Anatomy of a Story



Introduction

Once you have found the story that you want to tell, you must begin to think carefully about how you are going to tell it. By looking at stories which have been very successful, you can see which elements are crucial to maintaining a reader's interest. In this session, Charles Palliser, author of The Quincunx and The Unburied, examines the key decisions a writer must make when creating an interesting and believable story.

What's The Point? - What is it that you want the reader to take away from the story?
Surface and Hidden Narrative - What is really happening in the story?
Drawing In the Reader - How can you make the reader feel involved in the story?
Pitfalls - What makes a reader stop reading?
Getting Started: The Situation - Where does the story begin?
Voice and Point of View - Who is telling the story?
Voice: Hot and Cold - How does the storyteller's voice affect the story?
Story Structure - How does the story move along?
Endings: Wrapping It Up - How do you finally make your point?



What's The Point?

If you tell someone a story the worst thing he or she can say at the end of it is, 'So what? I don't see the point.' So a story has to have a point. But if the hearer grasps it too soon, then there is no reason to tell the rest of the story. The story is unnecessary. So there is a paradox in that the story has to have a point and yet it has to be hidden for as long as possible (ideally until the very end).

Another way of thinking about the point is this: nothing much need happen in terms of the events, or what I call the 'surface narrative' However, in the course of the story, the reader should realise something, should arrive at some insight. That is essential, whether or not any of the characters do the same. In most cases the character(s) work that something out along with the reader. However, there are many instances in which they might already know it, or they might reach the end of the story without realising it. All these are possibilities you may want to consider when thinking about the point of your story.

If you were asked what Hamlet is about and replied that it was the story of a prince who hesitates to take revenge for his father's murder, you would probably feel that you had missed something out. You would probably try to explain the hidden narrative as being about conscience, guilt, love, and so on. It's useful to think about this 'hidden narrative' that runs below the surface narrative. Surface and hidden narratives are also described as text and subtext The subtext is equally important to the story, if not sometimes more important than the text.



Surface and Hidden Narrative

Every aspiring writer has to think about the issue of what makes us continue to read a novel or a story. What is the appeal of a story? Do we carry on reading just in order to find out what happens in the surface narrative? There are novels in which we find that the mere succession of events is not providing enough interest, so it must be more than that. We are held as much by the hidden narrative as by the one on the surface.

Of course the surface narrative has to be appealing. The opening therefore needs to arouse the reader's curiosity without giving too much away and then the story has to go on giving enough pieces of information to engage the reader while at the same time teasing him or her by holding back on other pieces of knowledge.

One of my favourite writers is Hemingway, a master of the hidden narrative. His short story, 'Big Two-Hearted River', is simply an account of a man going fishing. Nick arrives in a landscape that has recently suffered a devastating forest-fire, but he finds the river and its fish just as they always have been. He makes camp and settles down for the night. The next day he starts to fish. He hooks but fails to catch the biggest trout he has ever encountered. However, in spite of that, he has a good day. At the end he decides not to fish the swamp into which the river runs because it is too difficult. That is all there is to the story except for a few hints that Nick is trying to avoid remembering something.

The very simplicity of the story makes the reader suspect that there is more to it than that. The reader realises eventually that the man has had some terrible experience which remains unspecified. The empty and fire-devastated landscape becomes a metaphor for whatever it is, and the fish lurking in the river come to represent the memories deep in his mind which are as shadowy and elusive as his prey.



Drawing In The Reader

These are some famous opening sentences which, in a variety of ways, pull the reader straight into the novel:

J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye: 'If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it.'

William Golding's Pincher Martin: 'He was struggling in every direction, he was the centre of the writhing and kicking knot of his own body.'

Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis: 'As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.'

To different degrees all those openings raise questions like these: What is going to happen next? What has already happened? What kind of character can this be? What is the explanation of this situation?

