I’ve begun my self-study Fiction Workshop this past week. The first week was an introduction, which truly took about 5 minutes to read through the expectations I had set for myself, make sure I had the proper text (The Art of the Short Story by Dana Gioia), and truly decide that I’m going to take things nice and easy at my own pace. ‘
The good part of this being a self-led study is that I am beholden to nobody. I’m not receiving a grade at the end of this. I’m the only one who can decide if I pass or fail this course.
The course that I’m following on OpenMIT is focused heavily on short stories, which is something I am, in all honesty, quite weak at. If my blogs are any indication, I am very long-winded when it comes to the written word. I think that’s mostly because I am so quiet in everyday conversations.
The second week of the course had us reading some essays by authors who have some very strong opinions on the short story. Some feel that it is a superior format for sharing the human experience; that the “flash” that is a short story is more true to how we experience our lives. Some think that there is no truly superior form, since the story itself will dictate that.
In the lecture itself, which unfortunately I only have the instructor notes for, Lewitt explains that short stories are all about efficiency. It is a single moment of change for the character. Every word counts; you may have heard that one before.
My main takeaways aren’t anything super spectacular this week, since I have taken fiction courses previously in my undergraduate career. I’m very nervous to start working on short stories. I like the time to think that a novel gives me. It feels much easier in my mind to write a 50,000-word novel about something than a 5,000-word short story.
Week 1 & 2 Readings:
“Words Not Plot Give Form to a Short Story” – 1924; Sherwood Anderson (p 19)
- Plots as frameworks
- Form, not plot
- Keep in mind the human beings within the stories
- “The words used by the tale-teller were as the colors used by the painter. Form was another matter. It grew out of the materials of the tale and the teller’s reaction to them.”
My thoughts:
- Each story will take on its own form, whether that is better suited as a short story or as a novel. We are trying to tell the stories of characters, and that should dictate the form.
“How the Short Story Differs from the Novel” – 1968; Nadine Gordimer (p 345)
- Same material, same aim, same medium
- Novel unable to focus on true “quality of human life”
- Short story = more flexible and open to experiment than the novel
- Stricter technical discipline; wider freedom
- “Each of us has a thousand lives and a novel gives a character only one. For the sake of the form.”
- Novel “does not convey the quality of human life, where contact is more like the flash of fireflies.”
- “Short-story writers see by the light of the flash.”
My thoughts:
- Interesting take on this. Novels do home in on a specific time period, thought process, or arc of growth. It’s not what the one scene does but what the entire time of the novel allows for. A short story would give those one-off moments that slowly build over time more meaning. Those “life-changing” things that merely start or end the process you have been slowly going through.
“How I Write Short Stories” – 1982; Alice Munro (p 661)
- “It’s more like a house. Everybody knows what a house does, how it encloses space and makes connections between one enclosed space and another and presents what is outside in a new way. This is the nearest I can come to explaining what a story does for me, and what I want my stories to do for other people.”
- A certain structure for the feeling gotten from being inside that structure
- “Every final draft, every published story, is still only an attempt, an approach, to the story.”
My thoughts:
- Love this metaphor. The feeling of never quite being finished, but trying to get it as close to the “feeling” you want others to have alongside you.
“Why Write?” – 1975; John Updike (p 808)
- What is the purpose of writing?
- Most readers assume there must be something deeper wrapped into the stories.
- Writers have taken on the mantle of educationist, rather than their previous herodom.
- “the absence of a swiftly expressible message is, often, the message”
- “That this activity is rather curiously private and finicking, a matter of exorcism and manufacture rather than of toplofty proclamation.”
My thoughts:
- Writing is, first and foremost, for the writer. It is a way of thinking through things, and possibly allowing others to think with you.
“The Subject of Short Stories” – 1925; Edith Wharton (p 841)
- “General rules in art are useful chiefly as a lamp in a mine, or a handrail down a black stairway; they are necessary for the sake of the guidance they give, but it is a mistake, once they are formulated, to be too much in awe of them.”
My thoughts:
- Do what is right for the story and the characters, rather than staying true to a specific rule. Like building a house, have the proper vantage point character for what needs to be done.
Week 2 Lecture Notes:
All Lecture Notes are found on OpenMIT from Instructor Shariann Lewitt
Capture the moment of understanding change – a snapshot
This moment of change is the “now” moment. This is the most central issue in the story. Give the reader insight experientially, not just intellectually so the reader can enter in. The reader experiences the “now” moment.
The character’s realization and the reader’s don’t necessarily match up – sometimes it is very satisfying to the reader to understand something a character doesn’t.
Short story in contrast to novel vs. short story as a singularity – it is dense. There is no space and no wordage to spare. Every word must count, and if any image/word/character/action can do double or triple duty, then it should!
Short stories are extremely efficient
The short story is not necessarily linear! (Munro essay) This is one of the central structural differences between the short story and the novel. Novels have an underlying linear structure, even if the prose and expression of that structure is not linear. The short story is all about the single moment of change, and gives the information the reader needs to realize that moment. So the structure centers on that moment and does not need to be causal.
Subtle Stories 