Not Adverse to a Little Conflict

adversary--a front-rank character whose agenda and/or interests directly conflicts with that of another front-rank character; an opponent in a story.

Just as characters with goals provide the catalyst for story, so too are stories propelled by individuals adverse to their goals and intentions. Often resting between these two sides is The Prize, the status or power or reward striven for by each. Cowboys and Indians, Indians and the cavalry, Earthlings and Extraterrestrials, cattle ranchers and sheep ranchers,rural and urban, the youthful and the elderly,laborers and management; all these and additional pairings have the potential for good relationships, which is splendid in real life but rather dull in fiction. Readers enjoy the potentials for rivalry; they expect rivalry blossomed into adversarial relationship when they pick up a story.

Even if the primary character is going up against a philosophical or social clash, both sides of the argument must be rendered with a human representative. Walter Scott's Ivanhoe presented the clash of cultures between the Saxons and their invaders, the Normans, which was indeed adversarial enough, but Scott appropriately heeded the need to have representatives of each opposing force on stage, if only to glower at one another. If the clash involves addiction, the adverse position--failure to quit the addiction--must be demonstrated. If the clash involves two or more contestants of notable analytic, artistic, or even athletic ability, the adversarial position must be represented as some competition among candidates for a position, say surgery resident, tenure track professor of history, artistic endowment recipient. If the clash involves Man and Nature, both sides must have representatives, easier to demonstrate in the adversarial relationship between Capt. Ahab and The Great White Whale, but not how, even there, Melville left a human survivor, Ishmael, to tell the story of the clash and to interpret its outcome. When encounters between individuals and a particular culture or zeitgeist are concerned, it is less problematic to have characters representing the opposing forces.

The most effective way to produce an adversary for a front-rank character is to produce a character who is at least one way has an admirable ability. The more effective and seemingly invincible the adversary, the greater the likelihood of the protagonist's ultimate victory seem convincing and satisfying. It will appear to the reader that the deck has been stacked if one of the contestants is, however skilled, evil personified while the other is Sir Galahad writ large.


family--a group of consanguineous individuals; a single- or multi-generational unit of relatives; a non-consanguineous group who have some connective association such as an alumni group, members of a religious group, longtime members of the same work group, a heterosexual or homosexual group who have formed live-in partnerships.

A family may be whatever a group of individuals define the group's boundaries. To have legal validity, a group must meet state, tribal, or national conditions, which immediately becomes story material given the arbitrary nature of conditions. Families are, for better or worse, gatherings of individuals who know one another's strengths and weaknesses, who may know secrets or be blind to their potential. Family is a Petri dish for story, the mold of agenda, intent, control, and tradition proliferating at every gathering of the clan. Happy families may be all alike, if one could only find them somewhere within every family is an unhappiness that influences behavior and tradition, dictates who from the outside may enter, and what the consequences are of undesirables trying to marry their way in. Even families that affect a patina of happiness and closeness have somewhere within their history an attitude that leads to a substantial story.

I Only Meant to Warn You

intent--a purpose for performing or not performing an action; a governing motive or reason for a character doing something in a novel or short story; the desire to do or become; the planning and performance of an act or the planning and performance of an opposition to an act or behavior.

A character may step forth in a story without intent, only to be drawn into a crisis point is reached and a decision--you're either with us or against us--is required.

A character may step forth in a story with intent, only to have that intent abruptly and directionally changed.

A character may intend to remain neutral through some crisis point, only to find the position of neutrality beyond his grasp.

Each of the previous three examples places a character in stress, which may evolve into jeopardy. Each example also places the character well within the landscape of story.




jeopardy--a danger, risk, or peril existing as potential for a character; the state of vulnerability a character experiences before, after, and during the making of a decision; enhanced possibility of complication or danger a character lives through while navigating toward solution of the problem that landed him in the story in the first place.

