Distraction: On the other hand...

digression--a movement away from a story line; a detail, introduction of character, time shift, or description that calls the reader away from details vital to the understanding of and immersion in the present narrative.

Digression is either a dramatic strategy or a literary wrong turn, the former a contrived movement that will have the effect of urging the reader to continue reading, the later a case of the author becoming impressed with some detail of surrounding, of meaning, or of implication that will have the effect of causing the reader to say, "Huh? What was that about?" The gap between the two poles is, sadly, rather narrow, hence these questions: Does the digression directly add a sense of tension or suspense to the narrative? Digressions in novels are easily achieved--merely shift the point of view to another character, who is appropriately engaged in intriguing activity. This strategy causes the reader to suspend focus on the previous situation, although keeping it close at hand. A short story proposes a more difficult situation because words must be chosen with mosaic precision. Digressions in short stories may be achieved and accommodated in short stories by having one or more characters respond directly to the digression, questioning its very appropriateness (which is what the reader will be doing).

A key to understanding the related plateau of anticlimax is the awareness that digression produces distraction, which in turn yields anticlimax. Digression and distraction combine forces to undercut the dramatic momentum of story. Writers need to develop a search-and-destroy agenda for digression and distraction. This agenda begins with the close examination of the digression to see if it will effectively assist the payoff of the story or is placed where it is merely as an advertisement for the writer's ability with words. Does it lead to a relevant discovery, or is it in fact merely showing off? If it does contribute to a discovery the reader and one or more characters may achieve, stet it; if it is merely showing off--well, that will not get us very far.

Do the Endings Justify the Meanness?

ending--the point at which a dramatic narrative delivers its payoff emotion; characters in a story being led from a precipitous brink to a more comfortable landing spot; the arrival at an offered solution to the major dramatic issue.

As in all events where humans are involved, story endings are at best temporary because one or more of the characters involved will quickly become caught up in another strand of activity--even if it is only a return to some old conviction, habit, or pattern, where a new chapter will begin. Ending is a sense that things are over for the moment. At the final curtain of Hamlet, with so many of the dramatis personae dead, only Fortinbras and Horatio are left to deal with the energy of the previous activities, but just as playwright Tom Stoppard saw possibilities for a spin-off in which Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern had their own show, Horatio could challenge Fortinbras after his final tribute to Hamlet, working himself up to wonder why Fortinbras hadn't done anything sooner, to which Fortinbras could have wondered a similar wonder to Horatio, whereupon the two would get into the exchange of blows and a sequel to Hamlet would have been in the making. Huck Finn could have done quite nicely in the territory ahead, but Tom Sawyer, fed up with the heavy responsibilities of family life, civic affiliations, and the weight of The Social Contract heavy on his shoulders, could have come looking for Huck and, once again, became caught up in Huck's life style.

Endings are a sign to the reader that things are over for now--not necessarily solved, but done until the next defining moment settles upon the characters.

Reminder: not ending soon enough may produce anticlimax.


layer--a stratum or single element manifest within a story; a subplot, thematic, or character-related motif found in a dramatic narrative.

Stories, even shorter ones, tend to have more than one layer of activity accompanying the main thrust of the story, perhaps extending to a remote past or possibly not quite as recent as the present moment. Layering often takes form in the interaction between two or more characters, relying on attitudes related to past experience or experiences between them. Results from conflicting or disappointed expectations among characters may also add layers of complexity to a narrative.

The conventional wisdom for layering holds each tier responsible for some enhancement of story line (plot), character development, subtext, or an enhancement of theme.

Thus may a story be seen as an archaeological dig in which the reader discovers more about the individuals involved in the narrative, their social make-up, artifacts, and attitudes as each layer is excavated. In general, plot-driven stories tend to have fewer layers than literary, but as with all generalities related to story, the writer must take care not to be driven by them to the point where imagination and inventiveness are overridden.

