playing with genre

Take a piece of news and write a first paragraph of a novel in different genres:

Jack Straw's evidence to Iraq inquiry challenged by former legal adviser
Sir Michael Wood says former foreign secretary rejected his advice out of hand
Helen Pidd, Hélène Mulholland and agencies
guardian.co.uk Tuesday 26 January 2010 15.06 GMT

THRILLER
Wood shuffled his papers nervously on the desk, looking behind his shoulder at the other witnesses waiting their turn. Scanning their dark faces he saw him there. Straw's eye twitched imperceptibly. A terse warning. Wood adjusted his tie and stared right ahead. He'd come to give his evidence and there was no going back.

ROMANCE
Sir Wood's hands slid down the small of my back as I readied his papers for the hearing. Sir Wood!, I whispered breathlessly, as I moved, reluctantly, out of his reach. The previous days had been a living nightmare. Spending day and night with him, watching his strong determination, feeling his seething power. But he has a wife. He has a wife, I repeat to myself. You have a wife, I say quietly, almost to myself, as he takes me in his arms and kisses me sternly.

CRIME NOVEL (from Sir Wood's point of view)
It's been a long time since I've seen so much greed and corruption, I think to myself as I make the third cup of strong tea of the morning. Not since Thatcher's days, anyway. But it's no use thinking about all this now. I put on my old suit and stuff my papers in the briefcase I keep by the desk for such occasions. I check in the mirror and see an old leathery lawyer looking back at me. An old lawyer about to lose some friends, huh? I set off into the dirty morning fog and notice the black car in the corner starting its engine behind me. Good old boys, they just won't give up.

CHILDREN'S BOOK
Once upon a time there lived a man made of wood and a man made of straw. Wood lived up on the high Mountain of Truth, which was unfortunately always covered in clouds. Straw lived in the Palace of Deception, which looked like a fortress if you looked at it from very far, but really it was made of nothing but bits of toilet paper.

SCIENCE FICTION
If this was 2010 we would all have to sit in a stuffy room while the dusty old men of government - it was mostly men at that time - gave their evidence in an unbearable monotone drone. Luckily we now have Exotron® and we can all livelink directy into our favourite ongoing enquiry from wherever we've chosen to extemporise ourselves. The drone, unfortunately, continues to be monotone, but we can now audiogoogle words as they're spoken. It is thus that, pseudo-sitting at a beach in Costa Rica, I have found out that 'wood' and 'straw' where materials once used to build houses. Now, however, all they're building is a pile of lies, high as the highest of stratoscrapers...

LITERARY NOVEL
As Sir Michael Wood recited his evidence, a feeling of despair descended on the assembled crowd. So the government had ignored the legality arguments. This unsurprising, inevitable piece of news fell on the room with an echoless thud. Helen sunk into her seat in the journalist section of the chamber. She felt the crowd realise what she had known all along. Legality was not the issue. The issue was our very core as human beings. Our meaning. Our whole life.

The end of fear

I heard about it on the radio as I was making my first cup of tea of the day. I was still half asleep. I had probably been half asleep for far too long. Far too long staying quietly in a corner trying not to make a noise. Far too long not asking questions when friends didn’t turn up. Far too long not reading the wrong papers. Far too long not playing the wrong songs. I heard it on the radio and it woke me up.

They had started gathering in the early morning. Slowly making their way to the main square. They were silent. Not a word. There was nothing that needed to be said and their silence smashed that other silence that had enveloped us and filled every pore and clogged every vein, strangling our feelings and thoughts and passions.

I stirred the tea and added more milk. Since the day I was born my land had been silent and scared. My parents had protected me from political reality, and when I was finally, inevitably, faced with it, I had chosen to close my eyes. Done the right thing. Studied a suitable degree. Got an appropriate job. Things were easy if you didn’t open your eyes. Even easier if your mouth stayed shut. I had complied, ignored, evaded. I had, I knew deep inside myself, colluded.

The police surrounded them, the radio said. They had sat down, still in silence, and offered smiles.

I looked out of the window and took a sip. The street was waiting for the people to come out. Fizzling. The street knew its inhabitants. There was the family two doors down, faces still caught in the grief of an unknown loss. The man in the government job, always searching for apologies. The couple in the corner, busily pretending nothing was going on, kindred spirits. The kids who played secret police. The young students in the dilapidated flats, who had been just one year below me at university, and now looked at me with sad eyes when I walked past.

The radio advised all citizens to go to work, go to school, go to the shops. Nothing was to stop the normal day. They were incongruous. They would be dealt with.

I emptied the mug in the sink. I looked inside of me at a new feeling. I was awake this time. I didn’t want to stay asleep. I wanted to open my eyes. Splay my fingers. Sing a song. If they were there, I could be there. I must be there.

I left the house and started to walk towards the square. The students had also left their home and were carrying a banner. I joined them and they smiled. I was human again.

When we got to the square the police would not let us get to them. They looked as afraid as we were, young kids recruited from the poor barrios. The crowd started growing but somehow it had a mind of its own, and when one of us sat we all sat down, making a ring around the police.

