About "Medial Tibial Stress" Syndrome by Sue Mell

            (Here is Medial Tibial Stress Syndrome by Sue Mell)

            Oh ho! Second person.

            After I finished reading, I asked myself, “Did that work for you?” And I couldn’t really answer. It’d didn’t not work. I kept reading to find out what “I” would get up to next, what “I” would think. But wouldn’t I be doing that anyway if the story was any good and written in first or third perspective?

I tried to imagine the story in first person, third. Would it be different really? Would I connect more with the quote unquote main character? “She” is already a fifty year old woman, which is technically a stretch, no real hurdle to any writer with skill (Mell seems to have some of that). So why then? Why second person?

I guess “I” would be a little different. As weird as it sounds, I think on some level we’re conditioned to replace the “I” with “you” in our heads. Obviously I don’t think I did all that when I read a story, so the only other option is someone else. We’ve developed a happy status quo of what I would think if I were this person in this situation, and all that can interfere with that is the issue of believability. Suddenly the story stops working if I think to myself, “No, if I were you there, I still wouldn’t do that.”

Second person, I think, moves us to that point with or without believability. We’re not trained to think, “Well, if I were me, but a different me…”

I’m beginning to suspect there’s a very good reason why stories are so rarely told in the second person. Currently, I’d say I’m in favor of that policy.

About "Six Million and One" by Barry Gifford

            (Take a quick look at Six Million and One by Barry Gifford)

            I’ve decided that I like this one. There was some question as I moved through it, but I landed firmly in the “like” column by the end.

            No, I decided, I don’t think your main character always has to undergo (or specifically avoid) a deep, emotional change by the end of the story. The possibility doesn’t even have to be there. There is something to be said for the light ripples caused by events most would consider more worthy of a story. Why can’t we hear more about Izzy and what his home life really was like and who was he, really and how did his parents actually react? Well, all that can be important, but big stories like that have small effects on the people on the edges, and why shouldn’t those stories be told too? Why can’t we just get a quick vision of innocence contrasted with the shadow of pure evil via a quick story about how a boy first heard about the Holocaust? It’s a short story. That’s the perfect medium.

About Live Dangerously! by Elizabeth Cox

(Please, please go read Live Dangerously! by Elizabeth Cox)

I get it, I guess. College kids will do what they will with the great thinkers. They will think what they like. I would just like to take a moment to list some things characters in a story should never say because people would never say these things. Bear with me.

“Dude, that professor blew it out.”

“Whoa! That is deep, dude.”

“That Nietzsche guy could cause some bad trouble with all he said.”

“Cool. Listen, I’m late. I’ve gotta split.”

“You hitting on me?”

“And then what?” he pleaded. “I mean, like, after the beer?”

“Listen, don’t get freaked. I’m just talking about Nietzsche, that’s all. I mean, was something wrong with him? I mean, like, was he nuts?”

The most vapid, ridiculous college students in the world would never say any of those things. No one sounds like that.

Yes, we of the more recent generations may tend to abuse the word “like,” but here is a hint. If you see commas near it, then there is no way it will sound authentic in text.

I’m just saying you can mock people like this and have them speak like actually alive people would speak.

Main Dramatic Pillar

The assignment is to write a “pillar article,” which, I’m told, is essentially a slightly longer blog entry with a more informative bent. So let’s get started by talking about one of the most important aspects that’s come to be associated with traditionally “good” fiction. Here goes:

In just about every good story you read, you’ll find at it’s center a character who has a goal. Together, these two things are the first line of defense against a scattered, chaotic mess on the page. With a character and her goal, we have focus, something to keep us grounded, and something to keep the reader turning pages. Whatever else happens, we want to know if Paula will get this job. Or whatever.

In some more professional circles they’ll call this the Main Dramatic Questions (they’ll even abbreviate that, so we have an MDQ). Yes or no. Will the protagonist accomplish this goal. That’s the story. Our, and the character’s, journey to the answer.

Yes, no, and even maybe are all acceptable answers. That ring was absolutely cast into the fires of Mt. Doom. No question. The grandmother from Flannery O’Conner’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” did not survive, no. And, will the girl in Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” get that abortion? We have no idea! (Although, frankly, I’m inclined to believe she will, and they’ll part in tears regardless.)

