| talking about fiction |
short story structure Our site receives certain questions over and over again on particular aspects of writing fiction. One recurring subject is the short story—namely, how does one create a short story? What are its components? What must a short story accomplish to be successful? At our weekly workshop in Boston, we’ve been discussing the short story genre for the past few weeks, and I thought I’d share with all of you some aspects of short story structure. Let’s look first at the bare bones that make up the skeleton of a short story: INVITATION: an opening to engage the reader, spark curiosity, lead the reader onward. EXPLANATION: the body of the story which unfolds the promise of the opening. A SHIFT OF FOCUS: Two joys of reading a short story are; 1) we don’t know where we’re going until we’ve arrived; and 2) the destination is always unexpected. This element of surprise is achieved through a shift in focus. It is the crux of the short story, the pivot on which the meaning rests. Flannery O’Connor described it as “a gesture or action unlike any other in the story, one which indicates where the real heart of the story lies…an action or a gesture which is both totally right and totally unexpected…both in character and beyond character…to suggest both the world and eternity.” It’s this shift of focus that catapults the reader beyond the words on the page, into a view of the story’s circumstance that is not only unexpected, but revealing, and leads to the next element: discovery. DISCOVERY: The best short stories achieve a clarity of perception, an insight. This insight is often perceived by a character and always perceived by the reader. The author attempts to cause her readers to find something where they haven’t thought to look, in a direction they haven’t thought to turn, under conditions they haven’t yet imagined. We see, suddenly, that the story is about more than it seems, that it operates on more than a single level, has universal resonance, and, most importantly, causes an epiphany of understanding. Without that epiphany of understanding, a story fails as a literary vehicle. In addition to these more concrete components, there are less tangible elements in a story: SURETY: Although there is room for interpretation of motive and symbolism according to a reader’s understanding, there is little room for misconstruing the aim of a short story, and no success if there is misinterpretation of the author’s intent. Edith Wharton said, “The short story writer must not only know from what angle to present his anecdote if it is to give out all its fires, but must understand just why that particular angle and no other is the right one. He must therefore have turned his subject over and over, walked around it, so to speak…. The moment the writer begins to grope in the tangle of his ‘material,’ to hesitate between one and another of the points that any actual happening thrusts up in such disorderly abundance, the reader feels a corresponding hesitancy, and the illusion of reality vanishes.” In other words, the author must be in full control of the story and of his or her intent, guiding the reader into trust and a suspension of disbelief. PURPOSE: Something has to happen, and that something must affect an experience in the reader. Flannery O’Connor says that a complete story is “one in which the action fully illuminates the meaning.” A story’s trajectory may not be straight, but in the end the story must hit, must satisfy, must connect or the reader will feel the miss. If five readers come up with five different answers when asked, “What is this story about?” then the story has failed. There should be a point in a story when a reader knows, without doubt, what a story is about; and, strangely, on the page, the story often seems not to be about that thing at all. An author doesn’t set out to write about love, say. One writes, instead, about daily and, often, loveless interactions, and then, if one is wise and lucky, the story will turn out to be about love. In fiction, you don’t set out to show love by creating situations where it exists. You show it by looking at its absence or its inverse or coming at it from some other less intense angle. INTENTIONAL AMBIGUITY: This could also be described as resonance or wash-back. It describes situations in a story that pick up new meaning at the point of discovery. These ‘double-sided’ elements seem to mean one thing until the story reveals itself. Then, they achieve a heightened interpretation. For instance, a character asks a question about another character. We take this at face value. But then the story shifts its focus and we see a dimension we did not see before. Suddenly, there’s a shift in our perception of the question that character asked, and we realize she was, in actuality, not asking about the other character, but asking about herself. Intentional ambiguities have to be crafted to flip toward more than one interpretation as the story unfolds. Discussion on short story structure always has the effect of reminding one how difficult the genre is to write, but, when done well, how satisfying it is to read. Structure analysis should also carry a caution. There is no formula. You can’t simply set out to put together the disparate elements of a short story as they are outlined above and expect to achieve success. Short stories don’t come about by plan. They evolve. Focus should always be on character, experience, situation, and evoking them into life. Once you achieve life on the page and the story requires evaluation, using the above to evaluate your work can cause you to see what’s missing, what’s necessary to add, what’s working, what’s not. We enjoy feedback from users. If you have questions or comments on short story structure, please do e-mail us.
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