Silence

I never read Lord of the Flies - I had to go and look it up on one of those GCSE pass notes sites today to clarify what I thought I knew about it. (And isn't that weird - how is it possible to know so much about a book you've never read? In the same way as wondering how you know all those bits of classical music you could never identify?) I did this because I was thinking about bullying. Bullying exists as part of a whole spectrum of behaviour, among a whole group of people. It isn't usually just one-on-one agressor and victim. Around those two are a widening circle of others and I'd range them from one end to the other. Aggressor over here on your left, victim on the far right, let's say, and spreading between are the others - starting with eager followers, moving through those who might join in and those who will take advantage of the atmosphere created. As you pass the midway point, you head into those who stick their fingers in their ears and go la-la-la ... the ones who aren't here. They don't want to get involved. But they are. By their silence, they normalise the behaviour of those on the left side of the spectrum. They isolate the victim, out there on the right by themselves. 'It must be me,' the victim thinks. 'They're not attacking anyone else, so this must be my fault, for attracting it, or for being unable to stand up to it. I must be reacting wrongly. In fact, I must be over-reacting - no one else seems to think it's bad or they'd say something. It's my fault.' So he or she is also silenced. I read through the background of Lord of the Flies, most of which I knew by this weird cultural osmosis, and it left me feeling even more bleak than when I started. I like to see the good in everyone, or life would be altogether too dark. But there are times when all I can see is that vision of children escaping civilisation and the good ones going under. Then I remembered: 'The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.' Edmund Burke, Irish political philosopher from the 18th century. It cheers me up to think that three centuries ago someone was able to say it so elegantly and succinctly, because of course that means it's not just me who thinks this way, and rages against it, and then I start to remember all those who have spoken up, at great personal cost, and I decide the world isn't so bad. It's a spectrum, still.

Making an Impact

Motivation vs plot. My strength is in creating characters and themes, in revealing what drives someone's thoughts; what I find hard is plot, sheer, simple driving onwards of action. Often that's why my short stories grind to a halt halfway through - I need the action to carry forwards an otherwise motionless piece of writing. At the moment, I'm considering the impact of one character's actions on another. I usually write short stories with a small cast and in writing something longer, I'm having to manage more people and how they inter-act. In real life, we all see things in different ways - as children, we see life from our own perspective and have to learn, slowly, that others will see things differently. Theory of mind, it's called. Those on the autistic spectrum struggle with it. It's also the reason why small children make those delicious comments that assume you know what they know, and they can't get inside another child's head to see that they might want that particular toy too and will be upset to have it snatched away. But even as adults, we can't see the impact our actions will have because we don't know where others have started from. The person we let out in the traffic queue may be having a seriously bad day and you lighten her mood or she may be on her phone and barely even notice your Random Act of Kindness. My real life examples: I regularly collect a prescription for someone else. Because it's a controlled drug, even the prescription has to be collected from a special place, rather than being put in the post. Each time I send in the repeat form, I wait the allotted five days, a bit more for courtesy, and then I have to start chasing it. I get answer phones; I ring several times; having started three weeks ahead, usually we're down to the wire, with the last tablet or two, before I can even make the forty-minute round trip to get the new prescription, and then it's a dash to the pharmacy to collect it. This all takes place against a backdrop of daily reassurance - yes, I'll phone again, yes, it'll be on its way, don't worry ... This morning, listening to that answerphone, I thought - she sounds nice enough whenever I speak to her - is it just that she has no idea of how important her small piece of paperwork is to those at the other end? Surely if she lived it through my eyes, she'd get her act together? Does she just lack imagination? Opposite end of the scale: someone who always returns calls promptly, answers emails, considers and puts things into action if they might help. In one of our early meetings, when I was fed up and suspicious of all officaldom, I was puzzled by him. I would talk and be met with an intent frowning silence. It took me some time to realise that he was listening to me. What he does probably seems normal to him, but it's had a huge impact, because I was losing hope when I met him. So when my characters do something, they don't act in a vacuum - they bounce off each other and cause repercussions. The 'what if' again - if he says this, how will she react? Where's she coming from, not just in general but today, this morning, now? I'm hoping these 'what ifs' will drive my plot onwards, using my imagination to stand in each character's place. After that, I'm going to drive up and stand at the counter and just ask for the repeat prescription form, because I despair of ever getting that call back!