All language subtitles for MasterClass Neil Gaiman Teaches The Art of Storytelling - 08Short Fiction Case Study- “March Tale”

Some years ago, I got a call from

BlackBerry. Um, actually the call came

from an advertising agency and they

said, "Will I come in and talk to them?"

I said, "Sure."

and they said BlackBerry are launching

their first smartphone

and uh they want to do something to do

with art and they want you to do

something to do with art. I said, "Well,

do I have to do it with a Blackberry?"

And they said, "No, you just have to do

a thing.

What would you like to do?" And I said,

"Well, I have an idea that's a bit mad."

I said, "So, what I'd love to do

is something that basically is the

21st century equivalent of when Harlon

Ellison used to write short stories in

the windows of bookshops and he would

set up his typewriter and a chair in the

window and he would work."

and he loved the idea that people were

seeing him working and seeing what was

actually happening and that seeing you

him staring and and writing and not

writing.

So I put together a bunch of questions,

12 questions. They were things like um

why is January dangerous?

What's the strangest thing you've seen

in July?

What did you lose in November? just just

questions that went out. What I didn't

want was people suggesting titles for

stories, suggesting ideas for stories.

What I wanted was just to take a

beautiful

little idea

and go, "Okay, that's a starting point."

And for people to realize that anything

could be a starting point.

So, my question that I asked for March

was, "What historical figure does March

remind you of?" And I thought, "Well,

that'll be a fun question because I'll

get something that's got a person in

it." And the reply

um was beautiful. The one that I picked

just said, "Anne Bonnie and her rep

scallion heart dreaming for a ship of

her very own." I found a notebook.

I really liked this particular notebook

because it's just a blank book.

Um,

it's bound.

I think it may even have been a

misprinted book with uh no text in.

And then

I wrote

a calendar of tales at the front.

I wrote down all of the months in order,

and then I began to write. So it was too

warm in the great house, and so the two

of them went out onto the porch. A

spring storm was brewing far to the

west. Already the flicker of lightning,

and the unpredictable chilly gusts blew

about them, and cooled them. They sat

decorously on the porch swing, the

mother and the daughter, and they talked

of when the woman's husband would be

home, for he had taken ship with a

tobacco crop to far away England. Mary,

who was 13, so pretty, so easily

startled, said, "I do declare. I am glad

that all the pirates have gone to the

gallows, and father will come back to us

safely." Her mother's smile was gentle,

and it did not fade as she said, "I do

not care to talk about pirates, Mary."

She was dressed as a boy when she was a

girl to cover up her father's scandal.

She did not wear a woman's dress until

she was on the ship with her father and

with her mother, his serving girl

mistress, whom he would call wife in the

new world. And they were on their way

from Cork to the Carolinas.

She fell in love for the first time on

that journey, enveloped in unfamiliar

cloth, clumsy in her strange skirts. She

was 11, and it was no sailor who took

her heart, but the ship itself. Anne

would sit in the boughs, watching the

gray Atlantic roll beneath them,

listening to the gulls scream and

feeling Ireland recede with each moment,

taking with it all the old lies.

She left her love when they landed with

regret, and even as her father prospered

in the new land, she dreamed of the

creek and slap of the sails. Her father

was a good man. He had been pleased when

she had returned and did not speak of

her time away, the young man whom she

had married, how he had taken her to

Providence. She'd returned to her family

3 years after with a baby at her breast.

"Her husband had died," she said, and

although tales and rumors abounded, even

the sharpest of the gossiping tongues

did not think to suggest that Anne Riley

was the pirate girl, Anne Bonnie, Red

Rackom's first mate.

If you had fought like a man, you would

not have died like a dog. Those have

been Anne Bonnie's last words to the man

who put the baby in her belly. Or so

they said.

Mrs. Riley watched the lightning play

and heard the first rumble of distant

thunder. Her hair was graying now, and

her skin just as fair as that of any

local woman of property. "It sounds like

cannon fire," said Mary. Anne had named

her for her own mother and for her best

friend in the years she was away from

the great house. "Why would you say such

things?" asked her mother primly. "In

this house we do not speak of cannon

fire."

The first of the March rain fell then,

and Mrs. Riley surprised her daughter by

getting up from the porch swing and

leaning into the rain so it splashed her

face like sea spray. It was quite out of

character for a woman of such

respectability.

As the rain smashed her face, she

thought herself there. The captain of

her own ship, the canonade around them,

the stench of the gunpowder smoke

blowing on the salt breeze. Her ship's

deck would be painted red to mask the

blood in battle. The wind would fill her

billowing canvas with a snap as loud as

a cannon's roar as they prepared to

board the merchant ship and take

whatever they wished, jewels or coin and

burning kisses with her first mate. when

the madness was done.

