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.

About Oceanside by Daniel Woodrell

            (Here is Oceanside by Daniel Woodrell)

            As always, there’s a link up there if you’re interested because there will be spoilers.

            Here is a question: Is it something about writing about war that makes you want to buck traditional story telling techniques? Seriously. Think about Slaughterhouse 5, To the White Sea, The Things They Carried (the short story), Catch-22, The Thin Red Line. I’m not saying more war stories are necessarily more likely to try things differently, but you have to admit there are a lot that do.

            Take this one, for example. There’s not a story here, per se, in the obvious sense anyway in which a protagonist attempts obstacles to accomplish some goal. We just follow this boy (almost certainly under 18, right?) around Oceanside for a while. He sees some things and does some things (actually tries to do some things), and then it’s over.

            What I don’t think is that this is a bad thing. You can go ahead and break the rules, we all know that. The only rock hard requirement is that we don’t regret reading your story. And I didn’t. I just didn’t care the only thing close to a dramatic question is whether this kid would get anywhere with overalls girl, and anybody would classify that part of the story as an aside at the very least, no more or less important than any of the other parts.

            But why? Why didn’t I care? That’s usually hard to pinpoint exactly. It helps that Woodrell’s a good writer and that this is a short story and not anything else. More than that though, the message in the picture he painted just felt important and very real, and more quote unquote story would probably only have interfered. 

About Lapses by Sue Mel

(Click for Lapses by Sue Mel)

            I don’t notice melodrama, or it doesn’t bother me, especially when I’m writing. Sometimes it just feels like those pauses and dashes are the only way to make the dialogue sound right. I get that. And I was happily clueless, until Sarah goes and points out how silly a lot of the dialogue in this story really sounds. It’s not just their conversation on the stoop, it’s just about any interaction between the three main characters. All those ellipses spell over the top, and I couldn’t stop hearing it, and I couldn’t stop it making the dialogue sound that much more fake. I do wonder though if I would have even noticed had Sarah just not said anything. Ah well.

            I wouldn’t even say that’s the main problem though. After we’ve established a healthy goal for DJ near the beginning, or at least the healthy idea (story-wise) that he’s got conflicting desires and maybe by the end of the story he’ll figure out exactly what it is he wants, he starts making choices with little apparent reason. He decides to go to the doctor suddenly when he was so unwilling before, finally he decides to be with Sarah, and in the end he decides not to stay with her. Of course I understood why someone in his position might make those choices, but I didn’t come away understanding why he did.

            So, no. I didn’t really like this one. What’s more, I think it may have ruined my melodramaless bliss. Maybe that’s a good thing?

About The Climax Forest by Mary Morris

(One short click to find The Climax Forest by Mary Morris)

We start off with a good amount of conflict (plenty now, but promise for aggressive expansion) and intriguing past mysteries and some good background well integrated right off the bat. Together, all signs of a good, solid story to follow. Which is exactly, I felt, what was there.

There was nothing experimental or innovative though about the language or style or structure. All those things, solid, so the weight of quality rested entirely on the plot and the characters, which of course is where most of that weight should be anyway, so there’s really no complaint to be made there. “It’s not new enough” is only really a fair criticism when other, perhaps more important aspects of the story can’t stand up on their own either.

            So, what about the characters? The plot? Both reflected the language in simplicity. Which is a good thing, I think. It’s a tone that just felt right. Or, at least, it didn’t feel wrong. (Although some of the short tangents did feel a bit “off.” Like that little bit about Hansel and Gretel. What?)

            All of that, even if it doesn’t shine exactly, acts as support for where the story, I think, really succeeds, which is, simply, the choice of narrator. Her’s is a side we usually only get angry glances of a couple times in the movie when the main character, who’s dealing with the real conflict of childhood adventure and adult responsibility, calls home only to be harangued by any number of Karen versions about why are you late for the party? Where are you!

            This is Karen’s perspective. Her story. And it’s important, if only because she’s there too and we never see it.

If I could make one complaint, it would be this: It’s too solid. Too static. No one changed, and no one looked as though they were planning to in the near future. Even Pete, who promised to change at the end, was doing that for at least the second time, which is just another nod how he hadn’t changed at all. It’s not so much a story as a painting (albeit one stretched over a day’s worth of time). Which isn’t a bad thing exactly, necessarily, but when simple characters exhibit no change at all your left wondering just a little bit why you spent the time…

About The Go-Go Dancer by Robert Coover

(You can go ahead and read The Go-Go Dancer by Robert Coover if you like)

            I cannot explain to you really how much I loved it. A lot. I loved it a lot. Every inch of it is evidence that good fiction does not need to be long at all, and that you do not need to explain away the existence of fairies or the nature of a magical world when the real story is about a man who is tricked by unnatural and unknowable mysteries into, if not learning, then living out the lesson that you can’t just have exactly what you want. Unless you are a fairy.

