New to Story Club but the common theme I'm seeing in every post is a willingness to experiment and be dynamic. It's already having a big impact on my creative writing. Just because I had one idea doesn't mean I have to keep forcing it, especially if it's telling me it's not working. Hearing a master grapple with and have to solve the same types of problems is validating and inspiring. Thanks for all you're doing, George!
How many exercises does it need to be ticked off as 'Done' on the 'To Do List' before the item on the to do list 'Story to Write' get to be ticked off as done and dusted (at least to the end of 'Working Draft #1'?
I'm so hoping to read {EDIT OUT 'your' EDIT IN 'our' 22.22 12/06/2022} our first shared, in progress - not just yours Sarah, or those other Story Clubbers, but even my own - fresh stories that I can only hope that we will, individually and collectively start to bring 'em on, then out from under their shy bushels, as necessarily revised, tweaked, edited and torqued to beautiful delivery.
P.S. After the clearly marked-up 'EDIT OUT / EDIT IN' there follow three more: can you spot them? Clue words are 'yours', 'those' and 'even'. Now I feel I am, maybe, getting to know what the phrase 'double precision arithmetic' meant . . . even allowing that the pins I'm inclined to be juggling, up their in the air, are words more often than numbers.
Ooh--now you're talking business!! Truthfully the closest I get to story is when I diarize a particular day's events and think - gosh there could be a story in that. This supportive and so intelligent and kind group and George have me dreaming that I might just write a short story one of these days...
Spiderhead! Spiderhead! So happy for you, George. That's very exciting.
And I appreciate this week's Office Hours. I've been playing with some judgmental narrator (close 3rd POV) with the character being observed making comments back to the narrator in 1st person - at this point with mixed results. But I'm tapping into the fun meter and just having a go for kicks. Bringing the fun back into the technical aspects of craft really does open the creative sides of the creative writing world once again.
That was a great question. The first time I read "Puppy" I thought I had finally found a Saunders story I didn't like. It was so disorienting. Now, it might be my all-time favorite short story from anyone. I use it religiously to teach POV, but more importantly to teach principles of empathy - which, for me, is at the center of teaching literature. Looking forward to Spiderhead, and to telling everyone, "The story was better."
I often worry about head hopping. I wrote (and rewrote and rewrote) a novel that just wasn’t quite there. After putting it away for a few years, I find the novel’s central topic is in the news. Looking at it with fresh eyes, I realize the antagonist’s POV is required so the reader understands the stakes.
Flashbacks are tough, took me a while to understand that. It takes the reader out of the moment. I’m sure there’s some “earned” flashbacks...but it cuts into the momentum some.
Thank you Stacya! I often feel here that brilliant gifts flow by and I forget to write them down. I think I'll come back to them but of course, the next shiny object catches my attention and I lose track, like a psychotic squirrel that can't remember where I buried anything. I appreciate this collection you harvested for us!
“Psychotic squirrel “ captures that feeling perfectly! I’ve gone back to pen and paper journal-- what you said, I always think I’ll remember or “get back to it later” but I don’t. There’s so many things to be excited about in this class, I just want to keep it in one place in an actual notebook.
I should do that, too. Especially if I can find time to go back through some of the posts of the last six months (that’s a pretty darn full notebook, though…)
Gosh, I can think of all kinds of stories where flashbacks are used successfully. Ethan Canin's work is full of them; so is Frederick Busch's. Mavis Gallant's best stories (Eduoard, Juliette & Lena) are driven by them. Someone already mentioned Alice Munro. I think that flashbacks, just like anything else (the internet, garlic in sauces, woodworker's tools), depend on how they're used.
Oh, yay! Glad you like the Orner. He's among my favs. I had the great good fortune to have a workshop with him & he's all for writing short, shorter. As for the garlic, I'm with ya.
I can think of more Alice Munro stories with flashbacks than without--she makes it look so easy! "Dimensions," "Child's Play," "The Progress of Love," "The Albanian Virgin" all leap backward and forward in time. "The Bear Came Over the Mountain!"
I think of Stuart Dybek as a time magician, too. "Paper Lantern" centers around a memory framed by an event (I was actually thinking of it back when we were discussing framed stories), and "Tosca" is like this matryoshka doll of nestled moments. He's one of my favorite writers.
In my current writing, I find I’m using flashbacks at difficult or crossroads moments. When a character doesn’t want to move forward, or is compelled to do what they’ve always done – and remembering the past might remind them how that works out (maybe not so well). So it can serve as an impetus for change in the present. It can also show why a little choice/action now has big stakes – a brave departure from a lifelong comfortable habit. Perhaps like The Falls; on the walk along the river we learn through their ruminations about what has happened in the lives of these two men, and the act of jumping (or not jumping) into the river becomes more poignant.
