Anton Chekhov @ Mt. Rushmore.com

Chekhovian--similar to or evocative of the thrust of the plays and short stories of Anton Chekhov; materials linked by an underground or less visible causality than conventional drama; seemingly ambiguous narratives, informed by the emphasis on subtext and internal responses of a character; stories decidedly lacking the appearance of being plot-driven.

Chekhov is best known among writers for his assertion that a gun appearing conspicuously in Act 1 must be pointed and fired by Act 3, opening the door for discussions about foreshadowing and causality. It may also be regarded as a framework in which characters use the tools at hand. Many of Chekhov's stories deal with the inability of characters to communicate with one another until a) it is too late, b) a sudden insight emerges, and possibly c) the elephant in the living room becomes through previous events visible to one or more characters. This last possibility links James Joyce to Chekhov, just as Beethoven's fondness for Mozart linked those two in an apostolic succession that began with the admiration of each for Haydn.

Chekhov is apostolic and his major plays and later short stories invite investigation, particularly for such techniques as interior monologue, internal conflicts, and subtext. His work has inspired twentieth- and twenty-first century actors as well as writers, inspiring them to find non-verbal ways of expressing emotions and intent. If there were to be a literary equivalent of Mt. Rushmore, Chekhov would certainly qualify as an image along with Franz Kafka, and George Orwell, and with some debate, Miguel Cervantes. The names of all four have become adjectival forms in the literary language, Chekhovian associated with ambiguity, Kafkaesque with apparent conspiracy theory or dead-pan satire, Orwellian implying Big-Brother supervision, and Quixotic suggesting extravagant romanticism and idealism.

Hint: Major things to be learned from Chekhov: 1) let the reader work at the story to adduce its meaning, 2) give the reader sufficient but not extensive tools.

Domino Theory

domino theory--a plot-driven concept in which story points (dramatic beats) are seen as dominoes, aligned so as to cause one falling to trigger another to fall; a dramatic demonstration of determinism, where the present event has been directly caused by past events; a practical demonstration of consequence in story.

A metaphoric description of a story: a row of dominoes stood on their vertical end, placed in close enough proximity that by tipping the first domino, it will strike and knock over its neighbor, which in turn topples its neighbor, ad inf, until the entire row has been toppled. 

Thus the entire row of dominoes stands in its at-rest inertia until a force (opening velocity) topples the first domino in the row. From that point until the last domino falls, the story is in effect "telling" itself. The literary equivalent of checking the air pressure in the tires of one's vehicle is checking to see if the dominoes (i.e. story or plot points) are spaced at the optimal distance. 

 Too wide a gap between events makes for a lurching ride. Too close an interval produces a frenetic, comedic effect which often undercuts any intended suspense or seriousness.

Recipe for success: During the revision process, select one incident or scene from anywhere in the text that provides unquestioned opening velocity. Move that scene or incident to the beginning of the story, making certain its narrative time frame makes the event appear to be taking place in the immediate present. Using this repositioning of events, adjust where necessary the time sequence (verb tenses) in recognition of the "new" beginning.

In this domino-theory regard, triggering devices play important roles; the topple of any domino in the row triggers the fell of the neighbor domino, thus an action has down-the-line consequences. In longer works, the triggering device may skip a few neighbors in delivering its consequential inertia, but it is nevertheless felt as a product of causality.

Graham Greene and Eric Ambler, each in his self-described thrillers or novels of suspense, are particularly worth study in this domino-theory regard. In Greene's Brighton Rock, for example, a major character visits a coin-operated booth at an amusement pier, where he records a phonograph record with what another character believes is a romantic message, which she plays at the very end of the narrative, to a heightened dramatic effect. 

 Ambler's still-radiant thriller, A Coffin for Dimitrios, begins early on with the protagonist being shown a corpse whose life he is invited to track. At one time in the corpse's life, the individual used coffins to transport heroin into France. The corpse and the trope of the coffin have downstream consequences every bit as surprising and ironic as the phonograph record in Brighton Rock.

Orbituary

elliptical orbit--a story path veering off from the circular orbit of the conventional narrative; the oval-shaped path of a story, implying a movement away from tight plotting while still appearing to revolve about a recognizable theme.

Conventional short stories and novels tend to follow the structure of the domino theory.  Events are arranged in close enough proximity to cause one dramatic event (a robbery, for example)to trigger another (unanticipated complication for the robber: get-away car stalls, flat tire, traffic jam).  Any one or all of which triggers the arrival of an investigative agency responding not to the robbery but the stalled car, which triggers the appearance of the investigative agency responding to the robbery, which triggers a bureaucratic confusion in which the robbers escape, etc.

As stories and novels evolve beyond the conventional plot formation, the behavior of the characters involved becomes more notional, producing surprise and variations on reader expectations. 

 The writer's role in such stories is to provoke questions rather than to insist upon or even suggest answers. Thus do those frequent passengers, ambiguity and subtext, hitch rides on the traveling sphere, pulling the circular orbit slightly off course and into an ellipse.

Let Poe's "A Cask of Amontillado" represent the uniformly circular orbit or domino theory short story, with James Thurber's more recent trope on the same kind of revenge theme represent the tendency to veer off slightly, and Tobias Wolff's "Bullet in the Brain" represent the elliptical nature of the latest evolutionary step in the decidedly elliptical orbit of the short story.

With this in mind, the question to the writer becomes: What new thing can you do for story while still keeping it a story?

Dear Editor: The Dog Ate My Revision

hard luck story--a narrative of misfortune offered to secure the hearer's sympathy and possible financial contribution; an offered excuse as in The dog ate my homework; a narrative offered as mitigation for any non-performance.