            I love that it’s all one paragraph, and it doesn’t so much flow as continue on, inevitably and inexorably in a sad, coal stained semi-circle. Each action leading neatly into the next and the next until it’s all over and you can’t help but feel satisfied, a little depressed, and very envious that you can’t write like that (yet). Uhg.

About Middlegame by James Warner

            (First, check out Middlegame by James Warner)

            It’s odd to like a story when all you can think about as you read it are the things you don’t like, the things that don’t sound right or don’t make sense. It’s odd, but it happens.         

            Here, for example, I couldn’t shake a feeling of dissonance. Like the protagonist’s thoughts and speech didn’t quick line up with how everyone acted around him. Almost as though the story was written originally in Russian and important implications of certain words and actions were lost in translation. It’s tough to describe, and for all we know this could have been intended. Certainly the plain, almost simple nature of the language lends itself to a kind of “translated” feeling. Regardless, it bugged me a bit, but it didn’t stop me from moving forward. I still wanted to find out what would happen.

            So I read on, and at one point I tabbed away to make a note to complain about vaguely defined relationship between the main character and his wife. But, I’ll tell you, now I think that’s the only relationship in the story that really truly works. He only mentions his wife a couple times, but we never meet her and we don’t learn anything about her or their relationship except that he doesn’t seem to conflicted about sleeping with someone else, and it didn’t take long for him to resolve to defect and leave forever. With only that information, though, we have a general picture of a relationship in which those truths exist, but we don’t have any of that dissonance arising from specific interaction. We can fill that in with stuff that doesn’t feel just a tiny bit off or sudden. More than anything else, I think that worked.

            So, I understand why anyone would publish this story. You can’t help but be intrigued by the setting, the basic ideas in the plot, the ideas of any of the characters (on paper, haha, a professional, Jewish, Soviet chess player considering defection to Israel ought to have come off more interesting). The problem is that so much of the story just felt wrong somehow. Too sudden, or too robotic.

            The problem, though, with that problem is that I still like this story. And I can’t really put my finger on why.

About “Liars” by Nathaniel Bellows

Why review a short story? The worst that could possibly happen is you waste half an hour of your day, right? You’re not looking at anything like the three week investment you usually plan for a novel. You don’t need to listen to someone tell you why it’s worth reading (or not). You might as well find out on your own.

            There’s some truth to that, so I would like you to stop, right now, thinking about these posts as reviews. Let’s just try to figure out what makes a good short story. Let’s do that together.

So go ahead and take a look at “Liars” by Nathaniel Bellows.

Now.

This is a story about the judges and commentators and critics who should know what they are talking about but don’t, and it is a story about some of the nobodies who are never heard but ought to be because they know exactly what they are talking about. There is drama and conflict from the beginning that feels quiet and suppressed even, but was more than enough to keep me reading curiously right to the very end. I finished the story feeling thoughtful and content. So that’s all good.

I would like to move on to some criticism here, but this is a hard story to criticize. If, say, we were to imagine every short story as a person physically explaining something to you or giving you a message or something, then I just spent half an hour listening to a women whisper to me calmly, “everything everyone writes is legitimate. Every writer of every caliber is exposing themself at least a little bit, and no one really has the right to crush them so utterly with rejection even though they obviously can’t all be published.”

            I’m having a hard time finding the will to tell her, “That’s well and good, and I’ve certainly been listening to you intently, but your dialogue felt forced some of the time.”

            No. I agree with her. I do. There is truth in everything that has ever been written, and if you can’t see it, then you just aren’t looking hard enough. So I am not going to try to tell you where I felt this story failed. I am going to tell that Andy’s little speech in the office left me thinking about how forced it sounded instead of what Nan might have been thinking while he spoke or whether Tammy could hear him and what she was thinking.

            I am going to tell you that that is the only criticism that feels fair. There were only a couple short moments while I was reading this when I thought about the story itself and the writer and what the write might have intended instead of thinking about Nan and Nan’s brother and Andy and Tammy. The other moments easily outweighed those moments though, so this one definitely gets some thumbs up. Read it if you haven’t yet.