When first we practice to discuss

When individual characters in a story converse, does their dialogue have to give the effect of an argument between them?

The simple, direct answer to that rhetorical and simplistic question is yes.

Even when characters are in accord, there is an ever present sense of a word or two being misunderstood, overly emphasized, felt or construed in some ironic or cynical way you know will ultimately lead to explosion.  Yeah, right; you're doing it because you love me.

When Character A makes unblinking eye contact with Character B, then says, "I see what you mean." a portion of our reader sensitivity is already leaping ahead to wonder if Character A does in fact see what Character B means.  Thus the seeds of anticipation and ambiguity are broadcast, the former setting in our minds a scene in which Character A will come to some kind of accounting for having with such emphasis seen what B means.  As well, we are drawn to the reality of our own communications with those about us and the comparatively low rate of satisfaction we have.  Some of us writers are even more likely to wince, having experienced editorial queries on our own works, notations asking us if A really intended that observation.  Truth to tell, it is a world of anticipations being driven off cliffs and of ambiguous fates out there.

Look at it this way:  when two or more characters converse it is indeed not mere conversation of the sort you are likely to have among a group of civilian (non-writer) friends; it is instead an enquiry board or an arbitration panel or a grand jury, trying variously to effect a cause, an agreement, or the extent of guilty participation.

Magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, and Liberty, from the heyday of short fiction would tend to view the simple phrase, "Honey, I'm home" as a simple announcement from the head of the family, in from an energetic, productive day at work, ready for some quality time with the kids before supper, a Kool-Aid metaphor for the Great American Dream being firmly in place.  Later in the same century, along comes Playboy in cynical riposte to the point where "Honey, I'm home," produces another reaction altogether, "Geez, I thought you said he never left the office before six," and the even more cynical "Will you please shut up and remember why you're here!"  Some might argue about the use of the exclamation point there; it was included to indicate the speaker's ardent wish to business at hand to be concluded rather than interrupted, thus occupying even more time before a potential confrontation might emerge.

Among the words you use to describe the resident emotions of scenes is edge.  You have seen plays written by Harold Pinter in which even though there was no dialogue being exchanged between the persons on stage, the mere rattling of a newspaper became dialogue, implying impatience, anger, irritation.

Dialogue is the unseen mosquito buzzing about in the room, the static electricity that sparks from the characters' clothing as they sit or stand; it is sexual tension and/or suspense or suspicion or resentment repressed at some degree of effort.  In David Lodge's remarkable novel, Deaf Sentences, it is a man losing his hearing, constantly misreading homophones, getting progressively more muddled as individuals close at hand increasingly shout at him.  However it sounds in appearance--"Did you sleep well?"--it is a world of implication in its own right, a reference to something in the past or some ongoing symptom that if not treated will become, that does become epidemic. Dialogue is the unthinkable, come to stay for a nice, long visit.

Letters to a Young, Middle-Aged, or Geezer Writer, XXV

Okay, they seem to be saying to you, Here we are, at your request.  Now, you going to give us a clue about why you called this meeting?

Well, you say, drawing the e's and l's out long enough to collect some thoughts, I figured we'd all hang out for a while, exchange some witty dialogue, maybe trade some gossip about a character who's not here yet, maybe even a remark or two about politics, then drip in a note about what a cool story this is.

Un, no, they tell you in near unison.  We're all members of the character's union; we don't hang out or give props to the author for casting us in such a cool story.  Our contract says we get a story or we're outta here.

But, you insist, I provided good snacks--get the early reference to lobster roll--and I provided air conditioning somewhere in there, didn't I?  Listen, you plead as you scroll through the scene on your computer.  Ah, here it is:  "The air conditioning purred away like a well-fed hummingbird, dispersing any traces of the torrid blaze of the sun outside."

You listen, they tell you.  We've been meaning to talk to you about that metaphor.  You've got to quit screwing around.  Get something going pronto or we're gone.  Capisce?

