‘The right look, too,’ says Scott. Gideon is early thirties, short, very slim—neat—with a hipster beard. The world’s smallest publisher, Scott calls him. ‘And fun for the romantic subplot.’

  ‘What? Seriously, you’re not going to have Layla fall in love with…it’s not a romance.’

  ‘Every story needs an unlikely romance.’

  By the time we’ve walked home, I’m tired. And grumpy. Having started out resenting Scott treating the exercise as a game, I’m now begrudging the hard work. And the waste of energy. I haven’t written anything all day, and I’m beginning to feel like Scott’s assistant.

  ‘Brilliant work,’ says Scott as I close the door of my room.

  11

  Scott

  We’d spent three days—an hour or two at a time—working on the synopsis, and I’d begun to sense that Emily was finding it less than stimulating, even against the carefully chosen backdrops of the art gallery, museum and botanical gardens.

  She thrust her arm in front of me to prevent me stepping into the path of a cyclist. ‘Can you imagine Jane Austen ignoring her surroundings? Lost in plot points and inciting incidents and dramatic questions?’

  ‘I don’t know that you can copy the work habits of geniuses. Even if they told you what they were, and you believed them. Better to copy non-geniuses who’ve learned to do it the hard way.’

  That was me. Emily, it seemed, had been born with a natural talent that she only needed to practise. She wasn’t the sort to read a manual. We had a broken dishwasher to prove it.

  Later in the day, I opened the door of her room—cautiously—when she hadn’t emerged for the next stint. Reminded myself that the purpose of the case study was to lift her up, not leave her frustrated and antagonistic.

  ‘There’s no hurry,’ I said. ‘It’s creative work; you can only push it so hard. How about we make it a routine over a pre-dinner drink, away from domestic cares?’

  ‘You want to go to a bar every night?’

  ‘Routine is good. What are you working on?’

  ‘Editing an anthology for my convent class. Which doesn’t exactly satisfy my writing-every-day rule.’

  ‘You know what I think about that. Writing’s only part of being a writer. But if you want to stay in practice, write a short story.’

  ‘You think that’s a good idea? I’m worried I’d be avoiding my novel.’ She said it like she was asking for permission. As if she wasn’t already avoiding the novel by doing an anthology and a case study.

  ‘I already said: take a break; do something different.’

  In that spirit, we took a night off the synopsis, but went to the bar anyway. And discovered that talking and writing about guns had triggered another idea.

  ‘There’s a guy at Grandma’s nursing home who’s got dementia. Most of what he says doesn’t make sense, but he tells this one story over and over. He was in the Second World War and he describes, vividly, an enemy soldier running towards him. The soldier’s just a kid—but my guy must have been young too. He shoots him. That’s all, that’s the story he tells, but…from his whole life, this is the one thought—the one story—that he’s left with. But it’s just an anecdote, and I’ve been trying to think how I could extend it into a story.’

  ‘Not easy. The story’s in him holding on to the memory, rather than the event itself. Maybe flesh out the event and then the memory is the way you end.’

  ‘That’s what I was thinking. But your mash-up idea… I’ve got another gun story. My uncle’s a farmer, and he’s surrounded by these hobby farmers who don’t have guns or don’t want to use them to put down a sick animal. So, they’d go to him.’

  ‘Past tense.’

  ‘Past tense. One day, a horse moved as he was shooting—anyway it didn’t go cleanly, and he was so distressed he couldn’t do it anymore. He’s this tough old farmer, but… People are so cavalier about guns, yet in reality…So, I’m thinking of telling the two stories together.’

  ‘Not merging them into one? That’s not really a mash-up. More a pairing.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘No: it matters. Rule of three.’

  ‘Rule of three?’

  ‘Three men walk into a bar. Not two, not four. Tell three stories.’

  ‘I don’t have three. Unless I add the terrorist one, and I don’t want to mix in fiction. Not complete fiction.’

