Outcome

Most of the people you know on any level beyond the mere familiarity of acquaintance are interested in outcome. Not surprisingly then, many of these individuals are writers or engage in some form of art whether it is photography, ceramics, music (which surely includes dance), or acting. Others, no strangers to reading and art, pursue their quest for outcome as scholars, scientists, attorneys, community activists. Only this morning one such friend spoke to you of his pursuit for outcome as it related to translations, his energy effervescing behind his need to get down his espresso and bridge the distance between the coffee shop where you breakfasted and the university where his class was scheduled for 9:30. Another such friend had no class but was interested in getting to his lab where he was pursuing a project that involved mud, a project that literally had his whiskers twitching.

It is your observation that those who are not interested directly in tracking outcomes born of their own projects are nevertheless interested in the outcome of baseball games, competitive celebrity-wannabe shows, even elections. Some of us like to look to outcomes as portents of extensive if not massive future behavior. In other words, outcomes as building blocks for additional building blocks. At this moment, the political climate and a certain N-sampling of past history suggest that after Barack Obama's decisive victory, he is likely to lose ground in the forthcoming bi-election. You even recall your hard-nosed political science instructor pronouncing: "The party that wins the election loses the bi-election."

You also notice more so now than you did as an undergraduate the way bias invades expectations (and hopes) related to outcomes. It is a fact that there have been six special congressional elections since Barack Obama's inauguration as POTUS, each of these won handily by a Democrat. This aggregate result at least stands as a rebuke to the general view that the 2010 elections will be seriously bad news for the Democratic Party and President Obama. We are all of us, of course, our expectations of outcome set on high flame, awaiting the actual results.

Story is your focus in these vagrant paragraphs. By definition and convention, story is an outcome in which contrary agendas clash, where behavior and sometimes ingenuity trump logic, and where more experienced writers need to discover again that the most emotionally laden and satisfying outcomes have their origins in listening to the characters they have created.

Take the leap with me to late sixteenth century Prague, where Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel created a creature out of mud,a golem, brought him to life by inscribing the Hebrew word for truth on the creature's head, then instructed the creature to defend the Jewish community against a virulent wave of anti-Semitism. After the Golem had completed its mission, the Rabbi deleted the first letter of the Hebrew word for truth from its head, leaving the word met, which is Hebrew for death, whereupon the golem crumbled to the clay from which it came. This story is presented as legend just as, later, the invention of a story about a particular Robin of Locksley morphed into Robin Hood, each tale having an outcome that at least temporarily provided satisfaction and perhaps even inspiration to the listener. Farther back in time came the story of The Iliad which, so far as we know, may have happened exactly as described in the epic poem of the Homer poets, giving at least an accurate picture of what societies were like at one time and also providing some an inspiration for survival and perseverance and observation of then prevalent custom.

Outcomes are risky business in general; no one can be completely happy with them. If they are too bright and cheerful, they are seen as bubbly optimism. If they are as laden with implication as, say, Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit, they may be seen as overly grim, cynical reflections on such well-trod themes as The Meaning of Life. Outcomes have led Barnaby Conrad to observe (more than once, alas) that stories about animals are fated to unhappy endings. Today, while making that observation in relation to Madison, a much loved gray parrot who lost out to a marauding rat, that human life was similarly targeted.

And yet we persist in pursuing human affairs, even ones we consider relatively dumb, drawn about the metaphorical camp fire of the oral tale or the reading lamp of the solitary reader in the sure knowledge that the behavior of the invented individuals is of greater significance than the final outcome. In the end, we all of us, as Jack London's character did in "To Build a Fire," run out of matches. A heavy collection of snow on a branch above us melts from the fire we have created, causing it to drop precipitously, extinguishing the fire we labored to create. Speaking of London, he true enough gave us "To Build a Fire," but he also gave us a shot at a way out with another, lesser known story, "A Loss of Face."

The Time Machine

time sequence--the temporal arc of a story or novel; the chronological order of events in a narrative; the arrangement of narrative events to effect the most dramatic result.