Couldn't happen to you, you say; you're not referenced in this; you're always on story, right?  You never hit soft spots in your work, right?

For many of us in the trenches, this scene is replayed with some regularity, meaning it must be faced and coped with in one draft or another and on a regular basis.  

Speaking for the "us" in the "us" in the above trenches trope, it is business as usual, the ongoing attempt to keep defensiveness and the need to explain well out of our work, banished in that dump site where all the props, useless foundations, and unreliable effects of our everyday thinking must ultimately be sent.  

We have enough on our hands as it is; telling a story in an effective manner--so that it produces an emotional reaction--quite naturally seems easy because it is supposed to seem easy.  Naturally you would think it easy; you were supposed to think it was easy.

It is only easy if you become aware on a word-for-word basis how difficult it is, then tell the story in spite of, perhaps even because of the difficulty.  That's how we got you into this business in the first place--making you think is was so easy that you could do it,too.

Letters to a Young, Middle-Aged, or Geezer Writer, XXI

Unless someone close to you has specifically pointed it out, chances are you have not fully articulated to yourself the connection between voices heard in rooms and voices emerging from reading material.

It is a truth universally recognized that in any large room filled with people, there is at least one person whose speaking voice will cause you in some way to come unglued.

You may have first recognized this potential in faculty meetings, or while merely trying to slurp down enough coffee and croissant to secure your waking state.  The phenomenon is also likely to emerge in rest rooms, doctors' office waiting rooms, or ticket lines for motion pictures or sporting events.

The irritating quality of the voice may be various, a rasping nasality, a locution characterized by a tendency to honk, or that most common culprit, the disagreeable timbre reminiscent of hardwood being sawed.  Squeaks and repetitions of some phrase such as you know, you know what I mean?, like, and drill, baby, drill are also contestants.  The overwhelming fact is:  you know an irritating voice when you hear it, to the point that the mere mention here of irritating voice evokes in your inner iPod sufficient response to set your jaw on clench mode, perhaps even your brow to furl in abject disapproval.

Some writers may already have a similar effect on you, explaining why the very mention of them and their work sends you into default negativity.  Thus do I introduce for your consideration the need to transfer the voice you hear as you compose into the material that lands on the page.  If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you haven't read enough or, worse, you haven't read with that investigative focus it is easy to confuse with plagiarism.

I expect to hear from some of you that you are not a hearing person; when you compose you are describing pictures you see of your characters and scenery and emotional landscape doing a ballet before your eyes.  No problem if this is the case.  What you do next is read your work aloud after you believe it is completed.  What you get is your voice--the attitude and effect your work is likely to have on readers fortunate enough to have the opportunity to read your work.

What's that you say; you don't like the way your voice sounds?  Okay, back to the reading gig, searching your search for voices that please you, reach you on some emotional level to the point where you can even venture an opinion why you like the voice.  Notice how that writer mixes sentence length for effect.  Notice how that writer will use short, clipped sentences in tense, action-heavy moments as opposed to thinking things through in leisurely form the way remarkable Jack Benny did when, being accosted by a mugger with a gun who demanded "Your money or your life," responded with an agonizing pause to the point where the mugger said, "Well? (intending the meaning to be What shall it be?), followed by Jack Benny's classic, "I'm thinking, I'm thinking."  Nor is it any accident that Mr. Benny's personal Achilles' Heel was another comedian with a reputation for splendid timing, George Burns.  Voice is timing, pacing, the orchestration of your text to the emotion you wish your text to convey.

And don't tell me you had no idea you were supposed to imbue every scene you write with a dominant emotion.  I don't write letters to young, middle-aged, or geezer writers who have no awareness of that.  I mean seriously, if you wonder why your manuscripts come back unread or with some ominous mark and the notation "I stopped reading here," it is because the reader had struggled to that point feeling nothing but relief at having reached it in order to bail out.