All stories have some kind of end-game goal, some intended effect on the hearer/reader. Is it laughter? Perhaps the author's intent is education, or irony, or reversal. Perhaps the narrative is offered in self-defense, or the adjunct of self-defense, excuse. As long as we're dwelling on the conditional perhaps, might be the intent of a story is to make the teller sound modest--moi?--or resourceful.

Surely one of the more plentiful among dramatic narratives is the hard-luck story or its close relative, the sob story. The purpose is to evoke or elicit sympathy for the teller, both in the nature of troubles piled on and in the way the load is borne by the forces of Nature and natural disaster.

You could say--and probably will, once you think about it--that The Book of Job is the classic hard-luck story, not only because of the trials visited upon Job but as well because of the capricious nature of the way the visitation was set in motion. Job happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, when those polar representations of The Cosmic Forces got into a bragging and betting mood.



Ishmael's was a hard luck story in that he signed on the Pequod with no other thought to get away from the depressing nature of life on shore, only to find life at sea a cluster of disaster in which he was lucky to escape with his life. Heathcliff and Cathy saw the chemistry of their mutual attraction torn into a hard luck story in Wuthering Heights, and the unnamed protagonist/narrator of Rebecca saw her dreams of a romantic future turn into a hard luck story, ditto Charles Ryder for being pulled into the swirl and eddy of the Marchmain family in Brideshead Revisited, and while still on the subject of Evelyn Waugh, look at the hard luck story he contrived for the hapless protagonist of the haunting short story, "The Man Who Loved Dickens."


deus ex machina--a too convenient solution for a dramatic problem; a way of removing an obstacle that seems to have come from an independent, even unrelated source such as mere chance or accident.

Originally a device in ancient Greek drama at a time when gods were thought to have a hand in determining the outcomes of human affairs, the name now evokes the presence of any dramatic resolution that creaks and groans its way to a mechanical-seeming outcome. Indeed, in some performances, characters representing gods were lowered onto the stage by means of a basket-and-winch device.

Hint: in ancient Greek drama, competition and jealousies among gods and goddesses was assumed, thus even at that level, personality and motive informed godly activities. In modern stories, personalities, differing agendas, and cultural squabbles produce the best mechanisms for initiating and resolving plot complications.

Further hint: it is acceptable for obstacles to grow larger, complexities to grow more intense by accident, but their resolutions must be more convincing in their engineering. Think as endings or resolutions as mediated settlements.

Risk

Individuals who appear in stories have, as we've noted, expectations. They also have something to lose. Michael Henchard, in arguably one of the most powerful opening chapters in all of English-language literature (The Mayor of Casterbridge) had his wife and daughter to lose, indeed did lose them, providing traction for the rest of the novel and a profound change in him.

Some characters have only their pride, self-esteem, sense of direction, sense of proportion, good judgment to lose (in varying degrees). Others have quite literally their life, their career, their reputation. Others still have at risk their morality, their virtue,their sense of adventure, their ability to inspire trust, their will to live.

The more a character has at risk, the more she or he has options, which lead to decisions to be made. Placing a character in such a position makes the character step forth with more interest than someone merely along for the ride, a window dressing, a convenience.

Regardless of where the needle points on a given individual's moral compass, that person compels interest in direct proportion to not only the choice to be made but the time frame in which it must be made. Thus two time-worn-but-effective enhancements: It's now or never, and You're either with us or against us.

We tend to ally ourselves as readers with characters in terms of the risks they take, how they take these risks, and what consequences await them if the risks taken do not pay off. There are actual courses given in MBA programs relating to risk management, allowing some of us a delicious sense of complex response to fictional individuals who risk business losses, lead organizations into disaster, then emerge with enormous buy-out or exit bonuses. There are individuals who risk personal resources on inventions or artistic creations. There are yet other individuals who risk their personal freedom on ventures in which the prevalent law is breached or entirely broken.

Most of us who have lived past a certain age have taken a number of risks with varying results which we bear in some degree after the fact. I, for instance, still bear the residual anger of the wife of one of my oldest friends for saying no to chemotherapy when she had particularly urged. From time to time she reminds me with some pointed remark about how I played the luck card. Her doing so is an indication of her regard for me and her fear for my survival. Risks are choices with consequences, a reminder of the causal nature of story. If there are no consequences in a story, the events are merely episodic, a stream of vignettes with perhaps a thematic throughline, but only perhaps. Even in its modern, post-modern, and post-postmodern forms, story is still somewhat a domino theory in which one element, someone's goal, triggers something else, which triggers something else. Macbeth, coming home, runs into the three witches, spouting Republican propaganda, which leads him to wonder, hmmm, should I go whack King Malcolm and accede to the throne? Hamlet encounters the ghost who gives him the Republican line about whacking his uncle, and thus buys into a revenge throughline. Henry V sends his cabinet forth to come up with a reason to invade France. And so these stories go, one domino at a time. If Lear had not decided to retire, divide his estate among his daughters, one of whom was the governor of Alaska, there'd be no story. Dominoes. Consequences of tilting events. Risks taken in anticipation of a prize. McCain choosing Palin as a running mate, the act of which provides a roar of distraction from the tangible campaign programs of Barack Obama. A risk taken and, for the moment, being effective.

Narrative without risk is not story, not yet. It needs the catalyst of risk to propel the simmering energy.

___________________

Sally wanted to appear on this post, offering concessions such as not sneaking out through a breach in the back fence and going forth to hoorah and harass the Cudahy's. It is a risk I will have to take.