The jeopardy may be the internal one of losing faith in a person, discipline, plan, even a philosophy; it may also be the risk of falling in love, getting into further complications, causing more damage or being caused more damage; it is the consequence of trying to move through the literary equivalent of a mine field while wearing snow shoes.

Many stories begin with the spirit-of-the-stairway comment of the narrator to self--I should have known better. The more productive characters never know better, rarely know enough beyond maintaining the status quo before being mired further in some activity or attitude where they become even more firmly stuck without traction.

In ways, jeopardy is cousin to risk, a state where additional things, worse things, can arise as a consequence of a character having taken some step, whether to avoid a problem, cope with it, or entirely flee from it. A narrative without some front rank character being in jeopardy of some consequence or in some risk-free circumstance is yet to be a story.

Jeopardy becomes the return of the pigeons, the consequences of the thing that should not have been done in the first place. Now it is worse; the character could have opted out (but there would have been no story). Now there is a price to be paid.

The Big MacGuffin

macguffin, the--a device or object that appears germane to the plot of a novel or short story but which has little to do with the outcome; a discovery such as a map, a letter, a weapon that serves as a plausible distraction from the throughline of a story.

The concept of the macguffin bears striking resemblance to anticlimax, which starts as an action,event or thought that distracts from a recently established dramatic high point, quite possibly even an intended conclusion or the payoff of a scene. Anticlimax is a dramatic pull away from the previous effect, leaving both reader and writer bewildered.

In a geometry class setting, macguffin could be demonstrated to be congruent to red herring which, one account of origins has it, was actually a dried fish, dragged across the trail of some valid prey such as a raccoon, fox or badger to draw young dogs in training off the scent, whereupon they would be educated not to be distracted. The red herring has the same purpose as the macguffin, which is to draw the attention of the characters and, if done to good effect, the readers off the true plot line of a story and into a dead end. Red herrings are also used in debate and logic contests to draw the participants off the throughline of argument.

A stand-out example of the macguffin at work is the reputed Maltese falcon of Dashiell Hammett's novel, a statue that may be a repository for jewels and gold. The Indiana Jones films also come to mind as does the Alfred Hitchcock film, North by Northwest, in which the macguffin was microfilm copies of documents "vital to the survival" of the United States. In much of its use, the macguffin begins with enormous importance, then, as characters begin to interact and alliances begin to be formed, its significance dwindles, making it possible to argue for the macguffin in a Western being grazing rights for cattle or barbed wire fences interfering with the concept of free range.

The macguffin is clearly a gimmick, an armature about which to wrap elements of plot and character. The more plausible it may be made to sound, the more convincing the surrounding responses of characters. An argument could accordingly be made for one of the great macguffins in American history being the Northwest Passage Lewis and Clark were dispatched to find in 1803, an argument that has as a collateral the dramatic value of the outcome, once the macguffin has failed to live up to its expectations.

Slight of Hand

slight--a frequent response to manuscripts from literary agents and editors; a catch-all criticism implying that the problems and resulting decisions made by the protagonist of a story are inconsequential; an indication that characters and their conflicts are too simplistic.

How to avoid such professional responses? One effective way is to recall William Faulkner's definition of fiction as, among other things, the agony of moral choice. Put characters in situations where they have more to lose than they may realize but which readers recognize as highly probable. Make characters vulnerable to any or all of the seven deadly sins or, instead, invent a behavior or indulgence which, it pursued a tad too far, will emerge as a fresh view of a new sin.

While Frankie Machine nourishes realistic dreams of becoming a professional musician in Nelson Algren's The Man with the Golden Arm, his behavior reflects the pulls of guilt and love resulting from the possibility that he may have been the cause of his wife's invalid state. The possibility is equally apparent that Zosh, Frankie's wife, may not be as much if at all an invalid as she appears to be. Critics and editors have had a number of things to say about The Man with the Golden Arm, but none has suggested it is a slight narrative.