Mother said Mary, I do believe you must

be thinking of a great secret. You have

such a strange smile on your face.

Silly girl, Aushla, said her mother. And

then she said, I was thinking of your

father. She spoke the truth and the

March winds blew madness about them.

What's lovely about that

is I could absolutely see that as the

end of a novel or I could see it as the

beginning of a novel

because we have two characters

and you have a huge and glorious problem

here which is you have a pirate queen,

pirate captain who pled her belly. You

were allowed to do that. uh you could

escape the death sentence if you were

pregnant and she was pregnant

and has disappeared back into real life.

She has a lot to lose if people discover

that she was a pirate captain. If they

discover she was a pirate,

she also

has a lot that's hidden and she has

abilities that are obviously not being

used on a plantation.

selling tobacco, growing tobacco

in March back

for the revolution.

So,

you have a really kind of fun and

wonderful setup. And yes, it could be an

end. You could start the story with

young Anne Bonnie um being dressed as a

boy by her father. You could tell her

story and go through and you could

actually end at the point where I end as

if this really is the end of a of a

novel or you could begin something here

and all you have to do is to put her in

difficulties

and you have her you have a daughter you

have a husband coming back just bring in

somebody from the past and now we have a

plot and that feels like it has legs. I

don't know who that person would be. I

don't know what would happen. But I do

know that she risks losing everything.

And that immediately puts you in a

fantastic place to tell a story with.

So let's say I wanted to turn that

story, that March story

into a novel.

I love the idea of respectable Anne

Riley and her lovely little daughter

Mary and their husband coming back from

England and what's going to happen to

them? What's going to happen when

somebody turns up and throws everything

into jeopardy? The first thing I would

probably do is go, okay, I don't think

that's enough yet

because I don't know what it's about. Do

you remember when I was talking earlier

when I said, "Okay, you can have your

plot. You can have some characters. You

can have an idea. You can have a

starting place, but what's it about?"

And you start thinking about this and

you go, "Okay, well, it's probably about

secrets.

It's probably about gender roles

as well."

Those those two things sound pretty

real. It can be about the romance of

piracy and the reality of piracy. That's

also feels like something it's about.

Um, but really I love the idea that it's

about a competent woman in danger

defending herself and everything she

loves. That feels like, okay, that that

that feels like that could be a good

about.

all of that other stuff that feels real.

So, I need to put her into danger, which

means the person who comes back into her

life

needs to be

somehow

um not only imperiling

the the safe life that she has,

but has to be much much more dangerous.

So you go right, let's bring somebody in

to the story that you know the first

thing that's going to happen is that

somebody is going to come in from her

past and it's going to be somebody

who she is not pleased to see.

That feels right.

I don't know at this point necessarily

whether they mean her good or ill.

It might be interesting

if you're going to do that kind of thing

to have whoever is the real threat to

her still not arriving. This let's we're

at the beginning of a book here. So, if

we're going to tell something

novel-wise, then whoever comes into the

story here,

isn't our the person who is really going

to be dangerous? Isn't going to be the

um

either the pirate from her past or the

law officer from her past or the captain

of the ship who captured her before.

Those are things that aren't yet ready

to come onto the stage, but you

something somebody needs to come into

town almost as a herald

and tell you that things are going to go

wrong.

And the other thing that you go is,

well, we have Mary, we have a beautiful

daughter, we have the romance of piracy,

and much more than being beautiful,

she's innocent.

and that and has been kept innocent by

her mother. And she has no idea who her

mother is. She has no idea what her

mother is capable of,

which means that something we're going

to do somewhere in the story. Probably

not immediately again, but it feels like

we are going to have to put Mary in

danger.

We're almost definitely, it feels like

you're going to have to have um An Riley

go and rescue her and rescue her by

becoming the Anne Bonnie that she has

put away. So, you're not when you're

plotting, you're asking yourself what

could happen, what feels right, what

will be satisfying

in a book like that. The things I've

said aren't a plot yet. They're saying,

"I think this should happen. I think

this should happen. I think this kind of

thing is is going to happen a little bit

further down the line. I have no idea

who lives and who dies. I have no idea

how people survive, how dark it's going

to get.

But what I do know

is that

um it's going to get dark because a book

of this kind has to get dark. And

there's a lovely point where

it's like forking paths.

When you begin

any story, you have an infinite number

of forking paths.

Every decision, every word, every

paragraph

is a fork.

By the time you're threequarters of the

way through, you have a very limited

number of forking paths left. And by the

time you get to the end of the story,

there really only one, maybe two, maybe

three paths you can go down. And you

happen to know what they are and where

they are. And so you keep making your

choices, but your choices lead you to

inevitable places where you have to be.