The Choking Doberman and Other Enigmas

anticlimax--a shift away from a matter of heavy relevant consequence to something entirely trivial, producing a bumpy, undercutting effect; a comparison of something high-minded with a matter of little or no consequence; overkill on the payoff of a story (the delivery of a death sentence when a reprimand would have sufficed). When done with deliberation, the result may be amusing, even considered satiric, but when done unintentionally, not only does the reader suffer, so does the writer's reputation.

Anticlimax is a feeling of impatience forced upon readers when an author overstays or over embellishes the dramatic effect of a satisfying conclusion. Often brought about by a writer's unwillingness to allow readers to draw their own conclusions, anticlimax is brought about when the author directly or through the intervention of one or more characters, insists on explaining critical events by offering background for them or explanations. Think of anticlimax as undermining an effective conclusion or as the mounting frustration experienced when a friend intrigues us at first with the beginning of an artfully told story only to persist in embellishing it with more details than we want to hear.

However managed and emphatic his endings were, Beethoven understood the dynamics of anticlimax in his compositions. Many writers of the past whose works are still being read today--notably Anthony Trollope, Joseph Conrad, and Jane Austen--seem to have found the boundary between the precision of an effective, memorable ending and ornate excess, then observed that boundary, giving some critics the opportunity to note that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century authors made sure their readers got their money's worth.

More recent novels and short stories are increasingly likely to end on a note of ambiguity, prompting the wisdom that writers looking for a voice, a theme, and an audience are well advised to err on the side of understatement.

arena--any landscape where a scene is set and/or the context in which narrative progresses. Think of the Roman Colosseum, replete with gladiators trashing one another, with crowds braying for more, with emperors and lesser dignitaries turning thumbs down. Consider those one-sided scores where the Christians were opposed by the lions. Now think of setting as an unfriendly atmosphere or locale in which to place characters (who may not even want to be there). Recall the moving dramas you've seen whether on stage,screen, or the page. They all took place in arenas of one kind or another. Now, go you and do likewise; impart that vital measure of tension to your scenes by setting them in arenas rather than travelogue backgrounds. Think of Bobbie Ann Mason's breakout short story, "Shiloh," in which a contemporary family heads out for a picnic in the area once the scene of a bloody and extensive battle during the American Civil War.

Query: What do living rooms, court rooms, dining rooms, school rooms, police stations, bed rooms, banks, and laboratories share in common?
Answer # 1: They are all arenas.
Answer # 2: They are places where story is able to grow.
Answer # 3 They are breeding grounds for dramatic stress, tension, and character development.
Answer # 4: All of the above.


Choking Doberman, the -- an eponymous device calculated to arrest the reader's attention through the opening pages of a story and into its development. A paradigm opening concept for a plot-driven story.

A woman returns home from grocery shopping to find her pet Doberman racked by a severe choking fit. She rushes the gasping dog to a vet, who examines the dog, but sees no reason for the breathing difficulties. He decides on a tracheotomy, telling the worried owner that the procedure wasn't anything she'd want to watch, suggesting the woman go home and leave the Doberman there overnight.

When the woman arrives home, her phone is ringing. When she answers, she is surprised to hear the vet. "Get out of the house immediately! Now! Go to the neighbor's and call the police."

Who could fail to be intrigued by such an opening?

Very few, it seems, because what started as an exercise in arresting beginnings in a creative writing class ended up as a post on an Internet site that deals with debunking urban myths. This intriguing concatenation of events, classic in its allure and promise of story to come, ultimately shoots itself in the foot by the very qualities it sets in motion. After such a fine beginning, the payoff has nowhere to go but a downward spiral. It plays out with the vet having discovered two human fingers lodged in the dog's throat, a result of the Doberman having attacked an escaped killer who was attempting to hide in the house of the unlucky dog and its owner. When the police arrive, the escaped killer is found unconscious, in a state of shock, and somewhat the bloodier for wear.

