Another thing we might think about is the way that one thing that helps shape a piece of short fiction is the reader's knowledge of...its brevity. That white space at the end rushing up. And here. as I was reading your exercises, my internalized knowledge that it was only going to be 200 words. That creates a nice sort of pressure - like someone saying goodbye to a lover as the train pulls away. But this is true even for a novel - we know it is going to end, and is, therefore, shaped.
I am caught up in substituting the idea of "life" or "living" with write, writing, fiction in so many of the comments and thinking most of the content would remain the same.
I do the same thing, Stephen. Helps me settle into story quickly and be a little more patient with what I might consider too much expo, description or dialogue. And then some times it helps me decide whether to finish the story. “18 more pages of this? Nah.”
Picked up my 2001 O'Henry Award Prize Stories book and searched for George Saunders. Pastoralia. Tom, I said "Eight more pages of this?" But he's our teacher and I don't think I've read him ever, and all of a sudden the story took a turn and I finished it!
Point taken, Laura. I admit that I'm terribly impatient and mood-driven in my reading habits. I want to be seduced quickly, or at least provided some evidence of seduction to come, in starting any short story, regardless of genre. I need something to persuade me to keep going. It's generally not a question of subject or plot, but one of tone, voice, what Ben Yagoda calls "the sound on the page" (see his wonderful book of same title). It's a risky, and self-defeating, approach, I agree, for I probably miss out of on experience of reading lots of fine stories. Hard to say how often this happens, but I have found myself returning to a story I had dropped and, wouldn't you know, discovering it was damn good!
Oh, that is just like life—finite. We are all pretending that we aren't going to die, but the fact that this will all end is the only thing helping us pay attention to THIS moment. (Along with Story club I'm doing Pema Chodron's online retreat on living purposely and dying fearlessly.) Thanks George for helping make this real! Accepting that we are going to die helps us shape our lives. Yes, the white space at the end IS rushing toward us.
Yes, time and words were precious! A drunk reminder that I want to keep forever. Also, it provided a deeper look, more poignancy; with the rolling boil coming rapidly, there was not much room for tepid.
Mr. Saunders, could you perhaps say that in another way? I'm not understanding what you mean by the pressure of knowing it's only going to be 200 words. Do you mean it's like the excitement of anticipation?
I'm haunted by the draft of a novel I wrote well before the pandemic that I KNOW needs a rewrite (or entirely new draft) but that thing about knowing "it is going to end, and is, therefore" needing to be shaped is part of what haunts me. It's based on a novella I had published in 2005 (a sequel in a way) that I think might have more import to me now than it did when I drafted that sequel in 2015 (or so). Anyway: constraints. I get that, and it's true but it can also stymie writing going forward. Any advice on that?
Also: the idea that "rising action" might have something to do with "returning to those things we have already set in motion" - and here, that's enforced by the constraint. So if we use the word "river" and are forced to come back to it - that feels like a focusing of effect, maybe?
Like your students, I, too, wrote a novel full of 'wonderful' exposition--and long on boredom (my consuming fear as a writer). My beloved mentors approached me with this verdict, "This is all lovely, but...it's not a novel." So I turned to an unlikely source, quite by accident. I listened to what Dan Brown had to say about writing thrillers and discovered that escalation works in the same way in every genre, including the elusive, hoity-toity literary style I admire. I'm finishing the revisions for that novel now, and the process has become a case of "how many bowling pins CAN I throw?" The pins were always there. They were just at my feet, waiting for me to toss them.
"the process has become a case of "how many bowling pins CAN I throw?" The pins were always there. They were just at my feet, waiting for me to toss them." Yes !! Great advice S. Going to pay close attention to this and toss my pins higher. I tend to lob things up gently, and as you'd expect, they don't do much but flop back to my feet with little consequence.
My inner editor tends to hold me back, sort of like a Hollywood Producer telling a script-writer, "Listen, your gonna have to cut something, you can't have a global pandemic, an attempted insurrection, world-wide protests against racial injustice, wild fires, floods, and crippling "heat domes" all in one script. No one's gonna buy it as realistic." If anything, these last few years have shown that, really, you can have a lot of serious pins up there. Def increases the tension. < sigh>
In the introduction to Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise (Barnes & Noble Classics Edition), Sharon Carson notes, "In August of [1918] Scribner's rejected The Romantic Egotist [the original title for TSoP] claiming, 'The story does not seem to us to work up to a conclusion' and 'Neither the hero's career nor his character are shown to be brought to any stage which justifies an ending.'" So what did Fitzgerald do at the tender age of 22? He tossed the bowling pins again. And he was rejected again. So he tossed the bowling pins once more and, at 23 (the old coot!), finally published his first of many marvelous novels. Fitzgerald's exposition is exquisite and his ear for language among the best. What he learned in the process of writing TSoP was that something had to happen to his characters or, moreover, that they had to do something. That something can be as simple as incremental choices scaffolded like a quiet game of Jenga. Joyce is sometimes accused of having written about nothing at all in Ulysses (or, more recently, I've read this about Mary Gaitskill), but the pins are all there and the elevation quite satisfying. Keep writing, Dorothy, and keep on juggling!
Yes, this was absolutely true for my little story. I had to keep returning to certain phrases and words so as not to go over my 50 unique word limit, and with each repetition the story kept growing. So that felt very magical and it surprised me completely.
I didn't think my story had escalation as it was more an internal monologue, but I just re-read it and it's true—the repetition escalated the tension in the piece. Quite amazing!
So could we take that principle - working with what's already there, rather than allowing ourselves to get distracted by new enticing thoughts - and apply it to content, without necessarily repeating individual words in the way the exercise demanded?
BTW, I am fascinated by the possible connection between 'rising action' and what is called the 'development section' in 'sonata form', (a standard form in classical music from about 1770 onwards.) The 'development section' does absolutely re-use and re-work the material of the 'exposition'. "Returning to those things we have already set in motion" describes it very well. And mucking them up, usually.
I've been surprised that when discussing the rising action/climax/aftermath model, none of my writing teachers has acknowledged the obvious sexual parallel, especially the fact that we're not really looking for *continuously* rising action, are we? Instead it's: rising, then slightly falling, then rising slightly higher, then falling, then rising even higher... etc. until climax and aftermath/glow.
In which case, 'the idea that "rising action" might have something to do with "returning to those things we have already set in motion" ' has a clear sexual parallel too. As in sex, we're moving forwards, but also backwards too, then forwards again, and so on. And let's not even start on the topic of constraints...
"the idea that "rising action" might have something to do with "returning to those things we have already set in motion"" -- that is SO useful - thank you! I'm chewing the cud on this one, utilizing all four stomachs.
I have been too. (Well, not the stomachs, actually, but equivalent intensity of attention in the mind.) I re-read the chapter in Pond in the Rain on 'The Darling' with the escalation exercise in mind and am now trying to apply to a story...
Also, the idea that the escalation or 'rising action' is about the internal technical workings of the story, rather than increased drama in the events that are narrated, is important for me. I think I had always rather assumed the latter before.
Yes - such a good point. With kid's literature increasing the drama is always emphasized, though "literary" children's writers don't necessarily do that - Kate diCamillo, Gary Schmidt, Rebecca Stead, and others. Also I guess in adult genre writing - there are expectations about drama or sim. e.g. in detective/police procedurals (which I enjoy sometimes). I'm now starting draft 6 of my mystery/spy/historical/kid's novel -- with Story Club at my back! and I'm thinking about what is returned to later that I'm setting in motion early on, and how it can thicken the middle which sags in earlier versions. Maybe saggy middles are especially a problem in plot/drama-driven longer stories and novels. Anyway - I'm feeling really good that I have found a way to thicken the texture in the middle with a thematically related but not so dramatic plot thread that still will be engaging to my young (and not so young) readers. I think. I hope!
Sounds good! I think with any kind of novel that has 'something to be fathomed' at its core, (whether children's, crime, mystery or anything else) it is satisfying when the author has planted a seed early on which germinates just a little after the point I have stopped thinking about it. That is, i can still recall it, but i have stopped expecting that it will turn out to be significant. If several of those moments happened in the middle, it would certainly cure the novel of sagginess for me!
It was really interesting how I felt like the opposite has occurred in my case, as I felt much more comfortable with an ethereal, less concrete approach to the text with these limitations in mind. With a more catatonic, rhytmic nature to the text and necessary sacrifices to structure and flourish, it seemed all the more logical to make things more dreamlike and tone-focused, with essentially no action at all in the completed text. It's made it especially fascinating to see and read how this focusing effect has manifested in others here with this exercise!
Charlotte, born of the 50/200 exercise is talking to me and following Mr. Saunders wise counsel, I’m listening and writing away, conscious of making use of the repetition of key words, which also reminds me of the sound of pecking away on an old Hermes I still own but don’t use.
Charlotte is doing what she wants to do and telling me what she wants to say.
“My best stories often come when I am following a certain voice…”
George Saunders 1/9/2022
And this from Isabelle Allende. Permission to speak:
“I write about what I care for, in my own rhythm. In those leisure hours that my grandfather considered wasted, the ghosts of imagination become well-defined characters. They are unique, they have their own voices, and they are willing to tell me their stories if I give them enough time. I feel them around me with such certitude that I wonder why nobody else perceives them.”