Making notes! Thank you. I’d love to read your stories. The Falls kept me 100 percent in, such a great story. George Saunders, amazing. As we all know.
A huge part of what made “The Falls” so great, I believe, was the contrast between the two forms of consciousness. Funny how the more egotistical character was unable to act, but the self-loathing one could, and did.
Oh, another more complicated one is The Sound and the Fury. In that book all time seems to be happening at once, and the past may be more compelling than the present.
Hi Stacya. Maybe we need a definition here because I think there are lots of different kinds of flashbacks. A flashback can take place within a paragraph (when a character has a memory). Or a flashback can take up a paragraph, or a page. Or a flashback can be an entire scene, separated by white space from the "current" time of the story. Or even an entire chapter. I think many times a flashback is written so neatly within a narrative that you hardly notice it. Here's a flashback (as I define it) that appears within George's story The Falls: ".....because Morse knew very well the kind of man he was at heart, timid of conflict, conciliatory to a fault, pathetically gullible, and with a pang he remembered Len Beck, who senior year had tricked him into painting his ass blue. If there had actually been a secret Blue-Asser’s Club, if the ass-painting had in fact been required for membership, it would have been bad enough, but to find out on the eve of one’s prom that one had painted one’s ass blue simply for the amusement of a clique of unfeeling swimmers who subsequently supplied certain photographs to one’s prom date, that was too much, and he had been glad, quite glad actually, at least at first, when Beck, drunk, had tried and failed to swim to Foley’s Snag and been swept over the Falls in the dark of night, the great tragedy of their senior year, a tragedy that had mercifully eclipsed Morse’s blue ass in the class’s collective memory."
So that is an example of a flashback done so expertly, so neatly, that you aren't jolted out of the story at all. Does it slow the momentum? Not for me, but maybe for others.
Thanks, Mary. Great example! It’s a flashback to be sure, but it moves so well, past and present flowing along at high speed together. Revealing of character and portentous at once.
I am grappling with a story that I believe is the one story I am "meant to write" . It's reliant heavily on flashback to the point that the largest part of the story is in the flashbacks, but they still hopefully pay off large when the flashbacks finally arrive at the present narrative moment.
Interestingly,vis-a-vis your comment, the momentum lies mostly inside the flashbacks. The multiple returns to the present moment are meant to provide the kind of break from the escalation that flashbacks often provide.
Just yesterday, I had a conversation with someone about the series "Under The Banner of Heaven" which is also a book by Jon Krakauer. The person I spoke with was watching the show with her boyfriend–– he hated the flashbacks in the show, he said he wanted to be "immersed" in the story, and the flashbacks ruined the flow for him, took him out of the story. The boyfriend stopped watching. She and I had the opposite reaction. I loved the flashbacks in the series, they made the show more interesting, and I got a history lesson. So... prolly it's all just a matter of taste. Your story sounds like something I'd like to read, as David S. commented. I cheer you on!
Funny how differently we are wired. Most people I know don’t like “foreign films,” but, my God, what a great way to get out of your own cultural skin for a while! (Not to mention how nice it is to hear other languages spoken!)
Love foreign films, those old French movies...what's the one where they go to the restaurant and the owner has died, he's dead on a big table, but they still want to be served a meal? "Parasite" is one of my all time favorite films. I had long telephone conversation with my high school English teacher, trying to change her mind about the film. She didn't like it. I kept trying to pitch her all the reasons I loved it, and she gave in only the tiniest bit.
Ach, I haven’t seen Parasite yet. I think it came out when I was grappling with too many things. But hopefully soon! ( I don’t know that French film either, but what a premise!)
Great post. Very relevant to what I'm working on, a composite novel...lots of voices. Yes, it will 'cost' the reader so it's a big risk to take. But fun...
I’ve never read a story like VL before & I might not have if I’d known the subject matter so I stopped reading the notes & went to read. Wow. Kyle becomes a hero, an unexpected one who’s trying so hard to be the dutiful son. The hysterical biz of disobeying his parents no-shoes-in-the-house rule a perfect description of someone who’d be ineffectual in a crises. But…you made magic by going into the head of the assailant, who I almost felt for with his brute monstrousness, and gave Kyle the impetus to act. This story expands my writer’s horizons, which I’m in sore need of & reminds me that we have to find compassion (or intelligence as you call it) for all our characters.
Loved what you said about “cost” with pov switching, backstory, time lapses, “discretionary moves”. I still hate backstory except in justified brushstrokes.
