The Biggest Little Job in Fiction
by Janet Berliner
An anonymous someone wrote to my website. He/she said that our blogs were fun, but could we please do more in the way of practical advice for those not yet published.
I don’t generally take much notice of people who don’t sign their emails, but this made sense, so I started to write a new essay. On that same day, I tripped and broke my foot. While that doesn’t entirely mean I can’t type, it does slow down my output. For that reason, I’ve decided to contribute a piece I did per request of the editor of an anthology. Scott, you’ll probably recognize most of it.
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In my not always humble opinion, there is no more challenging task in the writing of fiction than the crafting of a memorable short story. That’s largely because the rules of good writing have to be obeyed within a framework which allows little margin for error.
As a traditionalist, in form if not subject matter, I believe in the imperative of knowing the rules before breaking them. Until we have learned to dot all i’s and cross all t’s, we have not earned the right to veer from convention which dictates that you should–
Have a working skeleton that includes a beginning, a middle, and an end. Give the reader a sense of time and place as early as possible. Show what your protagonist looks like. Make sure that the story contains conflict and that the protagonist changes in some way. Provide layering and foreshadowing, build the story from its skeleton, and make every word count.
Take this article for example. I was asked to contribute a maximum of 1000 words about writing short fiction. Seems simple enough, yes?
No. I could write a book on the subject and have material left over.
How then do I approach the process of distilling a book into about three printed pages?
The answer is with great difficulty and much forethought.
You have a concept, an idea, a character or set of characters who are demanding your attention. Now you want them to command the attention of readers. If you are going to achieve that end within the constraints of what is, in the writing lexicon, a few bold strokes, you are going to have to appeal swiftly and equally to the reader’s intellect and viscera and–here’s the rub–you’re going to have to bring all of your skills to bear in using the right words to draw your reader in so that he brings to the story his own related experiences.
The boundaries of the short story allow none of the luxuries of novel writing. Subplots are out; digression is out. If you’re going to Paris, you’d better not go via Versailles. There simply isn’t the time. You have to travel the straight road from point A to point B.
That straight road is the skeleton of your story. The passing scenery is your layer of flesh. Still, you think, how much more interesting it would be to travel the side roads too.
So what do you do? You provide spaces for the reader to fill. Signposts that say, “Versailles this-a-way.” The reader who has been to Versailles enhances the story with that experience; the reader who hasn’t enhances it with the desire to go there someday. The signpost adds thousands of words, not one of which is actually on the page, and there is no avoiding the side trip.
This is the true skill of the short story writer, the one for which we should all be reaching.
One of the writers who most ably achieves this unwritten texture is Edward Bryant. He has certainly been my teacher. Read any one of his short stories, think about it, then go back and examine how much of what you thought was on the page is actually there and how much has been drawn in by careful omissions placed in such a manner that you were forced to create texture out of your own experience. That is Bryant’s art, his particular skill. Learn from it.
Read advertising if you want to fully understand how to make each word count. Ask yourself about the overt message and about the subliminal message.
Go back to the last draft of your most recent short story and apply the same test. If each sentence and every thought isn’t there for a reason, it’s time to apply some tough editorial surgery.
Since I am now approaching my allowable word count, let me add some practical advice about paring your story down to its bones. I started my writing life as a journalist, which gives me an edge. If anything, fearing my editor’s wrath, I have always written too tightly. I start a short story with my crux sentence. Then I begin the process of opening up what I hope is a rosebud into a fully blooming flower. For those of you without that training, I offer the following advice. It has never failed me.
I look upon the editing process as a party where I go to meet old friends and make new ones. The words and phrases that make my authorial heart pound are the party guests. They all look and sound beautiful just the way they are and I cannot conceive of excluding any of them, yet among the most attractive of the party-goers are those who don’t belong. Perhaps one day they will join the party, but not here, not now.
Sadly, I bounce them, but not before I note their names and addresses.
Telling them that they will have to wait for “another time, another place,” I take them–those words, phrases, paragraphs–and put them in my writing address book, a file of 3×5 cards that I keep ready and waiting for that other place, that other time…that other story.
I’ve cut and pasted, I’ve written and rewritten. Is it soup yet?
Not quite, at least not for me. I have to let the soup simmer in the pot while I find a taster, a reader–a bouncer with a practiced eye.
How I choose that person and how I do or don’t implement the advice I get will have to wait for another article. I’ve run out of space. Not words. Not ever words. But I am constrained by rules, by the boundaries of this article which is not a book. I will respect those boundaries, even when it is not easy, as I hope you will respect yours.
The more you do, the more you’ll succeed. And when you do, break all the rules. That’s why they’re there.
Be reading you.
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