Exploring Character and Place in A Seared Sky #7

Dilanthas

This is the 7^th in a series of pieces on characters and places featured in Joinings: A Seared Sky. This background information, isn’t covered in the book, but should enhance the reading experience. For some of my people, there’ll be a character drawing, supplied by Alice Taylor, maybe a video interview, and accompanying script. I may do short pieces of fiction, deepening knowledge of certain minor characters as well.

For the places, I may use sections of the map, to indicate location, along with a description of the place, as I see it, and, where appropriate, links with characters. Perhaps I’ll indicate the way of life there with a short anecdote or story. I won’t reveal any of the main story, either as already published or as written in the series, merely enhance readers’ enjoyment of the trilogy by providing more information. I hope this will give pleasure to those who’ve bought the book and, perhaps, persuade others to take that step.

Pronunciation hints:

Dilanthas – di-lan-thass

Krohtl – krow-tul

Muhnilahm – mew-nee-larm

Ytraa – eet-rah

Names are pronounced phonetically. But this is my take on them; how I hear them in my head. You may pronounce them as you wish, of course; reading is, after all, active rather than passive.

Dilanthas, from Krohtl, Muhnilahm, is a shy girl Chosen to go on the pilgrimage as a Virgin Gift. Here is a short piece about her initiation into womanhood.

All her life, Dilanthas had lived under Ytraa’s Peak, rising tall and dark to the southwest of her home. Her father urged the whole family to make their prayers at the back of the house, so they could see the craggy mountain before and after their acts of worship.

Tomorrow, she must make the journey up to the Plain of Ytraa, surrounding the high peak, and spend a whole sixday with other girls her age. Under strict instruction by the Holy Ones, she’d learn discipline and devotion, earning hard smacks for every failure to do exactly as they demanded.

It wasn’t the prospect of punishment she most feared, though she was certain she wouldn’t pass the sixday without pain and humiliation; it was the way she must leave the town. To walk the entire length of the main road and allow all to see the butterfly tattoo adorning her left breast and, worse, the hummingbird pointing its long sharp beak at the very centre of her womanhood. These were things only her betrothed and Ytraa should see and this exposure was what she most dreaded. After all, naked was sacred.

‘You’ll no be on yer own, lass.’ Her father’s words were intended to hold comfort.

She wanted to make him proud, make that walk with head held high and her whole body declaring her love of Ytraa. Shyness and modesty warred with her desire to do her best for her family and her beloved, as she made her way to the ceremony that would end her life as a daughter and announce her readiness to join and become a wife.

‘All t’other girls your age ‘ave to do same, Dilanthas. Me an’ your father did it when we was gettin’ ready to marry. Think on your pride as a Follower an’ go to yon Peak like our founder did all those ‘undreds of cycles ago.’ Her mother’s words were encouraging; she seemed happy with her life, and she and Father got on well.

It was true that Dilanthas looked forward to the ceremony that would come a few sixdays later. She and her betrothed would take the same route together, leading their families to the Plain of Ytraa, there to join before Ytraa and become as one.

She’d talked with the other girls, of course. They’d be fourteen in total. One by one they’d leave town and head into the hills. They were supposed to go to the Peak alone, but most intended to wait on the edge of the olive grove above the river and travel together.

Dilanthas would be sixth to leave and she’d vowed to follow the rules and make her way on her own. But she’d have to pass the place where they were due to collect and she wondered if she’d have the courage to leave them behind. There’d be safety in numbers. Should they pass an isolated farm, or come upon travellers, she’d be one of a group rather than a girl alone.

She could see the attraction of their intended disobedience. But would she be bad, or would she do as she’d been told, and make a solitary journey? It was considered part of the test.

For now, evening prayers were over and she’d had her last meal with them. Mother had prepared Father’s freshly caught fish with wine, something they rarely had in the house, and the tangy flavour lingered in her mouth. She’d placed her few needs in the rush bag she’d hang from her shoulders at her back. Now, all she needed was a good night’s sleep to be ready for the morning.

The family would take the short walk to the beach. There she’d remove her tabard and present it to her father as a sign of her independence. She’d step into the sea until her whole body was submerged. Then she’d turn and walk past the townspeople to the initiation on the Plain, following the tradition set by the first Follower, as he set out to explore their new home on this island. If she kept that thought in her mind, she might get through the ordeal with less anxiety. She might even feel the pride and joy her father expected her to show.

And, of course, her betrothed would be there, watching. On her return, he’d make the same trip, with the other bucks of his age, and she’d watch them. That was something to look forward to, after all.

Related articles

• Exploring Character and Place: #1
• Exploring Character and Place: #2
• Joinings: A Seared Sky. Couldn't put it down

Faith Introduces Herself to Readers

Stuart's asked me to give you some insight into how I think, what matters to me, why I'm the person I am. Let me introduce myself. I'm Faith Heacham and I narrated the story of Breaking Faith along with Leigh. I hope that some of my rather strange background came through that narrative but there will be elements that you will either not know or be unfamiliar with, of course.