I loved when the assailant’s body “tumped over.” Tump is a really great word.
In what way, specifically to you Susie, “enormously helpful” and “generous”?
Back in the day when, putting lunch on the table was down to me being an edumucator of sorts, I had a habit of acknowledging their ‘good labels’ but going on to invite folks to expand a taste on what lay beneath ‘labels’ (as I read them) such as your “enormously helpful” and “generous”?
The penny drops as I type this Susie: perhaps, or possibly even maybe, what George has written of as ‘placeholders’ and I’m referring to as ‘labels’ might, conceivably, just be not one and the same thing but ‘close cousins’?
If you read back on this and choose to reply, that’ll be fine. If you decline to reply, that’ll be just as fine.
Thanks for your comment Susie, a pebble hitting my mind’s still pond and setting those positive perturbations commonly referred to as ripples radiating, and causing me to 🤔 a refreshing bit further. Appreciated.
Hi Rob! Well yes, I think those phrases I used are like placeholders, you're quite right. I will need to give your question a bit more thought and will enjoy doing so as it's interesting. Let's see if I can dredge something up from the murky pond of my own mind - probably an old shopping trolley, ha - but I'll see what I can come up with. Let me sleep on it.
Rob, I've mulled it over. Specifically, for me, I found particularly helpful:
- the concept of "third-person ventriloquist" and how it can feel intimate and interior. The point of view from which a story is told is something I've pondered a lot recently re the effect the choice has on the reader.
- the concept of "costs" for both writer and reader when introducing various shifts. (I've never attempted to use flashbacks, for example, but the comments will be useful to bear in mind if I do.)
- I like the glimpse into the writer stepping back from the work and thinking "I need x to happen here and something to drive it for y to make sense". I recognize doing that in my own work but have never attempted to explain it or set it out that way and it's helpful. Instead of feeling things like: "Oh God I'm mangling things together here and I don't know what the hell I'm doing," I can think, "this is a valid part of the process."
- The bit about section length. I like this and I've counted beats and sentences etc. in my own work to achieve an underlying rhythm, as I think it comes through when read, even if unconsciously.
- I particularly liked the sentence, as a stand-alone sentence: "I needed to get out of Kyle's head and into someone else's and Alison wasn't available." It sounds like the start of a whole other story.
But I didn't think me saying any of that would be especially interesting or would add much to anything, so I didn't. However, setting it all out like this has been helpful, so thank you.
It all feels a bit like stuff (the teaching) is going in to a composter (my big thick head) and it needs to mulch a bit before I can understand what's hit me.
This part: "I decide not to jump off a cliff, make a great case for not jumping off the cliff...then jump off the cliff", unsettled me a little. George said he didn't buy it, and it made me think of many times in my life when I've done exactly that - the deciding against but then cliff-jumping thing - but in a reverse way, i.e. for the bad not for the good. For example: "I will have but one drink at the party and then enjoy delicious fizzy water for the next millionty-ten hours of it", or "This time, I will avoid that contentious topic at the family get-together". But that's the reverse kind of way to how Kyle behaved so 1. it didn't seem relevant to say it; 2. I didn't want to sound delinquent or stupid; and 3. I wasn't confident I could explain it properly and didn't want to sound like I disagree with George's writing decision, which I don't. Nobody wants, like, a whole scenario ending "George Saunders became enraged." 😉
Well one thing I really liked was you picking up on "I needed to get out of Kyle's head and into someone else's and Alison wasn't available." as a prompt for a new story! What fictional world are we in here, with all this head jumping??
Thanks, George! It's very kind of you to allow us to peak into your process, to understand your work in progress and how you feel in-between when it is all still under construction. It is SO important to see this for someone who is trying to find oneself as a writer and feels so intimidated by the stunning art (the end version) of other writers and just feels, Oh, will I ever produce something that masterful? I find it interesting to read about your take on the POV. I am currently writing a story (it runs longer than a short story, but I am still not sure whether it wants to be more or not, my main objective now is to follow my gut and the fun and then later I will think about structure and the format; so I might cut a lot, I basically am trying to write myself free, to find my tune etc). I started in first person POV, then introduced third person limited POV for two other characters. I am a beginner, and am not sure whether I will keep it, but for now I am doing it to get into the other characters' heads, to make sense of them in a better way so that even if I delete them later and return to classic fist person POV I am aware of these other characters and who they are etc. I am very impressed by your "third person ventriloquist" in Victory Lap and in The Falls. Victory lap was one of the hardest stories for me to get into, I basically fought with the feeling (this is George Saunders, I want to like and admire his stories) for the first pages, ready to give up, and it was only at the last line, when the hint of action (the assailant at the door and her feeling that something is wrong) was dropped that I got a kick out of the story and proceeded with Kyle's POV, which was a relief for me and already easier to read. So, in this story, I was glad of the different POV's in this story, from Kyle onward the story flew by and at the end I was left in such owe of George (again). This story for me was like a train that starts rolling very slowly amidst relatively boring landscape, then speeds up and ends in a roller coaster that I did not see coming and when it's over I am glad I survived it but still feel the vertigo. Last thing: I try to write stream of consciousness just to see if this is mine, but I find it difficult to write it in a way that really gets into people's head. I would like some fun exercises on this technique.
