When a Symbol Is More Than a Symbol

When a person uses an object often enough, the object becomes a symbol, possibly even a theme.

This vision of an object runs contrary to the famed argument that a cigar is sometimes merely a cigar, although had the cigar been mentioned only once or twice, the issue might not have arisen.

When a cigar is not merely a cigar, it is variously an object of great pleasure to the smoker but it may also be an annoyance to a bystander who is confronted with the second-hand smoke.  A cigar is also a sign of entitled male social standing and, likewise an accouterment of rebellious femininity.

An object is a thing, a concept, even a person.  A thing becomes an object when the viewer retreats from its fine-tuned specificity by calling it a thing instead of, say, a particular brand or type or shape of a cigar.  A maduro corona cigar refers to a darker wrapper of a cigar at least five inches long, more likely six. That thing, as in, you can't smoke that thing in here, is a negative objectification of a cigar.  A concept, similarly shorn of some or all its identity, morphs into that thing.  If you and I are discussing the inherent pleasures of an after-dinner cigar on the patio, you might be thinking an H. Uppman maduro Churchill while I might be visualizing and tasting a double claro panatella.  A person becomes an object when he or she is not seen any longer as an individual but as an embodiment of some quality such as sexuality, honor, courage, determination, pity, etc.

The metamorphosis from mere object to symbol or theme begins at the larval stage of specificity; one person, concept, or thing moves away from a unique and dimensional profile to become an exemplar of a thing.  This illustrates the duality within each of us:  We want our individuals at the same time wanting our things.  We want the person we bond with romantically to become a simultaneous series of objects or things with whom we can dial a particular concept as the mood strikes us, and of course if that person has a sexy reading voice, hearing that person reading Socrates can morph into sexual attraction, thus a symbolic twofer.

Stories of all genera and nature stress the awareness of the potential for conflict as reflected by the manner in which a cigar remains a cigar or becomes a representative symbol for a concept which one or more of the characters must call out, High Noon style for a shootout.

Boundary: Where No Good Character Fears to Tread

A boundary is a demarcation of limit or extent; it is the edge of a terrain, landscape, attitude, or principal. In dramatic narrative, boundary is a limit of behavior a character sets for himself or which is imposed either by other characters, conventions, ethics, legal principals, or a combination of these. Significantly, boundary in story represents the terrain beyond which a character resolves not to venture, but of course there would be no story if he or she remained true to his/her word.

Boundary represents the grown-up version of a child being limited to a specific yard or block or neighborhood which must not be transgressed without parental approval or guidance of some sort. Boundary may be physical, moral/ethical; it is often the place where story begins, with a character having just defied boundary limitations in action that represents breech of authority, faith, convention, or ethic. In such cases, a significant layer of the story is the dramatic consequences the character faces, particularly as pangs of conscience or lack of such pangs have influential effect on the subsequent behavior of the character.

Some of the more basic instances of boundaries being ignored would involve a young girl of a particular religious faith sneaking off to date a boy of another, proscribed, faith, a sort of Romeo-Juliet situation in the making; perhaps of an individual resorting to shoplifting or some behavior coming under the general heading of white-collar crime. A more sophisticated violation of boundary would be an occasion in which an individual of either gender required a form of heart surgery in which one or more valves needed replacement. Make the patient an orthodox practitioner of Judaism or the Muslim faith and factor in the replaced valve coming from a pig, thus transgressing boundaries in a significant way. What are the consequences? Would the individual be banished from synagogue or mosque? How would the individual self-esteem hold up? What would such a person then do that the same person would never consider before the scientific intervention?

The mere mention of the word boundary opens wide the portals of story potential: an individual who is seen beyond his or her boundary may be seen variously as an adventurer, a fool, or someone who is hopelessly lost; an individual who strays from the boundaries of convention in which he was raised may be seen as a rebel or a lost sheep. A boundary in fiction is set up or already exists to be trespassed upon or stepped over or completely obliterated; it is a challenge of culture, type, convention--anything that restricts behavior, knowledge/understanding.

If we begin with two characters--your personal argument for openers--then add conflicting agendas and social or moral boundaries, story is bound to happen; the twenty-first century equivalent of the free-range chicken.

I Confront, You Confront, He, She, or It Confronts

Confrontation may well be the head-on meeting of two or more opposing forces but it is also the spine of story and in the ironic bargain the navigation system by which most of us maneuver the reefs and shoals of our daily reality.

A sophisticated balancing act begins when we set forth to tell a story, putting onto a collision course the same forces we claim to observe in fiction while at the same time pursuing any kind of civil citizenry. We manipulate characters into irresistible situations of stress, moral confusion, and the just-beyond-arm's-reach realization of heartfelt agenda at the same time monitoring, controlling, and restraining our own behavior in the names of consideration and social restraint.

To the extent that we inject our own sense of tension and temptation into the story at hand, we invite the reader inside the raging dialectic between teller and reality, between observer and actual participant, between character and temptation.

Conventional wisdom whispers into our ear the encouragement to focus on conflict as the engine of story, an encouragement we fall upon with the eagerness and recognition of fleas discovering a long-haired dog. But our results of following such a course are fraught with the misplaced energy of thin, one- or two-dimensional characters who barely hint at the conversation to be had between writer and character, between characters and readers.

If the reader is led to feel the tension the writer experiences between story and reality, then and only then has the story succeeded in becoming more of a portal to interior conflict than a mere traffic report of conflicting agendas.

