Pen to Paper: Story Theory

What is a story? What elements are so vital to a piece of fiction that if one is missing you would not call it a story?

At this teacher resource site, the crucial elements are setting, plot, conflict, character, point of view, and theme. At this one, we’re told the elements are character, setting plot, conflict, and theme. This writing site says the elements are character, plot, setting, theme, and style.

In my researches to try to improve my flash fiction stories, I’ve come across these quotes:

For our purposes a story is a story only if it contains the following four elements: 1) a setting, 2) a character or characters, 3) a conflict and 4) resolution.
– Steve Moss, editor of The World‘s Shortest Stories

The flash fiction story must include characterization, conflict, viewpoint, significance and resolution.  When many writers try to write flash fiction they end up with a sketch.
– Guy Hogan, writer

Well, writing fiction is an art, not a science. Scientists generally agree on what combined with what equals what and on how to measure an experiment to see if it was successful. We humanities majors have opinions.

How many times have we read something only to say, “That wasn’t much of a story,” or even, “That wasn’t a story”? Something was missing. Perhaps there was no overt conflict, or maybe the setting was too vague.

Writer Bruce Holland Rogers has a fascinating — I might even say liberating — take on the elements of story, particularly as they relate to short-short fiction. He respects the rules but argues that by slavishly keeping a checklist we’ll keep getting the same stories we always have. Only by experimentation can we discover new kinds of stories. They won’t look like other stories and may challenge us to accept them as stories.

Rogers renews our poetic license to push the envelope of prescriptivism to see what we can accomplish. I hope you’ll enjoy his article as much as I have.

Fiction: Lemonade Stand

Darrell flopped into his recliner. “Hoo, boy! What a day. Am I glad to be home.”

“Rough day?” Bonnie asked. She came from behind the overstocked in-home bar and handed him a double martini. The bar took up the space where the previous homeowner had had both an organ and a grand piano.

“It’s always the same old stuff. No one has any vision, no new ideas. They stick with the tried and true and safe, and then they wonder why sales are slumping. I don’t wanna talk about it. I’m just happy to be in the bosom of my sweet, normal family. So what happened around here today?” He took a sip of his drink.

Bonnie was quiet for a moment. “The children set up a lemonade stand.”

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Pen to Paper: Omit Needless Words

I recently entered Round Five of NPR’s Three-Minute Fiction contest. The opening and closing lines were given; all I had to do was fill the space between them without exceeding 600 words. I wrote my story and the word count read 772. So I began to edit. (Unfortunately, the contest rules don’t permit me to post the story, so I can’t show you specific examples. I’ll do that with another story in a bit.)

To tighten a story, start with the low-hanging fruit. As King Arthur did Excalibur, so I wielded Rule 17 from Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style: “Omit needless words.” Find three words doing the work of one and replace them: “about that time” becomes “then.” Find words that aren’t serving much purpose: “in the bottom drawer” is better than “in the bottom desk drawer” if you’ve already referred to the desk. Look for unnecessary adjectives: “He put on his blue coat and went out.” Do we need to know the color? If not, toss it out. This is a quick and painless way to reduce wordiness.

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