George, Puppy is my absolute favorite story of yours, and quite possibly my absolute favorite story of all time. I am shocked to learn that what I love so much about it - the competing perspectives of two moms trying to do what’s best for their kid (and the tragedy of neither getting the glimpse into each other’s head that us readers do) - was something you initially fought against!!
I'm with you, Wil. I'm not sure I can think of another piece of literature that affects my day-to-day life more than "Puppy". So often, when I am standing in judgment over someone who I think is just socially or morally vacant, that idea of their complex inner lives, their fears, the traumas of their past, remind me to step off my self-erected throne and consider their humanity. The more I am consciously aware of that, the more it becomes a reflex. Beyond that - as many have commented on this thread - the story also reminds me, teaches me, how literary craft opens so many more windows of insight. I will probably never develop the skills to do it myself, but I love those rare moments when I'm able to recognize it in the work of others.
George, you've given me a valuable license: to be a more confident judge of whether POV in my story is working or not. This you've done by providing criteria upon which to base my judgement and modeling how/when you implement judgement. Love the 'third-person-ventriloquist' and hope you point this POV out more as you teach us.
Congratulations on Spiderhead. Escape from Spiderhead is a great story. I can't wait to watch it when it comes out.
I've read a lot of books on craft, and this is the most helpful thing I've ever read about POV. I often find that people who are really great at something can't explain why they're so good. You're not just a great writer, but you're also great at communicating how one creates a great story. These posts are invaluable.
Soooo hype for the upcoming style and editing section. It's weirdly hard to sound like myself. This problem creeps on me all the time, losing my voice between revisions for someone else who sounds boring and writerly. I always have to remind myself to just have fun when I'm revising. For me it's a lot like meditation. When my mind begins wandering off, I have to nudge it back into awareness. When I stop having fun during revisions, I have to remind myself what this is all for. Usually reading a good story snaps me back into it.
Congrats to everyone who worked on Spiderhead btw.
New to Story Club but the common theme I'm seeing in every post is a willingness to experiment and be dynamic. It's already having a big impact on my creative writing. Just because I had one idea doesn't mean I have to keep forcing it, especially if it's telling me it's not working. Hearing a master grapple with and have to solve the same types of problems is validating and inspiring. Thanks for all you're doing, George!
Welcome! It is so validating and inspiring, isn't it? I've found it has really freed me up.
Thank you! For any writer it's always great to know you're not struggling alone.
I love exercises. Bring it!
It's too hot to run!^^
How many exercises does it need to be ticked off as 'Done' on the 'To Do List' before the item on the to do list 'Story to Write' get to be ticked off as done and dusted (at least to the end of 'Working Draft #1'?
I'm so hoping to read {EDIT OUT 'your' EDIT IN 'our' 22.22 12/06/2022} our first shared, in progress - not just yours Sarah, or those other Story Clubbers, but even my own - fresh stories that I can only hope that we will, individually and collectively start to bring 'em on, then out from under their shy bushels, as necessarily revised, tweaked, edited and torqued to beautiful delivery.
P.S. After the clearly marked-up 'EDIT OUT / EDIT IN' there follow three more: can you spot them? Clue words are 'yours', 'those' and 'even'. Now I feel I am, maybe, getting to know what the phrase 'double precision arithmetic' meant . . . even allowing that the pins I'm inclined to be juggling, up their in the air, are words more often than numbers.
Ooh--now you're talking business!! Truthfully the closest I get to story is when I diarize a particular day's events and think - gosh there could be a story in that. This supportive and so intelligent and kind group and George have me dreaming that I might just write a short story one of these days...
Spiderhead! Spiderhead! So happy for you, George. That's very exciting.
And I appreciate this week's Office Hours. I've been playing with some judgmental narrator (close 3rd POV) with the character being observed making comments back to the narrator in 1st person - at this point with mixed results. But I'm tapping into the fun meter and just having a go for kicks. Bringing the fun back into the technical aspects of craft really does open the creative sides of the creative writing world once again.