But I digress.  This is about voice, about you sounding like you.  I know it is tempting to want to sound like writers whose names you find on bestseller lists, but stop and think about it for a moment:  They got onto those lists because they not only had a story to tell, they had a particular voice in which to tell it.

A Letter to a Young, Middle-Aged, or Geezer Writer XVI

Every time a character sets foot into a scene you have created, he or she comes armed with two essentials, agenda and expectations.  A character who enters a scene without either is a runaway from a writing group, incompletely formed, neither to be trusted nor endured.  Like you, the character thus waiting in the wings to go on has awareness of whence he or she has just come, what happened there, and under what circumstances.

Agenda is the character's goal, the one he or she strives before our eyes and by implication to achieve.  This agenda may well be inarticulate even as the character works or perhaps lurches toward achievement of it.

Expectation relates to the character's attitude while pursuing the agenda and is thus more time sensitive.  Each time a character enters a new scene, that character brings some tangible measure of the expectation that something will happen or, if there is to be a surprise, of some planned event not happening.  Looked at functionally, each scene becomes each character's anticipation of what will happen next, working in tandem with the reader's curiosity to see in fact what does happen.  A character can, for instance, dread going home for the holidays to a family gathering only to have such dread overwritten by the intense wonder of bonding and good fellowship, a theoretical outcome to be sure, but one following another dramatic certainty I commend to your attention:  Although the reader has expectations, they should be delayed as long as possible if they are ever in fact met.  Or to put it another way, don't take the reader where the reader wants to go because once the reader gets there, the story is over.

We all of us conspire with the characters against the reader in this last sense, hopeful of keeping the reader with us by constantly yanking the rug, table cloth, bed sheet, or any other similar length of metaphoric material from under him.  We conspire against out characters by blunting or misdirecting their expectations.  A character whose fantasies and wishes are met is not going to seem worthy of our interest, not for long.  Interestingly enough, a character who seems to have everything emerges as a character who is about to experience some comeuppance.  And that comeuppance had better not be too late an arrival at the party.

There is no sense investing our characters with these tools if they are not used, which is to say it is a good idea to know what their overarching goal is.  Doesn't hurt a bit to have an idea how far they're willing to go to achieve their goal nor to see how their expectations are faring as they wait to do whatever it is you have planned for them, where ever it is you planned on having them do it.  Nice touch if you can arrange a scene in which they interpret things to mean they're on the cusp of achieving their agenda or, conversely, that they are so far away from their goal as to be rendered inchoate with frustration.

Happy campers only work in commercials; unhappy campers are always on the cusp of entering a new scene with a new story.

Is writing democratic, autocratic, or fugeddaboudit?

The answer to the important question in story, What comes next? is more often than not associated with something one of the major characters wants.  The true decision is whether that something comes now, in the immediate moment or triggered something in the past.  You begin by setting up a scene in which one or more of your principals meet, preferably in some venue that poses maximal discomfort if not threat to each (thus even if it has nothing to do with the story, you'd consider setting a scene in a butcher shop or deli if one of the characters were a vegan).

Remember that each character is coming into the scene having just been somewhere else, the somewhere causing a dandruff of some sort or other to have spread over the shoulders of said character.  Individuals do not merely appear in places, they appear with emotional baggage of having just experienced something that will effect the resident mood.  Characters come into scenes also bearing expectations.  I've got this meeting to attend and I expect to be bored.  My supervisor wants a brief word with me.  I am already under the gun of a deadline and I know that the brief word of my superior never lasts less than an hour.  I have just come from that brief-word meeting to my encounter with you.  How do you expect me to behave?

One of the major purposes of a scene is to advance the story.  

All right, you say, advance it toward what, closure?  Perhaps complication.  Perhaps merely a demonstration that the characters cannot be expected under the best of circumstances to get along well.