I approached this exercise with curiosity and no expectations, so, I felt I was in the backseat, while the story and the words drove around. What came out wasn’t special, but was surprising and much funnier than what I usually write, which is always deadly serious.
I agree that the “rising action” element must have something to do with the repetitions, which create tension both in the form and in the content.
If you are talking about rivers, generally, and things set in motion, well ~ rivers are always in motion of course, so the answer to this one, is yes, we are being forced to go back to a person or action or whatever already started, to get focused.
On why we are bothering to read some pages that somebody wrote, at least long enough to see what they are trying to do… Or at least as long as you, the reader, can stand. That part is tricky here, because George S. Is telling us to go with our own instincts, to edit own work as if we wanted it to sound better, somehow, than it did. But to give it a chance, anyway.
Problem I have with writing has to do with about five boxes worth of paper I’ve kept with me for 40 years, stuff I’ve written. Labeled “Syls stuff” , pretty much.
The one thing I panic about losing in a wildfire (living on a ridge above chaparral...) is my accumulation of journals. I call them compost. I call them my external memory. But oh man, I wish I liked writing journals with a keyboard instead of a fountain pen, because all that ink.... that bad handwriting. The lack of a search engine. And yet...
also I liked your mention of rivers flowing and thinking of escalation going down! Down from a bubbling source, down cascades, going underground, lingering in meanders, spreading into a delta, merging with the ocean - quite a different model. Fun to consider. Then again - kind of Dante-esque maybe!
“Rising” seems to be a tension upon emotions, which deserves more violence, danger, comedic buildup, etc. Repetition of the same word seems to remove the tension. Am I missing something?
Yes, and it requires us to think about different ways to use the same word. “Dog” and “dogs” count as two words, but “just” as in “only” and “just” as in “moral, correct, right, what-have-you” just counts as one. So, pick the right words (they don’t even have to be the fancy ones!), and you give yourself more options.
Sometimes the "rising action" just occurs naturally, because, somehow, of the forced repetition. Words start taking on "extra" meaning and so on. Also, I think, the reader senses the constraint there behind the writing, and sort of starts playing along.
But it is a bit of a mystery to me, why this works (when it does).
For me, the forced repetition made the stasis more obvious. If the river is still just flowing, you can see the lack of change more easily because it's the same words repeated. In a long work, we use different words and turns of phrase that disguise the fact that nothing has really changed. Three people sitting in a room discussing their failed marriages, and then, ten pages later, they sit in a different room and have a different conversation about their failed marriages. It looks different - they're in a restaurant now and not the lounge room, and the use different words to describe their failed marriages and focus on different particulars of said failures - but essentially at its heart it's the same conversation in the same setting (which would be more painfully obvious if you had to use a more limited set of words). When the stasis is obvious (from a limited word set or a word count), the need to inject change is more pressing. And since escalation is a more interesting form of change than de-escalation, it's easier to lean into the rising action...
It's very interesting to follow the Hemingway, where we attended to slight changes in words ("the American wife"->"the wife"->"the American girl"), with this exercise where there's some incentive to use the same words. I wonder if this escalation exercise works for some people by pulling them towards big changes in word choice.
I think this exercise (among other intriguing things) pushes the prose toward poetry. The drastic limitation on vocabulary renders the words more and more "charged with meaning," as Pound might say. And poetry is a rather different mindset. This in turn raises the question of how poetry, prose-poems, and nano-fiction differ. I've gained some interesting insights from converting poems into paragraphs, and vice versa. Perhaps as a result I'm also captivated by the power of the visual presentation, the line breaks, words in italics, indents, and many of these exercises resulted in short repetitive lines, at least reminiscent of poetry. The visual is, of course, not in the language or in the writing, but it IS in the reading, silently or out loud, the timing, the emphasis. Punctuation and paragraph breaks can provide vital assistance in reading a piece in the writer's voice, or they can ruin the flow and baffle the reader. I wonder sometimes if we should adopt a more adventurous approach to these "performative" aids in printed material.
Your comment reminded me of some of D.H. Lawrence's works, where he would often repeat a word or phrase within a sentence, or within a paragraph, or use a variation of a word or phrase a paragraph or two later. Him being a poet as well might have been a part of that. The 50-word/200-word constraint might lend itself to some poetic tropes, though Lawrence used those methods in full novels.
For me, I think part of the why it works was being forced, again and again, to look at the bank of words I had and think: okay, what else can these do that they haven't done yet?
I think the shortness of it makes all the difference in getting to rising action. I am not alone as a writer in wanting to save the best for last. I've started to learn that the "big reveal" is often the best place to start and the real story is what comes next. In longer works, it becomes easy to stay in the tease too long.
That sense of “playing along” was definitely true for me! I think the exercise maybe nudged me into rising action/escalation/plot in general much sooner than usual mostly because I was always so aware of how many words I had already spent and how few I had left ahead of me to assemble the story elements I still needed. The constraint of “all 200 words together have to make A Story” was so helpful in keeping me/my characters moving forward — simply because the story was inherently charging forward from the first sentence, and there was no room or time to go in any other direction (including holding still!)
I found the process of working with the constraints engaging, though I now recognize that possible rising actions suggested by the 50 words never did ascend. My focus was on letting words from the fixed list press their music/meaning onto me, sentence by sentence, but the connective tissue between sentences went, I think, a little gauzy. Perhaps writing the piece as a monologue has something to do with this...
I had a similar experience/approach. There is not much rising action in my writing normally. (How about you?) Coming from blogging and the personal essay format, it’s a whole new challenge.
I found a few things in the process of doing the exercise. I had to throw away the idea it has to be good to even really try it. It wasn't fun until I did. I think when I sit to write I'm usually telling myself this has to be beautiful before I even start. Funnily, I didn't write something beautiful whatsoever. I went wild and sinister. It was so liberating. I'm not fantastic at plot usually, probably because I'm the sort of person who spends a long time looking out the window staring at snails and watering cans, but plot was right there somewhere amongst the madness. The pace was way better. It kind of reminded me of that feeling you have writing a story as a kid, before you realise it will get graded or that grades matter, the sheer joy of diving into a crazy idea without thinking. I loved that feeling. I want to find it again.
I took a seminar from a teacher whose advice was not to think or revise, but just get those pages written. I took another seminar from a teacher whose advice was to figure out the big why's first and plot out where I wanted to go instead of wandering in wilderness. I've written both ways and can see the benefits of both, but neither novel sold. (Another aim.)
This makes me think about my beloved mentor Grace Paley, and the workshop she did so many times in so many venues, "How to Tell What." And she would ask people to talk about a story they wanted to write but hadn't written. They'd get some powerful feedback. Almost always.
Would love to hear anything you want to share about her teaching. She came to Syracuse once and it was really something, to see how she comported herself as a public person and teacher. A master.
This place! Honestly. A treasure trove in every post. And that's just the comments! You've done something very, very special here George. And honestly, I think it's safe to say you already had plenty of goodwill saved up in that particular bank, what with all the decades of stories that have taught us all, I'm sure, so much.
Okay, back to Paley! Please, yes, as everyone has already said: share away if you feel comfortable doing so.
Genius. An exercise that sits alongside to George’s recollection of being in a a Douglas Unger workshop where ‘Take a short break and come back to tell a story’ was the revised expectation landed on participant without warning.
Yes, please do share more! I will never forget what it felt like to first read her and "feel" her voice. One of my literary idols. I'm sure she was a tremendous teacher.
I've just now found the time to sit down and do the 45-minute exercise myself, so I'm a bit late to the party. That being said, my experience with it bears repeating here, I think.
For months and months now, I've had a single sentence bumping around in my head, thinking to myself, "That would a wonderful sentence to start a novel with." Needless to say, six months later, I have not yet got past that sentence, because I've been trying so hard not to let down that eureka moment that provided me with it.
So I decided I would throw my beautiful sentence to the wolves, so to speak, and use it to begin this 200/50 exercise. I won't tell you what the sentence was though, because guess what? It wasn't actually very good at all, and it didn't make it into my final piece for this exercise.
All that being said, here's 200/50 my piece, a week late:
My name is Hope, and I was also born here, in Forgotton, U.S.A.
My father has not let the light in since mother left; and he has not led a sermon since the religion here dried up and slipped away.
Father leaves for food, he leaves the door ajar, and the light comes in, at first a slice, and then a pie. Suddenly, the light is also born here, in Forgotton, U.S.A, and suddenly, the religion comes home. Like my father, like a Father, I lead this sermon, preach to the light, shepherd the light into every Forgotton corner.
Then the sermon is a pie, the pie is a slice, and the slice is a darkness. Father is home, and he is leading a sermon of darkness. The food he leaves is dry and dark and the light and mother have slipped away again.
But now I have religion.
Father leaves for food. The door is not ajar. The home is dark, but the light has not slipped away. My name is Hope, and I have the light, and I lead my light in a sermon in the dark, and now it slips into every corner here in Forgotton, U.S.A.
Gianni, this is gripping. Stay with this, if you can! "My father has not let the light in since mother left..." There's something dark and bright and huge in here.