Confrontation is the meeting within each and every character, however front rank or humble walk-on, of the character's core agenda and what the appropriate behavioral dictates of that particular character--what is felt internally and desired as opposed to what is said and done in consequence. Accordingly, confrontation is present in every stave of dialogue, a simmering, bubbling catalyst that may explode into a force that causes the character to say and/or do something that betrays the protective covering, the Kevlar vest of reality worn by the character. Most characters will not willingly betray secrets of agenda until the collision with the stress of urgent confrontation, knocking at the gate like the porter in Macbeth, demanding to be let in.

Sales figures for the writers in our midst

The writer's major goal is to bring story and dramatic thrust to narrative, but close upon the heels of that goal is the need to bring power, where ever it exists, face to face with truth. You can start messing with that equation by doing to the definition of truth what we have so successfully done over the years to the tax code, leaving the appearance of confrontation without actually raising the hackles of concern and discomfort. Power should not be allowed unrestrained or unmonitored. For those who care and hold relevant beliefs, even God should be confronted with truth on a regular basis.

Notable among writers who have brought truth to bear (and in no particular chronology or other order) are Geoffrey Chaucer, Jane Austen, Miguel Cervantes, Edith Wharton, and John Steinbeck.

Of that group, Chaucer (1343) came about two hundred years before Cervantes, who in his turn was just about two hundred years before Jane Austen. Don Quixote, joined a few of Chaucer's iconic pilgrims, notably The Pardoner and The Knight, in confronting power, by which is meant social dominance. The results were opportunities for many of us, years after the fact, to laugh at what we were, what we have become, and what we still are as a race.

Throughout written and spoken literature, there are men and women who bring new meaning to such concepts as social awareness, individuality, and integrity. The lone character moves through the various zeitgeists separating eras, exemplary but lonely, happy but not as closely connected with a clan or family or organization as many of us. The reward or, if you will, satisfaction achieved by these characters is quite often not financial although in fairness to facts, Chaucer did pretty well in terms of an income, and later down the line, both Wharton and Steinbeck seem to have been undercut if not overtly betrayed by their wealth.

At a time when more books are published in one year than had been published in aggregate since Mr.Caxton invented the forerunner of the modern printing press, the median sale of a trade book is a scant five hundred copies. Back in the day, when you were running a small scholarly publishing company, you actually were able to base pricing decisions around projected sales of five hundred copies, but even then you knew you had some better-selling titles in the wings, waiting to pick up the profit picture. The point devolves to the things writers need to write about, the things they need to do to support their living costs, and their continued willingness to confront power with truth. The result of the clash might not necessarily be art, but it will serve to keep the civilization edging over toward full honesty, disclosure, and transparency.

In many ways, the writer is being shouted down by individuals with what are spoken of as good communications skills, trying to persuade us to tithe, contribute to fringe and rump causes, and shut down such targets as are presented to us under the guise of their being The Establishment. It is not the writer who is at fault, it is the self-aggrandizer who has a few yards of communications skills in his or her tool kit. The writer goes on, turning out those five-hundred-seller editions while the rest of the public sees the fringers picking up the big sales and royalties and thinking, I could do that, too, by which they mean I could drink the Kool-aid of the fringe and write my own Kool-aid, thinking lofty thoughts about how at last I was earning my due as a writer. It is necessary to confront that power with as many five-hundred-sale editions as possible.

Thanks for the Memory

You, it appears, have a quirky memory. In yesterday's New York Times op-ed section, the economist Paul Krugman got off a nice rejoinder about lunatic Republicans, using the trope There's no sanity clause. This took you back immediately to a moment at least sixty years in the past, from an old Marx Brothers movie, A Night at the Opera, in which Chico and Groucho were in the midst of a riff on contracts. During the course of the riff, Chico uttered the line, "Everybody knows there's no sanity clause." Krugman's deft, Christmas-day use of the pun was effective; many of the news and opinion bloggers you follow caught it, remarking on its originality. You even Twittered one of them with the citation.

Twice during a prolonged afternoon lunch conversation with Barnaby Conrad and Sandy Vanocer, you were transported back to events you'd witnessed or had read about in order to supply a slight correction to the record, an unintentional role you played as historian. True to form, Conrad commented on this trick memory of yours. Even though Sandy's reminiscences of his past as a newsman were interesting and vivid, you were drawn into the on-going debate within you about the nature of memory, particularly the awareness that your memory of an event is tinged with the colors you impart and may well differ from the memory of another who experienced the same event. Sometimes the difference of the memory resides within the nuance of a particular word. You, for instance, always thought of David Brinkley's voice as wry and amused. Sandy, who knew Brinkley personally and worked with him considered his voice dry and bordering on incredulous. Other times, although the memory comes to you wrapped in more than one sense, say visual and aural, or visual and smell, you wonder if the memory took place or that you are remembering your invention of it, life, as it were, lived as though you had wished rather than as it actually happened. And then there is the not inconsiderable use of that word "actually." Actually means really, or existing as a matter of fact. Compare actual with fictional. Did it happen or did you invent it? Much of your writing life has been focused on invention, in some measure because you felt that not enough of note was happening to you in real life, thus your need to invent it. Possibly because you were not satisfied with the outcome of things in your real life, you sought to rearrange the furniture of events to better suit your sense of self. Possibly.

