Huka Falls is located in the Wairakei Tourist Park about five minutes north of Taupo on the north island of New Zealand.
The Waikato River heading towards the gorge
The water heading down the gorge, gathering pace
until it crashes over the top of the waterfall at the rate of about 220,000 liters per second. It also makes a very loud noise, so that when you are close to it, hearing anything but the falls is impossible.
I have often wondered just how much or how little of the author’s personality and experiences end up in a fictional character.
Have they climbed mountains,
Have they escaped from what is almost the inescapable,
Have they been shot, tortured, or worse,
Have they been dumped, or divorced,
Have they travelled to dangerous places, or got locked up in a foreign jail?
We research, read, and I guess experience some or all of the above on the way to getting the book written, but it’s perhaps an interesting fundamental question.
Who am I today? Or, more to the point, who do I want to be today?
Or it can be a question, out of left field, in an interview; “Who are you?”
My initial reaction was to say, “I’m a writer.” But that wasn’t the answer the interviewer is looking for.
Perhaps if she had asked, “Who are you when you’re writing your latest story?” it would make more sense.
Am I myself today?
Am I some fictional character an amalgam of a lot of other people?
Have I got someone definite in mind when I start writing the story?
The short answer might be, “I usually want to be someone other than what I am now. It’s fiction. I can be anyone or anything I want, provided, of course, I know the limitations of the character.”
“So,” she says, “what if you want to be a fireman?”
“I don’t want to be a fireman.”
“But if the story goes in the direction where you need a fireman…”
“What is this thing you have with firemen?” I’m shaking my head. How did we get off track?
“Just saying.”
“Then I’d have to research the role, but I’m not considering adding a fireman anytime soon.”
She sighs. “Your loss.”
Moving on.
And there is that other very interesting question; “Who would you like to be if you could be someone else?”
A writer in that period between the wars, perhaps like an F Scott Fitzgerald or Ernest Hemingway, in Paris, or if it is a fictional character, Jay Gatsby.
He’s just the sort of person who is an enigma wrapped up in a mystery.
Nearly every city has a high building, a tower, or a large Ferris wheel.
London had the London eye
Paris has the Eiffel tower
The Galata in Istanbul
The CN Tower in Toronto
The towers of San Gimignano
Pisa has a leaning tower
We’ve managed to see all of the above bar the Galata in Istanbul. One day we might get there.
But, on this side of the world, there are two, the Sydney Tower, and the Sky Tower in Auckland, which we just visited recently.
It’s not a tall tower, but it definitely gives great vies of Auckland, particularly to the north
The mountain in the background at the top of the photo is of a volcano on Rangitoto Island. When we were visiting, there were reports that it might become active again.
To give a height perspective, it didn’t seem all that far down to the apartment building and gardens nearby.
I’m sure a lot of people have considered the prospect of whale watching. I’m not sure how the subject came up on one of our visits to New Zealand, but I suspect it was one one of those tourist activity leaflets you find in the foyer of motels, hotels, and guesthouses.
Needless to say, it was only a short detour to go to Kaikoura and check out the prospect.
Yes, the ocean at the time seemed manageable. My wife has a bad time with sea sickness, but she was prepared to make the trip, after some necessary preparations. Seasickness tablets and special bands to wear on her wrist were recommended and used.
The boat was large and had two decks, and mostly enclosed. There were a lot of people on board, and we sat inside for the beginning of the voyage. The sea wasn’t rough, but there was about a meter and a half swell, easily managed by the boat while it was moving.
It took about a half hour or so to reach the spot where the boat stopped and a member of the crew used a listening device to see if there were any whales.
That led to the first wave of sickness.
We stopped for about ten minutes, and the boat moved up and down on the waves. It was enough to start the queasy stomachs of a number of passengers. Myself, it was a matter of going out on deck and taking in the sea air. Fortunately, I don’t get seasick.
Another longish journey to the next prospective site settled a number of the queasy stomachs, but when we stopped again, the swell had increased, along with the boat’s motion. Seasick bags were made available for the few that had succumbed.
By the time we reached the site where there was a whale, over half the passengers had been sick, and I was hoping they had enough seasick bags, and then enough bin space for them.
The whale, of course, put on a show for us, and those that could went out on deck to get their photos.
By the end of the voyage, nearly everyone on board was sick, and I was helping to hand out seasick bags.
Despite the anti sickness preparations, my wife had also succumbed. When we returned and she was asked if the device had worked, she said no.
But perhaps it had because within half an hour we were at a cafe eating lunch, fish and chips of course.
This activity has been crossed off the bucket list, and there’s no more whale watching in our traveling future. Nor, it seems, will we be going of ocean liners.
