I think a lot about the craft of writing. The poem, the essay, the
short story and the novel each have their own internal rules, all of
which are to be broken if a writer wants to achieve something new.
Lately, my obsession has become short form. The short story has all the
same requisites as a novel: voice, characters, arc. But because it’s
short form, everything must be compressed.
You don’t have hundreds of pages at your disposal, maybe only a dozen
at most. So you haven’t got the time to paint a sweeping landscape or
people a multi-generational cast of characters. You may not even have
enough space to get through a single day. Short story writing is about
choices.
Not that I know much about the matter. Only three of my short stories have been published
and I have enough rejection letters to paper a small whale. But I try
anyway. I read and listen. And as soon I think I’ve figured it out, I
hear the admonishing words of John Gardner in The Art of Fiction (p.3):
When [a writer] begins to be persuaded that certain
things must never be done in fiction and certain other things must
always be done, one has entered the first stage of aesthetic arthritis,
the disease that ends up in pedantic rigidity and the atrophy of
intuition.
Yikes. What then is a writer to do? Luckily Gardner gives all of us writers an out.
Every true work of art – and thus every attempt at art
(since things meant to be similar must submit to one standard) – must be
judged primarily, though not exclusively, by its own laws.
So what sorts of laws are there?
beginning, middle and ending
A great deal of the art of the short story is to do with exits and entrances – when you jump in; when and how do you dismount.
That’s a great description by Sam Leith
on the craft of short story writing and all its predicaments. Where
should the story start? When is it over? Which arc bridges the beginning
and its end?
Lydia Davis writes stories so short that some are no longer than a
few lines. So that’s two, maybe three pen strokes to create a whole
world, characters and action. Like this one from the collection Can’t and Won’t (p. 235):
My Childhood Friend
Who is this old man walking along looking a little grim with a wool cap on his head?
But when I call out to him and he turns around, he doesn’t know me at
first, either – this old woman smiling foolishly at him in her winter
coat.
Other stories from Can’t and Won’t don’t sound like stories
at all to me. They could be better described as vignettes, prose poems
or sometimes just a gag. But given that Davis is one of the icons of our time, it’s hard to quibble with how she chooses to break the rules. As my writer friend Megin put it:
She’s one of those who give me permission to do what I
want/need. I was so surprised when I first read her, what could
constitute a story. If she’s allowed to do it, why can’t I?
Maybe it’s just me, but I like more tension in my fiction. Oddly
enough, I don’t care whether that tension is resolved. In fact, I have a
particular weakness for short stories with an ambiguous ending.
When does it end?
Let’s take “The Night in Question” by Tobias Wolff. I heard it on The New Yorker fiction podcast as read out loud by Akhil Sharma.
It’s a classic story inside a story. Frances has spent most of her
childhood protecting Frank from their abusive father. Now an adult,
Frank has found God. He tells his sister about a sermon he heard.
A father gets an unexpected call to work the night shift and, because
he’s alone that night, he takes his young son along. His job is to
raise the movable bridge for water traffic and lower it to allow cars
and trains to pass. There’s a train on the way when the father realizes
his son is missing. He knows that the boy has gone into the machine room
to play among the crunching, grinding, unforgiving cogs and gears.
Should the father lower the bridge, thus saving the lives of all those
on board the speeding train, or does he leave the bridge open to save
the life of his son?
We never find out. Frances refuses to hear the end of Frank’s story.
All she wants to know is, if it were me, you would save me, wouldn’t you
Frank?
Wolff doesn’t tell us the answer to that question either. And that’s
what’s so wonderful about his ending. There is a finite number of ways
this story could go. You could plot it out yourself with a dotted line
like the one the roadrunner draws just before Wile E. Coyote
gets clobbered.
Drive It Off the Cliff
Another great example of an open ending is “Herman and Margaret” by Vi Khi Nao, first published in Glimmer Train,
issue no. 90. Herman is a war veteran, now missing a leg, his wife and
any more reason to live. He’s en route to Hoover Dam in his wheelchair
where he intends to throw himself off the edge. Margaret has the same
plan though she’s traveling by RV, all 489 pounds of her.
Herman and Margaret arrive at their chosen departure point.
Improbably, they meet. Tenderly, they fall in love. Life has suddenly
become worth living. Tomorrow will be another day. But before dawn can
come, Margaret must pee.
In the dark, she cannot see, but she steps just far
enough from Herman, lifts her dress, and pees. And, then, without
realizing it, she walks right off the edge and into the abyss.
light at the end of the tunnel
John Gardner says (p. 194):
The novel’s denouement … is not simply the end of the story but the story’s fulfillment.
When I attended the Paris Writers Workshop in 2014, Lan Samantha Chang was the leader of the fiction workshop. She described the function
of an ending in a way that has stuck with me ever since, a grain of
sand inside the oyster of my mind. She said that an ending should send
light all the way back to the beginning.
Note: The Sense of an Ending was first published by Karen Kao on her blog Shanghai Noir.