When I first started to work for Leigh, I was still imbued with my father's rather strange brand of Christianity and I was determined to develop Leigh's conscience and convert him into a devout follower of my religion. I don't tell you a lot about that aspect in the book, because I didn't want to come across as too evangelical. As it happened, I quickly learned that Heacham was in the wrong and that Leigh, for all his unusual and, dare I say, unconventional ways, was often in the right.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me set the scene. I was brought up for the first few years as part of a small family with my mother, and two younger sisters as well as Heacham. I'm sorry, I can't refer to him as my father knowing what I do now. He was, to me, relatively normal and although he was always a very strict parent, he seemed no more odd or different than any other parent, until Mother left him and took my youngest sister, Charity, with her. It was then that I certainly noticed changes in my life. I was very young but I was expected to take over most of the duties my mother had carried out.

Heacham was a man who gave the impression of being pious. It was only later I learned how truly awful he was, not only as a father but as a man. However, I was placed in a position where I was required to look after him domestically as well as nurse my severely disabled sister, Hope. She, of course, had no hope of ever becoming anything other than a baby in a woman's body. But I didn't know that until I was a lot older. My life was difficult and restricted, as I was no longer allowed to attend the local school but was taught by Heacham. His teaching took the form of indoctrination with his peculiar form of narrow-minded Christianity taken from the Bible and some books of sermons by a rather extreme clergyman. I was allowed an atlas, and a dictionary and two volume encyclopaedia, both of which he censored for all sexual matters apart from the purely biological aspects. We had no television, no radio and he would allow no magazines or newspapers in the house. Living in an isolated cottage well out of the small Dales village, I had virtually no contact with children or with other adults. This obviously left me with a very odd view of the world. But I was a quick learner and loved to read. As a result, I picked up a wide vocabulary and a knowledge of many things that most people never come across.

For exercise, I did the housework, kept Hope free of bedsores by massaging and manipulating her limbs and body, walked the local hills and swam in the isolated tarn up the hill from our cottage. I loved the freedom of those few hours, away from home and father's constant watchfulness. I would strip to my skin and plunge into the freezing clear water and splash about until I was thoroughly tired. By the time I returned home, my clothes had mostly dried on my body. Not that it mattered, since Heacham required me to work in the house wearing the bare minimum of cover. He told me it was to save my clothes from becoming stained and dirty. I know now that it was to afford him a sexual thrill of both watching me and controlling me in a state of more or less permanent exposure.

He indoctrinated me to believe that most men and women were inherently evil and would eventually spend eternity in the fires of Hell. If I erred, even slightly, he would beat me with his hand, a cane or his belt, always on my naked skin. He told me he was saving my soul and I believed him. We prayed together every morning and each evening before bed. He attended some old barn that he and a few other men with similar views had converted into their meeting place, which he called their chapel.

When I first started to work with Leigh and discovered his free-thinking ideas and his openness toward nudity and sex, I thought he must be the most wicked man alive. His models were all beautiful and showed no shame or shyness in displaying their entire bodies for his camera. I was initially incensed and later intrigued. But, though Leigh gave all the appearance to my uneducated mind of being a wicked heathen, I quickly learned that he was a kind, warm, generous and basically good man. I suppose it was inevitable that I would fall in love with him, as the only other mature male I had any contact with. Apart, that is, from his printing assistant, Mervin. He was the embodiment of true evil in my eyes. A crude, ugly, cruel and utterly selfish monster of a man.

If you've read the book, you'll know how I came to change and what those changes involved for me and those I came into contact with. If you haven't read it yet, I can only point you in the direction of this blog, where Stuart's posting the whole book for you to read, free of charge, a chapter at a time. I hope you get as much out of reading my story as I did from telling it from my point of view and learning Leigh's view of things along the journey.

How Does A Writer Move You?

Image by stuartaken via Flickr

How does a writer enter the mind, heart and soul of a reader and persuade a mature human being that the fiction purveyed is true enough to deserve and elicit an emotional response? Of course, the question itself suggests that every writer does this. But we all know there are writers who succeed in the market place without ever stirring any deep emotion, relying on the pace and action of their stories to maintain the interest of the reader. Such writing invariably leaves the thoughtful reader unsettled and unsatisfied, as if they've devoted time and energy to a pursuit that has failed to reward them with a fully rounded experience. For me, such writers might persuade me to read one of their novels but I'll never return to waste more time on such superficial entertainment. It serves a purpose, of course, but holds little appeal for me and many other readers.

If the writing of fiction is about anything, it's surely about providing the reader with a multi-layered experience full of emotional content. As a writer, I want to entertain, of course. But I also want to cause my readers to laugh in amusement, cry with empathy, gasp in surprise, wail at injustice, call out in fear, retch with disgust, pause in thought, tremble in anticipation, wince at cruelty, warm with erotic response, scream in terror, applaud at justice, weep at despair  and cheer over a deserved outcome.