That was a great question. The first time I read "Puppy" I thought I had finally found a Saunders story I didn't like. It was so disorienting. Now, it might be my all-time favorite short story from anyone. I use it religiously to teach POV, but more importantly to teach principles of empathy - which, for me, is at the center of teaching literature. Looking forward to Spiderhead, and to telling everyone, "The story was better."
I appreciate how you remind us of the classical and elegant, George. When we apply that
to our individual sentences, to our paragraphs, and to our stories, we transform as writers.
I often worry about head hopping. I wrote (and rewrote and rewrote) a novel that just wasn’t quite there. After putting it away for a few years, I find the novel’s central topic is in the news. Looking at it with fresh eyes, I realize the antagonist’s POV is required so the reader understands the stakes.
Flashbacks are tough, took me a while to understand that. It takes the reader out of the moment. I’m sure there’s some “earned” flashbacks...but it cuts into the momentum some.
I’m wondering whether the flashbacks might contribute momentum (and escalation) of their own, thereby earning their keep?
It would be cool to make a list of stories that do exactly that! Can you think of one? I’d love to read the successful ones, that do as you describe.
Books, stories, authors from the last several days in various strings:
Everyone loves “The Falls” by George Saunders.
“In The Freud Archives” "Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers" by Janet Malcolm
Amy Hempel, writer of fiction, but “it’s all true.”
“Eileen” and also a 500 word story in The New Yorker: “Brooklyn." by Ottessa Moshfegh
“Dubliners” “Eveline”— James Joyce
Stuart Dybec: “Paper Lantern” “I Sailed with Magellan”
“The Sound and The Fury” William Faulkner
Alice Munro stories: “Child’s Play” “Dimensions” “The Progress of Love” “The Albanian Virgin” “The Bear Came Over The Mountain”
“The Immortal King Rao” by Vauhini Vara
Jack Hodgins “Spit Delaney’s Island” and other books
“Esther Stories” by Peter Orner
“The Snows of Kilimanjaro”
Writers: Ethan Canin, Frederick Busch, Mavis Gallant.
I’m going to start with Tillie Olsen’s “Silences” as it just arrived and keep this list for next reads.
Thank you Stacya! I often feel here that brilliant gifts flow by and I forget to write them down. I think I'll come back to them but of course, the next shiny object catches my attention and I lose track, like a psychotic squirrel that can't remember where I buried anything. I appreciate this collection you harvested for us!
“Psychotic squirrel “ captures that feeling perfectly! I’ve gone back to pen and paper journal-- what you said, I always think I’ll remember or “get back to it later” but I don’t. There’s so many things to be excited about in this class, I just want to keep it in one place in an actual notebook.
I should do that, too. Especially if I can find time to go back through some of the posts of the last six months (that’s a pretty darn full notebook, though…)
Thanks, Stacya!
Gosh, I can think of all kinds of stories where flashbacks are used successfully. Ethan Canin's work is full of them; so is Frederick Busch's. Mavis Gallant's best stories (Eduoard, Juliette & Lena) are driven by them. Someone already mentioned Alice Munro. I think that flashbacks, just like anything else (the internet, garlic in sauces, woodworker's tools), depend on how they're used.
Rosanne, I think a few posts back you recommended Peter Orner's Esther Stories—thank you! They're fantastic.
I'm afraid I use flashbacks like I use garlic. Recipe says one clove and I think, "well what fun is that?"
Oh, yay! Glad you like the Orner. He's among my favs. I had the great good fortune to have a workshop with him & he's all for writing short, shorter. As for the garlic, I'm with ya.
Ha, yes me too with the garlic. Also chili. And booze, just a little splash more can't hurt can it...
Thank you to everyone giving book/story recs, this is so helpful.
Rosanne your posts always make me smile. Writing these down. List is epic.
What a lovely thing to say. Thank you, Stacya. You sure do know how to make a person's day.
I can think of more Alice Munro stories with flashbacks than without--she makes it look so easy! "Dimensions," "Child's Play," "The Progress of Love," "The Albanian Virgin" all leap backward and forward in time. "The Bear Came Over the Mountain!"
I think of Stuart Dybek as a time magician, too. "Paper Lantern" centers around a memory framed by an event (I was actually thinking of it back when we were discussing framed stories), and "Tosca" is like this matryoshka doll of nestled moments. He's one of my favorite writers.
Great list!!!! 🙏
Yes! Thank you, Manami!
Munro weaves time. It's astonishing. In White Dump, there is one sentence (one!!) with three shifts (three!!!!).
Mine, too, Stacya. "I Sailed with Magellan" is one of my all-time favorite collections.