Similarly gritty in its reach and scope, James Leo Herlihy portrays in Midnight Cowboy the extraordinary friendship between Joe Buck,a young man whose dream of operating his own restaurant causes him to enter a lifestyle as a male prostitute, and Enrico "Ratso" Rizzi, a third-rate con man. Gritty as it is, Midnight Cowboy is not slight, particularly not in its denouement.

The temptation to over respond to slightness may produce an operatic quality to a work in progress, but NB, operatic as a concept has, in recent years undergone a change that is literally dramatic. Of yore, operatic was associated with broad gestures, which could be seen in the remoteness of the distant balconies, its themes having the equivalency of romance novels. Increasingly so, operatic performers are developing acting techniques as well as their voices, subject matter for operas are being drawn from wrenching social commentary.

A substantive story is rich in layered detail, has more to it than meets the eye. A slight story has less to it than meets the eye.

Questward Bound

quest--an agenda or goal pursued by a character in a novel or short story; a reach for artistic, emotional,financial, philosophical, or romantic reward; an end of which the character may be aware but choses to keep hidden.

The quest or desire may change during the arc of a longer narrative, as in Nelson Algren's The Man with the Golden Arm, in which the protagonist, Frankie, is a returned veteran of World War II, addicted to morphine. His main quest is the dream of being a jazz drummer, on a par with Gene Krupa or Dave Tough. He is bound by conscience and love to caring for his invalid wife, who may or not be truly crippled, and whose invalid condition Frankie may or may not be directly responsible. Frankie's main talent appears to be his dexterity with a deck of playing cards, leading to his only steady source of employment--dealer in illegal poker games. Frankie's quests revolve around staying free of drugs, pursuing his career as a drummer, and the romantic pull toward an old girl friend, Molly.

Walter Tevis' novel, The Hustler, dramatizes the quest of its protagonist, Fast Eddie Felson, to become the best pool hustler in America. Readers may bring value judgments to Frankie's or Fast Eddie's choices of profession, but these judgments are left at the door in the wake of the characters' yearning to achieve the goal of their quest. Becky Sharp was also on a quest in Vanity Fair; so was Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz; so too was Nora Helmer in A Doll's House.

The 1927 motion picture, The Jazz Singer, adapted from a stage lay by Samson Raphaelson, features a protagonist who longs to forge a show business career as a singer, in defiance of the wishes of his father to use his voice as a cantor. Joe Bonaparte, protagonist of Clifford Odets' play, Golden Boy, wanted to become a concert-level violinist but in order to secure funding for his education, became a prize fighter, risking the ruining of his hands. Both protagonists had goals; in their quest to achieve these goals, they encountered opposition.

The reader not only empathizes with the quest-oriented character, the reader is not satisfied with a dramatic individual whose agenda does not radiate from quest.

mise en scene: And You Thought You Knew

mise en scene--the visual aspects of a story; descriptions or evocation of a place, a time, and a setting; the positioning and movement (but not physical description of characters) of individuals in a dramatic narrative.

The term has been borrowed from the stage and motion picture set, where it refers to uses and placement of scenery, blocking, and atmosphere. When used critically or editorially to discuss a particular novel or story, it may mask the critic's or editor's desire to make the concept of setting seem more mystical than it ought to be, thus the warning to writers that terms expressed in foreign words or terms (See denouement and deus ex machina) should be made to show their passports at the border: Is there, they might ask, a suitable English language translation?

Mise en scene gives the writer of narrative fiction an opportunity to provide subtext, wherein the setting an/or activities of characters provide an unspoken, unwritten feeling or theme. Consider early on in the first act of Tennesee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire, where the principal character, Blanche DuBois, appears. Had Streetcar been a novel, we might have had some moments of interior monologue, but as the play is mounted, we see Blanche appearing in a brightly lit room, turning down the lights as she appears to be looking for something. Our curiosities aroused, we follow her as she approaches a hidden bottle of whiskey, then takes a bracing pull on it. Not a word has been spoken and yet we have learned things about her.