We stayed there in silence, scared but gaining our strength from each other. I felt right. I was nervous, but I knew I was finally really doing something right.

After a while, as suddenly as it was time to arrive it became time to leave, and before the police lost their cool, the crowd started to wander off back to our new lives.

That evening the radio didn’t talk.

But the next day, in the morning, they gathered in the square, and I was there.

The walk

I switched my mp3 player off half way through the journey, realising that I was only spoiling the perfect setting with the borrowed sounds. The landscape raced across the window, mountains, grassland, clouds. The sun had just come out – we’d left before dawn – and the air was hazy. A couple of concentric rainbows jumped across the peaks.

On the fence-posts along the road, eagles sat waiting for an accident to happen. Feasting on road-kill to keep their lazy broods. A nervous herd of horses ran alongside the bus appearing and disappearing with every bend. Occasionally, roadrunners sprang out of nowhere and fled away just as quick.

I arrived in Chalten and left the old bus sighing with relief by the shack-station, glad to be rid of its burden.

Chalten was a criss-cross of roads surrounded by impossibly white peaks. Even in the high heat of the summer the snow refusing to melt.

I dumped my bags on the top bunk, bought some bread and cheese in the hostel’s shop and went straight out and up the nearest path. The path wound its way through a sparse forest, and signposts were dotted here and there marking the way.

The sun was beating down but the air got colder as the path went up the side of the mountain. I took my jumper off and felt the rays on my shoulders. My water bottle was almost empty and I was wearing very silly flip-flops, the most unprepared hiker in the history of the Andes.

Behind a big rock the path bifurcated. The signs were unclear. Which was not really a surprise. Life had been giving me little funny metaphorical descriptions of my mind since I’d left London. My new flat was in Broke Walk. My husband’s emails had started to go automatically to my Spam folder. The only way forward had been to fly away, literally.

A man stopped behind me and took out a map. He might give me some direction, I thought.

He seemed as confused as I was, so I spoke up. Let’s go this way, I said, and he said yes. We walked in line as the path narrowed. I let him walk ahead of me, setting the pace. He came from Israel, he said, he’d just finished military service. He was travelling in South America and trying to learn a little Spanish.

I didn’t tell him about me, but I told him about the history of my continent, about why some people didn’t like Israel, about the way I saw the world.

We walked on, up to a ridge. The view was breathtaking, a glacier lying motionless on top of a mirrored lake. I considered the fact that it was the perfect kissing spot. I considered the fact that I had a husband in Australia, a lover in London, a fling in Buenos Aires and a man walking beside me. I considered it all and took my camera and took a picture of this man. Who then took a picture of me.

We walked on, lighter. Unkissed. Uncomplicated.

Down the slope we found the lake. People sat round the edge gazing, grazing. I took my bread and cheese and made some sandwiches for us. He gave me some of his water. We sat with everybody else, quietly. You could almost see the collective thoughts rising in a haze towards the ice.

On the way back I set the pace. I apologized about the speed, self-deprecatingly comparing my fitness with his military trained legs. He encouraged me. We made it back before sunset.

In the hostel, he was in the room opposite mine. I watched through the semi-open door as he changed to have a shower. When he saw me I pretended to read my book.

Later he nodded hello as he walked past me in the kitchen.

And the whole thing fizzled out.

Much like this story.

saga

he set off with a small bag, way across the ocean, to find the thing that had been lost. he never found the thing that had been lost, so he took his small bag and returned home, where he found the thing had never been lost in the first place.

You

You are unbelievable and make no mistake. Every single time I think about you…there’s something that I just can’t quite grasp. Like trying to see each individual fish in a…what’s it called? You would know. A school. A school of fish. Like trying to see each individual fish in a school of fish at once. Impossible. You have far too many parts.

You sit there like a porcelain doll, all smooth curves and no hard edges. And you sing your moody songs, whisper in my ear. And you cry and you laugh and you tell me dirty jokes and blush. And of course, I lap it up. But it’s all an act isn’t it, you little so and so. It’s all an act and I have fallen for it hook, line and sinker. I’ve been trying to work out what it is, and after much consideration I believe it must be your eyes that do it. Not your pouting slutty mouth. Or your endless snaking legs. Or your ice-cream skin. No, no, no. It’s your eyes. Those bottomless liquid green eyes, fixed in mine. Undressing me. Unwinding me. Undoing me.

Your pretty mermaid eyes, all innocent and naïve... My arse! You have more street in you than the whole of bloody London. You could ensnare a water snake just by looking at her. Or him. Cos that doesn’t matter to you, now, does it. Oh no, not for you the restrained boundaries of bipolar sexuality. Fuck that!, you say. And you do. You well and truly do. And then you fuck some more. And give me that charming smile of yours. Me?, you say, Little me? Oh, how many times if it wasn’t for those eyes…

Now you’ve gone too far, though. There really was no need for you to get in bed with him. It was totally unnecessary to start with. He’s not even close. And you really didn’t need to make sure that I caught you lying there. Tied to the bedposts. Moaning as he… Fuck. I really didn’t need that. I preferred to believe your lying eyes. To swim free in your sea of falsehoods. As the poet says.