You've managed to engross us with your musings on the art and craft of writing once again, Karen. Your post takes us on a tour of Grand Hotel Literati with the concierge letting us peek into many rooms and glimpse guests emeshed in all kinds of writerly hanky panky - allowed and disallowed by house rules. In the end, I feel not so much enlightened, but inspired anew. I love to read tales and admonishments from writers more esteemed than myself, ever eager to learn something, or have my memory refreshed. Then I think about what W. Sommerset Maugham said, “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” All the more reason to carry on! The End.
Veni, vidi...Wiki! Not long ago I had the all-time greatest Great Idea: one, born of total ignorance, that nearly tanked a novel. As you may have guessed from my opening line, my subject is Julius Caesar. But you might not have guessed from the title that my Great Idea entailed his being reborn as a penis. Don't laugh, please, I beg you. I saw no way around this, even though showing JC as a 'dick' might lead some to think that I've written a spoof. In fact, it's a serious thriller. Without giving the plot away, I can say this: I needed JC's ghost, today, remembering his nights with Cleopatra on her fabled golden barge. There was the heart of my book--a ghost trying for 2000 years to relive that lost boogie with Liz. And I'd begun to run with this when my memory corrected me: Mark Anthony, not JC, was on the barge with Cleo. And this was after JC's death. What the hell was I to do, lacking the good sense to check memory's 'facts
This blog post is going to start with a whinge about KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). Then it’s going to tell a proper tale of courage. Both are connected by My Ship is So Small , Ann Davison’s account of her solo Atlantic crossing. She’d left Plymouth on May 18 1952 frightened stiff, alone on her 23’ yacht Felicity Ann . ‘I wondered why I had let a dream run away with me. Why, for heaven’s sake, why?’ Ann had told the press that she'd be heading for Madeira but stopped at Douarnenez, Vigo, Gibraltar, Casablanca, Las Palmas, Dominica (and other Caribbean Islands) and Nassau. Then she had followed the Intracoastal Waterway to her final destination. Ann and her small ship arrived in New York seventy years ago this month (November 1953) She was the first woman to have sailed alone across the Atlantic. I wanted to mark the occasion. Simon Kiln, Ann’s closest surviving relative agreed. He and his sisters gave their permission for Golden Duck to publish a new edition of My Ship is So S
December is a time for looking back and although I’ve written a few Christmas letters in my time reminiscing about what we have been up to as a family I have never looked back at what I have achieved as a writer in the past 12 months. To be honest I tend to play down many of my writing exploits, but with my memoir about to be published in the New Year it’s time for a change, a time to be bold and update my writing CV. In January I discovered a new opportunity writing for Paddler Press magazine . My piece based on Silence was accepted on January 6th and the magazine arrived all the way from Canada on the 28th. According to my diary I was also very busy writing lots of 100-word stories for my memoir. At the beginning of February I wrote a 100 flash for the Retreat West monthly microfiction competition. By the end of the month, I was crowned the winner and I took home the People’s Prize as voted for by the readers. March was a month where life took on a new direction. I
Ah, December. Christmas approacheth, and what does that mean? Television ads, of course. And, oh my, do we in the UK have a bizarre selection this year. Stupendous New York Christmas tree. How did this happen, this escalation of The Christmas Advert? So that all the big hitters – John Lewis, Marks and Spencers, Aldi, Tesco etc – feel they have to go all out every year to outdo themselves in lavishness and sentimentality… And do they actually boost sales, the point of advertising in the first place (though you'd never guess it from these intensely concocted minidramas)? Well, funny you should ask that (oh all right, that was me). Because, judging by the reaction to this year’s John Lewis creation, they do. Though not quite (tee hee) as the Great Retailer intended (see below). But first to the one there’s been all the fuss about. Yup, the M & S offering , which, because of popular outcry, had the scene showing red and green paper hats burning in a fireplace removed. It isn’t
Bruce Nauman, Double Poke in the Eye II, Tate Modern. Photo credit: Karen Kao A while ago, a student asked me to talk about writing dialogue. She felt that her own dialogue was stilted, created solely for the purpose of completing her writing exercise for the week. I said something vague and probably wholly unsatisfactory, although this student was too polite to say so. I think I mumbled something like: use dialogue when it’s the most efficient way to convey your information. When the reader needs to hear the words coming out of the mouth of one of your characters. After class, I went home and started looking at my writing books. As I had hoped, there were plenty of better answers than my flubbed attempt. So here’s what I learned about writing dialogue. Impossible Dialogue Image source: HarperCollins Legend has it that Truman Capote could eavesdrop on a conversation on the street, rush back to his hotel room, and transcribe that conversation verbatim.
Comments
You've managed to engross us with your musings on the art and craft of writing once again, Karen. Your post takes us on a tour of Grand Hotel Literati with the concierge letting us peek into many rooms and glimpse guests emeshed in all kinds of writerly hanky panky - allowed and disallowed by house rules.
In the end, I feel not so much enlightened, but inspired anew. I love to read tales and admonishments from writers more esteemed than myself, ever eager to learn something, or have my memory refreshed. Then I think about what W. Sommerset Maugham said,
“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
All the more reason to carry on!
The End.