Thank you, Gail! Forgotten, U.S.A. is a place (or idea, or both) that's been bouncing around in my head for a while. I don't know much about it yet, but that's what writing is for, isn't it?
Mostly the constraint that was going through my mind during the exercise was "OMG, George fucking Saunders might read this." I am going to try and channel more of the 'just for fun' attitude' in all my writing.
I was incredibly stressed by the thought of people reading it, and I'm not sure why I posted mine, but in the end the thought of having an audience of any sort turned into a good incentive.
Nail. On. The. Head. My other constraint, because I've been listening to him read "Tenth of December," was, "Don't sound like him. Sound like him = failure. Not good."
"On what basis were you making your decisions? Was this different from your usual method?"
My best attempt at understanding what was different this time was so mundane I almost missed it. But upon reflection...
Because I knew that the 50 words would be "shared" between the characters, I was passively considering, each time I added one to the bank, how both characters would be "using" it. In doing so, I think I subconsciously developed a relationship between them -- their personalities, their motivations, their way of being in the world -- in a far more intuitive, natural way than I would have in a more deliberate & unconstrained piece of "real work."
Similarly, the escalation occurred because both characters were, quite literally, both reaching their end. It wasn't the author driving toward a conclusion or the plot demanding its next act, but the characters arriving at a final moment, in a shared "world" of words, together. And because I knew this was happening, I gave them what I could -- from what their world had to offer -- and left it at that.
I’m not sure I noticed much of a difference in my mindset setting out to write. But I did notice a difference in what my mind was doing while I was writing. Typically, I spend a lot of time staring off into the middle distance when I write, trying to think up what’s going to happen next. During this exercise, I found myself spending much more time attending to what was already there on the page.
One thing I’ll take away from the exercise is to look harder for meaning in and between the existing elements of a story, especially when things feel stuck. There’s a tendency in those moments to introduce a new element or set off in a new direction. I think that forcing yourself to find new ways of combining the elements you already have can often lead to more creative, interesting, and stranger story lines.
A lot of the exercises which I liked best seemed to be doing that. They were like little Rubik’s cubes, playing around with the same handful of elements until the meaning of the story seemed to click into place.
I don't know about anyone else here, but George's exercise allowed me to write myself into a plot twist I wouldn't have discovered otherwise. There's something about the time constraint and word limit that allowed for that surprise. When I'm pretending to be Karl Ove Knausgaard, not so much.
Coming away from this exercise, I want to know how to approach each sentence with that playfulness and sense of possibility, even without the word limit and time constraint.
I love that! Pretending to be Karl Ove Knausgaard probably isn’t particularly useful to Karl Ove Knausgaard either! Often I think we cultivate the worst of ourselves pretending to be who we think we should be.
A bit late, but here is my attempt at the 200/50 excercise. I started writing it in Dutch, but then I thought: I'll give it a go in English. For a non native speaker like me this is the perfect excercise, because I don't have to worry about grammar and pretty vocabulary as much (not worrying, see George, I'm learning :-)). I'm new to short story writing and I thought this was a very helpful and fun excercise.
My story (love to hear what you think):
---
Oak street is a row of houses between an old factory and an empty lot.
The people in Oak street didn’t mind the empty lot and the old factory. They sat in their front yard and drank beer.
A new couple moved to Oak street. They didn’t sit in their front yard.
They grew kale and radishes in their yard.
Oak street is no place for kale, said the people in Oak street.
The new couple had a baby. The people in Oak street put a wooden stork in their front yard, between the kale and radishes.
The front yard is no place for a wooden stork, said the new couple.
The new couple started a cocktail bar in the old factory.
Oak street is no place for a cocktail bar, said the people in Oak street.
A new new couple moved to Oak street. They didn’t sit in their front yard. They opened a gym on the empty lot.
The new new couple had a baby. The gym had a cocktail bar.
The new couple sat in a front yard with the people in Oak street and drank beer. Oak street is no place for a gym, they said.
I admire the way this lets me make up more of the story in my head than is actually in the 200 words.
I somehow thought that rather than 'building' as it progressed, it was going to come full circle. There's development but also a calmness to the lines.
I really like this. Are you introducing new words beyond 50? Maybe it just feels like that. I don't care really - I love the progression of the new couple joining the old residents when a new new couple come in - like laying down strata. and it has that stripped down feeling that makes the progression - escalation - feel even more - geological.
I agree with the sense of strata continuing to be laid in Oak Street. Another palimpsest is being laid on Oak Street . . . maybe Tim will tell us where and when the Oak Street of his imagination is located . . . revelations which could be escalators of the story to be continued?
I wrote the first part in the train, looking out on a street in an industrial part of where I live. Gentrification is a thing around here. So quite literal inspiration and only a small amount of imagination.
But what imaginative vistas your 200/50 open up to you and your readers Tim, suggesting that there may be more than a grain of truth in the adage 'less is more' or in this case 'much more literal inspiration' and 'much less imagination'?
Was it an American scene seen from your train window that literally inspired you?
Ah Utrecht! You know Tim of ‘All the places in all the world . . .’ I would never have placed Oak Street in Utrecht . . . But now that you have, kindly, shared it’s location it both constrains the story taking shape and widens the horizons of it potentiality.
That ‘new couple’ moved into Oak Street from . . . Where? And then, following them into Oak Street, where did the ‘new new couple’ arrive from?
And what’s with the predilection of both fresh generation incomes couples for opening cocktail bars?
You know Tim, well actually you don't until I tell you now: every time I've come back , prompted by some passing thought to check out what I think I've read about the story unfolding in (or should that be on?) Oak Street; I feel like an Amsterdam Diamond Cutter; sizing up which way will be best to cut a unique stone; it's why the real guys and gals, who have both livelihood and reputation, never make the mistake of foing what they may come tto regret at leisure.
In short, each time I revisit my reading and my comprehension seems to shift . . . a very enjoyable, enlghtening experience . . . thanks again Tim.
A story of an old street, Oak Street, beginning to be gently shaken rather than suddenly stirred from where it has been to where its going to be. As the inevitable departure of older people opens up vacancies for younger incomers so new possibilities for Oak Street future move in with them: old leads to new; new leads to new new; twas ever so but the options are improving for people in Oak Street; beer or / and cocktails; passively sit in your yard or actively seek out others in the community; work out with others in the gym or mix with others in the cocktail (which we can further imagine serving vegan canapes (based on shredded kale and grated radish). What will the next new new new arrivals bring with them: making the case for Oak Street to become a Conserved Heritage Street?
Delightful 200 worder Tim; escalates in series of rising ignitions.
"Most writers tend to write stories that are long on exposition but never ascend into the rising action (that is, they don’t escalate)." This is the bit that struck home for me. I can exposit for hours, even days - but how to escalate? That has always escaped me.
I have a pencil hanging around that says "Add a vampire". Very silly, but sometimes it helps to be silly just to break out of that serious mind death grip.
This attention to escalation is really helpful (and it's heartening to hear that it's difficult for many others); thanks George et al! I'd love to have more discussion about how to escalate in novels.... Sean McNulty and others in the comments tried out a sexual metaphor (to the effect of 'it'd not constant escalation, but rather rising tension, some play and diversion, then more tension and building momentum overall') and that was helpful. And it's interesting that experts usually locate the keys to all this in the structure of the novel (in chapter X, insert plot twist number Y), rather than in the sentences which have been our focus so far. (I'm not quite sure where I'm going with all this--and am now starting to wonder if I'm bad at sex--but I guess my point is that I'm finding the novel form difficult to animate and I'd love more advice from everyone!)
Wait—aren’t we all bad at sex, starting out? Then, if we take some time to consider things, we get more loving , and creative…I like that about play and diversion. I haven’t tried to write a novel yet, but it seems like the books I have loved all have this sense of a gathering storm, a growing of beauty, terror, hope, fear, despair and love that tornado themselves through me and leave me sadder, happier, and hopefully wiser than I was before. So maybe the sex metaphor is apt, to some degree, but it’s stretched out, a little bit of love and everything else every day, stretching, rising, falling, maybe an ocean and a river and mountains and canyons thrown in with heartbeats and Bach and jazz and rock and rap, not that I could get carried away here…
I can see this, and yet sometimes I feel like I am escalating too quickly, like I’m running, I force the reader into a sprint.
I blame this to more than twenty years writing memos, reports and Board briefings but maybe there’s something more there and I’m still struggling to understand what it is…
That’s interesting, Aurora. So pacing is important also—you don’t want to escalate too slowly or too quickly. Yet those parameters may vary vastly among different sorts of readers…maybe the writer has to find their own comfort zone with this, one that will match up with at least some readers. Or maybe each story unfolds with its own meter. Some are quicker, some deeper? I must think about this!
Hi Aurora. I can’t think of any exercises, so I am trying to invent one, something like experimenting on a story, speeding it up and slowing it down, adjusting the pace to where you want it to be. This is probably one of the reasons it’s recommended to let stories lie fallow for a time before going back to them. You might have to get most of the way out of it to be able to get an objective view.
Hope this is helpful!