Can you trust your memory? With some exceptions, the answer is yes, particularly if the memory is of a formula, a mantra, a fact that can be easily checked against two or more sources. Can memory in general be trusted? Well, that depends, and thus does a boundary line emerge between fact and fiction, between participation in an event and self-interest. That wasn't your idea, someone tells you, that was my idea, in a grand sense taking possession of the memory. You experience a squeeze of irritation, knowing it was in fact your idea, in effect wrenching the memory back from an individual who has been suddenly transported from the ranks of family, friend, lover to opponent in the Monopoly game of memory. Then an interior voice speaks to you, Screw it. Let him/her have the memory. You know the truth. Thus in one mighty concession, you have become bigger, more humane in your own eyes, a tower of empathy. You know with rigid certainty that you would never give a woman a gardenia. More likely you would have given roses or camellias but never gardenias. Of all the flowers you know and admire, the gardenia is so far down on the list that you would not even think of it much less give it. If she wants to remember gardenias, be my guest. Thus you are delivered to the nobility of allowing her memory of an event to vibrate reality for her. But you know better; you know the truth and of course, storyteller that you are, you live in the memory of truth.

So then, all the stories you tell of yourself are true? Well, you have a point there. Although he had no say in the mentorship, you have taken the memories of being mentored by Mark Twain, and he has indirectly whispered in your ear that making yourself the butt of a story can work wonders with an audience, even more so than making yourself the hero. In fact, making yourself even slightly heroic tends to heat up the room with the boredom factor. The eyes begin to roll upward, the yawns, at first stifled, tend to break through, and there, you've done it again, you've committed the act of boring an audience.

What emerges in any discussion of memory is the literary equivalent and mixed metaphor of the political football, moved up and down the grid at will and whim, one major truth being that we cling to memories as the dear and defining gifts that they are, incredulous that anyone would think to take them away from us or supplant them with their own.

Protective Covering

In recent years security measures have become an accepted price to pay for living in a multifarious society.  We have become inured to the point of thinking nothing about having to peel stubborn plastic covers or wrapping from books, bottles of aspirin, electronic appliances, even flea-control ampules for our pets.  If we stop to think about the reasons why some of these are necessary, our collective memory will take us back to such antisocial pathology as individuals embedding razor blade shards into apples given as treats for Halloween or of poison being injected into foodstuffs and over-the-counter medicines.  There are also statistics published by retail outlets reminding us that a constant percentage of humanity is given to shop lifting, which is in itself a euphemism for stealing.

Meeting such security measures head-on causes in each of us a particular response which could range from rage to a cynical nod of recognition and awareness to the prayer that the transgressor will mend his or her ways, not to forget the re-enforced resolve to be more careful of our own properties and actions that might make us vulnerable, actions such as trusting our brother and sister human beings.

Two disparate things today cause you to equate these idiosyncratic responses with the microthin vinyl covering that protects the faces of new products, faces such as dials of clocks and watches, computer screens, viewing screens of digital cameras, and the like.  These peel-off membranes are meant to protect a product that will ordinarily be scratched or dented, the theory behind such protection being that you would not accept such a scratched or dented product before you bought it.  When you do buy it and remove the covering, it becomes yours, a projection of you.  Each metaphoric ding or scratch becomes an assault on you.

One such assault comes when an individual of roughly peer equality disagrees with your taste in a matter that is of serious and considerable moment to you.  This is not a question of a friend or lover ordering a dish at a restaurant that contrasts markedly from what you have ordered because you after all want to chose friend and or lover for their individuality, not their complete, unflagging regard for your taste as THE standard for ALL taste.  This is a matter of someone having a differing view of a basic construct of story, of literature, of the men and women who write it, and of the men and women who edit it, and of the men and women who speak critically about it.  For example, in most areas, the views of your coffee chum, Ernest Sturm, who professes French literature, prizes the critical theory of Rene Welleck over that of Leslie Fiedler whereas you feel passionately that Fiedler is leaps and bounds ahead of Welleck in his visions of American literature.  Thus whenever THAT subject comes bubbling up, so too comes your attitude, which has infinitely less to do with defensiveness than it does a sense with a sense of trespass, which you allow under the wraps of civility to flare then pass without acting on the energy.  You give Ernest his opinion and respect him for having it, but you also give you the approval for your outrage before settling into the civility of dialogue and difference.

Another example:  a student gives you to read, evaluate, and make suggestions, a story, which becomes an occasion of outrage for you which you cover under that equivalent of a vinyl screen protector, focusing instead on trying to find ways to show that student keys to get deeper into the story, whereby it may be taken to a dimension of depth and originality and significance, all portions of your role as a teacher.

Today, in the upper village neighborhood of the quirky neighborhood in which you find yourself living, you encountered a display featuring two photographs of the President of the United States, the 44th president to be precise, each featuring a Photo-Shopped Hitler mustache.  You were not able to contain as much of your outrage as you wished.  "I suppose,"  you told the displayers of the photos, "this is your revenge for what so many of us said about the last President of the United States."  That did not set well at all, because their response, although you were alone, referred to you as "You people," rendered to suggest that "we people" need to learn what it is to be American.  Thus do arguments and differences of opinion escalate, fracture, Balkanize; thus do differing groups, points of view, and factions ramp up the rhetoric and the emotion of encounter, of turf, of outrage at the trespass of one's own view with the jackboot of moral certainty on the part of the trespasser.  Works both ways if you happen to be on the trespassing side.  One man's trespass is another man's side trip.

