A Question about The Question

A few more ways of thinking about what a story is...

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you who celebrate it.

For anyone interested, here’s a link to my talk at the National Book Awards last week…(This is just “my” portion of the program, not the whole ceremony, as I posted last Sunday.)

Also, here’s a link from The Believer, to an interview I did with my pal Ben Marcus back in (gulp) 2004. Interesting to read this twenty-year old interview and find some things I’m still saying and some I’m not, or am saying differently…

An Interview with George Saunders

Now, on to our question of the week…

Q.

Hello George, I want to ask about the question you’ve often referred to as shaping a story -- the question to be posed in the right way, as Chekov put it, rather than to be answered.

You sometimes mention the question that’s in your head as you draft a story. I don’t recall one exactly, but some examples might be, why is there such unfairness in the world, or, in the case of Young Goodman Brown, what happens when we judge people at extremes. (And I’m not quite sure those are such good examples.)

I have learned about concepts like the big and small stories within the story, the heart of the story, etc. but you are the first of my many instructors, teachers, or, as I might put it, aimiable coaches to suggest to me the importance of the ‘Chekhov question’ if I might call it that.

I don’t think I’ve ever started a story with the C question in mind, and I find it difficult to identify one even in a second or third draft. Would you be willing to describe where the question becomes clear to you in your own stories? What helps you give shape to the question? And, do you think that the clearer the C question to the writer, the stronger the story? This is what I suspect.

Thank you so much for Story Club and for your generosity and kindness.

A.

Yes, thank you – I believe the quote you’re referring to goes something like: “A work of art doesn’t have to solve a problem, it just has to formulate it correctly.”

So, we might note, first, that Chekhov is not actually advocating having a question. I think what he’s saying is that a story, well-told, poses a problem, and, although we sometimes feel that the writer’s job is to “solve” that problem (i.e., let the reader know the correct answer/where the writer stands), in fact, the writer’s job is to accentuate and heighten that problem, by representing both sides of it fairly, with heft.

The best example I know of this among Chekhov’s stories is “Gooseberries,” which I wrote about at length in A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.

In that story, the “problem” or “question” might be said to be: “Is happiness good or bad? A positive thing to seek, or negative?” And Chekhov doesn’t offer a final answer – he just lets both sides make their best case. This causes a complexifying of the question and then, magically, the story pops up out of that realm and becomes about something even bigger - a meditation on excess that seems to say, “Well, it’s not happiness itself, but the spirit in which we pursue happiness that’s the trouble.” (Ivan, swimming, is pursuing happiness in a pure way; his brother, who has slowly killed his wife with his mad desire to have a country place, is pursuing happiness in the wrong way.)

So it’s a story about happiness, which becomes a story about excessive belief, which, in the end, becomes (also, I think) a story about the different varieties of desire and contentment, and, of course, the story is much, much more than even all of that – the story is remarkable for the way in which it manages to be “about” all of these things (to encompass all these things) and yet still elude simple reduction.

And my guess is, if Chekhov had written it with “What’s my central question?” in mind, he would have written a much less wonderful story.

When we write (and especially if we’re revising well) all kinds of magical, incidental, accidental things happen, on their own, and then that same intuitive part of the mind “notices” these and responds…and the cycle goes on and on, yielding more and more complexity – more than we could ever “will into” it.

It’s difficult, subjective work and, as we all know, it’s tempting to desire a touchstone.

But sometimes the touchstone can inhibit – it suppresses the subconscious. We get the benefit of feeling that we’re in control (by way of our method or mantra) but the story doesn’t like this, and may go off and pout in the corner while we (logically, in-control) flail away at it, frustrated, in the end, by how quotidian and predictable it has become.

So, honestly, I almost never have a “question” in mind before I start – in fact, I think I can say I’ve never written a story in that way. What does happen is: I’m writing along, staying alert, so that, when and if such a question (or problem, or opposition) starts manifesting itself, I’ll notice. At that point, I’ll feel pleased (that my story has started to be “about” something) but I’ll also be hoping that the story will outgrow that thing and find another thing, on its own, and, in that way, will get clear of my literal, dull, merely-planning mind.