It's one of mine as well!
In my current writing, I find I’m using flashbacks at difficult or crossroads moments. When a character doesn’t want to move forward, or is compelled to do what they’ve always done – and remembering the past might remind them how that works out (maybe not so well). So it can serve as an impetus for change in the present. It can also show why a little choice/action now has big stakes – a brave departure from a lifelong comfortable habit. Perhaps like The Falls; on the walk along the river we learn through their ruminations about what has happened in the lives of these two men, and the act of jumping (or not jumping) into the river becomes more poignant.
Making notes! Thank you. I’d love to read your stories. The Falls kept me 100 percent in, such a great story. George Saunders, amazing. As we all know.
A huge part of what made “The Falls” so great, I believe, was the contrast between the two forms of consciousness. Funny how the more egotistical character was unable to act, but the self-loathing one could, and did.
I was rooting for the self-loathing, anxious dude. I’m going back to that one to study the flashbacks.
hmmm....you are making me want to thumb through my copy of "Dubliners"...
Ok get back to us!
"Dubliners" is full of memories (now that I'm thinking of it)..."Eveline" is a good example.
Thanks!
I’ll try to think of more, but the first one that comes to mind is “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.”
What was a leopard doing up that high on Kilimanjaro in the first place...and exactly who shot it and nailed it's ass on that post??^^
The leopard was trying to cheat death, I imagine.
Going in my note book! Thanks, David.
Oh, another more complicated one is The Sound and the Fury. In that book all time seems to be happening at once, and the past may be more compelling than the present.
Oooo. Sounds good.
Hi Stacya. Maybe we need a definition here because I think there are lots of different kinds of flashbacks. A flashback can take place within a paragraph (when a character has a memory). Or a flashback can take up a paragraph, or a page. Or a flashback can be an entire scene, separated by white space from the "current" time of the story. Or even an entire chapter. I think many times a flashback is written so neatly within a narrative that you hardly notice it. Here's a flashback (as I define it) that appears within George's story The Falls: ".....because Morse knew very well the kind of man he was at heart, timid of conflict, conciliatory to a fault, pathetically gullible, and with a pang he remembered Len Beck, who senior year had tricked him into painting his ass blue. If there had actually been a secret Blue-Asser’s Club, if the ass-painting had in fact been required for membership, it would have been bad enough, but to find out on the eve of one’s prom that one had painted one’s ass blue simply for the amusement of a clique of unfeeling swimmers who subsequently supplied certain photographs to one’s prom date, that was too much, and he had been glad, quite glad actually, at least at first, when Beck, drunk, had tried and failed to swim to Foley’s Snag and been swept over the Falls in the dark of night, the great tragedy of their senior year, a tragedy that had mercifully eclipsed Morse’s blue ass in the class’s collective memory."
So that is an example of a flashback done so expertly, so neatly, that you aren't jolted out of the story at all. Does it slow the momentum? Not for me, but maybe for others.
Thanks, Mary. Great example! It’s a flashback to be sure, but it moves so well, past and present flowing along at high speed together. Revealing of character and portentous at once.
It was so great to read that again! So funny and wonderful ❤️
I am grappling with a story that I believe is the one story I am "meant to write" . It's reliant heavily on flashback to the point that the largest part of the story is in the flashbacks, but they still hopefully pay off large when the flashbacks finally arrive at the present narrative moment.
Interestingly,vis-a-vis your comment, the momentum lies mostly inside the flashbacks. The multiple returns to the present moment are meant to provide the kind of break from the escalation that flashbacks often provide.
Just yesterday, I had a conversation with someone about the series "Under The Banner of Heaven" which is also a book by Jon Krakauer. The person I spoke with was watching the show with her boyfriend–– he hated the flashbacks in the show, he said he wanted to be "immersed" in the story, and the flashbacks ruined the flow for him, took him out of the story. The boyfriend stopped watching. She and I had the opposite reaction. I loved the flashbacks in the series, they made the show more interesting, and I got a history lesson. So... prolly it's all just a matter of taste. Your story sounds like something I'd like to read, as David S. commented. I cheer you on!
Funny how differently we are wired. Most people I know don’t like “foreign films,” but, my God, what a great way to get out of your own cultural skin for a while! (Not to mention how nice it is to hear other languages spoken!)
Love foreign films, those old French movies...what's the one where they go to the restaurant and the owner has died, he's dead on a big table, but they still want to be served a meal? "Parasite" is one of my all time favorite films. I had long telephone conversation with my high school English teacher, trying to change her mind about the film. She didn't like it. I kept trying to pitch her all the reasons I loved it, and she gave in only the tiniest bit.