Although you are indeed political, convinced for instance that Democracy as experienced in present day America needs a shot of Darwinism, needs a tick or two of evolution.  Your own belief is that the evolution is toward socialism as opposed to what is being branded, packaged today as conservatism.  One of your arguments in that direction is that the conservatives inherited a remarkably large surplus from the administration of the 42nd President of the US, which they promptly gorged upon; now they caution us about fiscal responsibility.  But this belief and this observation are not the closing arguments here; the closing arguments relate to the need of the writer person to walk these mean streets without contributing to the meanness, to remove the protective covering from the viewing screen and walk about making notes, taking it all in, recognizing the flare-ups of the sense of being trespassed upon, then getting back to the job at hand which is not writing as rant but writing as discovery.

I deny the allegations and challenge the allegators

Over the years of your endeavors, the subject of conflict has lingered resolutely, seeping up from your own inner reaches, from a not inconsiderable population of students who express revulsion that stories should have to contain conflict in the first place, and from a number of bouts with you, wearing an editorial cap, wanted from an otherwise splendid writer a deeper sense of conflict than the mere, obligatory presence of opposition.

Your recent preoccupation with duality, as expressed not only in mammal but particle behavior thus leads you toward conclusions about conflict:

1) Conflict is internal within a character as well as external.  She may wish to achieve a particular goal and indeed has the opportunity to do so, but is wracked by the fear that her goal orientation has made her selfish, distanced from the needs of others.  Externally, she is faced with the debt of obligation to succeed placed upon her by family, school, law firm, gender, etc.

2) There is a default duality between action and inaction (Just ask Arjuna in The Bhagavad-Gita) which is good for starters but is not sufficient unto itself to satisfy the reader.

3) Try to tie the tin cans of motive and intent to the bumper.  What motives and intents have produced the seeming impasse that leads to lines drawn in the sand and, gulp, actions and their consequences.

4) Ask yourself why conflict must lead to emotion-driven action or lack of action.  (Just ask King Creon, uncle to Antigone.)

5) Negotiated settlements are ultimately kosher but not until hot blood has been shed and the combatants have seen some unanticipated form of consequence.

6) All conflict begins with duality of some nature.

7) Ask self how to get writers who are made uncomfortable by conflict to face up to it so that they may proceed.

8)  Conflict may come from differing ideology or even differing points of view but for it to have any impact on the reader, it must have a visceral impact upon you.  Er, gut level response.

9) The best opportunity to learn from the work and produce a measure of freshness is to bring characters to a clash over a conflict you personally are uncomfortable with.

10)  It may be all right to know the outcome up front but it is better to seem to stumble on the means by which the outcome is achieved.

The Uncertain Wetness of Showers

Let us venture back in time to those seemingly palmy days when grown men of a certain social status were able to spend considerable time considering what I will call "the nature of things," my target one Heraclitus of Ephesus, whose life span is thought to be from about 535 before the common era to about 435. He is particularly relevant to my meanderings today not only because of his most remembered observation "You cannot step into the same river twice," but not to forget his belief in the unity of opposites, or to put it another way, the resident duality of everything about us, the proverbial half-empty or half-full glass.

You once ventured into a class in philosophy, thinking it would have the metaphoric effect of a blast of nasal spray to the clogged recesses of your mind. You forthwith were met with Anaximinider and his student, Anaximinides, as well as Heraclitus. You were also met with the wiry blond Midwestern force of Kay, and she with you, to the point where you were hormonally driven, even to the point of dropping out of the philosophy class. With the fondness of retrospect and nostalgia, you think about Kay from time to time; with the awareness that Heraclitus's observation lit some kind of vision within you, you think about him and his discoveries, trying to fit them into your own sense of what story is, what story is not, and how you as the triumvirate of writer, editor, and teacher you have become, can apply these observations to positioning yourself into either of these three modes as opposed to the modes you have identified as antithetical, modes such as the pedant, the authority, the bore, the nuisance, the Jerry-Lewis-type actor in a Shakespearean troupe.

A story is not a single line. True enough, a long wire or string produces a satisfying twang or tone, which may be modified by shortening or increasing its length, but the tone is nothing without some reference point, some opposition or overtone. Nor is a line a story until some conflict or opposition has been introduced . First you, as the writer, must see the duality in a person or situation, then you must learn how to convey this duality to those you would have read the story.

"All things are a-flowing, Sage Heraclitus says," was the line in the Ezra Pound poem, Hugh Selwyn Mauberly, that got the concept set loose in your mind, where it wandered like a mouse in the tall grass outside your laundry room. The grass is not enough; it wants something to give it roots. Your work area, in many ways an accidental result of your attitudes toward neatness and organization, is nevertheless nothing as it stands; it wants a fly buzzing about, landing on your chin or forehead as you type. Your work area is nothing without a book, consulted for some reference and not returned to its nominal place on a shelf, becomes the occasion for you to stub the toe of your bare foot against it, eliciting an immediate summer storm of profanity and a later one, an aftershock of recrimination for not having the follow-through that would have seen the book returned to its place and the stubbing of the toe thus obviated.

You could argue that--story wise--you are best served by setting forth as many potentials for consequence as possible. There was a purpose for having taken the book out in the first place. Indeed there was the distinct laziness of lack of purpose that caused the book to be left where you could walk into it, and even more event-laden is the momentum of fact that had you not been preoccupied with some notion in play, you would have seen the book, stepped over it, and gone your one-dimensional way.

