Just a wee update to let you know about a story of mine that’s been published as part of the Flash Flood for National Flash Fiction Day 2023.
I wrote ‘The Unicorn in the Garden‘ last year for a contest – I’m so glad that it’s now found a home somewhere for people to read it 😀
Feel free to check out my other published short fiction. I’m starting to build a bit of a portfolio which is a lovely confidence boost!
When I started thinking about this blog, I considered the ways in which a psychologist could contribute to our understanding of storytelling. My initial thought was that most topics would relate to characters and characterisation, after all, psychology is all about people, isn’t it? But then it occurred to me that the psychology of a reader may be just as important to a successful story as the story itself. A five year old would be unimpressed by a 100 000 word tome; an avid science fiction reader likely won’t find much to engage with in a chick lit novel.
I also realised that my first blog post started with the premise that everyone already understood what a story was. And perhaps we do. Perhaps we grow up so surrounded by stories that the concept doesn’t need to be explained. But consider the example of language fluency – it is possible to be fluent in English but to not understand the difference between past perfect and past continuous, and to not be able to put into words why it doesn’t sound right for someone to be wearing a “red, old, big coat”. You might know English, but you would perhaps struggle to teach its nuances to a class of English learners. So I thought I would share some thoughts about what stories are.
How do stories begin (and end)
Generally stories are a description of people and the events that happen to them, whether real or imaginary. Stories always have a purpose. Often they are told in order to share some understanding of the world we live in. Even stories that seem to have no strong purpose, light hearted and funny, tell us something about the storyteller or the characters within the story.
But none of this tells you anything really about what a story will look like. And the thing is, we do have expectations around the form that a story will take. Generally a reader (or listener) starts a story expecting it to contain a beginning, middle and an end, although not necessarily in that order, if the storyteller is feeling particularly avant garde.
We want to know who the main character is, what the setting is, and what problem the character is facing. And most of all, we want to know how they solve the problem. We want to be taken on a journey that gives the character resolution and teaches us something along the way.
When we start a story, if there’s no real conclusion, it generally feels like we’ve wasted our time. I’m sure many Netflix subscribers have grown used to that disappointment lately and started to turn away from them as a media source – because what’s the point if they never give you a completed story?
The importance of the ending
A story without an end is a story without meaning or purpose. How can we know what lesson we were supposed to take from a narrative if the writer doesn’t give us the ending? How can we better understand who the writer is if we don’t know how they wanted their story to go? Our lives are not as easily separated into discrete entities, but we expect the stories that we tell about these lives to be compartmentalised regardless. Because in doing so, our experiences become something that we can learn from, move on from, and then share as a warning to others who might follow the same path.
The lack of ending, or lack of closure, is often a reason that people struggle after a negative life experience. We want there to be a reason. We want to know what the lesson is. We want to know how to avoid it happening again. We want our life to be a story, broken into neat chapters, each with its own purpose. The girl who’s father left her wants to be an independent woman who doesn’t need men to define her. The man who lost his job wants this to be an opportunity to build a new career. And if our lives can’t be as clearly delineated as that, the lives of our fictional protagonists should be.
Or, to think about it another way, perhaps we use these fictional narratives in order to work out how to compartmentalise the sections of our own lives. If the only narrative sense our lives really have is the one we make up in our own heads, then the more experience that we have with narratives, the better we will be at sustaining the one that defines us.
Story Archetypes
And that leads to another aspect of reader expectation – story archetypes. Literary theorist Christopher Booker posited seven story archetypes which appear across the history of human storytelling:
Not all stories fit neatly into these categories. Probably because trying to categorise the human experience of storytelling is akin to telling a story in itself. We bring our own unique view points to our interpretation and may not come up with the same outcome. But, this theory highlights the important point that readers have expectations. If a hero goes on a quest, we expect to know how it ends – we would be pretty annoyed if he gave up halfway through and just went home. Unless of course we were reading a Rebirth story, where the protagonist sets off, determined to kill a monster, then realises killing isn’t for him. But if you don’t set the reader’s expectations towards the right archetype, they’re still going to be disappointed with how it plays out or may disengage from the story entirely.
Stories are conversations
This leads us to the most important part of what a story is. A story is a shared experience, one that means nothing without a reader or listener to appreciate it. We tell stories to teach lessons; we tell stories to warn of danger; we tell stories to share a piece of who we are with the people around us. But none of that means anything if our story isn’t entertaining enough for someone to listen to it in the first place.
A story, ultimately, is a conversation. It is an attempt by a writer to communicate something that they believe is important, to someone that they believe might benefit from what they have to say. Without a willing reader or listener, the story might as well be screamed into the void or tossed on a fire to burn. And in return, as a reader, we want to be exposed to the narratives we expect, that give us a sense of closure and help us to in some way make sense of our own journey through life. If we cannot in some way incorporate the meaning or structure of a story into our own experience, then what was the point of the story?