Then the reader, in order to continue wanting to read, has to be invited to collaborate imaginatively in the story. In something like a newspaper story or a witness-statement, the writer tries to make the reader work as little as possible by avoiding ambiguity, by respecting the chronological order of events, by being as brief as possible and by giving crucial information at the point where it is needed. But in imaginative writing the work that the reader is invited to do in order to make sense of the story should be a large part of the pleasure in reading it.

In this way, I believe that a story is the longest distance between two points. I myself tried to create a very long distance between two points for nearly half a million words in my first novel, The Quincunx. To keep the reader involved in the narrative, I needed to strike a balance between the narrative; what happens next? And the plot, what is the full story, or the solution to the mystery in this case? Part of the enjoyment of reading the book is the thrill of the next adventure, and part is the detective work in making sense of the clues.

The story is told through the eyes of a character, John Huffam, who knows no more or less than the reader at any given point. I originally intended to use a third person narrator in the style of Dickens or George Eliot. However, this would slow the pace and distance the reader from the danger felt by the characters undergoing terrible experiences, so I eventually made John - who is himself acting as a detective to solve his own mystery - the narrator.

Not just in whodunnits or mystery novels, but in all narrative fictions, there are mysteries or ambiguities or omissions. Whom does Frank Churchill really love if not Emma? What secret is Mr Rochester hiding in the attic of Thornfield Hall and what does Grace Poole have to do with it? What is the source of Pip's 'great expectations'? Why has the mysterious Gatsby acquired a huge mansion and started throwing extravagant parties for people he does not know and where has his money come from?



Pitfalls

In thinking about why we continue to read a story, it is helpful to think of why in other cases we stop reading.

One reason why we stop reading is that we don't believe in the events. We don't accept that such a thing could happen or such a coincidence take place or that such a person would behave in such a way. But we don't have to 'believe' in the way we are expected to believe a newspaper report. It's more a question of internal consistency. In the case of Metamorphosis, the reader accepts the astonishing first sentence as a premise of the story: This is what would happen if a man did wake up and find he had been transformed into a beetle. The reader can be persuaded to accept virtually anything as long as it is not internally contradictory. The success of works like Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and other fantastic fictions is proof of that.

Another reason why we stop reading is that we don't care about the central character or characters. A distinction needs to be made. We don't have to like them. We only have to become emotionally involved. Patricia Highsmith makes her readers care very much what happens to the protagonist of her Ripley novels, even though it is clear that Tom Ripley is a callous sociopath. The reader is made to understand why Ripley does the appalling things he does and therefore to want him to get away without being caught.



Getting Started: The Situation

Although there are no rigid rules for proceeding, it is a good idea first to think of a situation and a character involving 'jeopardy'. It need not be literal danger but moral or emotional risk. It is whatever answers the question: 'What does the character have to fear?' But the character must also have a goal. So that is the answer to the question: 'What does the character want?' So the character might fall in love or be faced with a temptation or forced to choose between unpleasant options or required to deal with a sudden crisis.

One can think of fictions which plunge the central character into such a situation. We've already seen how in the opening Gregor Samsa is placed in such a situation. Jane Eyre opens with the heroine as a bullied child being maltreated in the family that has unwillingly taken on responsibility for her.

It might be wise at this stage to think hard about what the story is really about, which is to say, what its point is. However, sometimes it is better to start writing about a concrete situation and character and let the idea blossom before you start to think about its deepest meaning in that more detached way. It is important to decide what you are going to hold back from the reader whether as late as possible or not revealing it at all.

In the most successful kind of story, the surface and the hidden narratives are revealed to be one. In Kafka's Metamorphosis it gradually emerges that Gregor Samsa is a timid man who has sacrificed his own wishes to serve his family and has allowed himself to put up with shameful humiliation at work. In other words, he has lived his life like a beetle. In a sense, he is already an insect.

The crucial need is to find a way of suggesting the point in as concrete and specific a way as possible. It is likely that a short story, unlike a novel, will centre on a single incident or image. Think of the river and the fish in the Hemingway story. Of course, previous events can be brought in through the memories of the central character or characters.