Time plays an important role in a story or novel. How long between events? How long has this--whatever this is--been going on? How long before he gets the idea? How long before she asks him if they have a future together? How much times does a Harlen Coben protagonist have before being discovered rifling the files in an office he has no authority to be in? The pacing or beats per minute is another way to measure the way theme and plot establish themselves within the reader's sensibility, helping the reader to remember bits of information as they come forth, We realize also the contrivance behind such manipulation, resenting it if we do not find it.

The skilled writer knows ways to manipulate time, showing an event in progress, exhuming an event from the past, switching away from a character who actually or metaphorically be hanging from the side of a cliff. Nor is it necessary to remain with a time line, instead juggling the various scenes and confrontations like the dealer in three-card monte.

Example of a relatively brief time line, Romeo and Juliet. In more modern times, James Grady's 1974 novel, The Six Days of the Condor, was successful enough to have evolved into a movie in which the time line was cut in half to The Three Days of the Condor. William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson's novel, Logan's Run, had a time-line imposed by population explosion: When a character reached the age of thirty, along came the Sandmen to put the character to sleep, as in the final sleep. Somewhere along the way between the penultimate draft and the draft submitted to the publisher, Nolan and Johnson decided to cut back on the arc of character life from thirty to twenty-one.

The Iliad begins with the story already having been set in action some seven years previously. Tim Gautreaux's 2009 novel, The Missing, takes place largely in the late 1920s but begins in the final days of World War I, then flashes back to an earlier time yet before delivering the reader back to the time the protagonist, Sam Simoneaux, returns from his experiences in World War I France to his job in New Orleans, where the main action sets forth.

Time in story is meant to be manipulated, is asking to be manipulated. Time may be compressed in narrative, frozen within the boundaries of a scene, projected into the future with a cheery "And they all lived happily ever after."

Some stories are about lost or stolen time, others are about travels in time, others yet are about waiting to grow up or trying to forestall the age process, while an entire sub-genre exists in which the focus is on the extent to which characters will go to deny the effects of time. Peter Pan did not wish to grow up, but even more worth further study and consideration is the character Jo Stoyte, from Aldous Huxley's engaging satire, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan. Stoyte, a Hollywood millionaire, at first wants merely not to grow older, but this desire morphs into his not wanting to die

Distraction

distraction--a character, event, or detail that will shift attention away from the main goal in a dramatic narrative; an accidental or deliberate device having the effect of arousing the reader's curiosity and possibly as well the interest of one or more characters within the story; a detail that because of its being noted by writer or character has the power to change the direction of the story in which it appears.

Distractions appear as a result of authorial laziness, authorial intervention into a narrative, or through random accident. Distractions may be deliberate calculations, sometimes no more than a word, much of a piece with a skilled magician using some device to distract the audience from seeing the mechanics of an illusion. The point to be emphasized is that distractions take the reader's attention from the procession of story elements. This may or may not be a good thing, depending on the writer's intent. A distraction or digression will raise expectations in the reader and, possibly, within other characters, triggering the reader-as-matchmaker instinct, causing the reader to make assumptions, to wait for a payoff which might not come.

Even though the writer is as conversant with the necessary elements in a story underway as a director is aware of the throughline in a written narrative, the most efficient mental state for the writer at work is the state of being "in the story," or completely immersed in the movement of events. Unanticipated details emerge from such states. It is a good policy to include them and move on until the next convenient moment for revision and possible rethinking. In other words, do not think about these distractions as they appear, waiting instead for a thinking mode--a revision mode--to decide whether they stay or go. Yes; you heard that correctly: details come rushing forth during the writing mode. Like guests wanting the maitre d' to seat them in the restaurant, they must be given appropriate scrutiny. Do they belong? Do they enhance the story? Or, like the fabled tourists with white belts and loafers, worn with green polyester trousers, are they distractions?

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?

A Modest Proposal

proposal--a presentation for a book-length project; a first chapter, outline, story map, and marketing materials for fiction projects; a thesis or operating statement plus table of contents, one or more developed chapters plus a marketing guide for works of non-fiction.

A cynical-but-practical approach for book-length works of fiction is the straightforward one in which "The completed manuscript is the best proposal." This is so because, should the writer find a publisher willing to contract a work from an outline or proposal, the publisher is most likely to insist on the finished product being closely allied to the proposal. This means that any changes or developments that occur to the writer after the project has been formalized will be regarded as something other than what was agreed upon in the first place.