They have just come from doing X, where they have experienced Y.  They expect this meeting to produce Z.  Now start writing.  With all these things in mind, do you follow a prearranged script--or do you let them go at it?

Your own take is that working from a script pulls you away from the spontaneous potential for discovery and detail, for the equivalent of Dustin Hoffman pounding on the hood of the car while crossing the street in Midnight Cowboy. Following the script while composing forces you to think, as in making sure you've got everything in you'd hoped.  

Resign from your inner writing group. Now!

Is she wearing red shoes or black shoes?

Could be some readers will think red shoes mean to be sexually provocative.

So, let them.  Black shoes could be seen as stodgy.

What about black shoes with three-inch heels?

Trying too hard not to look stodgy.  Sends the wrong message,

So you're saying all women who wear black shoes with three-inch heels are seen as trying not to look stodgy?

Not my fault.  You want her, whoever she is, not to come across as defensive, you should give some help right away by saying pumps or sandals, either of which sound more--

--sexy?

That's a judgment, see.  Words carry emotional weight.  Like you think words with k in them are funny.

They are!

To you, maybe.

Okra.  Pickle.  Ketchup.

Not funny.  You want funny, tuna sandwich is funny.

Is not!

Is too.

All of which demonstrates some of the many problems attendant on thinking while writing.  Thinking is good when revising, although there are those who will tell you that even then, the way to revise is to read the whole thing, form conclusions and structure adjustments, then stop thinking, just get on the work through muscle memory.

When you are thinking, you have put a strangle hold on association, the process that causes details, sometimes even metaphors, certainly comparisons or connections to come to you.  Admit it, you once had the embarrassing experience of having, in the heat of composition, come forth with a simile something along the lines of, he had a facial pallor and texture like a peanut butter sandwich.  You were not, however, embarrassed until later, when you read through the story, relieved none of your friends knew the depths to which you were able to sink.  You wisely caught it in revision, even using another culinary metaphor in its stead, but one that didn't distract from the tone of the story nor intrude to show how smart you thought you were (which, in those particular days, you did.  Things are different now, so you can relax.  You don't no Fred, or Tom, or Bill.  You particularly don't know Jack, although, with a nifty comma in there, that could give you the title and a pathway to an interesting story.  You don't know, Jack. )

The point you are after here is that there is nothing like thought to snip off one of those long series of serve, lob, return, return, return volleys that give stories their pulse and their sense of life.  It's one thing to pause for a moment, waiting for the right word, rejecting all others.  It is all right provided you don't think about it, rather you let it happen, click, click until the right word comes and you set it down and have lost no time.  But if you think, if you ask yourself one question such as those gratuitous ones up at the tip about red shoes or black, you have brought the process to a crashing halt and must find a way to get back in the game.

Just yesterday it was, you were doing a brief transition in which your guy was leaving his breakfast and morning c/word puzzle half finished in order to walk across the grounds of a retirement community to meet another character and tell her, hell yes, I'll take you on as a client, when it came to you that he was about to be blindsided by a golf cart driven by a man perhaps one reader in a hundred could discern at this point as being his older brother.  My Guy recognizes him after a casually called out apology, refers to him by a name he has been at some pains to hide,  at which point the older brother says "Must you goddam always do that?"  The goddamn would never have come if you'd had thought it through.  What does a younger brother call an older brother with a subtext of anger and tease?  Well, given you know the first and middle names your parents gave their firstborn son who did not progress past six or eight months, thanks to SIDS, and whose death might very well have been a major cause in you being here to write these vagrant lines, you have stowed away the thought that had he lived, Bernard Marvin might have been a--well, an older brother, and to level the playing field, you might have called him BM, letting him know of course that BM was an acronym for bowel movement and that you were simply helping him prepare for the taunts of his friends and classmates.  Thus the origin of the goddamn in the sentence when the older brother recognizes the younger.