Perhaps a cruise down the Rhine might be on the cards. I don’t think that river, wide as it is in places, will ever have any sort of swell.
I have a stab at improving this starting piece every now and then, a project that started about a year or so ago, and I find myself rewriting the start over and over because I’m not satisfied with the characterization.
It’s not so much the storyline, as it is in trying to create sympathy for the character, and not find him as dull as ditchwater. He’s improving with age. As writers, we tend to create colourful characters and shy away from those who are dull and boring, because after all, as a reader, you want to become something or someone who is far from ordinary. Well, Graham is starting out ordinary, but he will be anything but by the time I write those words ‘The End’.
I promise.
I am the master of my own destiny.
My father had drummed that into me, as well as my older brother and younger sister, over and over, until it became a mantra.
For them.
I could not say I didn’t have the same advantages afforded to them, afforded to me. I did.
But somewhere lost in the translation, someone forgot to tell me that it was only advice, not an order, and mistaking it for the latter, I struck out on my own path.
And for the next ten years, it was a long and winding path that led me to this point in time, in a small room that held nothing to tell me where I came from, or who I really was.
My parents were very wealthy with an Upper Westside Apartment in Manhattan and a holiday house in Martha’s Vineyard, my sister had a successful medical career and married a most eligible bachelor, as expected, and my brother, he was a politician.
I’d not seen any of them in at least five years, and they hadn’t called me.
You see, I was the black sheep of the family. I dropped out of college when it all became too much, and drifted. Seasonal labourer, farmhand, factory worker, add job man, and night watchman.
At least now I had a uniform, and a gun, and looked like I’d made something of myself.
It was hard to say why, just before I was about to head out of the factory to end my shift, that those thoughts about them came into my mind. They might be gone, but I guess I would never forget about them. I wondered briefly if any of them thought about me.
It was 3 a.m. and it was like standing on the exact epicentre of the South Pole. I’d just stepped from the factory warehouse into the car park.
The car was covered in snow. The weather was clear now, but I could feel more snow was coming. A white Christmas? That’s all I needed. I hoped I remembered to put the antifreeze in my radiator this time.
As I approached my car, the light went on inside an SUV parked next to my car. The door opened and what looked to be a woman was getting out of the car.
“Graham?”
It was a voice I was familiar with, though I hadn’t heard it for a long time.
I looked again and was shocked to see my ultra-successful sister, Penelope. She was leaning against the front fender, and from what I could see, didn’t look too well.
How on earth did she find me, after all the years that had passed? Perhaps that sparked my un-conciliatory question, “What do you want?”
I could see the surprise and then hurt in her expression. Perhaps I had been a little harsh. Whatever she felt, it passed, and she said, “Help.”
My help? Help with what? I was the last person who could help her, or anyone for that matter, with anything. But curiosity got the better of me. “Why?”
“I think my husband is trying to kill me.”
Then, with that said, she slid down the side of the car, and I could see, in the arc lamps lighting the car park, a trail of blood.
My first thought, she needed the help of a doctor, not a stupid brother, then a second thought, call 911, which I did, and hoped like hell they got here in time.
And, yes, there was a third thought that crossed my mind. Whether or not I would be blamed for this event.
© Charles Heath 2020
The process of writing is rewriting editing and more rewriting.
The other day l wrote some words. I didn’t like them. But it had laid the groundwork for a second draft.
Here it is:
Growing up I did not believe l had one of those lovable faces.
My brother, known in school as the best looking boy of his graduating class, said it was a face only a mother could love.
He was mean.
Simone, a girl who was a friend, not a girlfriend, said my face had character.
She was charming and polite.
Looking now, in the mirror, l decided I’d aged gracefully.
I could truthfully say my brother had not, but that was as far as the comparison went.
My overachieving brother was the epitome of success in business, a veritable god zillionaire. Everything he touched turned to gold.
My ultra successful sister, Penelope, had married into the right family perhaps by chance, but she was also a very learned scholar whose life was divided between her chair and the university and her social life with the rich and famous.
Then there was me.
I gave up on my chance at university because l was not the scholarly sort and didn’t last long. Sadly l was the first of my family to be sent down from Oxford.
Instead, l took on a series of professions such as seasonal laborer, farmhand, factory worker, and lastly, night watchman. At least now I had a uniform and looked like I’d made something of myself.
It would not be enough for my parents who every year didn’t say it out loud but the disappointment was always there in their expressions.
My brother in his usual blunt manner said l was a loser and would never change.
My sister was not quite so blunt. She simply said it was disappointing so much potential was going to waste. I only asked her once what she meant and lost me after the first four-syllable word.
Finally, I’d taken their comments to heart and decided l would not be going home to the family Christmas holiday reunion.
I told my boss l was available to work the night shift over the holidays, the shift no one else wanted.
