A Storyteller’s Means

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The Elements of Fiction: A Storyteller’s Means

A true work of fiction is a wonderfully simple thing-so simple that most so-called serious writers avoid trying it, feeling they ought to do something more important and ingenious, never guessing how incred­ ibly difficult it is. A true work of fiction does all of the following things, and does them elegantly, efficiently: it creates a vivid and continuous dream in the reader’s mind; it is implicitly philosophical; it fulfills or at least deals with all of the expectations it sets up; and it strikes us, in the end, not simply as a thing done but as a shining performance.

-JoHN GARDNER, “What Writers Do”

Most readers are able to identify short fictional prose narratives as short stories, whether written by authors in the United States or in countries throughout the world, because authors in every country employ the same ele­ ments of fiction. In the imaginations of gifted storytellers, these basic compo­ nents are transformed into the texts of short stories as the writers explore the potentiality of fiction. Literary critics generally agree that these basic elements comprise six different categories: plot, characterization, setting, point of view, style, and theme.

PLOT

Since the short story is defined as a prose narrative usually involving one unified episode or a sequence of related events, plot is basic to this literary form. Plot is the sequence of events in a story and their relation to one another. Writers usually present the events of the plot in a coherent time frame that the reader can follow easily. As we read, we sense that the events are related by cau­ sation, and their meaning lies in this relation. To the casual reader, causation (or why something in the plot happened next) seems to result only from the writer’s organization of the events into a chronological sequence. A more thoughtful reader understands that causation in the plot of a memorable short story reveals a good deal about the author’s use of the other elements of fiction as well, especially characterization.

As E. M. Forster realized, plot not only answers what happened next, but it also suggests why. The psychologist James Hillman has explained in Healing Fiction that plot reveals “human intentions. Plot shows how it all hangs together and makes sense. Only when a narrative receives inner coherence in terms of the depths of human nature do we have fiction, and for this fiction we

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have to have plot . . . . To plot is to move from asking the question and then what happened? to the question why did it happen?”

A short story can dramatize the events of a brief episode or compress a longer period of time. Analyzing why a short story is short, the critic Norman Friedman suggests that it “may be short not because its action is inherently small, but rather because the author has chosen-in working with an episode or plot-to omit certain of its parts. In other words, an action may be large in size and still be short in the telling because not all of it is there.” A short story can describe something that happens in a few minutes or encompass action that takes years to conclude. The narrative possibilities are endless, as the writer may omit or condense complex episodes to intensify their dramatic effect or expand a single incident to make a relatively long story.

Regardless of length, the plot of a short story usually has what critics term an end orientation- the outcome of the action or the conclusion of the plot-inherent in its opening paragraphs. As Mark Twain humorously observed, “Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.” The novelist may conclude a single episode long before the end of a novel and then pick up the thread of another narrative, or interpret an event from another angle in a different character’s point of view, linking episode to episode and character to character so that each illuminates the others. But a story stops earlier. As Edgar Allan Poe recognized in 1842, its narrative dramatizes a single effect complete unto itself.

The events in the plot of a short story usually involve a conflict or struggle between opposing forces. When you analyze a plot, you can often (but not always) see it develop in a pattern during the course of the narration. Typi­ cally you find that the first paragraphs of the story or exposition give the back­ ground or setting of the conflict. The rising action dramatizes the specific events that set the conflict in motion. Often there is a turning point in the story midway before further complications prolong the suspense of the conflict’s res­ olution. The climax is the emotional high point of the narration. In the falling action, the events begin to wind down and point the reader toward the conclu­ sion or denouement at the end of the story, which resolves the conflict to a greater or lesser degree. Sometimes the conclusion introduces an unexpected tum of events or a surprise ending. In successful stories the writer shapes these stages into a complex structure that may impress you with its balance and pro­ portion.

The plot of Grace Paley’s short story “Samuel” (p. 3) is very simple, dramatizing a brief episode on a Manhattan subway train. It relates a sequence of events about four young boys who are fooling around on the platform between two cars of a moving train. A woman watching them tells them they’ll get hurt, but the boys only laugh at her. Witnessing their response, a man gets angry and pulls the emergency cord. The train lurches to a stop, causing one of the boys to fall and be crushed to death. The mother of the dead boy grieves, then becomes hopeful after she becomes pregnant again. But after the birth of her baby she realizes that the new child can never replace the son she has lost.

In most stories the beginning sets up the problem or conflict; the middle is where the author introduces various complications that prolong suspense

10 The Elements of Fiction: A Storyteller’s Means

and make the struggle more meaningful; and the end resolves the conflict to a greater or lesser degree. In successful stories the writer shapes these stages into a complex structure that impresses the reader with its balance and proportion, often suggesting an insight into the human condition.

The first part of the plot, or exposition, of “Samuel” is the opening para­ graph. It introduces the idea that motivates the main characters of Paley’s little drama, the idea that boys like to show off for each other. The rising action dramatizes the conflict of interest between the young boys and the adults watching them in the subway car. Some of the men in the car sympathize with the kids, remembering the dangerous stunts they pulled when they were young. Most of the women in the car are angry at the boys and want them to behave more responsibly, to take seats and calm down. The turning point is when one of the women, with a son at home, summons her courage and admonishes the boys. They make fun of her, and this raises the tension of the story by adding a complicating factor of defiance to their behavior. The climax of “Samuel” is when the self-righteous male passenger pulls the emergency cord and Samuel is killed. In the falling action, Paley describes the result of the accident. Traffic on the subway is stopped, the passengers who saw the acci­ dent are in shock, the others riding the train are curious, and a policeman noti­ fies Samuel’s mother of his death. The conclusion is the final paragraph of the story, more than a year later, when Samuel’s parents understand the full dimensions of their loss.

Paley’s story is very short, more of a sketch than a fully developed nar­ rative. The only dialogue is between the lady who warns the boys that they might get hurt and the boys themselves, who find her warning hilarious. Samuel pounds his buddy Alfred’s back until the tears come, saying “You a baby, huh?” Paley gives a hint of foreshadowing in the opening paragraphs of her story, suggesting the action to come, when some of the men watching the boys think, “These kids do seem to be acting sort of stupid. They are little.” These words anticipate a turn of events that may or may not go along with our expectations, but when we reread the story, we see that Paley’s plot runs along as solidly as a subway train. Not for her are the tricky surprise endings favored in short stories by earlier writers such as Guy de Maupassant, Kate Chopin, and Ambrose Bierce. We sense Paley’s emotional involvement inlier char­ acters as she chronicles the tragedy of a small boy’s senseless death.

Along with her choice of a title, Paley sets up an expectation in the reader early on with her hint of foreshadowing-the story will be about Samuel, and its “single effect” will be the shock of his accidental, senseless death and how it affects the people around him. Paley doesn’t go on to tell us about the lives of the three boys who survive the accident, or about the guilty feelings (and subsequent nervous breakdown?) of the man who pulls the emergency cord. That would be another story.

Regardless of the author’s method of developing the plot, the goal is the same: The writer of short stories must show the reader something about human nature through the dramatic action of the plot and the other elements of the story, and not just tell the reader what to think. A good plot arouses our curios-