Big deal, you say, that the incident seems to hinge on that exchange.  Big is right, because it paves the way for a great deal of backstory, of thematic material, and a scene to come that is already percolating.  

Best not to think about it too much more lest it make you self-conscious. It's one thing to play the scene in you head, insisting on emotional readings each time.  That, of course, is not thinking.

The Genie out of the Bottle

If revenge is a dish best served cold, which is to say dispassionately, then irony is a dish best served with a secreted body part of a bug or small rodent, which is to say with a hidden agenda. Revenge is a dramatic way of getting one's own returned, a score settled, a slate wiped clean as in Poe's "A Cask of Amontillado" and Thurber's artful follow-up, "The Catbird Seat." Irony is the reader being allowed to eavesdrop on the difference between what is said and what is actually meant, as in Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day.

As an actor learns the essentials of the acting craft, it becomes increasingly clear that persons in real life and, consequently characters in drama, do not always say what they mean, covering intent with distracting gestures, contrivances, and disguises. As a writer learns the essentials of dialogue, it becomes increasingly clear that what passes for conversation must be driven by the inflections and attitudes of constrain, perhaps even caution, lest a misstep will let the genie out of the bottle.

Living with irony as a fact of the human condition allows the writer to impart complexity and dimension to a story, a complexity and dimension that extend beyond the alleyways and culs de sac of plot. To arrive at the point of living with irony, the writer profits from beginning each new scene with an investigation of the intent each character comes on stage carrying. Sometimes the intent is to keep status quo, to refrain from giving in to the smoldering resentment or impatience felt toward another character. If she says THAT one more time, I will scream. Of course she, whoever she might be, comes cheerfully into the scene, proclaiming THAT at the top of her voice. Thus are moments of tension formed, and even more thusly, another step is taken toward the goal of combustion. Now we are in a position where we do not actually have to see the "I" scream--we can end the scene shortly before the actual scream which, however skilled and excellent our descriptive powers may be, we could not do justice to the scream within the reader's mind.

No question about where to begin the next scene. Another character is remonstrating with "I." "I think it was terrible the way you shouted at her." Of course, you could have the remonstration take these lines, "I was really surprised that you were able to show such restraint."

We could also have a completely different set of circumstances:

"What's wrong? I thought this was something you really wanted to do."

"I do," she said, "but--"

"But?"

"I've never made love with a sixty-year-old man before."

"If it makes you feel more comfortable," he said, "neither have I."

I need, you need, he, she, or it needs

needs--the personal, professional, intellectual, artistic, spiritual, and financial items a character requires or believes he requires; motivating forces that drive a character to attempt to acquire attitudes, information, relationships, goods, or a combination of these things; perceived powers, understanding, or techniques a character assesses as being necessary.

As a consequence of extraordinary needs, a character's ego and or conscience may be impacted. The simple, unalterable point is that a character without needs is not likely to produce viable story elements. Another unalterable point: a character enters any given scene with expectations, with intent, and with needs. Any time a particular character in a particular scene is not pulling his or her weight, the writer is well advised to examine the consequences of any or all these traits for vital clues leading to the discovery of what that character will do next, and to whom.

Even in plot-driven stories, this examination merits consideration because it helps provide plausible reasons for the character's behavior because the knowledgeable reader will have come to expect that the interaction of characters with intent and purpose is a better fuel for story than mere plot points.

A Twofer

scene, the--the basic unit of dramatic storytelling; an integral moment in a setting which one or more characters have entered with agenda and expectation; the crucible to which the heat of ambition, agenda, or desire is applied; a period of dramatic engagement in a particular setting where personalities and goals collide, producing a sense of movement toward a resolution or trial.

Put enough of these basic units together and they assume a form suggesting a specific path toward some arbitration, trial, discovery, or resolution. As the collection of scenes emerges, the characters in them appear to grow in resolve or stubbornness, producing varying dramatic options to the point where they become memorable enough to eclipse the narrative in which they appear.