If you have anything you think is well-paced even though someone else is telling you it ends too abruptly, I’d be happy to read it and provide feedback.
George, I've a feeling you may address this "hardest thing" at some point, but I wanted to ask now...does this happen to you? And how do you rally? Say, you have characters that rock but you cannot get a story happening? It seems in a story or novel, there would be fundamental responses a writer can learn and choose when this experience happens? I'm reading your discussion on The Singers and finding it profound.
I wonder why this is. Are we afraid of what could happen when we let go and give up control? Maybe writing escalation is like suddenly being naked in a room filled with people wearing clothing?
Same here David. I'm like a frustrated baker, hopping around the dough wondering why the darn thing is just lying there like an inert pancake. No rising action! Argh!
Yes! Because you know - I know - that it’s absolutely superb dough. It’s just lacking that one trivial little thing… Why can’t people overlook that, and enjoy the dough _as_ dough?
Improv is so amazing, another art that seems to contain its own intelligence. I have this vision of Steve Martin saying, “Well, fortunately…” and Robin Williams responding, “Yes, but unfortunately…” Too much fun! Thanks, Tim!
I find the mindset of productive improv and of productive writing to be very similar. Not only for tapping into the open space that gives me permission to explore what arrises, but also to create tension through rising action. In improv, one of the keys to that is to accept your partner's premise (the Yes-and principle). Novice players often get stuck in denial, as in...
A: Unfortunately, the doctor said Jack's leg was broken.
B: Fortunately, the doctor was looking at the wrong X-Ray.
B's response blows up the scene because she denies the rising action. In good improv, the players hunger for escalation — and so does the audience.
I think there's the deadly risk of denial in writing too — denying the challenges our gut sets for us, chickening out instead of riding it out (chickens do very badly in stormy seas). George could never have written The Brief and Terrifying Reign of Phil if he'd chickened out.
Thanks Tim, this is such a great post. It does seem that good writing requires a kind of reckless and relentless courage, maybe also a Zen or Taoist non-attachment. Picture Butch and Sundance on horseback grinning at each other and then spurring their steeds off the cliff…(I must find this Phil story!)
Wow, that's great! I was reading some craft essays by Douglas Glover recently. (Attack of the Copula Spiders.) He is a huge fan of using 'but' and 'yet' in exactly this manner: each sentence should be filled with conflict and tension, escalating on the grammar level. Thank you, Zok, this is a fantastic example of this. Terrified of the guy in the Trump mask with the pistol!
P.S. Speaking of rising action, people here might want to read Hemingway's "Indian Camp."
I just re-read it, and I noticed that almost every sentence has a character doing something -- "Nick lay on his back," or "The young Indian stopped," etc. etc.
I tried writing a story like this and it was difficult. But maybe this could be another exercise? Write a story in which every sentence has your character doing something?
After reading George's thoughts about the exercise and going back to re-read my attempt, I have two takeaways:
- I did feel the pressure to create a sense or rising action. I'm not sure if that translated into the piece - when I re-read it I wasn't sure if the rise was actually there in the text or if I was just hearing the rhythm I heard in my head as I wrote it. But still, for whatever reason, the pressure for rising action seemed to be inherent to the exercise.
- I tend to get stuck on the meaning of what I write, over-explaining myself at the expense of the writing, not allowing implication and suggestion to do their work, etc. This exercise freed me to let go of meaning - or even a clear sense of direction - and focus at the smallest level: the words themselves. This even allowed a few surprises. One example: in my story I wrote "The mother catalogs the tools." She's walking through a forest with her daughters, thinking about the tools at her disposal. Later, without much thinking, I wrote "the forest catalogs the dark." I have no clue what that means but it's super interesting. It might not make any sense, I might not ever use it, but I find it such an evocative phrase. I need to remind myself that I always have that same freedom in all my writing. The freedom to put together any words and create sentences that are surprising and evocation, even if they're a mess and need revision. It's a powerful freedom and I'm going to work to keep chasing it.
It’s always interesting to slow down enough to be able to excavate at the level of the word and sentence. Maybe every sentence is a story of itself, a kind of microcosm of the larger story. That seems to be a huge part of what we are trying to do, we trees, cataloguing the darkness and looking for that slice of light.
Aaron, I like what you say about the freeing sensation of focusing on the words themselves. I'm a poet who loves short fiction but rarely writes it...but this "word level" awareness is definitely the engine of poetry, where "rising action" is not even a thing, for the most part.
So true, the curse of over-explaining ! "The forest catalogs the dark" is that kind of phrase that evokes instant images, emotions, questions...loved this exercise bc so many of the stories here contained such gold. As a "pantser," the writer in me usually runs, screaming, from even the mere suggestion of a plan/plot outline/etc. Somehow this version of constraint drew me in and felt freeing, as George says.
I've found a variation on this exercise can be particularly helpful with revisions. Simply put, I'll produce a numbered sheet like George has us do, with numbers of 1-500 lined in several vertical columns, and then I'll restart a story that I've already written, from scratch, not looking at it, using none of the written-down language from previous drafts. I've found that, in rewriting stories from scratch like this, I'm able to almost write in a mode of "recollection," which lends authority to the voice (as opposed to the more meandering, set-out-to-discover voice of the first or previous drafts), and that the details that are significant will inevitably rework their way into the beginning story.
Using the numbered lines, and having a "constraint" in the back of my head, I find that I'm able to integrate the earlier and middle parts of stories, including the heart of the story, to those very first paragraphs. It helps me orient all the absolute vital information of the story in the earlier draft, to the beginning, getting me into the story's escalation so much faster. I've also found that the "dilemmas" and situation of the story tends to come to the very forefront, helpful also, and that doing so has helped established "packed" beginnings which tend to serve as strong foundations for the story going onwards.
Wanted to share some success with this method in case anyone's been as lost and frustrated at times in the revision process as I've been :)
I'm trying to visualize this and can't quite. You have (let's say) a table? That has 500 columns? and you put a sentence in each column? Or do you use the 500 segments to organize the plot--the rising action? (like moving furniture around in your living room)
@ben I've been doing this for two days running now and am having so much fun! Bonus: I get to say that I've written. :) Here's the one from yesterday (I didn't guess the word so I had seven to play with).
“The tabby,” she typed, “would surely be tasty with a tangy sauce.” Not that she would ever eat a cat, but didn’t they do that somewhere in the world? China perhaps? Or was that dogs? How many countries ate dogs and cats? She would need a tally. How tacky, really. All things being equal, she would rather eat taffy.
I find a set of anagrams and then find a way to include all of them in a word game poem - the missing words in the poem are the set of anagrams.. My latest collection retinal, latrine and reliant. Good creative exercise to come up with a story line that would incorporate all three!
Another thing we might think about is the way that one thing that helps shape a piece of short fiction is the reader's knowledge of...its brevity. That white space at the end rushing up. And here. as I was reading your exercises, my internalized knowledge that it was only going to be 200 words. That creates a nice sort of pressure - like someone saying goodbye to a lover as the train pulls away. But this is true even for a novel - we know it is going to end, and is, therefore, shaped.
No doubt. I loved the word count limitation, but suffered PTSD at the number of unique words. Something terrible must’ve happened in my past!
For me it felt like conserving my last 50 dollars until payday. But I enjoyed that about it. Perhaps I have PTSD as well, John :D
I love this notion of conserving my last 50 bucks until payday. It very succinctly throws me into worry.
Pre-terminal stress syndrome ? :-D
I am caught up in substituting the idea of "life" or "living" with write, writing, fiction in so many of the comments and thinking most of the content would remain the same.
Before I start any short story, I flip to the end to see how long it is, what page it runs to, so that I can read accordingly.
I do the same thing, Stephen. Helps me settle into story quickly and be a little more patient with what I might consider too much expo, description or dialogue. And then some times it helps me decide whether to finish the story. “18 more pages of this? Nah.”
Picked up my 2001 O'Henry Award Prize Stories book and searched for George Saunders. Pastoralia. Tom, I said "Eight more pages of this?" But he's our teacher and I don't think I've read him ever, and all of a sudden the story took a turn and I finished it!
Point taken, Laura. I admit that I'm terribly impatient and mood-driven in my reading habits. I want to be seduced quickly, or at least provided some evidence of seduction to come, in starting any short story, regardless of genre. I need something to persuade me to keep going. It's generally not a question of subject or plot, but one of tone, voice, what Ben Yagoda calls "the sound on the page" (see his wonderful book of same title). It's a risky, and self-defeating, approach, I agree, for I probably miss out of on experience of reading lots of fine stories. Hard to say how often this happens, but I have found myself returning to a story I had dropped and, wouldn't you know, discovering it was damn good!
Oh, that is just like life—finite. We are all pretending that we aren't going to die, but the fact that this will all end is the only thing helping us pay attention to THIS moment. (Along with Story club I'm doing Pema Chodron's online retreat on living purposely and dying fearlessly.) Thanks George for helping make this real! Accepting that we are going to die helps us shape our lives. Yes, the white space at the end IS rushing toward us.
Yes, time and words were precious! A drunk reminder that I want to keep forever. Also, it provided a deeper look, more poignancy; with the rolling boil coming rapidly, there was not much room for tepid.
