Refraction: Combining Contemporary and Historical Fiction

Today on our blog we have a guest post from Jennifer Harris with a fascinating insight into the writing process behind her novel, The Devil Comes To Bonn. And we’re delighted that the book was written on our Novel Creator Course, a year-long online course with support and mentoring, plus the option for a lower cost un-mentored version too.

Straddling past and present via backstory is a standard novel writing tool, but some novels continue the past-present dichotomy throughout, therefore, requiring readers to jump between stories. Well known examples are Restless(2006) by William Boyd and Sarah’s Key (2008) by Tatiana de Rosnay. 

I thought frequently about these novels while writing The Devil Comes to Bonn (2023). I do not know how Boyd would articulate his technical aim in writing Restless, but mine was refraction. I wanted readers to read the contemporary story in The Devil Comes to Bonn as refracted or angled through the historical story.

My 2015 story of Stella, a woman who is bullied at a conference in Germany, was planned to be angled through the experiences of Hildegard, a woman who in 1941 finds herself pushed into the position of chambermaid to Hitler in one of his favourite hotels. By contrast, in Restless, the daughter discovers the historic story of her mother and thus must cope with the unravelling of the life she thought that she lived. In the other example, Sarah’s Key, the present resolves and heals the past as the contemporary story focuses on discovering what happened long ago. The two timelines of these novels have clear narrative links.

At first sight, the 2015 and 1941 stories in The Devil Comes to Bonn have little in common, but the differing responses by the women protagonists to life challenges are the links. In my novel, the women characters have different reactions to what has happened to them and make different life choices. There is no resolution. The refractive angling continues beyond the end of the novel. One woman seems honourable and the other not — or at best confused rather than dishonourable — but at the end who has taken more life leaps? Who has remade herself? 

Refraction in writing distorts and angles and thus creates new ways of seeing, sliding us sometimes subtly between stories, and sometimes brashly. Writing with refraction as my chief tool, meant that neither of the stories in The Devil Comes to Bonn could be told in a straightforward manner; they interrupt each other constantly, sometimes only a page separates them. The aim of the sudden halt of one story and jolting re-starting of the other creates a space for readers to ponder beyond the compulsion of the narrative drive of ‘what next?’  Refraction is a technique of rupture which propels readers into thought; the theoretical aim is for readers to use each story to reflect on the other.  This is not to say, however, that as a writer I want readers to be emotionally detached — far from it.  I want readers to feel strong emotional attachment to relatable characters. 

In Restless, Boyd brought the two timelines together via the plot as the main characters, mother and daughter, confront the antagonist. In The Devil Comes to Bonn, the two storylines come together differently: first via having the two protagonists talk to each other, and secondly by having them overlap in places. They meet repeatedly in the contemporary 2015 story on the shore of the River Rhine. Then they overlap in one room in Hitler’s hotel — but seventy-four years apart. 

I wanted the slightly secondary 1941 story to be as compelling as the modern story without overly reducing the presence on the page of the main protagonist, Stella. That was an on-going challenge. The two women protagonists have well-meaning, loving husbands who overstep loving relationships into the coercive. I use the historical-contemporary refraction to illuminate the long history of moral ambiguity that women often find themselves in — apparently loved and coerced. How should they respond?

My novel also contains references to other historical periods: ancient Roman settlement on the Rhine, and Japanese enslavement of Koreans during World War II. It was a risky leap to use these apparently extraneous historical times as plot points because of the possibility of diluting the central stories. I enjoyed the challenge of keeping readers close to the main protagonist, Stella, while she had life altering emotional responses to historical periods beyond either of the two timelines. With the main character being an historian, it was not unreasonable that she might think beyond the contemporary everyday. 

No-one has yet said to me that it is outside the scope of the intensity of a novel to invoke several other eras. I look forward to more responses.


About Jennifer Harris:

I write literary fiction inspired by the historic environment—not historical fiction, but fiction set in the contemporary era that responds to the past, remembered either publicly in monuments and memorials, or in subtle, private ways. My PhD is in Cultural Heritage theory and I have lectured in and researched cultural heritage and museums for many years. I have run a small museum, and worked as a journalist in Australia and London. I am from Western Australia and have lived also in France and the UK. In 2020 I relocated to Seattle in the spectacular Pacific Northwest of the USA. I enjoy water colour painting, hiking, skiing, dogs – and, of course, visiting heritage sites and museums. Website: https://www.jenniferharriswriter.com

Sept 2023 Monthly Micro Longlist

Many thanks to everyone who sent a story this month. It’s a very quiet month and only 57 entries received. Many of them are anecdotes, or jokes, rather than stories. We know the word count is small but we do need a sense of movement, and a story arc. We really encourage you to take advantage of the free trial next month to attend the new Monthly Micro workshop Debbi is running! Or you can sign up now and watch the recordings of the past 2 workshops she ran.

