The Whole Story

When I was on the staff of a writer’s conference, someone said, about a story we were workshopping, “I like it except for the whole thing.”

No one could have pointed to where this “whole thing” was missing or have found it if it were there. And because I sensed something going in a direction that wouldn’t be useful to the writer I redirected the discussion.

Even so, the phrase became a riddle for me. I could sense instinctively when something I wrote transformed from a collection of words into something greater than those words. It was like hearing a concerto after listening to each instrument. But I had no idea what I’d done to make this happen or where the story was. The same held true for stories I read, often when I taught workshops.

One day the answer arrived like the comic discovery of my glasses when I’m wearing them: We can never find the story because the story is always greater than the sum of its parts and doesn’t exist in any one place.

I didn’t have the workshop participant’s story; but I remembered transitions and backstories that interrupted the narrative. I also remembered a character with a dueling scar who wasn’t developed and a scene in a forest that was barely mentioned. The easy way to talk about what didn’t work was to say that there was too little showing and too much telling. But this was a sophisticated writer who knew how to tell and show brilliantly. The problem was not how to show and tell, but when. At times she told us too little for us to be able to imagine the story and at other times she gave us so much information the story was interrupted. The result was a disjointed rhythm. It was as though we were trying to swim and kept getting pulled out of the water.

If there is imaginative detail, readers swim. Without it—or with too much information --they rise about the surface.

When readers keep swimming, they have met the whole story. But writers don’t set out to write a whole story and often meet it after it’s finished.  Even writers of precisely plotted novels reach points where they have to improvise or cut. There’s a sense of serendipity that occurs in writing, as well as the sense that the part of a story is created in a hidden alchemical chamber. (John Barthes has said that stories about how stories get written are like fishing stories because half of them happen below the surface.)

And so I began to wonder if discovering that the story is greater than the sum of its parts could be useful to writers. It had been fun to discover and was sometimes fun share. Fun because it was obvious. But did it lead to any useful tools?

As I began to think of this, an image of the accordion came to mind. It compresses and expands rhythmically, and this pulsating motion creates a whole and satisfying piece of music. Good fiction is also a kind of music. But instead of silence and notes, the basic tools of fiction are words and the spaces between them.

When you expand the accordion you include imagery, sense of place, surprising characters, convincing dialogue, and potent scenes. When you contract the accordion, you omit backstories, long transitions, and information that would spoil the suspense. Contraction also translates to the way white space is used between sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and (particularly in flash fiction), even between words.    

In a longer workshop setting we might have begun to talk about specific ways the writer could revise the story. But her writing was so good it was hard to criticize on a first reading. If, on the other hand, we had been able to think about the proportion of showing and telling, we might have zeroed in on some things right away.

These concepts of expansion and contraction are useful for all lengths and genres of fiction. In the beginning, they are particularly useful for revision. Over time, they begin to be absorbed and some of the moves are automatic. Part of the story still happens in a hidden alchemical chamber. But thinking about proportionality helps, and is of particular use when you know a story needs more. Sometimes the “more” occurs to you right away. But when you can’t come up with something, you know it’s time to assign it to that chamber.

In the next newsletters, we’ll start with flash where you can be a magician and let white space talk!

Some things to try:

1.     Pick a fairy tale. Write the bulk of the story sparely; but clutter it with unnecessary details like backstories, long transitions, and premature information that would spoil the suspense.

2.     Now rewrite the fairy tale without the clutter. Instead, expand it by including, a sense of place, a vivid character, and sensate details. (Taste, touch, visual imagery (color), smell, sound.)

3. Make a list of things that have separate elements and also work together. For example: orchestras, babies learning to crawl, masked balls, the way jackknife divers use their bodies. From one lens each is “one thing”; from another lens it’s the separate element; and from a third lens it’s how they work together— the way an accordion expands and contracts in relation to an entire piece of music.

Reading

Silk by Allessandro Barrico

Pushcart Prize 2023

Note: If you use these ideas in teaching, please mention me. They’re part of an ongoing project. Thanks! Thaisa