But I’m no poet. And you’re no good.

And so let’s leave the marine metaphors and get down to what I really want to say. Which is. Fuck you. Fuck your long legs. Fuck your smooth skin. Fuck your green eyes. Fuck you and never come back.

The end of love.

She sits down across the table from him and puts on her smile.

As he serves up the food, she mentally calculates that she must have sat across the table from him over eight thousand times. Three hundred and sixty five days in a year, twice a day on average, fifteen years in total, take away a couple thousand to account for holidays, days out, silent treatment rows. Yes, that’ll be about right. More or less eight thousands times.

As usual, she doesn’t know what the food is. But she knows that she will like it - he is really a very good cook – and that she will eat it up too fast.

As they both start on their food, the kitchen is filled with the sounds of silent eating.

Her plate empty now, she wishes she hadn’t eaten quite so fast again. Now all she can do is watch as he slowly and purposefully finishes his food.

Every single bite is excruciating. The noise as the fork hits the bottom of the plate. The scraping sound as he scoops up too much food. The perilous journey from the plate to the gaping open mouth. The final screeching of teeth against metal.

She notices a tiny drop of fatty liquid tortuously sliding down the side of his chin.

Then all the crunching and slurping and sucking and grinding begin. The squelching as his teeth masticate the food to a swallowable mass. The gulping sound as the mass makes its way down his throat. It’s almost deafening.

Their eyes meet. She tries to think of something to say, but is so hypnotized by the scientific observation of her husband’s eating habits that nothing suitable for conversation pops into her brain.

As he opens his mouth to another bite, she catches herself before she winces as he displays – almost as a threat – bits of food and elastic threads of saliva, attaching from the upper teeth to the lower teeth like stalagmites (or was it stalactites? they always argued about this kind of stupid definition) in a moldy cave.

The continuing silence amplifies every sound and her heart sinks as she considers how much food he still has left on his plate. Will he have seconds?

When he’s finished with his fork, she will have to make a heroic effort to hide her disgust as he uses his finger to clean up the plate, picking up every last bit of sauce, making a screeching kissing sound as he greedily sucks on his index.

More squelching. He’s nearly done.

As she watches him finish his eating, with what she hopes is as close as can be to an adoring look, she remembers when the muscles on her face didn’t have to struggle for the right countenance. There had been a time when all the details of his eating, talking, moving, breathing, hell, even shitting, had been music to her ears. A while ago.

And so, with a final smack of the lips, he’s done.

“Darling, that was lovely. Shall I make a cup of tea?”

The space

There is a crack in the ceiling that cuts across diagonally from the furthest corner of the space all the way to the front. To the right of the crack is the garden, to the left the living quarters. A figure lies immobile in the centre of the space. Between the figure’s feet there is a mark on the wall resembling a door handle. A glob of plaster covering up maybe a hole left behind by a nail or an accidental bang with a clumsy hammer. This mark is the anchor, it keeps the space centred and concentrated. The figure blinks, slowly. Count the days, again.

Total number of days: 45. Mark the number on the ceiling, begin inventory.

In the nearest corner of the garden, over the figure’s right shoulder, there is a spider web that grows larger everyday. The spider is busy, and seemingly unbothered by the shoulder’s presence. It will undoubtedly be covered soon.

Diameter of spider web: 33cm. 3cm longer than yesterday.

Halfway down the garden, near the hip area, is the heart of the “aviary”. Getting busier now, flies multiplying through the abundance of nutrition available to them. The stench emanating from this area was powerful, but even if it still fills the space, the figure can no longer sense it. Attempt to count the number of flies, but as usual they will keep moving and it’s hard to come up with an exact figure.

Number of flies: approximately 90.

Down by the figure’s feet is a bucket. Twice a day, almost every day, the bucket is retrieved and then lowered into the space through the hatch on the corner of the ceiling, which the crack neatly edges around. The bucket is the occasional sun, marking day and night. Day is for water, night is for gruel. At the appointed time, the figure sits up slowly, careful not to bang its head against the ceiling, and either shares the meal in silence with the maggots that the guards have taken to use as garnish, or sprinkles some of the water on the spider web, and drinks from the bucket while observing the drops glitter in the faint ray of light that filters through the one unsealed edge of the hatch.

Number of buckets: 1. Continue inventory.

To the left, in the living area, there is the artwork. Primitive markings on the wall, made by hands long ago. Means of communication. They may or may not be understood. They are just there. White scratches on the concrete surface. The figure sometimes turns over and adds some scratches of its own. And so the artwork evolves.

2 girls
3 persons of indistinct gender
1 house
1 gun, scratched out
2 hanging figures
1 flower, unfinished

Over the figure’s left shoulder, the concentric contours of a spreading patch of damp cover the corner of the wall. White powdery salt-like clusters gathering around the outline.

Patches of damp: 1, growing.

Look back inside the space. There is nothing else. This is all there is.

A small space. A still warm body. Faeces. Flies. Scratches. Cracks. A spider and a bucket.