What would it say, for instance, about two characters who are watching television in their bedroom? What would it say about the same two characters who were watching television in their living room, each seated behind a fold-up tray on which a dinner dish rested? What additional would it say about the same two characters if they were sitting on separate Laz-y Boy chairs which had clear plastic covers on them?

The most effective use of the mise en scene concept can be experienced by remembering the importance of story in the dramatic equation. If mise en scene contributes to a deeper sensory awareness of story, then it is successful.


narrative--a systematic arrangement of dramatic information for the purpose of relating a story; presentation of character-based activities that involve readers to the point where they feel a stake in the outcome; events related with the purpose of keeping the reader alert and concerned.

The term "narrative" is a lazy term, being used generically to mean any story or tale. Narrative in a novel or short story is the sum of interior monologue, description, mise en scene, and action, which leaves only dialogue as non-narrative. A writer's narrative is any fiction intended for print or web media. A writer's voice is the tone with which a story is freighted.

The Used Care Salesman qua Narrator

unreliable narrator--a dramatic witness who relates his/her version of a story with bias and details which ultimately cause the reader to experience doubt and loss of willing suspension of disbelief; a character, however likable, whose vision of the story is less than trustworthy.

The cynical trial lawyer views every witness as unreliable, attempts on behalf of his own client to impeach the witness' version of a condition, situation, or story at issue. The reader approaches a novel or story with the same cynical attitude, looking for large or small facts with which to disagree until, at some point, immersed in the story, most if not all disbelief suspended, convinced the characters in the story are real individuals, the events plausible enough to radiate the aura of empathy.

Some characters, such as Richard Brinsley Sheridan's Mrs. Malaprop, (The Rivals, 1775)deliberately overreached the limits of her understanding, providing a great comic relief. Sir John Falstaff (Henry IV, part 1; Henry IV part 2, The Merry Wives of Windsor) was notable for his self-serving embellishments, many of which were in open conflict with information known to the audience. Moving from stage to page, where characters are able to become more complete narrators of story, they may overreach for the sake of personal gain, social or professional status, or some moral highground to which they aspire or already feel entitled. The eponymous protagonist of Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Foretopman, pushes the boundaries of unreliability into naivete. So too is Mr. Stevens, of Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, a treader on the cusp between unreliable and naive for at least two major breeches of awareness for a man of his stature. (See naive narrator)

All these individuals are unreliable in relative degree to the extent that they are less reliable than other characters who share the stage or page with them; indeed they may command from the reader a greater admiration than their more literal and reliable compatriots. Consider Randle (sic) P. McMurphy, from Ken Kesey's novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, introduced to us as a convicted felon, faced with the option of hard labor under the boiling sun, opting instead for the comforts of a mental institution. If ever a major character's unreliability were called into question, McMurphy would be a strong candidate. And yet. As the story progressed, his agenda became focused, reliable, and quite admirable, provoking a cathartic payoff in the best tradition of Greek tragedy. As an added irony in Cuckoo's Nest, McMurphy's grim compatriot, Chief Bromley, is a certified psychotic, some of whose visions the reader is allowed to see at first hand.

Unreliability in narration has been with us even before Chaucer's The Merchant's Tale, wherein the teller, in the throes of an unhappy marriage, has little positive to say about his or any other wife. It reached an extreme with the noted mystery/suspense writer, Agatha Christie, whose reliability transgression in Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? featured a first person narrator who confessed at the very last line.

The entire concept of reliability in a narrator or plural narrators in cases where warranted rests with the writer's avoiding the temptation to overextend the unreliability, especially for the purpose of representing said narrator as evil incarnate. An important model of balance is seen in William Faulkner's portrayal of Benjy Compson in The Sound and the Fury. With its title drawn from Shakespeare's Macbeth, ("a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,") thirty-three-year-old mentally retarded man, Compson's narration actually seems to have more compassion and wisdom than the other narrators.

A proper degree of unreliability becomes the doorway through which the writer can move the furniture of ambiguity, irony, and satire; it is in all its permutations a powerful tool.