But how are such responses to be achieved? People are so different, so varied in outlook, experience and education, that it must surely be impossible to get under their skin in this way? Well, perhaps it isn't possible to succeed with every reader on every occasion. But it clearly is possible to form the desired response in enough of your audience to justify the time, energy and effort needed to invoke the emotion you're aiming for.

So, how does it work?

I suspect the most important factor is shared experience. All of us go through the basic events of life; births, deaths, illness, falling in love and out of it, fearing the unknown, having sex or getting none, admiring some natural or man-made phenomenon, witnessing a natural catastrophe. We may not experience all of these events personally, but we will have at least some awareness of them through our family, friends, acquaintances and the ever-present media. There is, therefore, some fellow-feeling which can be used as a platform from which a writer can launch an assault on the reader's senses.

I'll give a couple of personal examples, since these are things about which I know.

My real father died before I was born and I was raised, from the age of four, by the man who later married my widowed mother and called himself my father. I was loved, cared for, appreciated and nurtured. I've no cause to feel in any way that I missed out on anything due to my real father's untimely death.

But. Yes, the 'but' is the crucial aspect here.

But, I always felt that I was incomplete because I'd never known my biological father. Because of this, I'm susceptible to certain elements in fiction. One of these is the situation that drives the hugely successful movie, Mama Mia. The heroine, Sophie, wants to know who she is before she gets married, and sends invitations to each of the three men she identifies as her possible father. Now, this motion picture has much in it that should, by the measure of many, not appeal to an average guy. It has been much lauded as a picture for women. That it's also a musical, lends it even more of a feminine appeal in the minds of many. But, because I absolutely understand, empathise with, Sophie's desire to know about her father, I find the story moving. It touches me in a way that probably evades many men. There's a link for me. And that's the point. I respond to the emotional element that drives the story because I have direct personal experience of the central emotion of longing to know.

Another incident that never fails to move me is the denouement of The Railway Children. As Bobbie waits on that railway platform and her father appears through the mist, I'm unable to prevent tears falling. And it matters not that I've seen both recent versions of the film on more occasions than I should. The power of the emotion remains. 

Why?

I can identify two entirely separate reasons for this one, I think. The first is that I'm a father and have a strong love for my daughter. I can empathise with the way both a father and a daughter must feel during a period of prolonged forced separation. My personal experience lies in the necessary absence of my girl as she attends university. But there's a second factor at play here. I have a deep and enduring concern for justice. Injustice wounds me and always has; perhaps I suffered some unjust event as a child and this lurks beneath the surface of my consciousness to elevate the quality of justice into something of paramount importance to me. I don't know; but it's as good a reason as any for my concern. In The Railway Children, of course, the father returns from a spell in prison served for a crime he didn't commit. So, the daughter/father reunion is enhanced as an emotional experience for me by the fact that justice is restored. Hence, I think, my empathy and my inability to prevent the tears.

I use these two examples to demonstrate how powerful a tool emotion can be for the writer.

Not only the most obvious emotion, that of love between adults, as embraced by romantic fiction authors, but all emotion. The reader needs to be exposed to the emotional spectrum as experienced by the characters, to feel these emotions, not simply to be told that the character feels them.

'Rose felt the sorrow of loss at the death of her baby.' This tells the reader what happened. 'Rose gentled the tiny crumpled cot blanket in trembling hands, hardly aware of the damp trails she left as she brought it close to her face and inhaled the scent of that small perfect person she would never hold again.' This shows the reader her emotions. And, because the author will have built previous experiences into the writing, making the reader empathise with the character of Rose, the reader will experience the feelings of loss and utter devastation such an event gifts the victim.

This is one example of how it can be done. So, the writer engages the reader with the character(s), manipulates the reader into a relationship that involves concern and fellow-feeling. Where the thriller writer might get away with generic description and superficial emotional content, relying on pace and action to drag the reader through the story, the author of almost every other genre must actually become his characters, in the same way a good actor does, he must feel what the characters feel, in order to convey the real emotions experienced by the people who act out the tale. Only then will the reader experience what the character feels and be moved, amused, shocked, aroused or whatever is appropriate to the situation. 

It takes a clever combination of the right language with a description and presentation of character that persuades the reader to care. If the reader really doesn't give a damn what happens to the character(s), then the author has fallen at the first hurdle and might as well take up some other activity. It's for this reason that most serious (serious in the sense of intent rather than style) authors develop the plot through their characters rather than forcing characters into a pre-conceived plot.

If you're an author who wants readers to respond to your writing rather than skip through the text on a mad dash to the end, you need to be fully engaged with your characters and to allow them to dictate the direction of the story. Only in that way will you find the necessary empathy to share emotional events with them and, thereby, your readers. It's a demanding process but one that brings great rewards when handled well. 

The picture, by the way, shows my biological father, Ken Burden, about whom I've recently learned a good deal from his surviving sister, my 98 year old Aunt Vera.