Part IV: Shape Your Story

  ***This post is the fourth in a series of eight.  From now through September I'll be posting weekly exercises designed to take our short stories from rough draft to finished "masterpiece"(or as close as we can get ;-) with the help of the late John Gardner and a host of other well-known authors and teachers.  Click here for Part I ***

Last week we worked on how to convince the reader that there's a good possibility our protagonists might change their ways by the end of our stories--even if they don’t end up changing at all. If nothing else we’ve at least shown that they’re capable of change, thereby keeping the reader in suspense until the end of the story. And for those of us whose protagonists do change, we’ve come up with a list of incidents designed to convince our readers that the character’s change is not only plausible but, in hindsight, inevitable. Surprising, but inevitable… that’s the key.

I don’t know about you, but when I came up with my list of incidents it became apparent that many of them will need to be shown in flashback (or flash-forward), or another way entirely, but in any instance they’ll likely throw my story events out of chronological order.  So figuring out the best way, the smoothest way, to sequence and transition those events will be crucial.  

When American author Lan Samantha Chang wanted to tell stories based on the lives of her parents and the era in which they grew up in China she realized that, though set in the present, she would need to move backward in time to find the heart of the story, to uncover “the mystery of the past.” In her excellent essay, “Time and Order: The Art of Sequencing,” Chang (currently director of the prestigious University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop) writes that “Every story shapes a pattern in time, and its writer must find that shape…. Manipulating sequence can greatly increase a writer’s range, her flexibility and her authority.  A leap backward can dazzle the reader and develop his understanding of the characters.  A complex story may move back and forth in time, creating a spellbinding pattern.  A subtle, chronological telling can draw the reader smoothly into the author’s world, holding him rapt with an awareness of its possibilities.”

Though certainly not as popular in today’s stories as the flashback, much can be gained from the flash-forward, by taking the reader briefly forward in time. Says Chang: “[The flash-forward] can provide us with a startling and revealing vision of the characters’ futures as their present conflicts unfold, helping us understand the present story in a larger context.”

In the first pages of his novel, Giovanni’s Room, author James Baldwin propels the reader forward to the events of a morning that has yet to take place. We learn that the protagonist’s lover is to be guillotined that day and that the protagonist blames himself for what has brought the two of them to this awful place in their lives. The opening, a flash-forward, sets the mood for the novel, and we feel that sense of destiny and significance as we watch, through flashback, the characters meet and fall in love.  The opening of Giovanni's Room:

In another piece by James Baldwin, the short story “Sonny’s Blues,” the narrator (an algebra teacher) wants his younger brother Sonny, a musician and a recovering drug addict, to have a normal, “safe” life, away from his old friends and his nightclub music, the jazz that Sonny loves.  The author employs a series of significant flashbacks, some dramatized, some expository, to show the narrator’s change over time.  The transition that thrusts the reader into the past begins at an awkward (for the narrator) family dinner with his wife and Sonny, (their parents are long dead) and hinges on the narrator’s thoughts, his desire to keep his brother “safe”:

Suddenly, without even realizing it, we find ourselves transported back to the narrator’s young adulthood in Harlem, to the early relationships with his parents, his brother, and others, until eventually we come full circle and return to the present, moving on from there. Each stop along this seamless journey through the past is a significant one.  Each event the author chooses to show us not only propels the story forward, but peels back the layers in those early relationships revealing the narrator’s failed attempts at understanding and helping his troubled brother. Through these past incidents Baldwin convinces us that the narrator’s change when it comes is not only plausible, but genuine.

With any sudden shift in time, be it forward or backward, the key of course is to do it without jarring the reader out of the fictional dream you’ve worked so hard to create. Sol Stein (editor, creative writing instructor, and author of nine novels) says “The reason flashbacks create a problem for readers is that they break the reading experience.  The reader is intent on what happens next.  Flashbacks, unless expertly handled, pull the reader out of the story to tell him what happened earlier.  If the reader is conscious of moving back in time, especially if what happened in the past is told rather than shown, the engrossed reader is reluctant to be pulled out of his reverie to receive information.  If we are enthralled, we don’t want to be interrupted.  Therefore, the art of writing flashbacks is to avoid interrupting the reader’s experience. I’ll show you how it’s done.” … which indeed he goes on to do in Stein on Writing, his fabulous book on craft. Stein gives great practical advice in all areas of craft, with an entire chapter devoted to flashbacks and how and when to use them.  Stein’s books differ from many other books on writing in that his focus is always and foremost on the experience of the reader.