Mr. Saunders, could you perhaps say that in another way? I'm not understanding what you mean by the pressure of knowing it's only going to be 200 words. Do you mean it's like the excitement of anticipation?
I'm haunted by the draft of a novel I wrote well before the pandemic that I KNOW needs a rewrite (or entirely new draft) but that thing about knowing "it is going to end, and is, therefore" needing to be shaped is part of what haunts me. It's based on a novella I had published in 2005 (a sequel in a way) that I think might have more import to me now than it did when I drafted that sequel in 2015 (or so). Anyway: constraints. I get that, and it's true but it can also stymie writing going forward. Any advice on that?
Also: the idea that "rising action" might have something to do with "returning to those things we have already set in motion" - and here, that's enforced by the constraint. So if we use the word "river" and are forced to come back to it - that feels like a focusing of effect, maybe?
Like your students, I, too, wrote a novel full of 'wonderful' exposition--and long on boredom (my consuming fear as a writer). My beloved mentors approached me with this verdict, "This is all lovely, but...it's not a novel." So I turned to an unlikely source, quite by accident. I listened to what Dan Brown had to say about writing thrillers and discovered that escalation works in the same way in every genre, including the elusive, hoity-toity literary style I admire. I'm finishing the revisions for that novel now, and the process has become a case of "how many bowling pins CAN I throw?" The pins were always there. They were just at my feet, waiting for me to toss them.
"the process has become a case of "how many bowling pins CAN I throw?" The pins were always there. They were just at my feet, waiting for me to toss them." Yes !! Great advice S. Going to pay close attention to this and toss my pins higher. I tend to lob things up gently, and as you'd expect, they don't do much but flop back to my feet with little consequence.
My inner editor tends to hold me back, sort of like a Hollywood Producer telling a script-writer, "Listen, your gonna have to cut something, you can't have a global pandemic, an attempted insurrection, world-wide protests against racial injustice, wild fires, floods, and crippling "heat domes" all in one script. No one's gonna buy it as realistic." If anything, these last few years have shown that, really, you can have a lot of serious pins up there. Def increases the tension. < sigh>
In the introduction to Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise (Barnes & Noble Classics Edition), Sharon Carson notes, "In August of [1918] Scribner's rejected The Romantic Egotist [the original title for TSoP] claiming, 'The story does not seem to us to work up to a conclusion' and 'Neither the hero's career nor his character are shown to be brought to any stage which justifies an ending.'" So what did Fitzgerald do at the tender age of 22? He tossed the bowling pins again. And he was rejected again. So he tossed the bowling pins once more and, at 23 (the old coot!), finally published his first of many marvelous novels. Fitzgerald's exposition is exquisite and his ear for language among the best. What he learned in the process of writing TSoP was that something had to happen to his characters or, moreover, that they had to do something. That something can be as simple as incremental choices scaffolded like a quiet game of Jenga. Joyce is sometimes accused of having written about nothing at all in Ulysses (or, more recently, I've read this about Mary Gaitskill), but the pins are all there and the elevation quite satisfying. Keep writing, Dorothy, and keep on juggling!
This reminds me of reading that Ann Patchett said she learned about plot and pacing from reading Raymond Chandler...
Try hitting them first with the ball..STRIKE^^
Thank you for sharing what is working for you. Best wishes!
Yes, this was absolutely true for my little story. I had to keep returning to certain phrases and words so as not to go over my 50 unique word limit, and with each repetition the story kept growing. So that felt very magical and it surprised me completely.
I didn't think my story had escalation as it was more an internal monologue, but I just re-read it and it's true—the repetition escalated the tension in the piece. Quite amazing!
Mine too! And my story became more surreal and interesting!
So could we take that principle - working with what's already there, rather than allowing ourselves to get distracted by new enticing thoughts - and apply it to content, without necessarily repeating individual words in the way the exercise demanded?
BTW, I am fascinated by the possible connection between 'rising action' and what is called the 'development section' in 'sonata form', (a standard form in classical music from about 1770 onwards.) The 'development section' does absolutely re-use and re-work the material of the 'exposition'. "Returning to those things we have already set in motion" describes it very well. And mucking them up, usually.
I've been surprised that when discussing the rising action/climax/aftermath model, none of my writing teachers has acknowledged the obvious sexual parallel, especially the fact that we're not really looking for *continuously* rising action, are we? Instead it's: rising, then slightly falling, then rising slightly higher, then falling, then rising even higher... etc. until climax and aftermath/glow.
In which case, 'the idea that "rising action" might have something to do with "returning to those things we have already set in motion" ' has a clear sexual parallel too. As in sex, we're moving forwards, but also backwards too, then forwards again, and so on. And let's not even start on the topic of constraints...
There you go Sean. Your next venture in 50 Unique: 150 Retread story making, a tale of sexual passion packaged in 200 Words produced in 45 minutes 😂
Heh. Titled "Uh, When Is the Action Going to Start Rising, Sean?"
When you remember to forget to think!
Hey Sean that's surely a stand-up title 🚀. . . 5, 4, 3, 2. 1 🌟
Thidd so is a really interesting way to think about it.
"the idea that "rising action" might have something to do with "returning to those things we have already set in motion"" -- that is SO useful - thank you! I'm chewing the cud on this one, utilizing all four stomachs.
I have been too. (Well, not the stomachs, actually, but equivalent intensity of attention in the mind.) I re-read the chapter in Pond in the Rain on 'The Darling' with the escalation exercise in mind and am now trying to apply to a story...
Also, the idea that the escalation or 'rising action' is about the internal technical workings of the story, rather than increased drama in the events that are narrated, is important for me. I think I had always rather assumed the latter before.
Yes - such a good point. With kid's literature increasing the drama is always emphasized, though "literary" children's writers don't necessarily do that - Kate diCamillo, Gary Schmidt, Rebecca Stead, and others. Also I guess in adult genre writing - there are expectations about drama or sim. e.g. in detective/police procedurals (which I enjoy sometimes). I'm now starting draft 6 of my mystery/spy/historical/kid's novel -- with Story Club at my back! and I'm thinking about what is returned to later that I'm setting in motion early on, and how it can thicken the middle which sags in earlier versions. Maybe saggy middles are especially a problem in plot/drama-driven longer stories and novels. Anyway - I'm feeling really good that I have found a way to thicken the texture in the middle with a thematically related but not so dramatic plot thread that still will be engaging to my young (and not so young) readers. I think. I hope!
Sounds good! I think with any kind of novel that has 'something to be fathomed' at its core, (whether children's, crime, mystery or anything else) it is satisfying when the author has planted a seed early on which germinates just a little after the point I have stopped thinking about it. That is, i can still recall it, but i have stopped expecting that it will turn out to be significant. If several of those moments happened in the middle, it would certainly cure the novel of sagginess for me!
Oh yeah - That’s a very satisfying readerly moment!
It was really interesting how I felt like the opposite has occurred in my case, as I felt much more comfortable with an ethereal, less concrete approach to the text with these limitations in mind. With a more catatonic, rhytmic nature to the text and necessary sacrifices to structure and flourish, it seemed all the more logical to make things more dreamlike and tone-focused, with essentially no action at all in the completed text. It's made it especially fascinating to see and read how this focusing effect has manifested in others here with this exercise!
Charlotte, born of the 50/200 exercise is talking to me and following Mr. Saunders wise counsel, I’m listening and writing away, conscious of making use of the repetition of key words, which also reminds me of the sound of pecking away on an old Hermes I still own but don’t use.
Charlotte is doing what she wants to do and telling me what she wants to say.
“My best stories often come when I am following a certain voice…”
George Saunders 1/9/2022
And this from Isabelle Allende. Permission to speak:
“I write about what I care for, in my own rhythm. In those leisure hours that my grandfather considered wasted, the ghosts of imagination become well-defined characters. They are unique, they have their own voices, and they are willing to tell me their stories if I give them enough time. I feel them around me with such certitude that I wonder why nobody else perceives them.”
I have the opposite problem with first first drafts. All rising action and no internal dialogue. Very plot heavy. In the second draft I just add.
That’s thickening the plot, methinks.
I approached this exercise with curiosity and no expectations, so, I felt I was in the backseat, while the story and the words drove around. What came out wasn’t special, but was surprising and much funnier than what I usually write, which is always deadly serious.
I agree that the “rising action” element must have something to do with the repetitions, which create tension both in the form and in the content.
If you are talking about rivers, generally, and things set in motion, well ~ rivers are always in motion of course, so the answer to this one, is yes, we are being forced to go back to a person or action or whatever already started, to get focused.
On why we are bothering to read some pages that somebody wrote, at least long enough to see what they are trying to do… Or at least as long as you, the reader, can stand. That part is tricky here, because George S. Is telling us to go with our own instincts, to edit own work as if we wanted it to sound better, somehow, than it did. But to give it a chance, anyway.
Problem I have with writing has to do with about five boxes worth of paper I’ve kept with me for 40 years, stuff I’ve written. Labeled “Syls stuff” , pretty much.
