Telling tales with Tracy

8:55am Saturday 10th May 2008

Comments (0)   Have your say »

THEY say a picture speaks a thousand words, but can it say the same in 300?

That's the challenge laid down by top author Tracy Chevalier as she launches a short-story competition with York Art Gallery.

Tracy, author of Girl With The Pearl Earring, is mid-way through her year as writer in residence at the gallery.

Besides curating her own exhibition and running a series of workshops and public events, Tracy will be writing six short stories inspired by works at the gallery, with each tale no more than 300 words long. And she is inviting other people to come along and do the same.

Staff at the gallery have singled out 15 pieces - ten paintings and five ceramics - which the public can write about. Each piece is on display in the gallery and on its website (www.yorkartgallery.org.uk).

The story can be about the subject of the work, the work itself, or even inspired by some of the autobiographical detail that accompanies the piece.

There will be two age groups, 12-17 years old and over 18s. People can enter as many stories as they like, the only limitation is that the story can be no more than 300 words.

The winners will be announced by Tracy in November and their stories will be printed on the back of a postcard showing the piece of art they chose as their muse. These will then be included in a gift pack of postcards, also containing the stories written by Tracy.

"I often make up stories when I look at art," says Tracy, who is currently working on her sixth novel. "It opens up the work for me and makes me look more carefully. I can't wait to see what members of the public come up with. One warning, though: it's not easy writing a whole story to fit on the back of a postcard."

The first story Tracy has completed is titled The Armchair and is inspired by a 1906 painting by Harold Gilman called The Artist's Daughters. It has a hazy, almost impressionistic style, and shows two young girls sitting with their coats and boots on in an armchair.

Tracy wrote the first draft in March, while working at a desk in front of the painting at the art gallery and fielding questions from members of the public.

Writing in public marks a seismic shift for the author, who normally writes alone in the study of her London home.

But she says it was a fruitful experience. "I learned a lot from the public," says Tracy. "Such as that in Victorian times, dolls were always called Abigail. I had no idea. Also, in the painting, the girls' names are Elizabeth and Hannah, but during my writer's in' sessions, I decided not to use them, and asked people what would be good names for the girls - we came up with Flora and Georgina."

Also, through chatting with visitors to the gallery, Tracy noticed details in the painting that had escaped her eye: such as one girl holding a doll, the other wearing red mittens and the fact they were both in coats and boots, as if waiting to go somewhere. It fired up her imagination.

"I wondered why they were sitting in that chair and looking so sad. I imagined that they could hear their parents having a row upstairs," said Tracy.

The first draft of The Armchair was written in a couple of hours, then Tracy finished it off over a tea break at Bettys.

And she has this advice for anyone keen to enter the competition.

"Try to write a first draft in one writing session, of say two hours," she begins. "Don't worry about putting in too much description; it's going to end up on the back of a postcard. You don't need to have as much detail as a long story because you have a visual aid.

"It's got to be more of a character sketch, or an incident, not something very complicated. It's got to capture the mood of the painting.

"Keep reading over it and make sure every word is necessary. Discard the ones you don't need. Reading it out loud is a very good way of figuring out what words you can take out.

"Finally, read it to someone who hasn't seen the work of art, then show them it, and see if your story matches up."

Tracy has already begun work on her second story, based on Alfred Wolmark's 1911 piece, Ice Cream Man. It shows a man, looking slightly downtrodden in a flat cap, standing by a bright-yellow rickshaw-type market stall.

"I've based this story on why the colour is yellow," explains Tracy, who says this story has more of a humorous tone than The Armchair.

She says she was drawn to the painting because of the colour, but also because her grandfather, Henri Chevalier, sold ice-cream in Switzerland around the same time the painting was created.

Tracy says she plans to write about a pot in the gallery's ceramics collection, as well as some other works, yet to be decided.

And she says she is looking forward to reading the entries, and hopes for a bumper crop.

"We could get ten, or we could get thousands," she says. "I'd rather get a lot, that way we've got a chance of getting some good ones."

l The deadline for entries is September 30. For more information about how to enter, a full list of the works and the terms and conditions of the competition, visit www.yorkartgallery.org.uk