Voice and Point of View

A crucial issue is to decide whose is the voice that is telling the story. And inseparable from that is the question of whose is the point of view through which the story is being seen? The two might be combined if a character is telling his or her own story in the first person.

The opening sentence of Herman Melville's Moby Dick is: 'Call me Ishmael.' That signals that Ishmael will be narrating his own story. It brings you, the reader, straight into the world of the narrator, by addressing you directly. Opening with a command also gives a clue to his character, which would not have been implied if the sentence had been 'My name is Ishmael'. One can think of fictions which plunge the central character into such a situation. We've already seen how in the opening Gregor Samsa is placed in such a situation. Jane Eyre opens with the heroine as a bullied child being maltreated in the family that has unwillingly taken on responsibility for her.

But the voice and the point of view need not be combined in a first person narrator. A third-person narrator might tell the story through the eyes of one or more of the characters.

The Talented Mr Ripley opens:

'Tom glanced behind him and saw the man coming out of the Green Cage, heading his way. Tom walked faster. There was no doubt that the man was after him.'

The third-person narrator is taking the reader inside the mind of the central character.

Those are the two most common approaches but there is a huge range of other possibilities available. In choosing the voice and the point of view through which to tell the story, the writer is tempted to ask, 'Who knows most about the story?'

That's one approach. A more fruitful question might be, 'From whose point of view is this story most interesting?'

That is to say that the writer has to decide for whom is the story's gradual unfolding going to be most intriguing for the reader?

In brief, the most interesting point of view might be that of the most 'unaware' character who then has most to learn. For example, Nick Carraway knows nothing about the past lives of either Gatsby or Daisy. In the course of the novel Nick learns their story, sees its tragic conclusion, and in doing so comes to understand his own destiny. Of all the characters in the novel, he has the most interesting story to tell.

In contrast, the best point of view through which to tell the story might be that of the most knowledgeable character. Emily Bronte chooses the servant, Nelly Dean, to tell the greater part of the story of events at Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. Nelly is not one of the characters most directly involved, but she has the most interesting perspective and therefore is the best person to be the narrator.



Voice: Hot and Cold

It is useful to think about voice in terms of the opposite poles of 'heat' and 'cold'.

At the 'hottest' end of the spectrum is a character recounting events in the first-person. The story has already begun and is happening 'now' and the character does not understand what is going on or know what will happen. The character is in an emotionally wrought state - perhaps of fear or passionate love - is speaking incoherently and perhaps irrationally and is perhaps not wholly to be trusted.

Sarah Waters' recent novel, Affinity, opens like this:

3 August 1873




I was never so frightened as I am now. They have left me sitting in the dark, with only the light from the window to write by. They have put me in my own room, they have locked the door on me. They wanted Ruth to do it, but she would not.

The reader is thrown straight into a situation that is both dangerous and baffling.

At the 'coldest' pole, some unknown person, a third-person narrator, is telling the story and it is something which happened in the past to another person. The narrator sets the scene before the story begins and recounts the events in a logical and uninvolved manner. The reader finds the narrator completely trustworthy.

Thomas Hardy begins The Mayor of Casterbridge like this:

One evening of late summer, before the nineteenth century had reached one-third of its span, a young man and woman, the latter carrying a child, were approaching the large village of Weydon-Priors, in Upper Wessex, on foot.

The narration has the feel of a social historian embarking on a lecture.

As a general rule, I prefer to stick with the point of view I have chosen. It takes great skill to switch it successfully as the reader is likely to feel that you have done so just from convenience. If you want to give another perspective on events, one really effective technique is to do so without using another character's point of view but making the reader imagine it. Saying that, I have used multiple points of view through journals, letters and my own 'asides' to the reader in The Quincunx!





Story Structure

Just as there are many options for the voice and point of view, so there is a virtually infinite number of possibilities for the structure of a story.