The one thing I panic about losing in a wildfire (living on a ridge above chaparral...) is my accumulation of journals. I call them compost. I call them my external memory. But oh man, I wish I liked writing journals with a keyboard instead of a fountain pen, because all that ink.... that bad handwriting. The lack of a search engine. And yet...
also I liked your mention of rivers flowing and thinking of escalation going down! Down from a bubbling source, down cascades, going underground, lingering in meanders, spreading into a delta, merging with the ocean - quite a different model. Fun to consider. Then again - kind of Dante-esque maybe!
Sex, rivers…what about tides, and volcanoes?
“Rising” seems to be a tension upon emotions, which deserves more violence, danger, comedic buildup, etc. Repetition of the same word seems to remove the tension. Am I missing something?
Yes! repetition made the meaning insistent. I found that too. And the heart of the story was revealed, for me.
I gotta look at that more deeply.
Yes, and it requires us to think about different ways to use the same word. “Dog” and “dogs” count as two words, but “just” as in “only” and “just” as in “moral, correct, right, what-have-you” just counts as one. So, pick the right words (they don’t even have to be the fancy ones!), and you give yourself more options.
Sometimes the "rising action" just occurs naturally, because, somehow, of the forced repetition. Words start taking on "extra" meaning and so on. Also, I think, the reader senses the constraint there behind the writing, and sort of starts playing along.
But it is a bit of a mystery to me, why this works (when it does).
For me, the forced repetition made the stasis more obvious. If the river is still just flowing, you can see the lack of change more easily because it's the same words repeated. In a long work, we use different words and turns of phrase that disguise the fact that nothing has really changed. Three people sitting in a room discussing their failed marriages, and then, ten pages later, they sit in a different room and have a different conversation about their failed marriages. It looks different - they're in a restaurant now and not the lounge room, and the use different words to describe their failed marriages and focus on different particulars of said failures - but essentially at its heart it's the same conversation in the same setting (which would be more painfully obvious if you had to use a more limited set of words). When the stasis is obvious (from a limited word set or a word count), the need to inject change is more pressing. And since escalation is a more interesting form of change than de-escalation, it's easier to lean into the rising action...
Beautifully put!
It's very interesting to follow the Hemingway, where we attended to slight changes in words ("the American wife"->"the wife"->"the American girl"), with this exercise where there's some incentive to use the same words. I wonder if this escalation exercise works for some people by pulling them towards big changes in word choice.
Adjectives did that work for him, and “rising” or at least juxtaposition of the age of the woman — girl to wife to woman.
Very difficult to manufacture a story. Seems more natural to let it tell itself.
I think this exercise (among other intriguing things) pushes the prose toward poetry. The drastic limitation on vocabulary renders the words more and more "charged with meaning," as Pound might say. And poetry is a rather different mindset. This in turn raises the question of how poetry, prose-poems, and nano-fiction differ. I've gained some interesting insights from converting poems into paragraphs, and vice versa. Perhaps as a result I'm also captivated by the power of the visual presentation, the line breaks, words in italics, indents, and many of these exercises resulted in short repetitive lines, at least reminiscent of poetry. The visual is, of course, not in the language or in the writing, but it IS in the reading, silently or out loud, the timing, the emphasis. Punctuation and paragraph breaks can provide vital assistance in reading a piece in the writer's voice, or they can ruin the flow and baffle the reader. I wonder sometimes if we should adopt a more adventurous approach to these "performative" aids in printed material.
Your comment reminded me of some of D.H. Lawrence's works, where he would often repeat a word or phrase within a sentence, or within a paragraph, or use a variation of a word or phrase a paragraph or two later. Him being a poet as well might have been a part of that. The 50-word/200-word constraint might lend itself to some poetic tropes, though Lawrence used those methods in full novels.
For me, I think part of the why it works was being forced, again and again, to look at the bank of words I had and think: okay, what else can these do that they haven't done yet?
I think the shortness of it makes all the difference in getting to rising action. I am not alone as a writer in wanting to save the best for last. I've started to learn that the "big reveal" is often the best place to start and the real story is what comes next. In longer works, it becomes easy to stay in the tease too long.
That sense of “playing along” was definitely true for me! I think the exercise maybe nudged me into rising action/escalation/plot in general much sooner than usual mostly because I was always so aware of how many words I had already spent and how few I had left ahead of me to assemble the story elements I still needed. The constraint of “all 200 words together have to make A Story” was so helpful in keeping me/my characters moving forward — simply because the story was inherently charging forward from the first sentence, and there was no room or time to go in any other direction (including holding still!)
I found the process of working with the constraints engaging, though I now recognize that possible rising actions suggested by the 50 words never did ascend. My focus was on letting words from the fixed list press their music/meaning onto me, sentence by sentence, but the connective tissue between sentences went, I think, a little gauzy. Perhaps writing the piece as a monologue has something to do with this...
I had a similar experience/approach. There is not much rising action in my writing normally. (How about you?) Coming from blogging and the personal essay format, it’s a whole new challenge.
Interesting.
I found a few things in the process of doing the exercise. I had to throw away the idea it has to be good to even really try it. It wasn't fun until I did. I think when I sit to write I'm usually telling myself this has to be beautiful before I even start. Funnily, I didn't write something beautiful whatsoever. I went wild and sinister. It was so liberating. I'm not fantastic at plot usually, probably because I'm the sort of person who spends a long time looking out the window staring at snails and watering cans, but plot was right there somewhere amongst the madness. The pace was way better. It kind of reminded me of that feeling you have writing a story as a kid, before you realise it will get graded or that grades matter, the sheer joy of diving into a crazy idea without thinking. I loved that feeling. I want to find it again.
Yes - the idea that we are trying to find out what is good about a piece instead of knowing in advance and....aiming.
First get it down.
Then get it good.
Yes, I get that.
I took a seminar from a teacher whose advice was not to think or revise, but just get those pages written. I took another seminar from a teacher whose advice was to figure out the big why's first and plot out where I wanted to go instead of wandering in wilderness. I've written both ways and can see the benefits of both, but neither novel sold. (Another aim.)
This makes me think about my beloved mentor Grace Paley, and the workshop she did so many times in so many venues, "How to Tell What." And she would ask people to talk about a story they wanted to write but hadn't written. They'd get some powerful feedback. Almost always.
Would love to hear anything you want to share about her teaching. She came to Syracuse once and it was really something, to see how she comported herself as a public person and teacher. A master.
This place! Honestly. A treasure trove in every post. And that's just the comments! You've done something very, very special here George. And honestly, I think it's safe to say you already had plenty of goodwill saved up in that particular bank, what with all the decades of stories that have taught us all, I'm sure, so much.
Okay, back to Paley! Please, yes, as everyone has already said: share away if you feel comfortable doing so.
A master, unrivaled.
Would love to hear more about Grace Paley.
Just started reading her collected stories earlier today
Genius. An exercise that sits alongside to George’s recollection of being in a a Douglas Unger workshop where ‘Take a short break and come back to tell a story’ was the revised expectation landed on participant without warning.
During the short break, I would've done a runner.
Yes, please do share more! I will never forget what it felt like to first read her and "feel" her voice. One of my literary idols. I'm sure she was a tremendous teacher.
Hello, everyone!
I've just now found the time to sit down and do the 45-minute exercise myself, so I'm a bit late to the party. That being said, my experience with it bears repeating here, I think.
For months and months now, I've had a single sentence bumping around in my head, thinking to myself, "That would a wonderful sentence to start a novel with." Needless to say, six months later, I have not yet got past that sentence, because I've been trying so hard not to let down that eureka moment that provided me with it.
So I decided I would throw my beautiful sentence to the wolves, so to speak, and use it to begin this 200/50 exercise. I won't tell you what the sentence was though, because guess what? It wasn't actually very good at all, and it didn't make it into my final piece for this exercise.
All that being said, here's 200/50 my piece, a week late:
My name is Hope, and I was also born here, in Forgotton, U.S.A.
My father has not let the light in since mother left; and he has not led a sermon since the religion here dried up and slipped away.
Father leaves for food, he leaves the door ajar, and the light comes in, at first a slice, and then a pie. Suddenly, the light is also born here, in Forgotton, U.S.A, and suddenly, the religion comes home. Like my father, like a Father, I lead this sermon, preach to the light, shepherd the light into every Forgotton corner.
Then the sermon is a pie, the pie is a slice, and the slice is a darkness. Father is home, and he is leading a sermon of darkness. The food he leaves is dry and dark and the light and mother have slipped away again.
But now I have religion.
Father leaves for food. The door is not ajar. The home is dark, but the light has not slipped away. My name is Hope, and I have the light, and I lead my light in a sermon in the dark, and now it slips into every corner here in Forgotton, U.S.A.
“…and the light comes in, at first a slice, and then a pie.” This sentence is lovely.
Thank you! That must be the yearly re-watch of Twin Peaks filtering through.
Used to love that
It's well worth revisiting!
Gianni, this is gripping. Stay with this, if you can! "My father has not let the light in since mother left..." There's something dark and bright and huge in here.
Thank you, David! Now I have somewhere to start, thanks to this group, maybe I can revise it into something workable.
I love this sentence:
Suddenly, the light is also born here, in Forgotton, U.S.A, and suddenly, the religion comes home.
