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And framing can, at least in my mind, also include what I think of as "braiding" - having two story lines going at once. Same deal - we want to ask: Why am I doing this? And: Is doing this keeping from doing something else (for example, concentrating more on the essence of one of the two storylines)?

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Jan 30, 2022·edited Jan 30, 2022Liked by George Saunders

Seeing the opening and epilogue together, something else struck me. It seems from the opening that he is still engaged in state affairs (“Six years have slipped by since I came from the country to the capital”). But in the epilogue he says, “The military and political affairs of *those* years I have forgotten as completely as the classics I read in my childhood,” as if he has retired or quit, and entered a new era of life. This could be a matter of translation, but at least in English, it makes me wonder if the driver somehow inspired the narrator to leave his job.

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founding

Super interesting. In law school, we were taught CRAC. Conclusion, Rule, Application, Conclusion. For persuasive writing. For objective writing it was IRAC (Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion). This can sound super mechanical after a while but it is how first year law students are taught. So maybe if it sounds mechanical in a story, it should def come out.

I was also interested to read some commenters say An Incident felt like a morality tale to them, and like they felt they were being manipulated. Maybe the frame has something to do with why it comes off that way, to them? I loved An Incident's frame but maybe that's just because I'm used to reading frames. Actually no, that frame was gorgeous. Even if I'd never read a frame before, I'd still love it.

But anyway, aren't most stories framed? Like in real life, when my friend is telling me what happened to her that morning, she'll always give context from before or after that morning before starting her story.

I feel like the frame usually answers the Why Are You Bothering Telling Me This? question George mentioned in A Swim In A Pond In The Rain.

Also, I feel like the frame lets us get to know the narrator, which I like.

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Not on topic? but wanted to share this quote a friend sent from James Baldwin:

“An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are. He has to tell, because nobody else in the world can tell, what it is like to be alive. All I’ve ever wanted to do is tell that, I’m not trying to solve anybody’s problems, not even my own. I’m just trying to outline what the problems are.

I want to be stretched, shook up, to overreach myself, and to make you feel that way too.”

Now that I think of it, "An Incident" does make me wonder about Lu Hsun's motive and if he'd say something quite similar! This story puts a "small" moment of shame under a microscope to show what being alive IS: humbling, inspiring, heart breaking.

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I love that this comes back to the idea of escalation. Does a framing device provide escalation to a story, does it meaningfully expand the story? If so, great. If not, eject it. It's a simple idea (although not necessarily easy to execute) but one that's already been helpful to my own writing.

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Jan 30, 2022Liked by George Saunders

Bonus material: http://sittingbee.com/the-calm-raymond-carver/

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For me, the "incident" is not the story. The story is the transformation, and so the frame is essential to telling that story.

On another note, I read the comments and feel awe and envy at how easily other readers and writers can cite examples and references from the rest of literature. I struggle to remember what I read. What am I doing wrong? I have notebooks filled with notes from class assignments, and books marked up with notes, and I will often look back at them and have no recollection of any of it. Does anyone else have this experience? Is there anything I can do?

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I’m so pleased that framing’s come up right now.

Just this week, as I was looking through the first draft of my novel for clues my subconscious might have left me (and guessing at what a clue might be), I hit a scene where my P meter was jumping up high. I’d thought I was going to have to cut that whole braid (hey!) of text because I’d decided in advance (boo) not to deal with that timeline.

I’d been revising the one-sentence-leads-to-another-and-that’s-all-you-need-to-know way, and the opening of the novel refused to come to life.

And then the idea of a prologue knocked on my brain with goods (and a special character) from the timeline I thought I’d have to lose entirely.

When I gave this prologue a whirl, not only did its own sentences arrive in great shape (and turn undeniable quickly) but the prologue itself cast light and shadow across the opening in this way that makes me freshly excited to work now. The prologue also talked directly to the people I’m writing this story for, which I didn’t expect, and it helps me to remember why this is all worth trying. Feels like a giant charging station for the whole endeavor.