It was he said the time for reflection. He hated his family as much as I did so we would be able to lament our bad luck though the long cold hours from dusk till dawn.
It was 3 a.m. and it was like standing on the exact epicenter of the North Pole. I’d just stepped from the warehouse into the car park.
The car was covered in snow. The weather was clear now, but more snow was coming.
It was going to be a white Christmas, all I needed. I hoped I remembered to put the antifreeze in my radiator this time.
As I approached my car, the light went on in an SUV parked next to my car. The door opened and what looked to be a woman was climbing down from the driver’s seat.
She closed the door and leaned against the side of the car. “Graham?”
It was a voice I was familiar with, though I hadn’t heard it for a long time, my ultra-successful sister, Penelope. From what I could see, she didn’t look too well.
“What do you want?”
“Help.”
My help, I was the last person to help her or anyone for that matter. But curiosity got the better of me. “Why?”
“Because my husband is trying to kill me.”
The instant the last word left her lips I saw her jerk back into the car, and then start sliding down to the ground. There was no mistaking the red streak following her as she fell.
She’d been shot from what could be a sniper rifle, which meant …
It still needs work but I’ve got the gist of where I want to go.
The idea is not to make a character so loathsome no one would want to read about him.
This will evolve and you can if you like come along for the ride!
© Charles Heath 2020
That’s what it feels like after you’ve put words on paper.
The story is there waiting to be written, I know where it’s coming from, I know where I want it to go, but the words are not working.
I read it once, yuk, I read it twice, it’s begging me to press the delete button.
Now!
This is how it looks:
My life was going nowhere. If I took a step back and took a good, long, hard look at it, what could I say was the one defining moment?
There was no defining moment.
I’d bounced around schools till the day I decided I was not cut out to learn anything more, or perhaps the teachers had given up trying to impart knowledge. Whatever the reason, I dropped out of college and drifted. Seasonal laborer, farmhand, factory worker, night watchman.
At least now I had a uniform and looked like I’d made something of myself.
Until I went home.
My parents were distinctly disappointed I was not married with children.
My overachieving brother always said I was a loser, and would never make anything of myself.
My ultra successful sister, married into a very wealthy family, had the regulation 2.4 children and lived in the lap of luxury, mostly pretended I didn’t exist, didn’t invite me to the wedding, and I had yet to meet the husband and children. I guess she was ashamed of me.
This year I was avoiding going home.
This year I volunteered to work the holidays.
Yep, time to walk away and do something entirely different, like wrapping Christmas presents, my second favorite job to mowing the lawn. Maybe if I contrive an accident with the lawnmower …
Back in front of the page, some hours later, an idea pops into my head. The story continues:
It was 3 a.m. and it was like standing on the exact epicenter of the South Pole. I’d just stepped from the warehouse into the car park.
The car was covered in snow. The weather was clear now, but more snow was coming.
A white Christmas? That’s all I needed. I hoped I remembered to put the antifreeze in my radiator this time.
As I approached my car, the light went on in an SUV parked next to my car. The door opened and what looked to be a woman was getting out of the car.
“Graham?”
It was a voice I was familiar with, though I hadn’t heard it for a long time.
My ultra successful sister, Penelope. She was leaning against her car door, and from what I could see, she didn’t look too well.
“What do you want?”
“Help.”
My help, I was the last person to help her or anyone for that matter. But curiosity got the better of me. “Why?”
“Because my husband is trying to kill me.”
With that said, she slid down the side of the car, and I could see, in the arc lamps lighting the car park, a trail of blood.
To be honest, it needs some more thought. IT’s got the makings of a story, but the MC shouldn’t come across as a hopeless case, he just needs to be, in part, a victim of circumstances, some of which he has to own.
But, as they say, anything on paper is better than nothing on paper. Tomorrow, or the next day, I will edit and rewrite and see what happens.
Stay tuned.
© Charles Heath 2020
This is not a treatise, but a tongue in cheek, discussion on how to write short stories. Suffice to say this is not the definitive way of doing it, just mine. It works for me – it might not work for you.
…
Now, there’s this thing called continuity, but it covers a whole range of writing sins, most of which I eventually get caught out. Films sometimes miss a few items, like back in the roman days, there are plane trails in the sky, in a 1920’s period piece, there’s a mobile phone sitting on a desk.
Like one minute the hero has a gun, and the next he’s fighting for his life with a knife, and, hey presto, there’s that gun again. The error might not be that big but you can’t pull out a weapon you don’t have or wasn’t there in the first place.
Similarly, the hero pulls out a mobile phone, but there’s only one problem, it’s 1980, and there are no mobile phones. Our problem might be that we are so used to doing and using certain things that we might forget, for a minute or two, that were not available in the past.
