the rest of the summer. Catherine Ivy, Adrienne tells us, has been her heroine ever since – inspiring a her book Toppling Miss April.
I suspect that Adrienne could have regaled us with many more stories, but we ran out of time. She is a fantastic storyteller (or Shanachie) and her talk was both entertaining and inspiring.