You have never understood the concept of absent-mindedness so well as when you understood the need to immerse yourself into a thing (a chore, a task, an event) in order to make story of it. Things remain at rest until they are engaged in thought. The books you have saved from your college days are not the same books any longer (take that! Heraclitus) because you are a different reader, one who has stubbed his toe many a time on many a thing. Kay may well be a grandmother by now, much changed from the time you stubbed your toe on her, just as you are someone you did not anticipate and yet were rushing toward.

The Three C's: Consternation, Conflict, and Compassion

The moment you give a name to a character, the closer you have come to imparting life to the character and in the process imparting concern for the character's welfare to you.  

Nevertheless, things have a way to go before you are safe; there is the reader to think about as well as the added matter of how your other characters will react to an interloper in their midst or a mere convenience character, brought in like some kick-ass consultant to set things right in the story.

We'll get you back to the reader in a while because readers are important in the long run and because they might well bring things to the table you hadn't even anticipated.  For now, we need to keep you on track--with characters and you.
Some characters are deliberately brought on stage to cause consternation to one or more of the ensemble already in place.  

This consternation might be the source of inconvenience as in an ex lover appearing on the scene or a nearly grown child, returning home on a spring break from school. wanting nothing more than a couch on which to be a potato.  Such characters are in effect armatures around which are wrapped the wires of their ability to produce discomfort and tension in every scene, as well as the aforementioned consternation.  

They might also be brought forth to enhance a conflict already in place or to push beyond the tipping point a tension into conflict.
Although these characters have a specific job description and are accordingly easy to track, we need to remember two vital qualities other than there mere name--they must be presented with some degree of compassion from you, lest their true purpose and, thus, your own motives become transparent.

Begin by imagining the climate and condition in place between the parents of this character in the process by which they selected this character's name.  Yes, I am positing that this new character has parents.

Wait a minute, are you suggesting--?

As a matter of fact, yes; I am.  This exercise has already imparted a sense of social and psychological environments, lathes shaping this character's growth and behavior, quite possibly eliciting a deeper understanding from you, if not outright compassion, relating to who this character is, what this character wants, and what this character is willing to do in order to achieve the goals you have set as a precondition to appearance in this particular story.

To add spice to the stew, you might even consider whether either or both parents wanted this character child, or if this character were an accident at first, then a growing irritant or, perhaps this accident character had come to be much appreciated to the point of becoming what we think of when we think of a spoiled child.

This exercise will provide clues for the next step in the equation--how your new, wanted or unwanted, named character gets along with the rest of the ensemble cast.  Is he or she the kind of emerging nuisance the poet Dylan Thomas became as he moved from university to university and unsuspecting home to unsuspecting home on his now legendary reading tour of America.  Does he or she throw up in the rose garden, borrow large or even minor sums of money without the slightest intention of repaying?  Does he or she come on to husbands, wives, baby sitters, professors' wives/husbands?

What kinds of nerves and wires will your new character cause to fray?  And how, oh, how will you portray this character so that the reader senses you are just as powerless to impede as your front-rank characters and their associates?

dramatic

dramatic--having the inherent suggestion and quality of story; implicit content of elements that produce conflict, interaction, goal search, revelation and reversal; a narrative that contains one or more characters in pursuit of an agenda or embarking on an internal or geographical journey; a quest which will involve reversal, frustration, and competitive exterior forces.

A successful dramatic narrative reflects the goals and intent of characters set against the counterpoint of the writer's personal goals at the time of writing. Thus stories may reflect an attitude of cynicism, pragmatism, sadness, bitterness, expansive optimism, and transcendental anticipation. Differing readerships will be particularly drawn to one of these qualities or perhaps even a combination of them. You might liken the physics concept of water, seeking to find its original level, to the literary concept of story: readers seek to find their target level. One thing all stories have in common is a voice or governing personality. It properly should be the goal of the writer to seek its own level, which becomes the pressures informing the voice, timbre, and intensity of its persona.

On a basic level, to say of a work that it is dramatic is to say of it that it is act-able, performable, readable. On a more nuanced level, to say of a work that it is dramatic implies that the work has skillfully designed ventures of men and women engaged in dealings with the enormous varieties present in life. If these dealings appear piled on or contrived, the landscape in which they appear may be spoken of as melodramatic, exaggerated, even operatic. Thus does balance come into the equation of which dramatic is an integral part.

My heart's not in it

internal conflict--a battle between two or more opposing forces within an individual, a culture, or a society; choices a character makes that impact his behavior in a story; the agony of moral choice written large as dramatic issue.

The key word in an internal conflict is but, which translates as "except for the fact;" but is the tin can tied as a prank to the rear bumper of a car, it is the conditional divide between the two warring forces that tug at the character. But is the fulcrum, the contingency with which the afflicted character lives. Sound dramatic principle dictates an internal conflict step forth in front rank characters, Mark Anthony the soldier and Mark Anthony the lover. Similarly there is Cleopatra struggling through the emotions of the lover and the duties and responsibility of the queen.

A protagonist may be a natural leader, except that he freezes in arguments; a scientist may be devoted to the pursuit of her research but feels compromised for once having managed the outcome of one of her more significant studies. Huckleberry Finn may admire and respect the runaway slave, Jim, but feels his conscience being conflicted because, after all, Jim was his master's property and Huck has effectively helped Jim escape from his rightful owner.

The conflict may be essentially internal,particularly in the short story, but it will have an effect on the way significant characters behave and in the way the reader feels.