And here comes George this morning, all “Oh, by the way, framing” and I am once again feeling blessed as hell to be here in Story Club.

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Jan 30, 2022Liked by George Saunders

I'd venture the purpose of the frame in this story is akin to a lawyer's opening statement, then later the summation in a court case

First the author opens with a paragraph telling us he's about to give evidence of something important. Last of all he finishes with a paragraph on there you go, I proved it, I certainly hope you got the point.

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founding

I've been thinking on why Hsun chose to use a frame instead of incorporating the details in the meat of the story - surely we could have 'seen' him unimpressed by the affairs of the state and misanthropic. Perhaps the reason he chose this narrative summary was because it was more efficient? Which begs the question, what is this particular efficiency driving? How is the story served by telling us these things, rather than showing them in a more organic way?

These questions have tumbled around in my head for the past few days without any real answer or epiphany, and then this morning my brain recalled another framing story that I loved as a child (and still do) - the Princess Bride. Which led me to discover that a number of my favourite movies as a kid (and this goes out to all the Gen X story clubbers) were also (to various extents) framing stories: The Neverending Story, and (probably to a lesser extent the Goonies). They all have this secondary (but ultimately more important) story that is connected by the smallest thread to the prominent story - that if you removed it, would still leave the prominent story (of action and drama) intact - take out Kevin Arnold and Columbo (jks - I mean, the grandson (played by Fred Savage) and grandfather (Peter Faulk)) and you still have a fun caper fantasy; take out Bastian and his breakfast conversation about unicorns with his dad, and him riding a massive luck dragon at the end, and you still have a great adventure fantasy (you could even take his character out altogether and have a great fantasy, albeit a tragedy); and take out the threat of the local country club taking buying up Astoria homes, and there's still a great caper fantasy.

These stories and 'An Incident' use the same kind of framing structure - there's a prologue and epilogue based in this 'other' story, and a moment (or two) in the prominent story that calls back to this other story - in Hsun, it's the 'Suddenly, I had a strange feeling' (the moment of introspection, where we see how the events of the prominent story have affected him), in Princess Bride, it's that moment where we cut to Kevin and Columbo "Do you want me to stop. You look a little scared." "I'm not scared, maybe a little concerned, but that's not the same thing" (or something along those lines, it's been a while...) - where again we see how the main characters of the 'other' story are being affected by the events of the prominent story, in the Neverending Story there's a few but my fave is where Sebastian saves the rest of his sandwich like Atreyu; and in the Goonies, it's that moment where Troy turns up at the wishing well.

And I think the reason why they are all framed (and successful because of their framing), is because a) the real impact is the one that happens outside the events of the story, and b) the framing removes the distance between the story and the reader, whereby even if we can't relate to the events of the prominent story, we can relate to the 'other' story and their protagonists. It makes the fantasy of the fiction more tangible, and helps us to experience it more intimately (rather than at the kind of distance we'd be faced with if we didn't have these story interlocutors). I wonder if, in the same vein, we can call Gatsby a framing story? Where the story is framed by Nick's observation/engagement in the key story at a distance, which provides the moral lesson and a more relatable character for the reader to hitch a ride with...

Anyway, after this long digression, I think that while Hsun could have left out the prologue (or incorporated its points more organically in the story), the epilogue is needed to show the future/ongoing impact on the narrator long after the events of that day. And the prologue, then, is needed to balance that epilogue and give a sense of symmetry. (ie He needed to have an open bracket at the beginning in order to use the close bracket at the end).

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I'll steal from my comment on one of the previous posts, because I talked so much about the frame there...

I think one of the crucial things this frame is doing is placing the events of the story "in question". Without the frame, the events are simply happening; we're aware (if we're attuned to it) that the narrator is "coaching" us and that there is a particular point of view here, but the frame has the extra effect of placing not just the events in the story but the point of view itself into question. Because it's not an in-the-moment point of view - it's a reflection, written after the fact. Is this how the narrator *really* felt at the moment the events actually happened? Is he recalling them correctly? Are his reflective thoughts accurate - has he really changed, as he indicates at the end?