In varying degree, scenes have at least the following ingredients: setting, characters, beats, pace, blocking, tension, subtext, dialogue. They may also contain reversals of fortune for one or more characters, shifts in the power exerted by one character or organization over another character or organization, shifts of allegiance within the cast of characters, surprise, discovery of relevant information, and revelation.

The setting is the thematic and physical locale for the scene; the characters are the individuals who come into it, having just been somewhere else. The beats are movements or activities, a pause to consider, a decision to turn a response into a riposte, a reaction to an invitation or an insult. Pace is the tempo with which the beats occur, slow and leisurely or at staccato intensity. Blocking is the sense of movement and placement of characters in the setting, where they will go if they are in motion, where they will remain if sedentary. Tension is the atmospheric pressure of something about to happen, of impending pleasure or gloom or discovery, while subtext is yet another atmospheric pressure, the palpable awareness of the difference between what a character says and what that character is thinking. Dialog is what the characters say to other in ways that express who they are, what they mean, what they intend.

Characters come into scenes with expectations which may be met or frustrated. A character who achieves an expectation, no matter how deserving he may be of the success, may experience buyer's remorse or conversely indulge exuberant celebration. Just as likely, characters may enter scenes with fears, hopes, prejudices. A character who enters a scene with no expectations needs to be sent home and re-costumed to reflect the basic assumption of story that the characters within them have a sense of being right about something.

A character who is right about something--an interpretation, an entitlement, a sense of being a victim, a sense of having something to protect--has earned admittance to the tent of story and must now pursue the goals that drive him, perhaps tentatively at first, but then with the increasing intensity of ambition. 

 Some characters require one or more scenes in which to ratify or shore up their sense of being right, which instills within them the glorious dynamic of defensiveness, which they are free to interpret as Justice must be done. Even the ghost in Hamlet has an agenda, which drives the story forth, stirring up from beyond the grave the stew of ambition, power, and sexual jealousy. That lovely, dysfunctional family, the Macbeths? They are also propelled by ambition, but who can say that Dorothy Gale is a passive observer.

Scenes should be wound about the armature of at least one salient emotion. Characters may not agree with that emotion, may be prevented from recognizing it by the sun-in-the-eyes of their own agenda, but the reader will see through all that and be able to identify the emotion. A significant example of this is found in the character of Bobby Dupea, wanting at this point in the film Five Easy Pieces nothing more than a conventional breakfast in a small roadside lunch room. "You want me to hold the chicken," the waitress asks Bobby, producing not only the crucible overflowing but a subsequent persona for the actor Jack Nicholson.

A scene is a crucible, an arena, a place where characters go armed with the baggage of their past, their attitudes, their agendas, fortified with the toolkit of their abilities and hopes. The scene is the Swiss Army knife of story.


magical realism--dramatic narratives told from the perspective of one or more narrators who have a vision of reality that differs from the conventional; stories in which beings, places, and events appear as though conventional, their existence supported by the behavior of one or more characters and/or the writer; narratives which suggest alternate origins, universes, and abilities than those found in conventional literature.

Against a setting most characters and readers would agree is a rigorously plausible rendition of reality, the writer of magical realism adds one or more fantastical elements that barely slip under the net of reader believability or are not overtly challenged because everything else seems acceptably real. Accordingly, characters in magical realism are less likely to seem vulnerable than those in super realism, the measure of a writer's ability and popularity measured in accordance with the degree to which readers believe their characters are subject to harm. Thus the intriguing comparison between two seemingly incomparable couples, Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley in Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, and Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry in Pullman's The Subtle Knife, the former being lovers from an all-too believable wartime reality, the latter lovers in a reality infused with alternate universe topography and magical realism. The argument here is that while the relationship between Henry and Barkley is convincing enough and poignant, the young love romance between Belacqua and Parry is the more memorable because of a greater depth of detail and nuance, in spite of being set in a patently unworldly world. The further argument becomes: no matter how fanciful the setting, if the details of a commonly felt emotion are strong and nuanced enough, the reader is more likely to suspend disbelief to the point of accepting the magic along with the realism.