  ‘That’s why you’ve got me. When I was twelve or thirteen, there was a kid who had an air gun, which he wasn’t allowed to use without his dad around. I was at his house, and my mate and I persuaded him to get it out. My mate loaded the gun and lined up this little blackbird sitting on the lawn, and…bang. I don’t think any of us—him included—had thought it through, didn’t actually expect he’d hit it, and when he did, we were just…horrified. Freaked out. He went up to it and it was still thrashing about, and he shot it from close range…’

  ‘Ugh. Boys.’

  ‘I’m not finished. The guy who shot the bird: we stayed friends while I was at the school, but we never talked about it. Then I moved and we lost touch. But a few months ago, he turned up at my book event in Albert Park. We hadn’t seen each other for…twenty years, more…and the first thing he says: “Remember the bird.”’

  ‘So now you want co-authorship?’ She said it lightly, but she was testing.

  ‘No credit for ideas. Also, I’m your partner. Partners help each other. Try to. But now you’ve got to write it. Call it Three Shots.’

  ‘Working title is Old Men and Guns. Have you got one—a title—for our case study?’

  ‘That can be our dinner topic.’

  We picked up a pizza on the way home and settled on A Bigger Cause as our working title—ABC for short. The ideas kept flowing, though I knew from experience that any which arrived after the third glass were unlikely to survive scrutiny in the morning.

  12

  Piper

  It’s a little weird being in Emily’s home. Scott and Emily’s, I remind myself, and it’s Scott who has invited me to meet here. But there’s a frisson from occupying some of Emily’s space, and I look for a word to describe it. Intruding. Trespassing. Transgressing.

  Scott leads me past the downstairs room that I guess is Emily’s study—and catches me sneaking a look.

  ‘Emily’s out, but this is where she works.’

  Scott misreads my disappointment. ‘If you’d like to go somewhere else…a coffee shop or something…’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I say, maybe too quickly, and he continues up the stairs.

  I’m glad I joined Emily’s community class. She seems okay with it. Yesterday, she gave us an exercise on structure and synopses, which half the participants, including me, thought was amazing. The other half wanted to do what we always did: workshop two-thousand-word pieces that were neither complete stories in themselves nor part of anything bigger.

  I’m excited about the writing I’ve brought to show Scott—my response to the exercise he gave me, redrafted after Emily’s feedback. He begins to read, then looks up, a little strangely, as if something’s wrong. ‘This is going to take me a few minutes. Grab yourself a tea if you like. Or a coffee, but you’ll need to clean the plunger.’

  I don’t want either, but can’t deny myself the opportunity to go downstairs. I’m not snooping, just getting a sense of the space (student-level messy: empty pizza box, wine glasses that haven’t made it to the dishwasher, an A4 spiral-bound notebook). A dirty coffee cup inscribed Enzo & Sophia 25 years. Scott’s parents, maybe. I guess he could be Italian.

  I’m confused by his reaction to my essay. He only had time to read a few sentences. When I return with a glass of water, he seems to have finished: not exactly a close read.

  ‘Was it your idea to tell it from the terrorist’s point of view?’ he says.

  ‘I thought that was what you asked me to do. To give voice to the voiceless.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I’d forgotten. Thanks for the reminder. I’ve had a lot on.’

  ‘Is it okay?’

  ‘It does the job. It’s workmanlike prose, and that’s not an insult. There aren’t any creamy clouds or creamy… anything. It doesn’t draw attention to itself, or read like bad poetry. That’s about all I’m qualified to say about anyone’s prose. You write better than me, but so do a lot of people who don’t get published.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘People get published because they come up with great stories. So let’s work on that. One tip I’d give you is to start later and finish earlier. It’s a screenwriting trick: you can usually take the first and last sentence out of a scene and it’ll read tighter. Same at each end of a story.’

  ‘Lose the bit where they get in the van?’

  ‘And wake up in the morning and comb their hair and have breakfast. I know you didn’t say that. Which is good. Storytelling is about selecting the moments that matter.’