Conflict of Interests

conflict--the clash of agendas between two or more forces within a story; thus the internal argument of conscience versus desires raging within one character as well as the differing views of appropriate behavior among opposing sides. Conflict is opposition writ large, the duel between dream and reality, between age and youth, between conservative and liberal. Conflict emerges from two wellsprings, the desire of an individual to survive, and the sense in story that every character believes he is right. Conditions that stand in the way of survival represent conflict. Conditions that emerge when opposing forces insist on the aptness and correctness of their positions are representations of conflict. Since its appearance and subsequent evolution, the human species has struggled against the conflicts of weather, starvation, illness. Since its reemergence in the middle of the twentieth century, Israel has been in one form or another of conflict with its neighbors, each side convinced of the validity of its position.

Story often begins with a character being propelled by a goal. The character collides with one or more obstacles, reversals that cause frustration and possible humiliation. These obstacles are often other characters with contrary agendas, but the obstacles may be emotional or philosophical forces within the principal character. In either case, the principle character must seek a way through or around the labyrinth of obstacle to some degree of settling the claims of the original goal.

Real life characters who identify their goals, then set methodically forth to achieve them are admirable, often becoming role models for emulation. They represent progression, but they do not represent story. A woman setting methodically forth to accomplish something rarely achieved by a woman is story because of the presence of obstacle, which in story becomes personified, even objectified.

Conflict begins in story with an individual who wants something to come to pass or who wants something not to come to pass. The conflict is engaged when the individual acts on his goal. The conflict becomes tangible and irreversible when a person or persons reacts to the individual acting on his goal.

Conflict always has consequences (if it does not, the narrative effect becomes reminiscent of the boy hollering wolf).



tension--a sense of potential menace, vulnerability, humiliation, conflict, or reversal hovering over characters as they pursue their agendas; a radiant quality of apprehension affecting readers who have come to have concerns about characters; a dramatic shading valued by some writers to a greater degree than actual conflict, tension is the flashing warning light, the buzzing smoke detector that warns of the consequences of conflict.

One instructive way to look at tension is as an atmosphere of dramatic tentativeness, of characters attempting to behave as though nothing is wrong, trying not to recognize the elephant in the living room. Thus by the indirection of subtext the reader will become apprehensive for the appropriate characters.

Another way of instruction: Tension is the tightening of hopes, anticipation, of thinking nothing more could go wrong, just before one more thing goes wrong. Tension is being in bed in a cheap hotel, awaiting the comforting presence of sleep, then hearing a shoe drop onto the floor in the room above, then waiting for the other shoe to drop. At length, the shoe does drop. But a moment later, one more shoe drops...


style--the appearance and expression of written personality; often enhanced by an adjective to connote spareness, flourish, orotundity, even baroque complexity. Style is the physical fingerprint of the writer, demonstrated by such traits as length of sentence, cadence, length of paragraph, use of adjectives and adverbs, punctuation; style may emerge as formal or informal, depending on such idiosyncrasies as "one" instead of "you."

Most writers have a pronounced style, making it possible to identify their work without signposts (Hemingway comes to mind as a prime example.) while other writers are said to write in a particular style, say journalistic or scholarly or discursive. Some styles, such as material appearing in The National Geographic, are so focused on clarity and accuracy that authorial presence tends to retreat into the background.

Style is what remains of a manuscript after it has been revised by the writer, winnowed to achieve for the author a sense of comfort, which is to say that all self-consciousness has been edited out. If the writer is not comfortable or happy with his style, happier results may be found by examining writers with agreeable styles, looking for things to include or remove from one's own work.

The difference between style and voice has its origins in the author's intent in writing the work; voice comes from an emotional and/or philosophical atmosphere. Style relates to the way the writer dots i's and crosses t's; voice is a direct reflection of the author's attitude.

What's the Story?

reversal--one or more points within a story in which the plans of the protagonist takes a punishing hit a disastrous turn; one in a series of accelerating blows to the aspirations of a main character.

Story is enhanced by reversal of fortune; the more serious the reversal the higher the story is borne along. The more plot-driven, formulaic stories use reversal as a vehicle for making it appear to the reader that the lead character's aspirations are done for, that the lead is defeated in some vital enterprise, perhaps even a candidate for a place in the morgue. Without some form of reversal or a direct threat of it, there is no conflict. Without conflict, there is narrative only--but no story.

In novels and longer short stories, reversals may appear as minor irritations, increasing in intensity to the point where one or more of the characters will wonder aloud, "What more could possibly happen?" And once again the doctrine of the Unthinkable, come to pass is evidenced because--if the story is effective--something more always can and does happen.



story--a bundle of information bits about characters, strategically deployed to produce a series of on-going emotional responses, culminating in a thematic, emotional payoff. Story is the resulting product of one or more individuals who make plans, experience frustration or reversal, then achieve some progress toward their goal; it is a condition reflecting the pursuit of agenda against odds; at the very least it is a dramatic expression of volition and intent.

Longer stories, those over 10,000 words, often referred to as novellas or novelettes, depending on their length, actually move one or more characters fo some kind of change in personality, life style, or understanding. Shorter fictional works running from about fifty words to 10,000 are called short stories. Because of their comparative length in relation to the novel, there is less likelihood that shorter works can track a character from the point of awareness of a problem or goal all the way through a complex ending and subsequent change in the character's perspectives.

Short stories may end with a realization or epiphany of stunning emotional impact, as in James Joyce's memorable "The Dead." Stories may also end on a note in which one or more characters, having realized something, resolve to change a course of action, but this resolve stops short of actual change.