So, it’s maybe more a recognition of a question the story might be asking, and a nod in that direction, but a slightly skeptical nod, as in: “Well, maybe, dear story, if you say so – but let’s wait and see.”

I have stories of mine that I really like that I couldn’t reduce to a question/problem, except by really straining and putting on my “I am writing a college essay!” hat – and that answer would have little to do with the actual process I went through while writing the story.

For example, an early one, “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline,” makes the case, in its first few pages, that sometimes violence is needed to protect virtue. Then the characters take that too far, and the very act of trying to protect virtue by violence becomes evil.

Did I “see that” while writing the story?

Not that I recall, no.

In “CommComm,” without planning to, I made two characters (Rimney and Giff) who were, each in their own way, extremists. So the story became a story about extremism, and I think the reader’s attention naturally turns to the main character, wondering, “Does this guy have anything in his life that he’s extreme about?” And the reader comes to feel that yes, the main character does (he is extremely attached to his parents), and this realization might make the story feel that much more like an organic whole, and gives the reader something to wonder about (“Will he continue along that extreme path, or catch himself?”)

But again: I only realized all of this a few months after the story was done and had run in The New Yorker. (Or, I only consciously recognized it then.)

But: the revision process I enacted while writing those stories “saw” and honored and heightened those patterns…but without my conscious involvement, if that makes sense.

You asked: Do you think that the clearer the Chekovian question to the writer, the stronger the story?

I have to say, I feel strongly that the opposite may sometimes be true.

If it becomes too clear to the writer what that alleged “certain question'“ is, she might freeze up, in an attempt to “honor” that question and in that process, stop listening to the story and start overriding it.

Well, here’s the big question: if we don’t want to cling too tightly to mantras and methods and all of that, what do we cling to? (Well, the right answer, I guess, is: nothing, nothing at all.)

And yet…how are we supposed to proceed?

I understand my stories as sequences of events that, aligned in a certain order, make for rising tension. So there’s a lot of attention being paid to the order of events – can they be improved upon? Are certain events redundant and thus asking to be cut?

Or (related): I see a story in-progress as a pattern of areas that work and others that don’t yet. Revision is: trying to get the flat bits to work better - and that “better” doesn’t have much explanation about it - just a feeling that is more powerful or kicks more ass, or (I especially like this phrasing) is more “undeniable.”

Or (related): a story is a pattern of places where the narration resembles a fast, narrow river (that’s good), and other, less refined, places, where the narrative (lake-like) seems to spread out and slow down and become low-energy and vague (not so good). And there, revising looks like trying to make rivers out of those lakes.

But, of course, revision looks and feels the same in each of the above models. (Those are all imperfect metaphors for one consistent thing.)

One thing these models have in common: most of the work that takes place occurs on a local, (phrase- or sentence- ) level. That’s where the first-order choosing happens and the choosing is what will, over time, make the system called “your story” more coherent and shaped system.

And sometimes, this close work makes it more clear what sort of larger, structural, section-level work needs to happen. But that work is done in the same spirit - intuitive, trying to make the whole more undeniable.

Most of the revision I do is in response to a certain gut feeling that this is better than that; that I prefer this way of saying it to that way; that I prefer this sequence to that, and so on – all of those decisions being made almost entirely by instinct and on a very local level.

When I’m done, the story might appear to have posed a question - but that’s a result, not a cause.

The real game is for a given writer to develop her sense of what she prefers and learn to enact that value system in as many places as possible throughout the story.

Honestly, my advice, dear Questioner, might be for you to consider putting this “Chekhovian question” construct aside for a little while. It’s just one of many ways of looking at a story. It’s possible for such a notion to do you more harm than good. A writer may started feeling that, in the absence of such a question, she’s “not doing it right,” which would be a shame, since continuing to try is required for a story to find its true shape.

That is, I’d rather feel, “Ah, hell with it, I’m probably doing something right,” than, “Oh, no, I’m not finding the Chekhovian question, which means I’m doing it all wrong and my therefore my story is doomed.”

I know you’re not saying that, dear Questioner, but….I worry. 😊

Hope you all have a beautiful day today.