I'd argue that because the frame is in place, we can't interpret the narrator's "spin" without taking into account how he feels now, at the time of writing. What struck me is that even though this is presented as a reflection, the narrator isn't really doing a whole lot of reflecting. Though he seems to be trying to accurately represent his emotional reactions, he doesn't view them in a specifically critical light (for example, he says "She must be pretending, which was disgusting", rather than "I felt disgusted"), showing that he still hasn't really questioned himself and his responses. And, of course, "perhaps he had not heard" is also telling - he is reluctant to view himself as the true non-entity in the action of the story (unworthy even of acknowledgment by this remarkably attentive rickshaw man), because he still wants to see himself as the center of the story. In the second to last paragraph, the wind (a large, sweeping, impersonal force, sort of an agent of change and self-transcendence, which is inextricable from the action of the story) dies down and leaves him caught in his own "small" thoughts. Though he is approaching some kind of reflection, is at least made uncomfortable in his usual perspective, he still cannot "answer himself". Everything is still about him. And he does not wonder at all about the fate of the rickshaw man or the woman, which gives the impression that even now, he still doesn't really care.

The fact that the story begins and ends in the same matter-of-fact, removed language provides a contrast with the middle of the story, where the action is. It is almost as if the narrator is no longer himself when he describes the action. This shows how deeply it has affected him, drawing him so dramatically outside of his usual perspective, but also shows how resistant to change he actually is. He reverts right back to the same language at the end (nonspecific, failure to provide details about what impressions it has actually made on him in his daily life), making his reflection seem hollow.

But I don't think it's *completely* hollow - after all, something significant has caused him to question himself, and he is the one telling the story - describing that wind as it whips through, not just the story's action, but his own mind.

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Jan 30, 2022·edited Jan 30, 2022

“The gravel pit was about a mile east of town, and the size of a small lake, and so deep that boys under sixteen were forbidden by their parents to swim there.” So begins another great framed story, “So Long, See You Tomorrow,” by the great William Maxwell. What begins as a somewhat mysterious digression, circles round to a powerful conclusion, where we don’t need another description of that place, or even its name, because we now feel its stoney depth in our hearts.

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Thought the group might be interested in this BBC Radio 4 15-minute piece from this week on a Lu Xun novella https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0013rbg

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I love this, George. I was just talking recently about Flannery O'Connor's framing device in "Good Country People." A student had asked about the opening and ending graphs that have to do with what seems to be an ancillary character (Mrs. Freeman) and what she's gazing at. The story begins and ends with her gaze, though the guts of the story have little to do with her directly. But I hadn't thought of putting this exercise in front of them -- that idea of taking the frame out, and noticing how that might alter the story. It helps readers understand more about the nuts and bolts of writing, how a story is put together and what choices writers make. Though I don't think this is always the "plan." I also think writers go with their guts, and aren't necessarily thinking consciously of following a kind of template. But that's the magic of writing. Just want you to know you are giving me great ideas for small group workshop exercises! I can't wait to see what you put in front of us next!

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George, I laughed out loud at your paragraph about "Frugality Fever," which I do come down with every-so-often—sometimes when writing a story, but more often with poetry. I'll just keep cutting stuff mercilessly, telling myself over and over it's not needed, be spare, spareness is power, less is more, don't reveal everything, show don't tell, blah, blah, blah, until all I'm left with is about three lines. "What am I supposed to do with THIS??" I shout, and I hurl my computer out the window.

I truly appreciate your insight into the reason the intro and epilogue bookends work so brilliantly in this story. There is movement between the two passages that reflect, elaborate on, and deepen how and why the movement of the action is life-changing for the narrator.

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Jan 31, 2022Liked by George Saunders

Thank you so much, George. I have already gotten so much out of Story Club, well in excess of the cost. I am very grateful.

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