Of course, there are far more facets to storytelling than just this, that could be analysed at the micro and macro level. But none of those factors mean anything if you don’t have two people, the reader and the writer, willing to communicate with each other.
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If you’re interested in any previous Storytelling posts, you can find them here
Or why don’t you check out my young adult fantasy novel, George Square, or my published short fiction.
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Caroline Ashley is a clinical psychologist who works for the NHS in Scotland. She is a lover of fantasy in all forms and fascinated by the ways in which the fantasical can speak to our everyday lives.
As always, writing comes with highs and lows. At the beginning of May, Globe Soup announced the winner of their 9th 7 Day Challenge and my story didn’t place at all (the winning story is a chilling horror and well worth a read). Then a couple of weeks later both of the stories that I wrote for their sci-fi contest placed as finalists! I feel bad that I’m not going to share them but I’m currently in the process of trying to find someone to publish them – so watch this space 🙂
And don’t forget to watch out for my new Storytelling blog – next post will be coming out in the middle of the month, probably around the 17th – 18th June. First post can be found here
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Ever since I was able to write, I wanted to tell stories. As a child, I would sit with notepads and pencils and scribble away, writing about people and places that only existed within my own imagination. The stories that I write even now are informed by the stories that I put down on paper all those years ago. But why? Why are so many of us compelled to write about faraway lands and wild adventures?
As a psychologist, I know that there are many different ways to answer that question. We could consider the science of the human brain and its evolutionary drive to recognise pattern and meaning in the world around us. We could consider the social aspect of sharing knowledge and experience as well as building links with those around us. We could also consider the developmental benefits of building empathy and understanding of the perspectives of others. So where do you start?
The History of Storytelling
The earliest known cave paintings date back over 60 000 years. The earliest painting depicting what could be described as a story was found in the Indonesian island of Sulawesi and dated to around 44 000 years ago. Back then, homo sapiens and neanderthals were still duking it out for supremacy and human language was in its infancy, so our stories were probably similar to what has been seen in other animals. For example, monkeys have specific calls to indicate certain predators and can combine them to communicate more complex messages. Bees dance with each other to share information about pollen sources and make decisions about search strategies. These are the stories told to help us survive. True tales of where to find food, where our enemies might be, and where might be safe to sleep at night – shared with those who are important to us.
But the stories humans now tell are far more complex than that. So what changed?
The Power of Language
When us humans tell stories, we tell allegories. We share ideas rather than events or locations. We tell stories that teach us how to behave, like The Boy Who Cried Wolf – act like him and no one will trust you. We tell stories that warn against conflict and pride, like Romeo and Juliet – forgive past sins or your children may suffer. We tell stories about coming of age like Peter Pan – childhood is fun but we all must grow up. All of these stories require a level of communication far beyond what we have seen in other animals. They require an ability to use language not just to describe what has come to pass but people and places and events that have never existed and are outside the experience of both the storyteller and the reader.
Many animals’ communication is so far removed from our own that we can never be sure what goes on in their heads, but we do know a little about primates. There are examples from the 1970s to 1990s of primates (like Koko the gorilla, Washoe the chimpanzee and Kanzi the bonobo) who had been taught sign language and human language and learned to communicate with the primatologists working with them. None of them exceeded the level of a young child in terms of their communication level, but they were reported to engage in forms of pretend play, an early stage of the use of imagination. The most common example of this was in pretending that an object was something other than it was. The unique thing about this behaviour was that it was also something linked more with social interaction than with survival – for example, dolphins have been shown to engage in novel behaviours for rewards; and rats have been shown through brain studies to plan out maze routes in their heads before traversing them, again for a reward at the end of it. There is no obvious reward in pretending that a brush is a book, other than in how those around you react to your ‘game’.
But if you’ve spent any length of time with a four year old, you know that object substitution is nothing next to the range of creative play that a human child can engage in. My son regularly creates items out of thin air that he expects me to interact with and tells me that he is off to his grandparent’s house, which is actually a den he’s created in the corner of the room. He pretends to be a shop keeper, a bus driver, a dog. He role plays stories with his stuffed animals – talking for them so that they can hold a conversation.
Humans are likely the only animals in the world who are capable of telling these symbolic tales of fictional events, because we’re the only ones who have developed our language to the level required to do so. As our brains developed into what they are now, they prioritised the use of language, not just to communicate about a tangible past and present, but to imagine other possible presents and futures. The symbolic nature of the language we use allows for our stories becoming symbolic as well. When I say “remember the boy who cried wolf” you know that I don’t trust what you’re saying and my words evoke an idea of the outcome of continuing to lie. When you read the story of a brave hobbit travelling with his companion to destroy a ring, you know that the story is really about the loss of innocence, the dying of the old ways, the importance of friends to support you when challenges stand in your way.