That said, we also read some fab stories and they are on our longlist. The cash prizes this month are £62 for 1st place and £41 for second.

Longlisted Stories

  • A Beginner’s Guide to Displacement
  • Cycle of Love
  • Hindsight
  • Home by a Different Road
  • Humanity
  • I Am Used
  • Instruction manual for ‘fitting in’ at your new school
  • Meeting Point
  • My name was different
  • Needs Must
  • Quiet
  • Shades of Grey
  • Tainted Love, Top of the Pops, Sunny View Rest Home 1981
  • The Box of Fingered LongingTainted Love, Top of the Pops, Sunny View Rest Home 1981
  • The Measure of a Man’s Worth
  • Two boys, one book, in Jim Crow’s Jackson
  • Why My Big Sister Won ‘The City of The Future’ Art Competition
  • Your Time Is Running Wild

July 2023 Monthly Micro Winners

Well done again to all who made it through to the shortlist this month and congratulations to our winners! Yet again someone has scooped a cash prize and the People’s Prize!

First Prize: The day after the moon landing, a dry-eyed GI bride stands next to an open casket in Clovis, New Mexico by Anne Soilleux

Why we chose it: Love the subtle approach to the prompt, the fantastic imagery and lovely sensory writing.

Second Prize and People’s Prize: The Net Worth of Mary-Jane Casey by Claire Travers Smith

Why we chose it: Another great take on the prompt and it’s sad, poignant and full of love.


Shortlisted Stories

  • All the things Beth from the corner shop told me when she first saw my bruises: by Eleanor Luke – Read it here
  • Because…their faces never betray how they really feel by Sharon Boyle – Read it here
  • Da Always Said He Would Take me Shrimping by Katie Holloway – Read it here
  • Diamonds are a girl’s best friend by Fiona Dignan – Read it here
  • Elsie Bickerstaffe’s Window by Alison Wassell – Read it here
  • How to tell my father I want to be an accountant by Fiona Dignan – Read it here
  • Study of an Empty Children’s Play Park After Summer Rain by Mairead Robinson – Read it here
  • The Making of a Militant by Kathryn Ratzko – Read it here

Anne and Claire win the cash prizes and Claire also wins a ticket to the next Online Flash Fest!

We have a new workshop on the first Sunday of the month related to this competition for our community members to sharpen up their micro writing skills and get the prompt ahead of it going live on the website the next day.

This comp doesn’t run in August so we’ll be back in September with the next prompt. The workshop will be at 19.30 UK time on 3rd September. You can join the community on a free trial to test us out! Info here.

July 2023 Monthly Micro Shortlist

Vote for your favourite from these fab stories to win the surprise People’s Prize. Our judging team are busy re-reading to choose the winners of the cash prizes. Voting is open until 23.59 (UK time) on 24th July 2023. Results will be announced on 25th. Good luck everyone! 


The Day After the Moon Landing, a Dry-eyed GI Bride Stands Next to an Open Casket in Clovis, New Mexico

The mortician has made him smile, so Sheila knows he’s definitely dead. She breathes in the smothering incense of lilies, catching a whiff of embalming fluid as her wailing, black-mantilla’d mother-in-law jostles her out of the way. No-one from England came.

She’s remembering how they met, crushed together in those drab village hall dances, Eddie spinning yarns in primary colours – cobalt skies, eternal sunshine, rich red earth. He gave her nylons and she said yes. They felt like silk. If only she’d known they were synthetic, so easily ripped to shreds.

High above, a plane flies east, heading for the ocean.


Because … their faces never betray how they really feel

The psychiatrist asks them to draw an animal they ‘identify with’.

Delores doesn’t want to draw. She wants to leave. But Ma has placed her here, and trapped folk do as they’re told.

She could draw an eagle to peck out Ma’s eyes; a boa to splinter Ma’s spine; a bull to smash Ma’s bones; a scorpion to barb, a hippo to squash, a bear to tear, a kangaroo to KO, an alligator to roll and sink and drown.

She draws a kitten.

‘Why a kitten, Delores?’

Because…

Because…

‘Because they’re sweet and wholesome like Ma says I should be.’  


The Net Worth of Mary-Jane Casey

Mary-Jane has a daily allowance. Whatever remains at bedtime is hers and hers alone.