Now, though, might be a good time to mention that absolutely no rule stands hard and fast for absolutely every scenario when it comes to fiction (and really any writing, for that matter). Take that last example. Even though Hemingway didn’t do away with the main question in his story, he did twist the telling so the story became about showing the reader what the question is instead of the answer. I guess we can’t all agree it worked, although I thought it worked quite well.

Sometimes the question the question is shrouded so thoroughly, you have to wonder if it’s there at all. Like in Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” (you can find the full text here actually).  Will the narrator change how he thinks about the blind? Will he learn something? The answer in the end is as vague as the question, but the point is that it wasn’t missing entirely. It never is.

You will always have a character, and he (or she (or it) ) will always have a goal, internal or external, obvious or not. They’ll be there because without them you don’t have a story. You have an event or a scene or a thesis maybe. Someone has to do something if you want a story.

Remember to think about the Main Dramatic Question the next time your reading a book or watching a movie!

About "Occidental Hotel" by Peter Orner

            (Check out Occidental Hotel by Peter Orner)

I can’t help it. I just love these super short stories. It’s an art within an art, a very difficult skill, to clarify and distill a story down its core elements, to extract its essence a choose just the right words to show us what you’ve done. It makes sense that it’s hard though, because when it’s good, it’s really good.

Orner explains in a few short sentences a clear, simple setting, and that is important because it puts aspects necessary for the story in our heads without also filling our heads with all the bits the author may think are important but really don’t matter at all to us. And so much of it is left vague too, so we can also add bits that the author may not have thought important. We can go ahead and make connections between the story he’s telling and the things the setting puts in our minds with no middle-man. We can make this story our own without even realizing what we’re doing. (It’s a good thing you’ve got me though, ‘cause now you know.)

But we don’t see them court each other, we don’t see him fall in love. Isn’t that a problem? Of course not! It must not matter how that happened or why, just that it did. It just did, and it’s happened before and it may well happen again, but it wasn’t good enough and it isn’t. In a couple hundred words your forced to think about what is. What’s important, what makes it important. You don’t need any more to do that. Orner just did it with less.

About At the Wrong Time, to the Wrong People by Cara Blue Adams

                                                                                                                                                                      
 

At the Wrong Time, to the Wrong People by Cara Blue Adams

 

Here is a very interesting issue. Clearly, right from the beginning we have the problem: her dog is going to die. There is some uncertainty about how much longer she’ll keep things the way they are, but for the most part, we know from the beginning exactly how this story is going to end. She is going to lose her dog. That is what the story is about, and that is what is going to happen. No question.

But, at least for me, that didn’t do anything at all to stop this from being an excellent short story. Because it was so clearly obvious right from the get-go, we’re free to focus on other aspects of the story, and so long as they are themselves engaging, then your story isn’t hurt at all. That’s what Adams did here. We’re shown a relationship and given a very unique (and very sad) opportunity to gain deep insight into this relationship, and through that, the character herself and all her other relationships. It’s like Adams tried to tell us as much as she possibly could about a woman by only relating one short episode in her life.

I think she did a really good job.

About Beautiful Daughters by Haley Carrollhach

            (You should read Beautiful Daughters by Haley Carrollhach)

            This is a story about a woman and her daughters and how everything seems to be slipping away from her. And it’s a good one. Mostly.

It’s absolutely clear how she feels about her daughters, which is good and important, and it’s not so clear how her daughters actually feel about her, but that’s good also because we’re not in their heads, we’re in hers. This is her story, her moment, and we come away with a good idea of everything that’s happening viewed through her eyes.

Right. The problem, I think, is how this story is arranged, what I believe you might call its “structure.” Often, it is a good idea to let the audience in on salient details slowly, in short doses, throughout the story. I don’t think that strategy worked so well here though. There’s a fine line between reading further because you want to know the answers and actually being distracted by not having them, and think Carrollhach may have strayed a little too far past that line. I found myself asking “why don’t I know more” more often than “oh, what should I know here.”

I kept reading though, so it can’t have been so bad.

Finally, though, and I believe I may have made a similar point before, but one very important success in this story is the choice of narrator. This is another example of a rare perspective. We’ve seen plenty of stories about daughters afraid of their parents, but it’s a lot more difficult, I suspect to get into the head of the other party in that particular dynamic. Carrollhach has definitely done a good job there, I think.