Thank you, Gail! Forgotten, U.S.A. is a place (or idea, or both) that's been bouncing around in my head for a while. I don't know much about it yet, but that's what writing is for, isn't it?
Yes. A station for arrivals.
Nicely done. It's much harder than it looks and you created something with a nice effect.
Mostly the constraint that was going through my mind during the exercise was "OMG, George fucking Saunders might read this." I am going to try and channel more of the 'just for fun' attitude' in all my writing.
I was incredibly stressed by the thought of people reading it, and I'm not sure why I posted mine, but in the end the thought of having an audience of any sort turned into a good incentive.
I don't know if he read mine, but I've decided to tell myself he did.
Haha! Brilliant. That’s the proper use of constraint, I think.
I’m often rewriting with someone in mind. Very good motivation for checks and balances.
Nail. On. The. Head. My other constraint, because I've been listening to him read "Tenth of December," was, "Don't sound like him. Sound like him = failure. Not good."
Luckily, I didn't get to mine for over a day, so I was thinking, George may not get to this one. Whew! Pressure's off!
Same here! Took me a week!
"On what basis were you making your decisions? Was this different from your usual method?"
My best attempt at understanding what was different this time was so mundane I almost missed it. But upon reflection...
Because I knew that the 50 words would be "shared" between the characters, I was passively considering, each time I added one to the bank, how both characters would be "using" it. In doing so, I think I subconsciously developed a relationship between them -- their personalities, their motivations, their way of being in the world -- in a far more intuitive, natural way than I would have in a more deliberate & unconstrained piece of "real work."
Similarly, the escalation occurred because both characters were, quite literally, both reaching their end. It wasn't the author driving toward a conclusion or the plot demanding its next act, but the characters arriving at a final moment, in a shared "world" of words, together. And because I knew this was happening, I gave them what I could -- from what their world had to offer -- and left it at that.
There's something freeing about all of this.
I’m not sure I noticed much of a difference in my mindset setting out to write. But I did notice a difference in what my mind was doing while I was writing. Typically, I spend a lot of time staring off into the middle distance when I write, trying to think up what’s going to happen next. During this exercise, I found myself spending much more time attending to what was already there on the page.
One thing I’ll take away from the exercise is to look harder for meaning in and between the existing elements of a story, especially when things feel stuck. There’s a tendency in those moments to introduce a new element or set off in a new direction. I think that forcing yourself to find new ways of combining the elements you already have can often lead to more creative, interesting, and stranger story lines.
A lot of the exercises which I liked best seemed to be doing that. They were like little Rubik’s cubes, playing around with the same handful of elements until the meaning of the story seemed to click into place.
That’s very good.
Thanks, John!
I don't know about anyone else here, but George's exercise allowed me to write myself into a plot twist I wouldn't have discovered otherwise. There's something about the time constraint and word limit that allowed for that surprise. When I'm pretending to be Karl Ove Knausgaard, not so much.
Coming away from this exercise, I want to know how to approach each sentence with that playfulness and sense of possibility, even without the word limit and time constraint.
I had a new plot twist appear out of nowhere too. What fun!
I love that! Pretending to be Karl Ove Knausgaard probably isn’t particularly useful to Karl Ove Knausgaard either! Often I think we cultivate the worst of ourselves pretending to be who we think we should be.
I like your idea of it harbouring a 'sense of possibility' and 'playfulness'
A bit late, but here is my attempt at the 200/50 excercise. I started writing it in Dutch, but then I thought: I'll give it a go in English. For a non native speaker like me this is the perfect excercise, because I don't have to worry about grammar and pretty vocabulary as much (not worrying, see George, I'm learning :-)). I'm new to short story writing and I thought this was a very helpful and fun excercise.
My story (love to hear what you think):
---
Oak street is a row of houses between an old factory and an empty lot.
The people in Oak street didn’t mind the empty lot and the old factory. They sat in their front yard and drank beer.
A new couple moved to Oak street. They didn’t sit in their front yard.
They grew kale and radishes in their yard.
Oak street is no place for kale, said the people in Oak street.
The new couple had a baby. The people in Oak street put a wooden stork in their front yard, between the kale and radishes.
The front yard is no place for a wooden stork, said the new couple.
The new couple started a cocktail bar in the old factory.
Oak street is no place for a cocktail bar, said the people in Oak street.
A new new couple moved to Oak street. They didn’t sit in their front yard. They opened a gym on the empty lot.
The new new couple had a baby. The gym had a cocktail bar.
The new couple sat in a front yard with the people in Oak street and drank beer. Oak street is no place for a gym, they said.
I admire the way this lets me make up more of the story in my head than is actually in the 200 words.
I somehow thought that rather than 'building' as it progressed, it was going to come full circle. There's development but also a calmness to the lines.
I love the wooden stork! (Took me to Holland.)
Well done, I think you got it, I'm sure you got it. But what is 'it', It is the imagination going wild. Wonderful piece.
I really like this. Are you introducing new words beyond 50? Maybe it just feels like that. I don't care really - I love the progression of the new couple joining the old residents when a new new couple come in - like laying down strata. and it has that stripped down feeling that makes the progression - escalation - feel even more - geological.
Thanks Jackie! I was too lazy to count unique words myself, but the online-unique-word-checker said 50 :-).
I agree with the sense of strata continuing to be laid in Oak Street. Another palimpsest is being laid on Oak Street . . . maybe Tim will tell us where and when the Oak Street of his imagination is located . . . revelations which could be escalators of the story to be continued?
I wrote the first part in the train, looking out on a street in an industrial part of where I live. Gentrification is a thing around here. So quite literal inspiration and only a small amount of imagination.
But what imaginative vistas your 200/50 open up to you and your readers Tim, suggesting that there may be more than a grain of truth in the adage 'less is more' or in this case 'much more literal inspiration' and 'much less imagination'?
Was it an American scene seen from your train window that literally inspired you?
Thanks Rob. It was Utrecht, in The Netherlands.
Ah Utrecht! You know Tim of ‘All the places in all the world . . .’ I would never have placed Oak Street in Utrecht . . . But now that you have, kindly, shared it’s location it both constrains the story taking shape and widens the horizons of it potentiality.
That ‘new couple’ moved into Oak Street from . . . Where? And then, following them into Oak Street, where did the ‘new new couple’ arrive from?
And what’s with the predilection of both fresh generation incomes couples for opening cocktail bars?
Care to continue your tell Tim?
You know Tim, well actually you don't until I tell you now: every time I've come back , prompted by some passing thought to check out what I think I've read about the story unfolding in (or should that be on?) Oak Street; I feel like an Amsterdam Diamond Cutter; sizing up which way will be best to cut a unique stone; it's why the real guys and gals, who have both livelihood and reputation, never make the mistake of foing what they may come tto regret at leisure.
In short, each time I revisit my reading and my comprehension seems to shift . . . a very enjoyable, enlghtening experience . . . thanks again Tim.
A story of an old street, Oak Street, beginning to be gently shaken rather than suddenly stirred from where it has been to where its going to be. As the inevitable departure of older people opens up vacancies for younger incomers so new possibilities for Oak Street future move in with them: old leads to new; new leads to new new; twas ever so but the options are improving for people in Oak Street; beer or / and cocktails; passively sit in your yard or actively seek out others in the community; work out with others in the gym or mix with others in the cocktail (which we can further imagine serving vegan canapes (based on shredded kale and grated radish). What will the next new new new arrivals bring with them: making the case for Oak Street to become a Conserved Heritage Street?
Delightful 200 worder Tim; escalates in series of rising ignitions.
The incremental progression is done so well--the heart of the story!
"Most writers tend to write stories that are long on exposition but never ascend into the rising action (that is, they don’t escalate)." This is the bit that struck home for me. I can exposit for hours, even days - but how to escalate? That has always escaped me.
That is the hardest thing. For anyone.
I have a pencil hanging around that says "Add a vampire". Very silly, but sometimes it helps to be silly just to break out of that serious mind death grip.
Hi Melissa, thanks.
This is so funny! I’m going to write it on a note and stick it on my desk.
This attention to escalation is really helpful (and it's heartening to hear that it's difficult for many others); thanks George et al! I'd love to have more discussion about how to escalate in novels.... Sean McNulty and others in the comments tried out a sexual metaphor (to the effect of 'it'd not constant escalation, but rather rising tension, some play and diversion, then more tension and building momentum overall') and that was helpful. And it's interesting that experts usually locate the keys to all this in the structure of the novel (in chapter X, insert plot twist number Y), rather than in the sentences which have been our focus so far. (I'm not quite sure where I'm going with all this--and am now starting to wonder if I'm bad at sex--but I guess my point is that I'm finding the novel form difficult to animate and I'd love more advice from everyone!)
Wait—aren’t we all bad at sex, starting out? Then, if we take some time to consider things, we get more loving , and creative…I like that about play and diversion. I haven’t tried to write a novel yet, but it seems like the books I have loved all have this sense of a gathering storm, a growing of beauty, terror, hope, fear, despair and love that tornado themselves through me and leave me sadder, happier, and hopefully wiser than I was before. So maybe the sex metaphor is apt, to some degree, but it’s stretched out, a little bit of love and everything else every day, stretching, rising, falling, maybe an ocean and a river and mountains and canyons thrown in with heartbeats and Bach and jazz and rock and rap, not that I could get carried away here…
I can see this, and yet sometimes I feel like I am escalating too quickly, like I’m running, I force the reader into a sprint.