  ‘And the reflection at the end? I thought that was important. To explain how he’s feeling.’

  ‘We know how he’s going to be feeling. You’ve done a good job setting it up. Less is more.’

  ‘Thanks. And I’m okay with writing for…the general public.’ Since our last meeting, I’ve done some soul searching. I’ve decided that reaching millions of people who need to hear the message is more important than winning a Pulitzer.

  He smiles. He doesn’t just like to be right; he needs to explain how right he is. Though he comes across more as enthusiastic than arrogant. ‘Beautiful prose doesn’t equal depth,’ he says. ‘Or insight. Or power. All it equals is beautiful prose. But have you had any ideas for your novel?’

  ‘I was thinking, I’d like to develop the piece you just read.’ I’ve figured out the reason for his odd reaction: he hadn’t expected me to write it from the terrorist’s point of view, even though that was what I thought he’d asked for. Which is good, because it makes it my idea.

  ‘You sure?’ he says. ‘You really want to glorify a terrorist?’

  ‘I want comfortable, privileged readers to relate to people who are so desperate to right some wrong, or in such terrible circumstances, that they don’t have the luxury of worrying about…collateral damage. Like in a war. I mean, there was an actual war on terror, so…’

  ‘It’s not easy to get readers to identify with an unsympathetic character. I’m not sure you entirely pull it off in the piece you’ve shown me.’

  ‘I thought you might have some techniques…’

  ‘Well, there are a few things you can do…’

  I don’t need to know this stuff right now, but the self-assuredness—and enthusiasm for my idea—is back, so I let him go.

  ‘What’s working in your piece is that we’re in the shooter’s head. And there’s a degree of fascination that keeps us reading. What you can also do is pat the dog or save the cat, as they say—have them do something that signals they’re decent. Or pit them against even less likeable antagonists…’

  ‘American cops.’

  ‘Exactly. But the best approach is to give them a tough challenge. Passion for a goal that’s hard to achieve—everybody relates to that.’ He stops. ‘But this exact story…’

  ‘I’m not asking you to agree with my themes,’ I say.

  He sits back in his chair.

  I try again. ‘I’m not saying I support terrorism, but I want people to get beyond just labelling behaviour they don’t understand as evil…’

  He puts his hand up to shut me down. ‘I hear you. But let’s do some theory and then we’ll look at applying it to our exercise. For now, that’s what it is: an exercise.’

  I let it go. What can he do to stop me?

  ‘Every conventional story has a beginning, a middle and an end—though, as Jean-Luc Godard said, not necessarily in that order.’ I nod as though I recognise the name, and he goes on, lecturing. ‘Which leads us to the three-act structure.’

  ‘I know a little about that.’ Thanks to yesterday’s writing class.

  ‘Well, good then. How about the dramatic question?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘It’s what keeps the reader reading—especially when the going gets dull, which ideally it wouldn’t, but…’

  He lays it on me, his audience of one, even standing up and walking around as he talks. There should always be some question or jeopardy; the overarching dramatic question may change from act to act. It’s not as though my teachers have ignored this, not completely, anyway, but they haven’t been so scientific about it. It’s like sex education, when you’re told about the mechanics but not the stuff that matters. And people were doing sex for millions of years without sex education. Why am I thinking about sex?

  He looks at his watch: we’re half an hour over.

  ‘All right,’ he says. ‘How about I set you another exercise? Something different?’

  Now I push back. ‘I was supposed to bring a concept and work on it. I don’t want to jump around. You’ve really helped with ideas for making the terrorist relatable.’

  ‘It’s not going to be easy. And this is your first novel. That’s one of my concerns.’

  ‘I’m thinking readers will sympathise if I can make their cause big enough, something anyone would agree with—starving children, genocide…climate change.’

  13

  Scott

  ‘Somewhere in a city in…California…we meet a young woman named Layla McHugh.’ I was improvising, fleshing out the synopsis on the fly.

  Emily interrupted. ‘Why California?’