The fiction proposal introduces in actual text one or more lead characters who forge a bond of appeal for a targeted audience. The character or characters then become involved in a situation involving accelerated vulnerability or a looming deadline with dire consequences for failure (which the author now proposes to resolve with dramatic flair).

In addition to actual text pages, the fiction proposal contains as detailed an outline as possible to show the story arc. Even though the outlines for the individual episodes of the TV series, The Wire, were not intended to serve as an outline for a book, they do convey the tone and theme of the overall design and serve as a guideline for the writers of individual episodes.

The purpose of the proposal is to show interested literary agents and publishers that the writer is capable of telling a story, has a viable one at hand and some sense of how it will play out. Unspoken in the transaction is the need to overcome the publisher's suspicion that the writer will not be able to complete the work, a suspicion allayed by presentation of the completed manuscript.

Writers who have produced one or more previous works may be granted greater leniency in presenting a proposal for a work of fiction. A larger number of nonfiction books reach contract stage on the basis of a proposal than those submitted as a completed manuscript.

An ideal fiction proposal would have at least one completed chapter, preferably the first, in which one or more of the major characters is introduced. This would be followed by a list of characters with a brief description of their roles. Then either a chapter-by-chapter gloss or a detailed enough outline to define the main plot points. This would be followed by the author's estimate of the demographics of potential readers followed by a brief statement comparing the instant work with one or more published works. Although thematic material will likely shine through, an accompanying statement about the writer's attitude and intent toward some relevant social, ethical, or political issue is a useful adjunct. Such books as Cliff's Notes, Monkey Notes, and Spark Notes provide useful approaches to the plot outline.

Successful proposals rarely if ever cite best-seller lists or predict sales figures.

Cool Hand Sisyphus

Sisyphus--a figure from Greek mythology, variously a king or prince, but in every version of the myth a devious, self-aggrandizing individual who eventually pushed the envelope too far and was condemned by Zeus to an eternity of meaningless work; a prototype for a character who is doomed to repetitive behavior; according to Albert Camus in his essay, "The Myth of Sisyphus," a happy man.

As with so many bigger-than-life characters, Sisyphus is defined more by his fate than the events leading to it. Now forged in our collective memory as a man who must push a large rock to a steep hill to its crest, whereupon it will roll down the other side, Sisyphus makes us think of the tedium of tasks we abhor, ways of avoiding the tedium, including the karma yoga approach of work,however meaningless, as worship. 

Suppose, however, that Sisyphus were an atheist. Would the karma yoga concept cause him to engage in the inevitable transformative change that is imposed on protagonists in longform fiction--change?

However his plight is seen--karmic justice done, for instance--he is an embodiment of story, as an action and as an active concept. Whatever myth you follow that led to his ultimate fate, the constant application of force to move the rock to the top of a hill, only to see it tumble, suggests story orbit, a path that may be interrupted at any point as a beginning. 

Let the rock equal the goal (which is always to keep the rock moving). Now the story may begin at any point in the circuit of Sisyphus addressing the rock or watching the rock fall or rushing to the other side of the hill to be in place when the rock comes to a halt, in order to begin pushing it to the top once more. 

Given Sisyphys' devious nature, he may be working on a plan, either to get out of this meaningless work altogether or to turn it into something with meaning. Thus the story could begin at the point where Sisyphus would ordinarily begin to push the rock up the hill, but this time he does not; he storms into Zeus office, where he quits, refuses to push the rock any longer. 

As a potential for reversal or antagonistic force, Zeus nods, then directs his underlings to assign Sisyphus to the Prometheus Treatment.

"Wait," Prometheus protests. "What's that?" Whereupon he hears the fate of Prometheus, who stole the secret of fire from Zeus and pass it along to humans. As payment for this misadventure, Prometheus is bound to a mountain side every day, in time for his liver to be an afternoon snack for a vulture. By nightfall, a new liver is regenerated, and the following day--back to the mountainside and the hungry vulture.

Hearing this tale of eternal high choler and higher cholesterol, Sisyphus quickly decides, "Excuse me. Got to get back to my rock."