But in the end, our stories, no matter how complex or allegorical, are attempting to achieve the same thing as our animal cousins. They teach us messages about the life that we live, the people we want to befriend and the dangers that we want our children to avoid. They tell us the behaviours that might reap rewards from those around us or warn against behaviours that will lead to harm. They also tell us something about the person telling the story. In much the same way as the bee dancing to tell its companion of a pollen source that only it has found, we are unique in the stories that we’re able to tell. We filter our warnings and our teachings through a frame of reference that only we ourselves have truly experienced.
The Desire To Be Remembered
Which leads me to why I believe that we still tell stories. Why we don’t just rely on the ones already written, the ones shared in our communities so much that they have become symbols in their own right. We tell stories so that people will know who we are and understand the world from our unique points of view. We use them to bond with others, to communicate something about ourselves. We instil our hopes and dreams into words and cast them outward, looking for people who share an affinity for those dreams.
And this is true even of the introverted writers like my teenage self, scribbling away on my own, my work locked away from view. I may have never shared those teenage stories but they were the starting point for other stories, other attempts to reach out and connect with like minded people. And even stories still to be shared, much like the cave drawings on the walls, are written in the hope that one day someone will read what our minds have created and know something of who we were.
Caroline Ashley is a clinical psychologist who works for the NHS in Scotland. She is also a lover of fantasy in all forms and fascinated by the ways in which the fantasical can speak to our everyday lives.
Three weeks back at work and totally knackered 😴 I thought about posting something about the experience, and even had a few paragraphs drafted, but writing a blog about being an NHS psychologist is a very different track from the one I had planned when I started this. Suffice it to say, there are too many patients, not enough staff and not enough time. I spend my days trying to prioritise as well as I can and always leave with a list of more things to do the next day, that would ideally have been done already 🤷♀️
In terms of writing, I’m working on a story about grief that was originally for a particular magazine but ended up longer than their word limit, so now will need to find a new home. My productivity won’t be what it was last year, but I have plans for a magazine in June; a contest in July and then another contest in September. Wish me luck keeping to those plans!
I also had some good news in that one of my flash fiction stories, called ‘The Unicorn in the Garden’, was accepted for Flash Flood 2023. The Flash Flood Journal will be posting a new flash fiction piece every 5-10 minutes for twenty-four hours on the 24th June in celebration of National Flash Fiction Day. My story will appear at 6.40am BST 🙂 This story was written for a contest where it didn’t even reach the longlist so it’s nice to know that someone out there liked it – hopefully readers will appreciate it too!
I also plan to start a blog called “Storytelling”, stylised with a psi symbol for the ‘i’, just to be all fancy like.
I have drafts for the first 3 posts and I plan to post on a monthly basis, a couple of weeks after each chapter of George Square. I’m not really one for blogging but my hope is that the more I say the more readers might find my work. The blog will be an attempt to combine my two interests of psychology and writing in various ways – hopefully I don’t run out of ideas too quickly! I’m still working out how to make it look all nice on the website but hopefully I’ll get that figured out in the next couple of weeks 🙂
Check out my published fiction here.
My first blog post on this site was published on the 9th May last year, when my daughter wasn’t even two months old. She’s now had her first birthday and I’m about to head back to work – into the breach of NHS Child and Adolescent Mental Health. While I find my work rewarding, it’s also stressful, demanding and time-consuming. I would love to live in a world where I could be paid enough to write fiction and stay home with the kids (with a few days of nursery included – the kids are also stressful, demanding and time-consuming 🙈)
Last year, when I started this, I wasn’t sure how far I would get with it, what with looking after a newborn while also having a toddler to parent. Now I wonder if I can keep the momentum now that I have a toddler and a preschooler and also need to go to work!
The traffic to my site is still small numbers. I’m hoping to get more shorter fiction published and improve that, but the route to publication, even for short fiction, is full of rejections. I’ve also considered writing a proper blog incorporating some of my psychology knowledge, but is that just another thing that distracts from writing the novel? 😅
If you would like to read my published short fiction, you can find it here
I said in my last blog post that I probably wouldn’t update George Square this month and sadly I was correct that I wouldn’t have enough time for it. Completing the two science fiction stories for Globe Soup took far more of my headspace than I had hoped that it would. It was also a quite difficult month for me on a personal level. My beloved Siamese cat, Loki, fell unwell and we had to make the heart-breaking decision to put him to sleep. He and his sister have been part of my family for nearly 11 years, adopted as kittens and always there to greet me through my day. I miss his cute fluffy face and his demanding cries. So having stories that I was busy trying to complete was a bit of a blessing, since it gave me something else to concentrate on. Now that the deadline has passed, I feel that I have two quite good (or I think they are anyway!) sci-fi stories that I can submit to magazines once the results of the contest are announced, so it has hopefully been worth all time and effort.