I blame this to more than twenty years writing memos, reports and Board briefings but maybe there’s something more there and I’m still struggling to understand what it is…
That’s interesting, Aurora. So pacing is important also—you don’t want to escalate too slowly or too quickly. Yet those parameters may vary vastly among different sorts of readers…maybe the writer has to find their own comfort zone with this, one that will match up with at least some readers. Or maybe each story unfolds with its own meter. Some are quicker, some deeper? I must think about this!
Hi David, thanks. I think you are right. If you know any writing exercises which help with pacing, I’d love to know.
Hi Aurora. I can’t think of any exercises, so I am trying to invent one, something like experimenting on a story, speeding it up and slowing it down, adjusting the pace to where you want it to be. This is probably one of the reasons it’s recommended to let stories lie fallow for a time before going back to them. You might have to get most of the way out of it to be able to get an objective view.
Hope this is helpful!
If you have anything you think is well-paced even though someone else is telling you it ends too abruptly, I’d be happy to read it and provide feedback.
canyonwrenvibes@gmail.com
Happy writing!!
Hi David, thank you so much for the suggestion and for offering to provide feedback. This is very kind of you, thanks!
Let me think about this. I will get back to you sooner, or later!
George, I've a feeling you may address this "hardest thing" at some point, but I wanted to ask now...does this happen to you? And how do you rally? Say, you have characters that rock but you cannot get a story happening? It seems in a story or novel, there would be fundamental responses a writer can learn and choose when this experience happens? I'm reading your discussion on The Singers and finding it profound.
I wonder why this is. Are we afraid of what could happen when we let go and give up control? Maybe writing escalation is like suddenly being naked in a room filled with people wearing clothing?
Same here David. I'm like a frustrated baker, hopping around the dough wondering why the darn thing is just lying there like an inert pancake. No rising action! Argh!
Catch some wild yeast!
Yes! Because you know - I know - that it’s absolutely superb dough. It’s just lacking that one trivial little thing… Why can’t people overlook that, and enjoy the dough _as_ dough?
I hear you, David! I often try to escalate, but it always feels artificial...
Ha, premature post-ulation! But sounds like the idea is a fast-action life-sized chess game where if you get checkmated you will die.
Your BUT and AND SO is similar to a powerful improv exercise — FORTUNATELY/
UNFORTUNATELY — it’s a great way to provoke rising action, or as they say in improv “escalation”.
Thanks for this, Z.
Improv is so amazing, another art that seems to contain its own intelligence. I have this vision of Steve Martin saying, “Well, fortunately…” and Robin Williams responding, “Yes, but unfortunately…” Too much fun! Thanks, Tim!
Thanks David.
I find the mindset of productive improv and of productive writing to be very similar. Not only for tapping into the open space that gives me permission to explore what arrises, but also to create tension through rising action. In improv, one of the keys to that is to accept your partner's premise (the Yes-and principle). Novice players often get stuck in denial, as in...
A: Unfortunately, the doctor said Jack's leg was broken.
B: Fortunately, the doctor was looking at the wrong X-Ray.
B's response blows up the scene because she denies the rising action. In good improv, the players hunger for escalation — and so does the audience.
I think there's the deadly risk of denial in writing too — denying the challenges our gut sets for us, chickening out instead of riding it out (chickens do very badly in stormy seas). George could never have written The Brief and Terrifying Reign of Phil if he'd chickened out.
Thank you for being brave, George.
Thanks Tim, this is such a great post. It does seem that good writing requires a kind of reckless and relentless courage, maybe also a Zen or Taoist non-attachment. Picture Butch and Sundance on horseback grinning at each other and then spurring their steeds off the cliff…(I must find this Phil story!)
One of his finest.
Also The Semplica-Girl Diaries, if you haven't already read it. Yow!
Wow, that's great! I was reading some craft essays by Douglas Glover recently. (Attack of the Copula Spiders.) He is a huge fan of using 'but' and 'yet' in exactly this manner: each sentence should be filled with conflict and tension, escalating on the grammar level. Thank you, Zok, this is a fantastic example of this. Terrified of the guy in the Trump mask with the pistol!
P.S. Speaking of rising action, people here might want to read Hemingway's "Indian Camp."
I just re-read it, and I noticed that almost every sentence has a character doing something -- "Nick lay on his back," or "The young Indian stopped," etc. etc.
I tried writing a story like this and it was difficult. But maybe this could be another exercise? Write a story in which every sentence has your character doing something?
Yes!
thanks for pointing to read this for rising action.
After reading George's thoughts about the exercise and going back to re-read my attempt, I have two takeaways:
- I did feel the pressure to create a sense or rising action. I'm not sure if that translated into the piece - when I re-read it I wasn't sure if the rise was actually there in the text or if I was just hearing the rhythm I heard in my head as I wrote it. But still, for whatever reason, the pressure for rising action seemed to be inherent to the exercise.
- I tend to get stuck on the meaning of what I write, over-explaining myself at the expense of the writing, not allowing implication and suggestion to do their work, etc. This exercise freed me to let go of meaning - or even a clear sense of direction - and focus at the smallest level: the words themselves. This even allowed a few surprises. One example: in my story I wrote "The mother catalogs the tools." She's walking through a forest with her daughters, thinking about the tools at her disposal. Later, without much thinking, I wrote "the forest catalogs the dark." I have no clue what that means but it's super interesting. It might not make any sense, I might not ever use it, but I find it such an evocative phrase. I need to remind myself that I always have that same freedom in all my writing. The freedom to put together any words and create sentences that are surprising and evocation, even if they're a mess and need revision. It's a powerful freedom and I'm going to work to keep chasing it.
It’s always interesting to slow down enough to be able to excavate at the level of the word and sentence. Maybe every sentence is a story of itself, a kind of microcosm of the larger story. That seems to be a huge part of what we are trying to do, we trees, cataloguing the darkness and looking for that slice of light.
Aaron, I like what you say about the freeing sensation of focusing on the words themselves. I'm a poet who loves short fiction but rarely writes it...but this "word level" awareness is definitely the engine of poetry, where "rising action" is not even a thing, for the most part.
So true, the curse of over-explaining ! "The forest catalogs the dark" is that kind of phrase that evokes instant images, emotions, questions...loved this exercise bc so many of the stories here contained such gold. As a "pantser," the writer in me usually runs, screaming, from even the mere suggestion of a plan/plot outline/etc. Somehow this version of constraint drew me in and felt freeing, as George says.
Love "the forest catalogs the dark"!
Trees can't count^^
Thanks!
I've found a variation on this exercise can be particularly helpful with revisions. Simply put, I'll produce a numbered sheet like George has us do, with numbers of 1-500 lined in several vertical columns, and then I'll restart a story that I've already written, from scratch, not looking at it, using none of the written-down language from previous drafts. I've found that, in rewriting stories from scratch like this, I'm able to almost write in a mode of "recollection," which lends authority to the voice (as opposed to the more meandering, set-out-to-discover voice of the first or previous drafts), and that the details that are significant will inevitably rework their way into the beginning story.
Using the numbered lines, and having a "constraint" in the back of my head, I find that I'm able to integrate the earlier and middle parts of stories, including the heart of the story, to those very first paragraphs. It helps me orient all the absolute vital information of the story in the earlier draft, to the beginning, getting me into the story's escalation so much faster. I've also found that the "dilemmas" and situation of the story tends to come to the very forefront, helpful also, and that doing so has helped established "packed" beginnings which tend to serve as strong foundations for the story going onwards.
Wanted to share some success with this method in case anyone's been as lost and frustrated at times in the revision process as I've been :)
I want to come back to this, as I worked with an existing story. Thank you so much! Hope I can find this later
I'm trying to visualize this and can't quite. You have (let's say) a table? That has 500 columns? and you put a sentence in each column? Or do you use the 500 segments to organize the plot--the rising action? (like moving furniture around in your living room)
Also: is anyone else doing Wordle in the morning and then taking your semi-random 5-letter guesses and turning them into some micro fiction?
Not yet. But that’s a great idea.
I LOVE that idea!
@ben I've been doing this for two days running now and am having so much fun! Bonus: I get to say that I've written. :) Here's the one from yesterday (I didn't guess the word so I had seven to play with).
“The tabby,” she typed, “would surely be tasty with a tangy sauce.” Not that she would ever eat a cat, but didn’t they do that somewhere in the world? China perhaps? Or was that dogs? How many countries ate dogs and cats? She would need a tally. How tacky, really. All things being equal, she would rather eat taffy.
Ha! What a great idea. I just found Wordle and that will be a fun follow-up.
Just as a way to get out of my head a bit about certain words and see what those guesses inspire.
I find a set of anagrams and then find a way to include all of them in a word game poem - the missing words in the poem are the set of anagrams.. My latest collection retinal, latrine and reliant. Good creative exercise to come up with a story line that would incorporate all three!