The structure of the contemporary short story has changed, moving away from the moral finality or tidy outcome of the ending, although beginnings often set a major character in a situation where there is some need for a decision. Middles provide occasion for tension and suspense by encouraging the turning up of dramatic heat on the protagonist and/or by adding an atmosphere of texture and complexity to the narrative. Endings propel the lead character to some point where their physical or emotional state produces a direct response from the reader. Most of Alice Munro's and William Trevor's short stories well illustrate the current elliptical state of endings in the short form.

Another characteristic of the aggressively contemporary story is the way authors break further away from the traditional narrative restraints and conventional formats. Accordingly, Rick Moody's memorable "Boys" abandons the tradition of a first- or third-person narrator; short stories by other writers will render narrative as a series of numbered paragraphs, and yet other writers will either shift from the usual past tense to a present tense delivery or depart fro conventional spelling and usage in favor of Internet chat room or electronic mail abbreviations, acronyms, or symbols.

From time to time, authors will also cast novels i the present tense, use a larger ensemble of characters as active narrators, abandon quotation marks or, as Vikram Seth did in his novel, The Golden Gate, render his entire text as a series of Petrarchan sonnets.

As a dramatic entity, story is nuanced and satisfying enough to allow adjectives to be attached to it, suggesting types such as mystery story, which by convention has come to mean a story with a focus on the discovery of at least one corpse and the detection of the individual who caused that corpse to come into being. A romance story is taken by readers to mean a series of events in which an appealing but not necessarily attractive protagonist is faced with the choice of romantic partners. A fantasy story is set in a more or less conventional venue where the outcome is influenced by a strong element of magic.

There are two basic approaches for the writer to take with the short story, the first being the literary equivalent of paint-by-the-numbers approach of arranging a lead character in a beginning-middle-end configuration in which a goal or problem is introduced, followed by a resolve to achieve the goal or solve the problem. Then comes frustration and reversal to the point where the goal or solution seems helpless or pointless. Finally, through action and some form of determination, an outcome is forged. Such formulaic approaches can be and often are satisfying, if only momentarily.

The second approach for the writer to take with the short story is to define his own vision of story, including how problems or goals are introduced, and how relatively transparent the characters are, pursuing the avenues of collision and opposition the characters experience to the point of some fireworks display of emotion that will end the story arc. This is not merely a case of the individual writer moving away from a one-size-fits all approach to story, rather a case of wanting to establish a defining take on what story should do and what it ought not do; this becomes a matter of the individual writer imposing his individual personality on the story form.

I Have Said It Thrice

"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.
"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
What I tell you three times is true."
The Hunting of the Snark
Lewis Carroll


Being the person I am, tidal in nature, certainly as mercurial as my September birth would indicate astrologically, I would nevertheless try to give as concrete, earth-bound answer as I could were you to ask me if I knew where, at a given moment, I was. High probability of an I-don't know answer, equally high chance of exact coordinates or some similar sense of exactitude. Almost no chance you'd get an it-all-depends answer. Travel with me has certain risks involved. If you are the sort who insists on knowing your destination and arrival time in advance, whether the travel is automotive, ambulatory,or in such literary excursions as essay or story, we are probably going to experience certain friction.

I am most likely to stop and ask for directions if involved in a story, proportionately less likely if engaged in an essay, bordering on surly if forced in real life to ask. Previously involved closely in the lives of three Blue Tick Hounds (the second-best nose in dogdom), and currently partnered with Sally, a compact mix of Aussie Cattle Dog and Aussie Shepherd, I have come to recognize the ease with which scent hounds become distracted, drawn off task as they say, by an interesting smell. My own life has become a fond imitation, drawing me off the lesser scents to the scents less traveled.

Accordingly, I have been drawn off scent by such recent distractions as denouement and roman a clef, finding myself drawn even farther afield by blog chum Marta's meme for willing suspension of belief, our collective token tossed into the collection bin at the phantom toll booth we have come to think of as story.

In the real sense, story is an impossible construct, a hopeless and helpless bystander to the formulas of quantum physics, those no-nonsense depictions of how things behave in the universe, how they combine or not, how they influence or do not, where they go, how much they weigh, and what they'll do if cornered. From observation, we know a certain amount about how our species and others will behave in many situations, but not all situations. The quantum persons are working on articulating how it all began, a seemingly impossible story to articulate, which makes the comparison between story and physics formula lass tenuous than it might seem.

Story is a systematic accumulation of cultural and mythic data, personified, placed in the laboratory beaker of the imagination, and subjected to the heat of conflict, tension, suspense, and agenda. The storyteller applies enough heat to cause combustion, then reports the results. My chum and collaborator Digby Wolfe visualizes the dramatic big bang as a riddle:


"The core [or plot ] of the riddle should be cleverness – hiding that which is in plain sight.

The tension of your riddle should come from the conflict between what happens as opposed to what seems to have happened."

We begin the process of buying into the riddle--suspending disbelief--when the individuals involved become human enough and vulnerable enough to cause us to feel--repeat, feel--concern for them, to become curious, even worried about what will happen to them. Rational, scientific, practical as we are, we want to push the boundaries of physical behavior on their behalf, extending our own wish to supplement with magic our impatient desire to cause things to happen or to withstand impending events on our own behalf.

And there it goes; we're in. To a degree, we're more than in; we're in love, we're smart, we're powerful. In the accelerated process of identification with characters and rooting for them, we experience the sensual thrill of running, swimming, moving briskly and efficiently through more than air and water; we move instead through obstacles, limitations, problems, physical and mental conundrums.