Ach, I haven’t seen Parasite yet. I think it came out when I was grappling with too many things. But hopefully soon! ( I don’t know that French film either, but what a premise!)
"The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie." It's an odd film, but you can't stop watching.
Let me know what you think of Parasite, if you watch it before this class ends.
That sounds so interesting, Fred. I hope I get to read it someday!
Great post. Very relevant to what I'm working on, a composite novel...lots of voices. Yes, it will 'cost' the reader so it's a big risk to take. But fun...
I’m also writing a novel with four POV! Fun but challenging.
Victory Lap/Voices
I’ve never read a story like VL before & I might not have if I’d known the subject matter so I stopped reading the notes & went to read. Wow. Kyle becomes a hero, an unexpected one who’s trying so hard to be the dutiful son. The hysterical biz of disobeying his parents no-shoes-in-the-house rule a perfect description of someone who’d be ineffectual in a crises. But…you made magic by going into the head of the assailant, who I almost felt for with his brute monstrousness, and gave Kyle the impetus to act. This story expands my writer’s horizons, which I’m in sore need of & reminds me that we have to find compassion (or intelligence as you call it) for all our characters.
Loved what you said about “cost” with pov switching, backstory, time lapses, “discretionary moves”. I still hate backstory except in justified brushstrokes.
I loved when the assailant’s body “tumped over.” Tump is a really great word.
Looking forward to exercises.
Ya I love "tumped" too!
It is so exciting about Spiderhead! Few things are as exciting as a dog-stuffed car but seeing that billboard must have been up there.
Thank you for another enormously helpful and generous post.
In what way, specifically to you Susie, “enormously helpful” and “generous”?
Back in the day when, putting lunch on the table was down to me being an edumucator of sorts, I had a habit of acknowledging their ‘good labels’ but going on to invite folks to expand a taste on what lay beneath ‘labels’ (as I read them) such as your “enormously helpful” and “generous”?
The penny drops as I type this Susie: perhaps, or possibly even maybe, what George has written of as ‘placeholders’ and I’m referring to as ‘labels’ might, conceivably, just be not one and the same thing but ‘close cousins’?
If you read back on this and choose to reply, that’ll be fine. If you decline to reply, that’ll be just as fine.
Thanks for your comment Susie, a pebble hitting my mind’s still pond and setting those positive perturbations commonly referred to as ripples radiating, and causing me to 🤔 a refreshing bit further. Appreciated.
Hi Rob! Well yes, I think those phrases I used are like placeholders, you're quite right. I will need to give your question a bit more thought and will enjoy doing so as it's interesting. Let's see if I can dredge something up from the murky pond of my own mind - probably an old shopping trolley, ha - but I'll see what I can come up with. Let me sleep on it.
Rob, I've mulled it over. Specifically, for me, I found particularly helpful:
- the concept of "third-person ventriloquist" and how it can feel intimate and interior. The point of view from which a story is told is something I've pondered a lot recently re the effect the choice has on the reader.
- the concept of "costs" for both writer and reader when introducing various shifts. (I've never attempted to use flashbacks, for example, but the comments will be useful to bear in mind if I do.)
- I like the glimpse into the writer stepping back from the work and thinking "I need x to happen here and something to drive it for y to make sense". I recognize doing that in my own work but have never attempted to explain it or set it out that way and it's helpful. Instead of feeling things like: "Oh God I'm mangling things together here and I don't know what the hell I'm doing," I can think, "this is a valid part of the process."
- The bit about section length. I like this and I've counted beats and sentences etc. in my own work to achieve an underlying rhythm, as I think it comes through when read, even if unconsciously.
- I particularly liked the sentence, as a stand-alone sentence: "I needed to get out of Kyle's head and into someone else's and Alison wasn't available." It sounds like the start of a whole other story.
But I didn't think me saying any of that would be especially interesting or would add much to anything, so I didn't. However, setting it all out like this has been helpful, so thank you.
It all feels a bit like stuff (the teaching) is going in to a composter (my big thick head) and it needs to mulch a bit before I can understand what's hit me.
This part: "I decide not to jump off a cliff, make a great case for not jumping off the cliff...then jump off the cliff", unsettled me a little. George said he didn't buy it, and it made me think of many times in my life when I've done exactly that - the deciding against but then cliff-jumping thing - but in a reverse way, i.e. for the bad not for the good. For example: "I will have but one drink at the party and then enjoy delicious fizzy water for the next millionty-ten hours of it", or "This time, I will avoid that contentious topic at the family get-together". But that's the reverse kind of way to how Kyle behaved so 1. it didn't seem relevant to say it; 2. I didn't want to sound delinquent or stupid; and 3. I wasn't confident I could explain it properly and didn't want to sound like I disagree with George's writing decision, which I don't. Nobody wants, like, a whole scenario ending "George Saunders became enraged." 😉
Well, I for one enjoyed all that - thanks!