Lan Samantha Chang: "Time and Order: The Art of Sequencing,"from Creating Fiction (edited by Julie Checkoway)

Sol Stein: Stein on Writing
James Baldwin: Giovanni's Room
James Baldwin: "Sonny's Blues" from his collection of short stories titled Going To Meet The Man

Write A Short Story:  

Part I: Introduction

Part II: Setting & Emotion  

Part III: Character Motivation & Change

Part IV: Story Shape

Part V: Dialogue

Part VI: Authenticating Detail & Description

Part VII: Tension & Reader Anticipation

Part VIII: Plot

Flashback

Yesterday I changed my mind about how to structure my novel. This is nothing new -- I've gone back and forth with this for nearly four years now. My novel spans approximately six years in time, and though the events occurring in the earliest months are critical to the story's outcome, I want to keep the main focus on those events that take place during the final year of the story.

Telling the story in chronological order seems like the most straightforward way to go, but that option gives equal weight to both past and present events. Another option would be to tell the story in alternating parallel storylines, one chapter in the present, followed by a chapter of flashback, and then back to the present in the next chapter, and so on. This structure would also seem to put too much focus on my character's past actions. For now, I've settled on a third option: I'll begin each chapter in the present and then flash briefly back to an important scene from the past, giving just enough information to provide necessary motivation or to reveal character. These flashbacks will follow a chronological timeline, until hopefully by the end of Part I the past will have caught up to the present and I can proceed with the rest of the novel in the present time.

The only problem, of course, is that flashbacks can be difficult to pull off. "There is an inherent plot problem when you use flashbacks," writes James Scott Bell, author of Plot & Structure. "… forward momentum is stopped for a trip to the past. If not used properly, the reader can get frustrated or impatient (not to mention editors, who tend to distrust flashbacks altogether)."

But flashbacks can be a good thing, as Caren Gussoff notes in this excerpt from her excellent chapter on "Setting and Pacing" in Gotham Writers' Workshop: Writing Fiction, The Practical Guide:

One thing for sure, to be such a wizard we need to keep our readers from getting lost in time and space, to keep our transitions as smooth and inconspicuous as we possibly can. In her bookPlot (from the Elements of Fiction Writing series) Ansen Dibell writes:

One way to make sure you're solidly anchored before you make the leap back in time is through the use of sensory detail. Author  Rust Hills (Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular) writes:

Recently I've tried to pay attention to how some of my favorite authors manage to navigate so smoothly from present to past and out again. The following are just a few flashback transitions from one of my favorite short stories, "Tiny Smiling Daddy," by Mary Gaitskill (Read her stories. Gaitskill is a master at piloting the reader through time and space). Each of the following passages leads into a brief flashback scene. The last one is my favorite-- the way the author ferries the reader from a scene in the present action (He stopped at a crowded intersection, feeling like an ant in an enemy swarm), through a brief summary of events over a period of time (She wrote poems about heroic women warriors, she brought home strange books and magazines), to a particular, vivid moment in time (Kitty screamed at her, the tendons leaping out on her slender neck.... ) So fluid. So seemingly effortless!

So, if in your current writing project you're ready to "lean off the roof" and take your reader on a brief journey into your character's past, here's an exercise to help get you started:

James Scott Bell, Plot & Structure

Rust Hills, Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular

Ansen Dibell, Plot

Gotham Writers' Workshop: Writing Fiction: The Practical Guide (chapter on "Setting & Pacing" by instructor, Caren Gussoff)

Mary Gaitskill's collection of short stories: Because They Wanted To