All narratives involve the juxtaposition of different moments from the past with the 'now' of the present. In any narrative what starts as 'now' has become 'then' by the end. The simplest version of that is to contrast the present moment with a past moment and the obvious way to do that is: 'Now. Then. Now.'

The simple version is ideally suited to the short story. James Joyce's story 'Eveline' begins with a young woman reflecting, in the hours before she is supposed to elope to South America with her lover, on her past life. The reader learns through her memories everything that is important about the misery and oppression of her life with her drunken widowed father and also about the fear she feels at the prospect of leaving a life that is at least familiar.



Endings: Wrapping It Up

It is often believed that the ending of a short story needs to have a surprise or a 'twist'. The idea that there needs to be a revelation at the surface narrative level now seems a little old-fashioned. What is needed is that the 'point' emerges at or near the end. That is to say, some insight occurs at the level of the hidden narrative. Sometimes, as in Hemingway, it is the fact that the story stops abruptly that suddenly makes the reader see what the point is. It throws the reader back into reconsidering the experience.

One kind of ending is to go back to the beginning or to show that no development has taken place. Many of Joyce's stories in Dubliners end like that. At the end of 'Eveline' the girl remains frozen on the quayside unable to embark for a new life even though her lover begs her to join him. The reader realises that the story's 'point' is that for the girl who has been bullied and crushed all her life, the existence that is familiar, though oppressive, is less frightening than the unknown.

'Big Two-Hearted River' ends with Nick returning to his camp at the end of his first day's fishing. The last sentences are: 'He looked back. The river just showed through the trees. There were plenty of days coming when he could fish the swamp.' It has a profound resonance because of the context that has preceded it. Nick's decision that he is not yet ready to go into the swamp is a metaphor for his awareness that his psychological convalescence is still unfinished.

In a perfectly structured fiction like Hemingway's, the reader's insight comes from an understanding - conscious or barely conscious - of the hidden narrative. The story's point is not necessarily grasped immediately but might be left to resonate in the reader's imagination.



Futher Reading

Books

While all the examples used in this session make excellent reading, you should certainly make a point of checking these out of your local library.

Hemingway, Ernest - The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
From hard boiled crime stories to tales whose simplicity belie their depths, the range of techniques discussed in this session are demonstrated to their full effect.

Joyce, James - Dubliners
Short stories comprising a group portrait of middle and working class life in Dublin. Examples of strong characters and interesting endings.

Kafka, Franz - Metamorphosis and Other Stories
Dark, disturbing existentialist tales which make the reader work. The perfect example of how an initially absurd premise is accepted by the reader and used to present the subtext of a story.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby
An excellent example of how point-of-view and hidden and surface narratives are used to keep a reader's interest.

Useful Links

The Afternoon Reading on Radio 4 - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/afternoon_reading.shtml
The Afternoon Reading brings short stories direct to your ears.

Bibliomania - http://www.bibliomania.com/
Classic fiction, non-fiction, poetry and reference materials free online.

Bartleby - http://www.bartleby.com/
Classic fiction, non-fiction, poetry and reference materials free online.

More on Get Writing

Now that you've got the theory down, get some ideas together with Inspiration Point. Get tips on choosing your style with Develop Your Voice and refine your work with Re-work and Edit.

You can write and edit your work online at My Portfolio. Don't forget to submit your works-in-progress to a Review Circle for maximum feedback.

Find out more on Charles Palliser here.

Good Luck!