Only one problem: we have to give our fantasy legs, make it seem do-able, bring the miracle from the macro to the micro, and the starting point, the big bang for this process is to feel the inherent life and possibility of our fantasy with such clarity that we are able for just enough time to see the miracle in everything.

Making a Scene

1. The scene is the basic unit of drama.
2. Most short stories and novels are compilations of scenes strategically arranged for the most effective dramatic result (which is an emotional impact of some sort).
3. Scenes in novels and short stories are often--but not necessarily--connected by narrative, which is in effect stage directions writ large, including but not limited to a particular point of view, an indication of intent, a benchmark of story development, and/or a summary adduced or deduced from things characters have said, done, or not done in earlier scenes.
4. Scenes contain but are not limited to:
A. Landscape/setting
B. Characters
C. Dialogue
E. Tempo
F. Conflict
G. Suspense
H. Tension
I. Beats (events)
J. An awareness of power being exerted or exchanged
K. Reversals
L. Surprises
M. Point of view
5. Characters enter scenes with expectations of some outcome, a hot slot machine in a casino, an argument, approval, being ranked on, being ignored
6. Characters enter scenes believing they are right and/or entitled or...
7. Characters enter scenes wanting to restore some status or balance
8. Successful scenes may lack two or three of 1-7 supra, but fall into the category of endangered species if they lack four or more
9. Epistolary stories do not necessarily have scenes
10. Postmodern stories may have formats (emails, IMs, recorded messages) that do not contain scenes but which nevertheless suggest the presence of past, present, and future scenes
11. Thus scenes have an awareness of time past, time present, and time future
12. Scenes have some relevance however tenuous or thematic to the story at hand
13. A story without scenes is of a piece with a body lacking in cells
14. The arrangement of scenes in a story does not demand a strict chronology or, indeed, any kind of chronology
15. If feng shui works for rooms, there is no reason why it cannot be a useful concept for placement of the scenes in a story.

The Meeting Place between Conflict and Timing

One of the great moments in television erupted from, of all things, silence, when Jack Benny (1894--1974), amply established as penurious, a tight man with a dollar, and otherwise given to financial conservatism, is accosted by a robber (the icon from gangster movies, Sheldon Leonard), who with considerable menace, demands, "Your money, or your life."

There follows one of the most pregnant pauses in all of modern comedic entertainment. You might call it a Benny pause.

Finally, Leonard, impatient, growls out a "Well..?"

And Jack Benny's reply: "I'm thinking...I'm thinking."

Such was Jack Benny's deft timing that you could actually hear him thinking over his options, over the laughter of the audience. Set up. (Benny's frugal nature) Conflict. (Being robbed/threatened) Payoff.

Even now, over thirty years after Benny's death, you will hear the likes of Neil Simon, Woody Allen, Sid Caesar, major writers of dramatic humor, reminisce on the importance of that moment, which influenced their work as they were emerging from the shadows and into prominence.

Significant to the point I'm leading up to is the fact that Jack Benny was close to being a dead-pan in his responses, his most famous other retort being a drawn-out "Wellll!" The only person who could break through the splendid Benny facade was his close friend, the cigar chomping George Burns(1896-1996), another master of timing.

What, precisely, is timing?

Timing is knowing when what comes next can safely arrive.

Timing is knowing how long to withhold information, be it spoken, written, or a gesture.

Timing is knowing how long you can continue getting away with what you've been getting away with.

Timing is also knowing when to quit.

The best way to demonstrate how acute was Jack Benny's sense of timing is with this anecdote, gleaned from those who wrote for him and appeared with him. A generous man in his personal and professional life, he affected a stinginess and also a rivalry based on jealousy with his good friend, Fred Allen.

Benny always instructed his writers to give guests good, funny lines, and inventive agendas. The only rule to be observed was that the guest was not to deliver his/her lines until, on stage before the camera, Benny made eye contact with the guest. Then the guest was free to indulge timing, gesture, and improvised device. If the guest violated that simple rule, the guest was not invited back.

Benny in effect directed his own shows, relying on his innate sense of how long he could delay a moment of dramatic impact, producing the long-lasting guffaw.

Timing, thanks to Jack Benny and George Burns, led subsequent generations of writers and actors to see how conflict needn't be melodramatic or even burlesque--a simple disagreement or misunderstanding would do. And of course conflict was writ large when Benny was challenged with, "Your money--or your life."

Conflict is the placing in motion of differing agendas, competition set loose, disagreement spilling out like an upturned glass of red wine on a white linen table cloth. Put them together, as with, say, Jack Benny, or George Burns, or Neil Simon, and you have a raucous and engaging dynamic set loose as a force that cannot be controlled.

Will the face of humor change? Will Benny and Burns and Caesar and Simon lose their bite? Of course it will, but for now, we see the dramatic origins of it in the work of those who, whether they knew it or not, were influenced by these giants; it takes place in that crowded, ill-furnished guest room between seriousness and literary intent. It is that splendid patch of dramatic landscape wherein James Thurber, curious to know for certain if light shined in a dog's eyes will reflect, is caught by a policeman, on his hands and knees in the dark, trying to shine a flashlight into a dog's eyes--then having to explain this to the policeman.

All of these worthies of timing and conflict have in common a degree of the absurd, which, like a gifted magician, they distract us from. With timing. The absurd becomes real enough for the audience to buy the situation without question.

We have been invited into this dreary guest room between conflict and timing, where somehow our suspicions have been raised and we are along for a ride that lasts us long after the performance has ended.