The first outgoing is at breakfast: milk-spilled uniforms spell school gate meltdowns, emergency loads of washing. By lunchtime she’ll be spent.

Afternoon expenses are forgotten gym kits, party reminders, the doctor saying it’s back. Must also account for coffee, cake, crying.

Dinner’s cindered lasagne is a mistake Mary-Jane cannot afford. She lets him have his way to claw back from red to black. 

At night Mary-Jane balances the books on the bedroom ceiling. Forever indebted, always at a loss. 

Such is the cost of loving crisis.


Study of an Empty Children’s Play Park After Summer Rain

There’s a creaking swing, swaying gently. Long metal slide glazed with rain. A climbing frame, its cargo net sagging. 

She cartwheels in through the gate, backflips, lands it, skips to the swing, but he’s there, paws gripping chains. Fox-face, agate eyes gleaming beneath dark hood. Dirty jeans. She stands still. Uncertain.

‘She went to the park,’ her mother says, ‘to play, before dinner.’

The policemen nod, search, but there’s nothing; damp dandelion clocks and broad-leaved docks, lone swing, silver slide, wet climbing frame, cargo net dripping. 

‘She went to the park,’ her mother says, ‘for half an hour, before dinner.’  


Da Always Said He Would Take me Shrimping

Uncle Jim brought me once; he had this salt-stiff net, repaired with stitches like Mam’s arm that time. When I slipped he didn’t let me fall. I hauled my catch, feeling powerful as that sea-tasting wind. Those shrimps flipping about had so much life; Uncle Jim showed me how to grab the sopping mesh so they couldn’t escape. That made me queasy. They had spiteful jabby bits; could stick up for themselves. But they stopped writhing soon enough. I didn’t expect them to be grey as Da’s face on Sunday mornings. He’ll never get the chance to take me now. 


Diamonds are a girl’s best friend

She becomes my unwitting companion during fresher’s week.  I watch her from my dorm window as she shivers under the shimmering streetlight. I gaze at the gleam of skin peeping through the rhombus ridges of her fish-netted thighs. She stands apart from the other girls. A loner too.

I keep watch as she enters the dirty slits of punter’s cars and check she returns to her orange spotlight. That’s what friends are for. To keep watch. 

Some nights, I count the diamond holes in her tights and wonder, if she glanced up, would she see diamonds or holes in me.


How to tell my father I want to be an accountant

My father’s fingers are sequinned with the scales of his labour. On the quay, he ices his haul, the herrings’ eyes blank as amnesia.

The nets have trawled too long. This is a village of decline, of relics and rusted pots. I dream of cities landlocked in the bounty of concrete and glass. Where my fingers work the keys of different nets. Where data shoals like quicksilver across the continents. The haul of net profit.

My father stares at the desert dunes of sea, turns to me, tells me he already knows the last of the boats have come in.


Elsie Bickerstaffe’s Window

Mother judged other women by their nets, and Elsie Bickerstaffe’s naked windows told her all she needed to know. Elsie’s too-short skirts showed more than was decent as she leaned into the fishman’s van. She reeled him in with head-tilted smiles and the way she caressed his fingers when she took her change. Before long, he was slipping her extra fillets.

“That bay window’s like an aquarium” Mother said, peering through her snow-white nylon as Elsie wound octopus tentacles around her catch. Mother bought her fish from the market after that, and stopped wearing stockings and suspenders on Wednesday afternoons.


The Making of a Militant

She found the bird under the tree, dying, its leg broken by the netting. She shouted that she didn’t like cherries anyway. Her dad laughed, said it was just a sparrow, then went back to reading his paper.

The next day she took scissors from the kitchen drawer and dragged the heavy stepladder from the shed. She placed it under the tree. 

Her mum found her on the lawn. By the time her dad got home, her leg was in plaster.

When she looked out of the window in the morning, she saw the netting had gone, and she smiled.


All the things Beth from the corner shop told me when she first saw my bruises:

Teach the bairn to get help!

I dangle Ollie’s tiny fingertip over the keypad. ‘Press nine three times and shout police if Daddy makes Mummy play sleeping lions.’

My boy’s scared of lions, but I tell him it’s the hunter he should fear.

Build a safety net!

Beth’s hidden our passports. Keeps a spare set of keys to my house. She gives me inflated receipts for the stuff I buy. I’ve enough money to last a month without him.

Keep your car fuelled!

Because when our day comes, my boy and me, we’re gonna sprint like cheetahs, never looking back!


