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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

TELL ME MORE

Bunnies and chocolate eggs: does Easter work for marking time in fiction?

16/4/2017

6 Comments

 
If the events of a story unfold over more than a season, how do you evoke the passage of time? We can allude to the weather, seasonal flowers and the nakedness or otherwise of trees, but not all readers, and especially those looking in from other climates, will be grounded by these changes in the natural world. We can also, as I sometimes do for blog posts, draw on key events in the annual calendar to show that time has moved on. Christmas is an obvious choice, but what about Easter, when the date changes from year to year?

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The contemporary strand of my debut novel, Sugar and Snails, takes place between Easter and Christmas 2004. For my forthcoming second novel, Underneath, the present strand of the novel runs from late spring to the autumn of the following year. That gives me a Christmas and Easter to play with, and I’ve used them to the full.

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Steve and Liesel spent their first Christmas together in their hideaway love nest in the cellar. A couple months later, however, the relationship has soured and Liesel delivers her ultimatum: if Steve won’t agree to start a family, she’ll have to leave. The novel’s timeline isn’t so tight that it is muddled by Easter occurring any time between late March and late April. What matters is that it’s a deadline and, from daffodils on the table to bank holiday quiet at work, Steve can feel it looming and it’s got him worried (p154-5):

I strolled into Holding Bay to collect the chit for the next patient. Good Friday and the whole world seemed on Go Slow. I wouldn’t have minded ordinarily, but I’d been relying on keeping busy to distract me from the fact that, with Liesel’s deadline two days away, I still hadn’t worked out how I could keep her without poisoning our lives with a child.

The area was deserted, as lonely as the boardroom in the management suite on any ordinary weekend. I wandered down to the coffee room, but all I could see on the armchairs surrounding the jangling TV were yesterday’s newspaper and a heap of sweet wrappers. I put my head round the door of the quiet room, but no-one was there either.

It felt weird, like a kid told to close his eyes and count to a hundred while everyone disappears. One of those movies where a guy runs out of gas in a thunderstorm right outside the psychopath’s house. And then I heard the music.

Well, Steve, despite what I said, in my post on Jonathan Keates’ book on Handel’s Messiah, about singing on Good Friday, it’s not me you can hear. But you’d better get yourself organised if you want to keep Liesel in your life!
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And so to this week’s flash fiction challenge to write a 99-word story featuring a ring, in the sense of jewellery. An earring has a role in progressing the plot in Underneath, but it’s shaped like an anchor rather than a circle, so I’ve had to look elsewhere for inspiration. Not drawn to adornment, I thought I’d write about the risk of rings:

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Eternity ring

I emptied the contents onto the table-top. Plastic decked like playing cards, coins rolled on their edges, a foil-wrapped migraine tablet squat among the notes. He held my fingertips so gently, I almost anticipated congratulations. “Take it off!”

I babbled about its sentimental value, worthless to him. He grabbed me roughly by the wrist. “Fucking take it off! I won’t ask again.”

I tugged at the gold band. Bonded with my body, it wouldn’t budge.

Spreading my hand across the table-top, he brought down the knife.

I stared at the stump. I’d lost my finger, but kept my promise.


Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
6 Comments
Susan Zutautas link
18/4/2017 10:41:27 pm

Wow! What a story!

Reply
Annecdotist
19/4/2017 07:17:38 am

Thanks, Susan.

Reply
Charli Mills
20/4/2017 03:25:31 am

Interesting to consider holidays as the passage of time. In my earlier draft of Miracle of Ducks, I used time passing between winter and the growing of blueberries, unique to the original setting. My editor wasn't keen on blossoms and weather. Now it's set elsewhere and I've had to look to holidays and seasons for anchors on the timeline. I wonder if this gets redundant?

The dark tone for your upcoming novel didn't go away as I read your flash! The momentary detail of how he held her fingertips so gently slows down the pace and allows for what follows to slam hard and fast.

Reply
Annecdotist
20/4/2017 05:10:38 pm

Thanks, Charli. Having just read your Raw Weather post, I think I'd have enjoyed reading about the time between winter and blueberries, even though here I can never remember exactly when they likely to be ripe, but then it's a lovely surprise coming across them on a walk, although might greed does have a tendency to slow me down.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
21/4/2017 11:57:11 am

Interesting discussion about weather, seasons and the passage of time. So much of that holds little meaning for us here in the subtropics of the Southern Hemisphere. We do get used to reading about your Northern experiences, but they never fall with just the right meaning. Your story certainly ended with a thump. Now I wonder about the ring and his response. It reminds me a little, though not so dramatic, of instances in my family.

Reply
Annecdotist
24/4/2017 05:30:46 pm

Yes, doesn’t always translate into other climates. When I was young I read a lot of books by an Australian author Ivan Southall and was kind of bemused that it was always hot. As for the family drama, where do you think my ideas come from? :-)

Reply



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