This will (appropriately) be a short one.
Hyp prose needs to be wielded sparingly. It is not suited to intricate descriptions of physical action or physical place. To have the proper effect, it must be set within a sparingly described and fast-paced narrative work.
Consider the length and structure of the gospels. Not even novellas, none of them exceed 20,000 words. Compare today’s fat, ponderous novels that seem to be sold by the pound, yet struggle to tell any meaningful or enduring story.
This opening passage from Lightbringer describes a birth, a death, a suicide, an adoption and the loss of a true name within about 600 words. Setting the emotional tone for the story and its headlong narrative flow, foreshadowing Winstanley’s final confrontation with the terrible demon who hunts him.
P. Julian
3 March 2019
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WINSTANLEY Jones was a strange name but Winnie was not always called by that name. His mother named him Clementine, after the darling of that song, without a thought for the fact that he was a boy, because he was her everything and her light and shade and she knew when she finally saw him what his name was and she had no doubt of it. And when she held him, in those short moments that were allotted her to hold him, she cooed and he burbled and she called him Clementine in her soft voice and said oh Clementine. Oh my darling oh my darling.
Winstanley was the boy’s middle name, and was a thought in honour of his maternal grandfather, who was an unreformed communist in his younger days, and though bitterness had seized him now he was still a collector of working class heroes. Although they were all good men his only favourite was Brave Winstanley, who led his men into the Diggers Revolt until that revolt was put down by evil men and especially Churchmen. Gerrard Winstanley was a righteous man, but he also knew how to write directly from his heart and Grandfather would say that this one thing made all the difference. Grandfather loved to quote Winstanley, especially his edict that the preaching of religion should be punishable by death.
Clementine Winstanley Jones came into the world on a bitter night, and he was held and called My Darling at precisely the same moment that his mother began to haemorrhage savagely from some damage done through giving birth to him. She held him and loved him and that love penetrated his vagrant soul and pinned him down to earth in the very moment she was being released. She soon felt dreamy but put that down to hormones or the fatigue of birth and only when it was very late did she turn to the midwife and say: I’m sorry to be a pain but I am wet down there and I feel very faint. Is it normal for that to happen? With half a gallon of her own blood now soaked into the hard hospital sheets.
Oh they did what they could. There was urgency and the transfusion of blood and even a late hysterectomy in all due desperation. They worked and coaxed her back a few times but in the end her head turned away and poor kind Bonnie Jones just slipped away, despite all of the panic, and her husband watched her pass despite every effort of the doctors and he felt violent nausea and he felt himself utterly undone. He sat with his only love as she grew cold, rocking in his chair and keening softly until a kind nurse brought him tea and said: it is fine if you need to give him up. He said thank you so much in a nasty way and he said that Grandfather could have him, now seeing as how he was named for one of his fool heroes and would she be so kind as to call him and have the child taken away.
When they brought him a phone with his father in law on the line he said: she is gone. And without pausing he said: you and Emma need to take the boy. And Clementine is not his name. The boy is to be called Winstanley. I hope you are happy with that. And he hung up the phone and walked through the night to his newly empty house, and what met him there were horrors and a terrible demon, and although he did not survive the agony of that night it was only on a narrow view that his death could be said to be the work of his own hands.