The concept was so good that it gained the kind of repetition and currency momentum common to the urban myth. In much the same way that a successful movie or TV series beget imitations, the choking Doberman began appearing on urban myth Internet sites as having originated in numerous Canadian and U.S. locales. It was so successful that it even made the jump from web site to book, The Choking Doberman and Other Urban Legends. During his tenure in the Department of Theater at the University of New Mexico, Digby Wolfe frequently invoked the Doberman as a splendid example of the opening velocity needed to get a plot-driven story underway. The excellent medical thriller, House, M.D., alive and running with six seasons of TV exposure at this writing, begins each episode with the equivalent of a choking Doberman, in which an individual suddenly begins acting out the bizarre, life-threatening behavior of some unusual symptom, often placing the eponymous protagonist, Gregory House, M.D., at risk of breaking some moral code, civil law, medical ethic, or a combination of all three.

Admonition # 1: Although there is nothing artistically or morally wrong with the plot-driven story, its side effects often include a weakening sense of reality, diminished plausibility, and suspended character development

E. B. White, the New Yorker writer, children's novelist, and co-author of a legendary style guide, once wrote, "Whoever sets pen to paper writes of himself whether knowingly or not." In similar fashion, writers who attempt to fashion a compelling opening to a story, pushing at the outer limits of plausibility, write of the choking Doberman, whether they know it or not.

Admonition # 2: the choking Doberman is a plot-driven device. While effective, it is no substitute for characters the reader has been made to care for.

Block Party

block--both a concept and a device, each of which is vital to the storyteller's success in keeping the story alive and in motion.

As a concept, block becomes a verb which goes to work by way of mapping the setting of a particular dramatic landscape, dramatizing it with the details and sensory attributes that fit the author's intent and which contribute to the discomfort of the characters. A scene that has been blocked out is a Google map which shows the reader who is positioned where, what shifts in position there are, how the characters pursue their separate agendas, how they respond to other characters, at the same time suggesting the subtext of the truthful regard each character has for all the others. A blocked scene also contains relevant information about temperature, time, smell, taste, relative states of light and dark, color, as well the relative openness of space or the pressure of a closed-in space. As an extreme example of this construct at work, imagine a claustrophobic character and an agoraphobic character in the same setting, first a small, cell-like enclosure, then in a commodious locale with a breathtaking vista.

Storytellers who do not at some point in the writing process block out each scene and every bit of narrative connection run the risk of having the work appear one-dimensional or confining. Knowing where everyone is or will be in a scene helps determine as one example, of the benefits to be had from blocking, whether the characters can whisper to one another or must shout in order to be heard.

As a device, block becomes a presence or condition that prevents a character from pursuing a stated agenda; it may also be a condition having its effect on a large number of individuals who are rendered fearful of acting or frustrated that they cannot act as they might wish, or resentful that they have been issued an order not to perform a particular action even though they may have ardently wished to do so. Thus block becomes an obstacle which makes itself felt, repeat felt, by a character whose options to keep the story alive are direct opposition, seething resentment, disappointment, immediate embarkation on a counter offensive, or abject surrender. Fear is another exceptional dramatic obstacle; so is conscience. Macbeth is quite prepared to kill Malcolm as a necessary step to further his goal. Screwing up his courage to commit the murder, Macbeth observes a servant carrying a dinner tray to Malcolm, whereupon Macbeth's conscience steps in to block him, to become an obstacle. Macbeth cannot for a time bring himself to kill Malcolm. The obstacle creates dramatic tension, building to suspense. In this sense, story is like the bait-and-switch of advertising and retailing technique: a desirable product is shown at an attractive price, but when the customer appears to claim it, he is either told it is no longer available or the customer is shown another, more expensive product. In either case, the customer is diverted from his original intention. Readers not only want to be baited and switched, they expect it.

The writer who knows his characters well enough to see and manipulate the obstacles or each character remains in control of the need of the story to be shoved, driven, propelled against obstacle. This knowledge will lead the writer to understand how vital blockage is for the reader. As a story develops, the reader begins to take sides, root for particular characters to achieve their goals. But if the characters achieve their main goals too soon or too easily, the story is seen as a cheat or at best a dismal failure. This understanding of block-as-obstacle produces the useful dictum: Never take the reader where the reader wants to go.

Once the characters arrive at a point where the reader wants them to be, the story is over. A story that continues to generate activity and resulting movement after its major dramatic effect has been established is appropriately diagnosed as suffering from anticlimax.