Introducing…

For some time now, I’ve been getting to know two characters, who first featured in a short story I wrote for a competition. At the time of writing, I was really pleased with the story, the first I’d written for a long time. Despite its flaws, it sparked something in my imagination and has grown and transformed considerably since the initial idea.

Lucy, a middle-aged woman, who appeared to have taken early retirement, was volunteering at a local National Trust property when she stumbled across a statue in the garden that contributed to resolving the mysterious disappearance of Flora. Flora was lady of the house in the 1920s who, in a state of extreme grief, developed a supernatural talent for adding some permanent features to her carefully curated garden, in the form of beings she had frozen in time as stone sculptures. Ultimately, as Lucy’s garden statue and the simultaneous discovery of Flora’s diaries revealed, this included herself and her husband.

What’s wrong with that?

Nothing really, I enjoy fantasy, and a little bit of magic doesn’t go amiss in my opinion. I read quite a bit of historical fiction, and this story put the two together.

Except…

• It was hastily written and had very little depth, which I over-compensated for with too much ‘telling the reader’ what was happening instead of letting the characters or the setting do the work.

  
  

• I had stuffed everything I knew about 1920s rural England (which is not much) into several paragraphs of over-laboured detail, and it read a bit like a school history essay, without the research.

  
  

• Lucy’s character in particular was pretty pathetic, she was only there because her husband told her he thought volunteering was a good idea, and she liked that house, didn’t she? All we really learned about her was that her children had left home, she missed them, and gardening hurt her shoulder. Sorry Lucy.

  
  

• Flora couldn’t live without her injured husband and resorted pretty quickly to freezing them both in time. As a narrator, she communicated through her diary, which I actually quite liked and may continue with but her voice was old-fashioned and unrealistic. And she pretty much only wrote about her husband, or herself in the context of the loss of him. Sorry Flora.

  
  

• The prompt for the story competition was a genre and a time period. In my case The Roaring Twenties. I have very little personal connection with the male history of the 1920s. My family is heavy on the extra x chromosome. So why was I trying to write something about women whose stories were so dependent on men?

  
  

Fast forward two years and neither Lucy nor Flora has a husband, or if they do, they’re not really a feature of the story. Flora may or not be magical, she hasn’t decided yet. Either way I’m pretty sure she doesn’t disappear in quite the same way as she did before. Lucy has grown a backbone and a career and has some distinct agency in her quest for information about this woman of the past. There probably is however, still a stately home, or at least a historical building involved, and an arts and crafts inspired garden but they’re still making their minds up about that, and how it features in each of their lives, too.

I had a long car journey with a colleague in June and we had plenty of time to talk about what we do when we’re not at work. After favourite music, childhood stories, and a hilarious game of snog, marry, avoid, we got to talking about my story. I’d introduced the two female leads and fluffed something I thought made my project sound intriguing and thought we’d probably leave it at that.

“What’s their story arc?” my colleague asked… uh oh… “No idea! I said, “But… I should probably know that”.

The conversation we went on to have was so useful, I was really glad I’d shared. It was enlightening and refreshing to talk it out with Danny and get a completely different perspective, which unlocked a few doors for me.

I’m not worried actually that these two women haven’t worked out where they’re going together yet. It could be some time before they do. In the meantime, I’m absolutely loving the extended research and how it’s leading me down all sorts of paths towards (hopefully) a story at the end. It’s got me reading all sorts. I’ve created a detective series-esque story wall compiling the ‘facts’, the main characters, and the possible developments. Just this week, I’ve just started writing a daily diary as each of the characters to get to know them better.

Lucy has edged towards becoming a little autobiographical. Her character is certainly being influenced by my own life experiences of late.  That wasn’t intentional, but it makes sense to start with what you know, I guess. The first thing I wrote from the window of my little studio away from home could be a good starting point for setting her story.

I invite you to read: At the start… (The first extract from the summer house studio)

And, in the spirit of self-forgiveness and the surprising rewards to be found in sharing, I also offer you: Finding Flora (A story I’m not really happy with anymore).

Enjoy!

A tiny side note: I have no problem with husbands, or men in general, in fact I have a lovely husband of my own, my Dad is a man, and so are many of my friends! It’s just that, in this story, I want to focus on these two women and their lives from their own perspectives