Now please don't ask me to unpack "enjoyed"!! ;-)
Maybe later...
Well one thing I really liked was you picking up on "I needed to get out of Kyle's head and into someone else's and Alison wasn't available." as a prompt for a new story! What fictional world are we in here, with all this head jumping??
Ha! Thanks, Jackie.
I know, that line is great isn't it and really opens up possibilities!
😳😎 ❤️🎶
Thanks, George! It's very kind of you to allow us to peak into your process, to understand your work in progress and how you feel in-between when it is all still under construction. It is SO important to see this for someone who is trying to find oneself as a writer and feels so intimidated by the stunning art (the end version) of other writers and just feels, Oh, will I ever produce something that masterful? I find it interesting to read about your take on the POV. I am currently writing a story (it runs longer than a short story, but I am still not sure whether it wants to be more or not, my main objective now is to follow my gut and the fun and then later I will think about structure and the format; so I might cut a lot, I basically am trying to write myself free, to find my tune etc). I started in first person POV, then introduced third person limited POV for two other characters. I am a beginner, and am not sure whether I will keep it, but for now I am doing it to get into the other characters' heads, to make sense of them in a better way so that even if I delete them later and return to classic fist person POV I am aware of these other characters and who they are etc. I am very impressed by your "third person ventriloquist" in Victory Lap and in The Falls. Victory lap was one of the hardest stories for me to get into, I basically fought with the feeling (this is George Saunders, I want to like and admire his stories) for the first pages, ready to give up, and it was only at the last line, when the hint of action (the assailant at the door and her feeling that something is wrong) was dropped that I got a kick out of the story and proceeded with Kyle's POV, which was a relief for me and already easier to read. So, in this story, I was glad of the different POV's in this story, from Kyle onward the story flew by and at the end I was left in such owe of George (again). This story for me was like a train that starts rolling very slowly amidst relatively boring landscape, then speeds up and ends in a roller coaster that I did not see coming and when it's over I am glad I survived it but still feel the vertigo. Last thing: I try to write stream of consciousness just to see if this is mine, but I find it difficult to write it in a way that really gets into people's head. I would like some fun exercises on this technique.
I love your slow-train-becoming-a-roller-coaster analogy!
George, Puppy is my absolute favorite story of yours, and quite possibly my absolute favorite story of all time. I am shocked to learn that what I love so much about it - the competing perspectives of two moms trying to do what’s best for their kid (and the tragedy of neither getting the glimpse into each other’s head that us readers do) - was something you initially fought against!!
I'm with you, Wil. I'm not sure I can think of another piece of literature that affects my day-to-day life more than "Puppy". So often, when I am standing in judgment over someone who I think is just socially or morally vacant, that idea of their complex inner lives, their fears, the traumas of their past, remind me to step off my self-erected throne and consider their humanity. The more I am consciously aware of that, the more it becomes a reflex. Beyond that - as many have commented on this thread - the story also reminds me, teaches me, how literary craft opens so many more windows of insight. I will probably never develop the skills to do it myself, but I love those rare moments when I'm able to recognize it in the work of others.
George, you've given me a valuable license: to be a more confident judge of whether POV in my story is working or not. This you've done by providing criteria upon which to base my judgement and modeling how/when you implement judgement. Love the 'third-person-ventriloquist' and hope you point this POV out more as you teach us.
Congratulations on Spiderhead. Escape from Spiderhead is a great story. I can't wait to watch it when it comes out.
I've read a lot of books on craft, and this is the most helpful thing I've ever read about POV. I often find that people who are really great at something can't explain why they're so good. You're not just a great writer, but you're also great at communicating how one creates a great story. These posts are invaluable.
Soooo hype for the upcoming style and editing section. It's weirdly hard to sound like myself. This problem creeps on me all the time, losing my voice between revisions for someone else who sounds boring and writerly. I always have to remind myself to just have fun when I'm revising. For me it's a lot like meditation. When my mind begins wandering off, I have to nudge it back into awareness. When I stop having fun during revisions, I have to remind myself what this is all for. Usually reading a good story snaps me back into it.
Congrats to everyone who worked on Spiderhead btw.
I love reading George's comments about stories I have read--and they make me want to read more!
Yes, a film about "Escape from Spiderhead"---that is really exciting!
Thank you for all this, George!