Such widely diverse authors of magical realism as Ben Okri, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Isabel Allende, and Alice Hoffman employ the medium with a significant lack of defensiveness, while the Japanese author, Haruki Murikami, is so deft in his applications that the reader may totally buy into his uses of coincidence, dream states, and implied symbolism.

A good governing principle for the use of magical realism is to set one magical element into a world of detailed realistic detail.

A Twofer

expectations--the results each character foresees when venturing into a new scene, a guiding compass as the character is being borne along on the stream of narrative within scenes or connecting them. A character without expectations in a scene is the equivalent of the scenic backdrops found at tourist attractions, where one inserts one's head and is photographed as a comic memento.

Every character wants something; this is the passport to cross the border from joke or anecdote or vignette into the landscape of story. Accordingly, imagine the tourist character equipped with a fanny-pack right out of the L.L. Bean catalog. Along with that character's desire, rolled neatly and resting on top of history/backstory, attitude, and feelings about the other characters in the story is expectations. That character expects the next scene to be an occasion of achievement, boredom, surprise, humiliation, frustration, severe reversal, sexual opportunity, inspiration, or challenge. These will be delivered in such a way and by appropriate characters to send the story forward, leaving as emotional residue an identifiable counterpoint. Expectations are the qualities that give dimension and life to story, allowing the character to do what characters are intended to do--react. The character need not use all the tools in the fanny-pack in every scene, except for expectations and the personal sense of having been in or lived through some situation or encounter before entering the present scene. Without these two possessions, the character is sure to be turned back at the border.

willing suspension of disbelief, the--a term coined by critic-poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge to account for the inertia of skeptical disbelief a writer must overcome in a reader in order to have his narrative accepted as real. With so many books being published and so many sources apparent for short stories, readers are daring writers to be more convincing, at pain of not pursuing a story to its conclusion. Sophisticated readers have come a long way from the early days of the novel and short story; they know the characters are inventions of the author. But they also know that a skillful writer can make them forget this fact, empathize with fictional beings, root for their favorites, and experience severe distress when their favorite characters experience reversals.

The trick here is to make the reader forget that the characters on the page are inventions. One way to do this is to quickly present characters in their attempts to solve the problems and reversals of fortune with which they are afflicted. Another way to accomplish this goal is to show characters setting off on a quest, a perilous journey, or a new venture in which they will become at accelerated risk. Yet another approach is to endow the character with some physical or emotional flaw which they must struggle to overcome. Johnny Tremaine, the young, eponymous apprentice to Paul Revere, experiences an accident early on; molten silver is spilled on his hand, permanently fusing his thumb to his palm. In Tracy Chevalier’s novel, The Girl with the Pearl Ear Ring, a young peasant girl is forced to take a job as a maid when her artisan father is blinded by an exploding kiln.

Every short story and novel, regardless of how fantastic or quotidian, has to cope with this problem: Does the reader believe implicitly in the characters and situations? Step One in this remarkable alchemy from the dross of initial concept to the gold of finished work begins with the writer believing in the characters. From there, the author must portray characters behaving in ways that are feasible to them so that the reader not only does not question them and what they do but as well begins hoping none of the obstacles are too big to be overcome. Thus by indirection, the key to overcoming disbelief is vulnerability; no matter what the characters are vulnerable to--greed, love, fear, confusion, ambition--that vulnerability becomes a wedge that lifts the fence of plausibility, often just enough to allow the reader to crawl through.