Please vote using the form below. If you have any problems with the form, you can also vote via this link: https://form.responster.com/IYodIK

Monthly Micro Longlist July 23

Many thanks to everyone who sent in a story for the NET prompt. We received 71 paid entries so the prizes fund is £77 for first prize and £51 for second. The People’s Prize will be announced with the results. Some absolutely amazing titles this month! And after launching our Monthly Micro workshop the day before submissions opened we have seen a real difference in the standard and scope of stories being submitted!

Longlisted Stories

  • A Mother Gives her Daughter Indra’s Net
  • All the things Beth from the corner shop told me when she first saw my bruises
  • Because…their faces never betray how they really feel
  • Catch of the Day
  • Despicable
  • Da Always Said He Would Take me Shrimping
  • Diamonds are a girl’s best friend
  • Drone Eat Drone
  • Elsie Bickerstaffe’s Window
  • Escape
  • Humans are for life, not just for Christmas!
  • How to tell my father I want to be an accountant
  • Internet Searches Since Your Diagnosis
  • Invasion
  • Manumission
  • Never Speak of This
  • Nodding Off
  • Sport on a Wednesday afternoon in winter
  • Study of an Empty Children’s Play Park After Summer Rain
  • The day after the moon landing, a dry-eyed GI bride stands next to an open casket in Clovis, New Mexico
  • The house where the man on trial for murder lives
  • The Lepidopterist
  • The Lepidopterist and the Common Cabbage White
  • The Making of a Militant
  • The Net Worth of Mary-Jane Casey
  • Things My Granny Taught Me
  • Trying to Find a Memory of You in the Dream-Catcher Archive

Good luck everyone – the shortlist will be announced on Monday when voting will open so you can vote for your favourite!

Meet The Writer – Shrutidhora P Mohor

Today on our blog we have a Q & A with writer Shrutidhora P Mohor who is a contributor to our final competition anthology, Swan Song

Can you tell us a little about your story in the Swan Song anthology?

Salt Colonies is a story which developed as a dream out of a relationship lived largely in my dreams. It is a story of an unstructured, undefined, asymmetrical relationship between a man as a mentor, and a younger woman as a learner/ devotee/ giver, the latter’s enthusiasm for love and life reflected in her passion for art as well just as the mentor’s emotional indifference towards life in general and towards her in particular is captured by his coldness for art even though he is a brilliant creator.

I have always been mesmerised by the dialectics of unequal relationships, where one partner has been a disappointed recipient, a seeker and yet a giver too, strapped in a need to give and receive at the same time. 

In this story we find them located in the wilderness of a deserted sea shore, ploughing through the mystery and pathos of an uninhabited seaside, an imagery which came to me from one of my holiday trips and the beach-side restaurant quite some distance away from the main resort.    

What draws you to entering writing contests?

I admit I enter international writing competitions frequently, deterred only by high entry fees, sometimes costing me 2000 INR for a single entry!

I love entering contests primarily because there is scarcely a more effective way of judging the worth of my writing and ascertaining if my writing can be counted anywhere within the perimeters of being of international standard. While it is always a good idea to compare my progress in terms of my own growth, my earlier writings with my present writings, it is also relevant to see where my writings stand vis-a-vis the writing community.

The setting of deadlines imposes a pressure in a positive way, pushing me to stay focused and engaged with my writing, which otherwise stands threatened very often by the mundaneness of my professional preoccupation.

Moreover, a contest entry is a heartening way to connect to the writing community. As we all go about submitting, encouraging each other, wishing luck to one another, sharing our disappointments and joys over the longlist and the shortlist, it makes me feel emotionally connected and gratified.   

Can you share some of your favourite writing influences with us?

I am a lover of classics in all its forms—music, films, books, although I am drawn equally strongly to contemporary and post-modern forms of art as well. So, say, for example, Gone With The Wind is as much an influence as Milan Kundera whose works I devoured as a precocious teenager. I have been a particularly visually driven reader, imagining and sometimes enacting entire scenes and mouthing dialogues secretly after reading books.

Jane Austen, Guy de Maupassant, Daphne du Maurier, W Somerset Maugham, D H Lawrence as authors have moved me (I have visualised each scene vividly in my mind and been intensely scrutinising of the film versions of their books). Hence I generally ‘see’ every scene that I write.

Where can we find out more about you and your writing?

Unfortunately my author website is yet to be launched, my limited technical skills causing me to go excruciatingly slowly on it. As a poor substitute, for some time to come, we have to make do with my social media accounts on all of which I am quite active and all my publications or competition listings are posted. On Twitter my handle is @ShrutidhoraPM, on Instagram @shrutidhorap, on Facebook @Shrutidhora P Mohor. 


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