Tip: Conflict
Story dynamics are based on interactions between characters. In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy begins: 'All happy families are alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.' If they all got on well to start with, there would be no story. Drama heightens life through a series of oppositions (goodie versus baddie) or the oppositions that occur within the minds of the characters, the choices they have to make: 'To be or not to be...' It is this chain of action and reaction that moves a story forward. (UOE)

Tip: Getting Started
Don't expect to get it absolutely right in your first draft. Concentrate at first on getting your idea down as simply and clearly as possible. Then build it up and pull bits off as you need. Be open to the possibility that it may not be about what your originally thought, or that characters may be different people to what you thought at the beginning. (LU)

Tip: Names
Names are important. Consider: The 'Boy Named Sue' syndrome: the impact of the boy having this name is at the centre of the plot Dickens uses names like Bumble to give characters a label - this is perhaps a bit simplistic for us, but names are suggestive. How many supermodels are called Agatha? Would you call your hero Cedric? Keep a 'bible' - a list of all your characters, a family tree of their relationships and any significant facts about them, and cross-reference it as part of your journal. (LU)

Tip: Forms of Writing
Generally, we use three forms of writing to tell our stories: Narration - outlining what is happening Description - colouring in Dialogue - breathing life into the characters All these modes work together to create a story. It is important to vary the modes of writing in order to keep the writing interesting. Miles of description can be boring while clear-cut lines of pure narration will not provide the depth which we need to engage with the characters. Dialogue alone can not tell the complete story. (UEA)

Exercise: Critique
Select your favourite book/story. Read twice through the opening paragraph or even the first page - the first time for pure enjoyment, the second time with a critical eye. Ask yourself: How does the first sentence catch your attention? How smoothly do the next few sentences follow on from the first and draw you into the story? How does the end of the first paragraph/page make you want to go on to the second paragraph/page? Now open the book/story at random and select another paragraph. Ask the same questions. You should now be starting to see how your favourite author achieves many of the effects that you enjoy so much. Try creating a first paragraph of your own, putting into it as many of your discoveries as possible. (OU)


Exercise: Autopsy of a Story
Select a fairytale (e.g. Little Red Riding Hood or Cinderella) and via the internet and local library, find at least three different versions. Reduce the selected story to a synopsis in no more than 250 words. The synopsis should consist of cast of characters, time and location, outline of plot, purpose of story. Compare some different versions to identify variations in detail. If the versions selected are from known dates, different sociohistoric attitudes might emerge. Attempt a new version of the story, written for today's child. (UEA)


Exercise: Characters and Story
Imagine two characters meeting on holiday and discovering a common interest. Before reaching home, they swap addresses and decide to write to each other. Plan out a series of four short letters in which they get to know each other better. This might be a holiday romance or purely platonic. As these characters will already have met, you will need to reveal details about each of them to show how they met on holiday as well as to develop their knowledge about each other now they are home. Remember to include daily details, which are telling about a person's character. (LU)


Exercise: Squawking Heads
Write a short scene (750 words) in which the protagonist (central character/hero(ine)) meets the antagonist (love object, enemy, baddie, victim) for the first time. Using mostly dialogue, try to build a sense of the world of the story and what the couple might want from each other. Dialogue should convey something essential about the person speaking and move the story forward. (UOE)


Exercise: Outline and Explore
Outline a story, choosing characters, setting, situation, conflict and crisis. For example, a brother and a sister (characters) go to the seaside (setting) for the day. They have saved up money to go and have been looking forward to it. In particular, they want to go to the Sea Word (situation). When they get there, the sister is tempted to spend their money in the arcades. Her brother tries to stop her (conflict). She loses all their money (crisis). Now take each aspect of the story and use the different forms of writing (description, dialogue and narration) to explore them. Write a short description of the setting, a brief dialogue between the characters during the conflict, tell the story of the sister at crisis point, etc. (UEA)


Credit: Open University
Thanks to David Stephenson, Derek McTravers, Anne Stevens and Derek Sheills for these tips and exercises. For more information on OU courses: (OU)


Credit: University of East Anglia
Thanks to Lisa Selvidge and the continuing education department for these tips and exercises. For more information on UEA continuing education courses: (UEA)


Credit: University of Exeter
Thanks to Anne Morgellyn for these tips. For more information on UOE lifelong learning courses: (UOE)


Credit: Lancaster University
Thanks to Hilary Thomas and the Department for Continuing Education for these tips and exercises. For more information on LU continuing education courses: LU