Then there’s places like hotels and restaurants, both of which change hands and close and reopen with a different owner like someone changes their socks. There’s no substitute for checking, on the internet of course, whether a Hilton Hotel was in 6th Avenue, New York, in 1920.
The answer is no. The first Hilton Hotel was in Waco in 1927. The New York Hilton opened in 1963.
The same goes for the fashion of the day.
I’m no fashion guru, but I have to rely on Google once again to fill in the gaps.
And my all-time favourite, getting the right make and model of car.
Oh, and just for good measure, back in the old days they used acoustic couplers to attach to phones via a serial port to dial-up not a server, but a BBS, Bulletin Board Service, at a rate of 300 baud, or a little while later, 1,200 baud.
There was no internet in general use. If you wanted to call the office when out, use a telephone box. Or carrier pigeon.
And the use of language, there’s a lot of stuff relevant today that was not used back then, and there was a lot of stuff back then that isn’t tolerated now. Some of it might be hard to get your head around.
It isn’t for me, because I can remember the 1970s and 1980s, but I’m not too sure about allowing some of what happened then to creep into my work.
So, you get the picture. Try to use the past as the past, or leave it in the past.
Unless it’s a book about time travel, then all bets are off.
We as authors always like to see two little words in every review, page turner.
Alas, sometimes they’re not, but usually this applied to non fiction simple because they’re reference books. Then another two words apply: boat anchor.
The good stuff is usually over the page.
Page in this instance refers to a leaf in a book, which generally has many pages.
Then the is a page boy, not what you’d find lurking around these days but were more common in days past, but refers to a boy in training to become a knight, or an errand boy for a nobleman.
These days a page boy opens doors and runs messages in a hotel.
Another variation is being paged over the P.A. system, always a major cause of embarrassment because you and everyone else thinks your in trouble.
Of course, before there were mobile phones, there were pagers, and sometimes in the deathly silence of the classroom, it went off. Definitely not advisable to have one on you if you are trying to sneak up on someone. Same goes for the modern equivalent, the mobile phone.
For the person who uses a word processor, you are familiar with pages, and having the software generate page numbers, of course, not for the title page, and a different numbering for other pages like an index, before the story starts.
Complicated? Sometimes.
And many years ago a boss of mine often used to say I needed to turn over a new page, and it did make much sense to me. That might have been because I was young and stupid. But, later on I realised what he was really saying was that I needed to turn over a new leaf.
Kind of strange, but then a lot saying are.
And did I?
Eventually.
And just to end on a high note, Paige is also the name of a girl, I think, and one I’ve decided to use in a story.
This is not a treatise, but a tongue in cheek, discussion on how to write short stories. Suffice to say this is not the definitive way of doing it, just mine. It works for me – it might not work for you.
…
Now we have the where and the who. What’s the story going to be about?
I find inspiration in the most unlikely places.
Shopping malls are great, there is so many things going on, so many different types of people, there’s often enough to fill a journal.
Driving on the roads, you get to see some of the most amazing stunt driving, and it’s not even being filmed, it’s just playing out before your very eyes.
Waiting in hospitals, waiting for doctors, accountants, dentists, friends, hanging around coffee shops, cafes, bistros, restaurants, hotels, the list is endless.
But often a reliable source, the media and newspapers in particular, and a frequent go to, and the more obscure the headline the better. Then it’s simply a matter of letting your imagination run free, like:
Four deaths, four mysteries, all homeless.
This poses a few interesting scenarios, such as, were they homeless or were they made to look like they are homeless. If they are genuinely homeless how did they die? Are they connected in any way?
The point is, far from the original story that simply covers four seemingly random deaths, a writer can spin this into a thriller very easily.
It could follow a similar headline in another country where three headlines could be found, say, in London, where a man is found dead in an abandoned building, a week after he died, with no obvious signs of how he died.
A woman is killed in what seems, from the outset, an accident involving two cars, but the kicker is after three days, the driver of the second vehicle just simply disappears.
A man is reported missing after not reporting for work when he was supposed to return from a vacation in Germany.
And the third death, where an obscure piece says a man was found at the bottom of a mountain, presumed to have fallen in a climbing accident.
It’s all in the joining of the imaginary, yet possibly quite real, dots.
You could be on a train, and two people are acting oddly, note I didn’t say suspiciously, when going to or from work.
When on a holiday, you notice that a fellow hotel guest is in the same place at the same time every day but acting like he or she is waiting for someone or something. Then suddenly they’re not there.
But I’m not suggesting for a minute you should start investigating.
Just let the imagination work it’s tricks.
And, before you know it, you’re on that rollercoaster ride.
Maybe there’ll be less confusion tomorrow.
