In part one of The Shape of the Story, we talked about a clear way to think about structuring short stories: ABCDE. If you’re seeing this for the first time, go to part one for an introduction and a discussion of A (action).
In this post, we’ll break down B,C,D, and E. (The cover photo has nothing to do with this post. I just like candy, and Mast General Store in Winston Salem, North Carolina has buckets and buckets of it.)
Of course, there are many ways to write a story. This format is one I have used in undergraduate writing workshops, as well as flash fiction workshops. Technically, C might easily come before B. After all, there is no story without conflict. But B-before-C works in flash fiction and short stories because of the brevity of the form. In a flash fiction, your background may be only a sentence or two. In a short story, it may be one paragraph. The problem with front loading a work of fiction with background is that you interrupt the stakes before the story really gets started. That said, putting background before the conflict is perfectly reasonable in the short story or flash fiction form because the interruption is brief. In a novel, I advise against it; because a novel’s background may take the form of an entire chapter or two or three, front loading a novel with background risks lowing the stakes and boring the reader.
I refer you to rule number one: don’t be boring.
BACKGROUND
Once you've presented the inciting action, you may want to step back and give a little (but not too much) background information.
For inciting action, we examined the opening lines of the story “Dog Years” by Melissa Yancy. In the second section of "Dog Years," Jeanette looks at her watch: "It was a gift from Gordy for her forty-sixth birthday."
That's background, giving us a glimpse into the character's pasts. We will later wind back around to more background, but for now, we have this small window.
Background can really come at any point in your story, or you may choose to not include it at all. If there's anything you can leave out of ABCDE, it's B. Your story will survive without it. Still, it's good to provide a little background, even if you end up taking it out later. Thinking about the background to your story will open up your sense of where the characters have been...and therefore where they might go.
The inciting action of Bobbie Ann Mason's "Shiloh" is Norma Jean "working on her pectorals" while her husband, Leroy Moffitt, looks on. Mason then steps back to give us a little background:
Leroy is a truck driver. He injured his leg in a highway accident four months ago, and his physical therapy, which involves weights and a pulley, prompted Norma Jean to try building herself up.
Background tells us how we got where we are, but be careful. Too much background weighs down the story before your reader has had a chance to get into it.
Note that the background doesn't have to appear in the beginning. In fact, placing it too close to the beginning may interrupt the flow of the novel at a crucial moment, when your reader is entering the story. But just as you have to know your characters inside out for them to feel satisfyingly complex, it is important for you to understand your story's background. Then, you'll be able to make informed decisions about what to include and what to leave out, rather than having holes in the narrative simply because you haven't thought everything through.
What background information is essential to the reader's understanding of these characters and the inciting action?
CONFLICT
In "Dog Years," the conflict is that Jeanette and Gordy's son Zach is dying. He will only live a few more years. Here, the conflict is enormous and tragic. However, conflict does not always have to be so huge. It only needs to be huge to the character.
What matters to your characters?
What bothers them?
What sends them into despair?
How do your characters deal with these conflicts?
What does your protagonist's response to conflict reveal about him or her?
These should be the questions at the top of your mind at all times.
DEVELOPMENT
Now that you've established conflict, what do you do with it?
You complicate. You introduce a series of events in which the conflict is played out.
The cruel irony in "Dog Years" is that Jeanette and Zach are both scientists researching genetic disorders. We discover that they had established their careers before they were parents. If they work tirelessly, they may eventually be able to save someone's child, but they know they cannot save their own. As the story develops, we see them racing through their days, leading fundraisers, doing research, losing precious time with their dying son while working toward a greater good.
Development is the series of attempts made by the protagonist to resolve his/her conflict. These attempts should increase with regard to drama and/or suspense, and ideally, each step in the development should tell us a little bit more about the protagonist.
Whatever type of conflict drives your story, the two sides of the conflict should be questionable enough to keep the reader engaged. That is, they need to be paired in a way that does not make the outcome easily predictable. If your reader knows what's going to happen, there's no point in finishing the story.
Take the fairy tale of Cinderella, for example. As the action rises, the power shifts back and forth between Cinderella and the Evil Stepmother. Dramatic tension holds because, up until the moment when the slipper fits, we don't know how things are going to turn out for our protagonist, Cinderella. The story could turn out to be either a comedy or a tragedy.
Proportionally, development usually counts for 70 to 80 percent of the mass of the story.
As complications build in your true story, you must eventually reach the point where something has to give. Your reader has stayed with you for a reason and is expecting a reward. Now you're ready to pull it all together.
END
The end should be proportionate, in length, to the narrative. While a short story may have an ending of a couple of paragraphs, the ending of a novel is likely to stretch out over a few chapters.
There are many balls in the air--far more in a novel than in a story, of course. But even a short story will have a few things going on. You threw a few balls up in the first few paragraphs.
The end is where you bring them down. Which is not to say that you line them all up neatly in a row. While the end should provide a sense of resolution, it should not tie everything up neatly with a bow.
I won't tell you how "Dog Years" ends, because I hope you'll read it. You might also want to read Yancy's excellent essay for Glimmer Train, "The Upside of Failure."
ABCDE is a guideline, not a rule!
There are many ways to write a story. Every work of fiction demands its own structure, its own style, its own way of looking at the world.
There is no magic formula.
That said, ABCDE can give you a good idea of classic story structure. How you apply it to your own work, how you tweak it, tame it, or otherwise adulterate it, is entirely up to you.
You can read Frederick Barthelme's excellent advice for writers, 39 Steps, here. One of my favorite nuggets of advice on structure from Barthelme:
Organize the story’s structure around the simplest available strategy. For example, if there’s no obliging reason that the story be told in flashbacks, don’t use flashbacks. Don’t use flashbacks simply because you get to a certain point and then think of something that requires telling in flashback if it is to be told at that point. Instead, return to the front of the story and add the material in its appropriate spot.
This cut and paste sensibility is one of the things I love about the short story form. Write the story the way it comes to you, in the order it comes to you. You can always go back later and move things around. A novel, too, has moving parts, but restructuring the pieces of a short story comes without quite so much wailing and gnashing of teeth, because you're working with a much smaller volume of material.
If you don’t want to wail and gnash your teeth this week, step away from your novel and write a flash fiction, flash memoir, or a short story.
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