Coming to Terms

arc--the path or direction a story takes once it is set in motion. This useful term, its origins in geometry--a curved segment of a circle--helping it serve as a mnemonic device. Why is this so? The concept of "story line," also a traced path of the progress of a story, suggests the moment in medical thrillers when the patient dies and his vital responses flat line; thus a story line connotes a thin, even episodic progression of events, a story arc suggests layering, dimension, an orbital path, all constructs reminding the writer, the reader, and characters that story is multidimensional, multifarious, filled with implication, surprise, and the anarchic energy of impulse.

By its very shape, arc implies movement, the story being nudged, dragged, pushed, in some direction, both chronologically and in terms of pace. Helpful to writer, reader, and characters, arc allows each to see where the story has been, where it needs to go, and what further impediments may cross its path or, indeed, collide with it.

Two of the most important individuals in the writer's professional life, the literary agent and the editor, will frequently inquire about the arc of a story, by which they are asking where the story is going. Story arc is momentum informed by volition; it is episode injected with "because" or "as a consequence." Arc is a record of things done past in present because, and as a consequence.

arena--a place wherein story is the featured event; a locale for a scene or the entire story, its landscape never neutral, in fact frequently inhospitable. In some stories, the characters may not know they are in an arena, content to think of it merely as a place--perhaps not the optimal place nor even a good place, but not bad. The readers, however, understand. Why did Bobbie Ann Mason's iconic short story, "Shiloh," take place on the park grounds that were once the arena for one of the most fierce and bloody battles of the American Civil War? Was it mere accident that Allison Lurie named her protagonists the Tates for her darkly funny novel, The War between the Tates?

Arenas in story are famously located in bedrooms, offices, law courts, tennis courts, front seats of automobiles, back seats of automobiles, hospitals, supermarkets, Roman coliseums, anyplace where characters gather to explore and exploit their agendas. Wise writers have come to consider the settings for their scenes with the same care they use in selecting characters. If there is some plausible reason for including a particular scene in a story, its venue should be chosen with as much deliberation as the cast of characters is selected, allowing it's personality to have a tangible effect on the characters, whether a sneeze of allergy, a memory of a painful experience from the past, or a sense of discomfort and unwelcome.

Acting Up

act--the noun, not the verb. An orchestrated and contrived performance given by one or more persons, intended to define reality while pursuing some agenda; hence the judgmental, a class act, meaning a person or group whose behavior suggests quality and substantial grace of approach; or a step beyond, a tough act to follow, meaning an extraordinary performance, or getting one's act together, suggesting an orchestrated routine of behavior intended to produce a desired effect.. A component of a stage play, an act contains one or more scenes in which character simultaneously pursue agendas and through their actions reveal relevant individual traits. The act is the thematic framework in which story is set in motion, then advanced as the characters, attempting to be true to their intentions, confront opposition, reversal, and surprise.

Although meant originally as a theatrical segment, the act is a useful reminder to the short story writer and novelist as a check list of events that have happened, that should have happened, the might happen, and are being actively hoped for. An act is a larger Petri dish of smaller segments, scenes, which have some temporal or thematic hierarchy. Many short stories are readily transformed into a one-act play. Many longer novels are reduced to the equivalent of a short story before being transformed into a motion picture. (William Styron's novel Sophie's Choice, is an example of the transformation from a number of acts on its way to becoming a motion picture.)

Instructive examples of acts: act one, scene two of Richard III by William Shakespeare sets forth characters and their agendas in immediate and irresistible motion. Act one, scene one of St. Joan by George Bernard Shaw quickly establishes a political climate, introduces the background of an as-yet unseen major character, all the while evoking the ambiance of a time in the distant past. Act one, scene one of Entertaining Mr. Sloan by Joe Orton presents an immediate agenda which foreshadows a bold, arresting conclusion, ironic in its Solomon-like logic.

As a verb, act connotes individuals who assume or take on agendas, attitudes, and entire modes of behavior that are not necessarily their own. In most stories, this acting is apparent to the reader if not the other characters, thus forming a double bind with irony; the author has conspired with the reader at the expense of the characters to produce this effect.