47STORY COMP
Writers’FORUM #222
Fools rush in. No, no I’m sorry.
Ow! Please don’t do that!
Later, when she has yet
again antagonised her captor,
she receives another dose
of punishment, which we
hear about via the excellent
dialogue.
Well, I don’t know how to
explain it better. Maybe if you
listened more closely, you’d ...
Ow, ow! Oh God, don’t do that
please, please it hurts.
Dora foreshadows the story’s
in a nicely understated way.
While trying to explain left
brain, right brain control, the
narrator notices something
that should alarm her were she
more aware of her predicament.
Left brain tries to dictate what
you should and shouldn’t do.
‘Don’t write today,’ it says, ‘you
need to patch that hole in the
garage wall.’ So... what’s the story
with that anyway? Target practice
or something?I loved the ending to this
where the narrator is made
to describe her own murder –
black humour at its best.T
he Complexity of
Simple by Russell Day
is an emotionally
demanding story about
a father who wants nothing
more than to be the centre of
his son’s world, if only for a
day. Eamon feels an outsider
when looking at the strong
bond between his wife and son.In the back seat of the car,
giggling together, Jeanie and
Liam had already become an
independent state.Sadly, Eamon’s attempt to
connect with Liam inadvertently
leads to the boy’s downfall.When riding the helter-skelter
for the fi rst time Eamon had
no idea of the impact it would
have on Liam. His only thought
was that fi nally he and his
young son were a unit.The word ‘they’ had delighted
him. They: him and Liam.Russell’s descriptive powers
are evident when describing
the father’s observation of his
now adult son.Liam’s smell was the musk of
someone too long without sleep.
Nothing worse than that; no sour
tang of stimulants leaking through
skin. He’d inhaled as he leaned
over to put a mug on the table.
Discretely, he’d thought, but Liam
said, ‘It’s all right, Dad, I’m clean.’The dialogue is natural and
heart-breaking. After too long
a gap, and years of dealing
with addiction, it is almostimpossible for father and son
to reconnect, though both
clearly want to do so.‘I just came to see you.’
Liam dropped his gaze and then
tried to fi nd a place to settle it. The
top of the table seemed to interest
him. ‘You look well.’
‘Two years and that’s the best
you can do?’
‘Has it been two years?’This story has characters so
real and settings so beautifully
crafted it is possible to travel
down the helter-skelter with
them. The ending is sad, but
this story moved me so much
I had to include it as a winner.Competition round-up
Revealing relationships
Lorraine Mace explains why she chose this month’s winners
Lorraine is co-author
of The Writer’s ABC
Checklist (Accent
Press) and author of
children’s novel Vlad
the Inhaler (LRP)The importance of
relationshipsEach of this month’s stories
is built around relationships:
Tritos’s family in the fi rst
story; the writing tutor and
disgruntled author in the
second; and the father–son
dynamics in the third. In
all three cases, it is the
credibility of the characters
that enables readers to
immerse themselves in the
lives of others. Try not to
think of your characters in
isolation, but as real people
with real issues, which
means they are interacting
with others. The deeper
the relationship (and not
just romantic or family) the
stronger the storyline will be.