  ‘Anywhere in the US. It’s our biggest market. Lots of famous cities beginning with different letters.’

  ‘What about American readers who are interested in other parts of the…don’t worry. And McHugh?’

  ‘Does it sound all right?’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  I was happy with ‘okay’. Names are tricky. Abdullah or Reiffel would have drawn attention for the wrong reasons.

  We continued in this vein for an hour, Emily questioning every addition. We’d become the bar’s most regular customers.

  I’d done some thinking about Piper, and decided to wait and see. Her protagonist was male and she didn’t have the alphabetical cities. Those distinctions would likely be enough to send the two stories in different directions—climate change notwithstanding. If not, and if both stories got finished, we’d negotiate something.

  When I’d finished the summary, with Layla and her driver, David, dead in their van, Emily shook her head.

  ‘This is it? You’re saying we’re done?’

  She, who wrote (and let her students write) without any synopsis at all, was implying that our four-page document, plus extensive verbal embellishments, was a bit thin.

  ‘It’s not the final version.’

  ‘Pleased to hear it. Not sure something good happens quite nails the midpoint.’

  ‘Just a placeholder till we find something better. Good writing is rewriting. And good synopsis writing is synopsis rewriting.’

  ‘Not the punchiest slogan.’

  ‘If you want to give it another pass…’

  ‘I’ve got the idea. I just thought it wasn’t that good a basis for going forward.’

  ‘For going forward, it is. But we’re nowhere near ready to start the draft. Lots to do before that. Fun and not time-consuming. How’s the three-shots story going?’

  ‘Done.’

  ‘Fantastic.’

  ‘I reworked the kid who saw the bird get shot. He started off as you. Now he’s a bit less full of himself.’

  ‘I had to be full of myself when I was at school. You go to a new school, you either get on top of it or…’

  I stopped and sipped my drink, to let her take the conversation back.

  But she said, ‘Go on.’

  ‘You know we moved around a lot. Country towns—you give crappy financial advice to the publican and you’re stuffed.’

  ‘You really don’t have much time for your father.’

  ‘I bailed him out. We bailed him out. As evidenced by our bank balance. But no, I owe my mum.’

  ‘Funny, she basically devoted her life to you kids, which is not so different to mine devoting her life to my father’s job, yet…’

  ‘My mum did what parents do. Good parents. And you’re too hard on your mother. If she inspires the Great Australian Novel, you have to forgive her.’

  ‘It’s not about forgiving her. It’s about what she sacrificed…’

  The waiter cleared our snack plates, and I took the opportunity to pull a wad of index cards from my pocket.

  ‘The dreaded cards,’ said Emily.

  ‘The dreaded cards.’ She’d seen mine laid out on the floor and stacked on my desk while I was writing The Assassin’s Mistress. Every screenwriter does cards. There are computer apps, but cards are tactile and portable and support collaboration—not that the last matters much to most novelists.

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘you need to carry a few of these with you in your handbag.’

  ‘I can’t use my notebook?’

  ‘You could, but I’d make you copy it onto cards at the end of the day. Easier to do it once. And you’ll feel like a screenwriter.’

  ‘Not a selling point.’ She was smiling. ‘What exactly am I supposed to write on them?’

  ‘Scenes—and before you say that’s a screenwriting term, narratology recognises scenes as…’

  ‘Can we call them passages?’

  ‘Fine, but try to think of scenes as they’d play in a movie. Real-time action rather than reflections and description. Layla shoots her first victim. Emily’s mother walks out. Emily writes the final sentence of her bestseller and dies.’

  ‘Scott pushes his luck. Scott orders another drink before Emily strangles him.’

  ‘Perfect. Probably all one scene, but we’re not being fussy. Just stay away from Scott reflects on the risks of drinking and The veins in Emily’s hands were like snakes in the snow. So, let’s do all the cards we can now, straight from the synopsis.’

  We had another drink and created twenty cards, and Emily couldn’t hide that she was enjoying it.

 

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