Epic characters such as Sisyphus, Captain Ahab, Captain Spaulding, and Joan of Arc are resonant because of their own focus on task and because of the ways in which their behavior reminds us of other characters, those more accessible to our lives. Notable within this panoply is Luke Jackson, from Donn Pearce's novel, Cool Hand Luke, in which Jackson, after a drunken prank, is sent to a prison where his days are spent performing increasingly meaningless tasks.

Nora and Sophie: The Golden Girls

vector--the direction a story takes and the magnitude of intensity with which it moves; the goal-seeking movement of a dramatic narrative; the orbital path of the attempt(s) made by one or more characters to cope with a dramatic problem.

A vector is a quantity with some degree of magnitude or motion as well as a direction. What better way to look at story: A dramatic force with some inherent inevitability, pointed in some specific direction. A group of individuals seated at a large dining table is not a story, in fact barely a concept until someone at the far reaches of the table asks for someone at the other end to pass the mashed potatoes. Now we have an essential ingredient--someone wanting something. All we need now is opposition, as in someone saying No; the last time you were passed the potatoes, no one else got any. Had the request to pass the mashed potatoes been politely and promptly filled, there would also have been no story because there was neither opposition nor any demonstrable ingenuity on the part of the individual making the request. Vector is the tracking of initiative against the friction and inertia of opposition. This is another way of saying that the emerging character with some want or need must earn his or her place by taking some steps toward achieving the goal, must not be awarded the goal as a result of passivity or lack of caring about the outcome. It matters less whether the character is successful than if the character tries to implement a strategy. Even though the protagonist of Jack London's short story, "To Build a Fire," is ultimately unsuccessful and dies in his attempts at a relatively simple goal, the story resonates poignancy because the character tried. (See throughline and story arc)


commercial story, the--a dramatic narrative in which the payoff is a direct product of the protagonist's ingenuity; a story in which there is some tangible prize or reward, achieved or at the very least strived for; a plot-driven narrative; a story in which the promise of a particular genre is paid off either as a prize won or as a surprise, ironic reversal; a story in which the ingenuity of plot and deployment of events trumps the complexity of characters and their moral choices.

Another view of the commercial story: the problem with which the characters cope or the choices they must make emerge as being larger than the characters themselves, more or less directing the reader to the cadences of plot elements falling into place.
Simplistic as it is to comment, the commercial story is any story that appears in a mass publication platform, meaning that a literary story may have enough of the qualities listed above to give it entrance to a larger audience.


choice--a decisional or pressure point inflicted on front-rank characters; a forced or self-induced decision made by an individual that will have relevant consequences in a story; some overt form by which a character takes a stand for which there will be a price to be paid, something to be gained or lost.

William Faulkner described fiction as "the agony of moral choice," a vivid way of illustrating the importance and variety of potential choices in any given story of his and of all writers. A character may chose to ignore something, take a stand on some issue, commit a particular act or deliberately not perform another; the character may stay, go, protest, smile outwardly and seethe inwardly. These and other similar acts are the individual beats a character performs during a story; they all have relevant consequences, which is to say they will have some effect such as provoking a recognizable emotion in another character.

One of the Newtonian Laws appropriate to fiction treats the effects of physical action by observing that each act has a consequence that is equal in effect and opposite in motion. In fiction, acts bring forth consequences, some of which are quite wonderful and positive in their nature, others are painful, inducing regret. A character faced with choice stands the risk of vulnerability, which may make that character more sympathetic for a time. The Newtonian product of choice is consequence and of course consequence may lead directly to subsequent actions and, no surprise here, more consequences.

If Daisy had accepted Jay Gatz straightaway in their courtship, the world would be missing The Great Gatsby; if Juliet had thought Romeo a dork, they would likely have gone on to marry others, living entirely different and considerably longer lives. If Sophie had not been forced to make her aching choice, William Styron would not have had nearly so plangent and moving a novel. If Nora Helmer had less spine, that door would not have slammed at the end of act three of A Doll's House.

Thus the paradigms are presented, the lines drawn in the literary sands: You're either with us or you're against us, In or out? Yes or No? Coming or not? Are we going home yet? I can't do this any more.

Choice allows the reader to see large and small moments in the lives of characters, moments in which they set sail on a causal sea of events that leads them through the white waters of conflict and resolution; characters who are confronted with choice become strategically immunized from the one condition that renders them ineffective in fiction--passivity.