In terms of writing, my main other achievement this month has been a further publication – Spillwords.com have published a piece of flash fiction that I wrote called ‘Chosen for greatness but by whom?‘. Originally written for a micro contest on the theme of ‘Luck’, I found myself considering how it might feel to grow up as a destined hero, with all the heavy expectations that come with it and whether your faith in that destiny might ever waver.
My plan for the next month is to get back into writing George Square so that I keep up with my self imposed schedule.
If you’re new to George Square, the first chapters are available to read here
You can also find my published short fiction here
This update is late, I know!
At the beginning of the month I decided to get a draft completed for one of the sci-fi stories that I’m writing for Globe Soup’s latest contest, thinking it would just take me a few days. How wrong I was. Who knew how much research would be required to write a short story related to terraforming? (Probably most people, I imagine 🤣) First I had to decide where was being terraformed, how it was being terraformed, how the characters were surviving pre-terraformation, as well as working out the story within that! Thankfully I do have a draft now but I definitely didn’t enjoy expanding my scientific knowledge and I’m not convinced it’s my strongest idea. Sadly, I also got a ticket for time travel so I’m going to have to get all sciency again before the end of the month 😭
On a more positive note, my story on 50-WordStories was chosen as story of the month, so that gave me a wee mental boost as I waded through Wiki articles on how to extract oxygen for life support systems 😄
My mind has drifted a bit from my focus on George Square due to the contests I’ve been preparing for lately – I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing. On the one hand, the contests are helping me to hone my writing skills. On the other, novel writing is much more my preference over short stories and I only have so much time for writing. The problem is that a completed short story gives me a much quicker sense of achievement than trying to type my way through tens of thousands of words!
I know not many of you are reading this, so I’m sure there won’t be a momentous backlash, but I’m thinking that I’m going to skip a month of writing George Square to get my short story commitments completed – then I will hopefully power through the next few chapters. So next month may just be a wee blog post to update you on my activities but I promise normal programming will resume the following month 🙂
Or check out my published short fiction here 🙂
And a little update to go with it. I tried my hand at a 50 word dribble and it’s been published by 50 Word Stories – read it here. Many thanks to Tim for accepting it 😊
Submitting fiction is a bit of an exercise in rejection so it’s always a wee boost when someone likes a piece you’ve written 🙂 I have struggled with flash fiction – I find it difficult to wrap my head around how to tell a complete story – beginning, middle and end – in so few words, so my ideas tend to be more ‘moments’ which often aren’t as well received. I definitely prefer having breathing room to build a character or two, but flash is still useful for expanding my writing skills.
As I said in my last post, this month is pretty busy with getting new stories ready for contests. For the latest one that I’m preparing for, I came up with one new idea, got it down and then came up with another I liked better so I now have a completed first draft and half of a second story instead of just being finished one! 🙈 Fingers crossed it means two decent stories and not just that the first idea was a distraction from what I needed to get done 😅
Further update will follow at the beginning of next month!
Well, the holiday season is over, having whizzed past as it does every year. This was our first year with a child old enough to be expecting gifts from Santa and he seems to have been satisfied with his haul! It was lovely seeing his excited face and getting to bring the magic of Christmas to his world – as a fantasy writer I’m all for having some magic to light up your childhood.
New Year for us was a quiet one, largely hoping for the kids to go to sleep at a reasonable hour so we could get some board game time in without being too knackered the next day 😴
And now, here we are, already more than a week into January. I’ve given myself a lot to do this month – there are two short story contests that I plan to enter, as well as a novel contest which requires up to 10,000 words, and all three have deadlines before the end of the month 🙈 I don’t really have high hopes for the novel, my most complete novel is an urban fantasy about a traumatised werewolf. There’s the possibility of it having a decent audience when fully finished – if I can snag an agent and publisher and all that jazz – but I’m not sure how likely it is to do well in a contest. I mostly saw the contest as an opportunity to motivate myself to start the editing process, which I never find as fun as the initial writing stage.
In addition to these self imposed deadlines, I’m also starting Keeping in Touch days with work, because my maternity leave is soon coming to an end 😔 Thoughts about work are starting to creep in to my head and it’s no longer distant enough to just forget about. My job can be very rewarding, but it also takes up a lot of headspace and doesn’t always leave much mental energy for anything else. Perhaps that’s why I’m trying to do so much with my writing right now – a last push before work starts distracting me again! I dream of coming into money in some magical way and just being able to give it all up and live in the multiverse that exists in my mind. In the meantime, I guess I just have to keep writing what I can 🙂
You can check out my published work here
Caroline Ashley 