Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular

by L Rust Hills

  Fate is as irreversible in fiction as it is in life. The author may use various methods to make it seem to the reader that the character has choice, has a chance to be other than he will be, has opportunity to do other than he does. The reader submits to these methods, first of all because they delight him, but also because he in turn has a hold over the author: whatever finally happens must beconvincing. That is, in retrospect every turn of the action must seem inevitable.

  "Character is Fate," said Heraclitus in 500 B.C. or thereabouts. But "Our characters are the result of our conduct," added Aristotle, a hundred years or so later. We will find character and action even more inseparably entwined in fiction than they appear to be in life.

  Fixed Action, as against Moving Action

  It is an effective way of achieving characterization in fiction to show how a character regularly behaves, what his actions are in his everyday life. Every action he takes — from how he brushes his teeth in the morning to how he winds his alarm clock as he goes to bed at night — all such actions indicate, or are capable of indicating, something significant about him. And "little" habits (like what's carried in pockets) may be as revealing as the "big" things (like the attitude assumed when talking with the boss). These are "fixed actions." People are doing things all the time, but in the same way every time. The key thing about these actions is that they are repeated — indeed, the fact that they are done over and over is what makes them significant and revealing.

  There is a kind of larger pattern of behavior that people fall into too; not just the day-to-day routine, but a sort of repetitious pattern to their whole lives. Some of these life patterns are very bizarre. Troubled people try all sorts of ways to solve their problems and sometimes adopt a role or manner that ought to be temporary or transitional, but then they get stuck that way. It's like when the needle gets stuck in one groove of the Victrola record: there's still sound and there's still movement; but the sound is senseless and the movement is somehow static, going around in circles.

  People get stuck, for instance, playing the role of either parent or child in situations where all that's wanted is to be simply adult. They make their rounds, daily, yearly, seeking a particular kind of kick or caress that they've been stuck into wanting. As often as not they keep going to those who can't possibly give them what they want. Or if it's what they want, they shouldn't want it. Everyone knows how everyone else ought to live his life. Many patterns of life are almost incredibly self-destructive, but nonetheless familiar. There's the man who constantly takes on more than he can manage so that he can fail, doomed in some psychologically predetermined way to want the failure that he hates. There's the familiar Don Juan figure—now a stereotype in both literature and psychology—doomed to go from girl to girl but never to find the "lasting relationship" he says he seeks. There's the accident-prone person; the hard-luck person. We all notice how much the ex-wives of a much-married man resemble the girl he's marrying now. Some women seem only to choose alcoholics for husbands, over and over. Poor people! With new enthusiasm and firm resolve to break out of their maze, they waste their vitality by inevitably rushing into the same corridor as before, to make the choice that puts them right back where they were.

  Not all patterned behavior is so extreme or so selfdestructive. There are of course tendencies toward repetitious behavior in every life: many apparently happy and profitable lives are built around routine and repetition. We've all recognized patterned, predictable behavior in our acquaintances. It's harder to see it in ourselves, but pattern in action, whether in daily habits or in entire existence, is likely to be the rule rather than the exception.

  But just the opposite is true in fiction. In fiction this kind of "fixed action" is an aspect of characterization rather than plot. Patterned behavior is useful in establishing characterization because it is illustrative action that shows what a character is like. The very fact that these sequences of action happen over and over is especially revealing of character. But it is distinctly different from the action which comprises the plot of a short story. What happens in a short story can happen only once. A short story may show how a character got his needle stuck and got into one of these patterns of circular, "static," fixed movement. Or a story may show the extraordinary and exceptional circumstances by which a character broke out or was jolted out of the groove he was stuck in. In some rare cases a story may show how a character lost his last chance to get out. But in any event, the action in fiction is not this static action, friezed in constant motion like the figures going around and around the urn but getting nowhere. Such patterns of behavior are described at the beginning of a story to create characterization. Or they are suggested at the end of a story as the result of the action, as showing what the character became as a result of what happened to him in the story.

  But the action in fiction is final determining action. Something happens, however slight it may be—and it isn't something that happened over and over before and is going to happen again and again in the future. It is assumed that the events of a story take place only once, that whatever "happens" to the character as a result of the action of the story alters or "moves" him in such a way, again however slight it may be, that he would never experience or do the same thing in exactly the same way. Moving action alters fixed action.

  As the Story Begins and Ends

  Martin lived alone in a two-room apartment on the East Side. It was his habit every morning, after arising and shaving and bathing, and dressing, to plug in his electric coffee percolator, and while it was perking, go downstairs to his mailbox, get his mail and his newspaper, and go back upstairs and read them while he was having breakfast.

  But one morning when he went down to the mailbox...

  The first paragraph describes action Martin takes, but it is "fixed action," taken in the same way each time, a pattern of regular behavior that exemplifies his way of life and to some extent helps establish his situation and his characterization. The second paragraph introduces a potential story. Whatever happens to Martin as a result of his visit to the mailbox that particular morning— whether he encounters the seemingly nice girl in the next apartment just coming in at that hour, or whether he gets a letter saying a lesbian CIA agent has murdered his uncle in Beirut—whatever he does as a result, whatever happens to him as a result, is not an action that could be repeated every day. Nor is it the kind of action that could ever be repeated in exactly the same way. The first paragraph describes action that is understood to be fixed—that is, constant (or repeatable) before the story happens, for it may be that afterward, as a result of the specific action introduced this particular morning at the mailbox, afterward his regular morning habits may be quite different.

  Martin had always had a lot of girls, but whenever one of them seemed to be getting too involved with him he'd back off and find a new one.

  But one night at a party he met Jane...

  It should be understood that these first paragraphs are putting matters oversuccinctly. It might be the author's desire to show at some length the regular pattern of Martin's relations with girls. He could describe in some detail, perhaps even dramatize into scenes, his experiences with Betty and Sue and Genevieve and the nice girl next door and so on as a preamble to the story. It's assumed that whatever happened with Betty and Sue and all the others followed the pattern of action described. But what happens with Jane, if it is a story, will be unique. It will not be the sort of action which could take place over and over, because Martin will have been affected by the action of the story and could not again go through the same experience with Jane in exactly the same way. No matter what he did to her or she to him, it could not happen again.

  Of course, nothing can happen again. And of course what happened with Genevieve really must have had some effect on Martin and couldn't have happened again either. But that's not the story. Every day that passes affects Martin somewhat and he can't even go down to the mailbox exactly the same way twice in a row. But a story assumes a
constant to start with. A story has to begin somewhere, and, as it begins, there is so to speak a split instant of pause when we see Martin as he is "now"—now as the story begins. This is when the author sets him out on the road. And the story tells of what happened to him from that point on to some other point which is the end. At the end there is another split instant of pause when we see what has happened to him as a result of the action of the story. Then he simply vanishes just as he simply appeared at the beginning—according to the author's will.

  The character to whom the events of the story have consequence is a moved character. There may, of course, be several moved characters in a novel, but in the short story there is usually just one character on whom matters focus. He is "moved" in the sense that at the end of the story he is not in exactly the same place he was at the beginning. He has been affected, "changed," is somehow different—no matter in how slight a way. It may be a very slight movement indeed—a change barely suggested by the author, amounting perhaps to little more than just a shift in the author's tone, the altering effect of a symbol or image. But something has happened. The character has moved, emotionally. He must be presented as a dynamic (moving or movable) character, rather than as a static (stationary) character, in order for him to do this.

  Loss of the Last Chance to Change

  It might be well to mention here a kind of story that seems at first to be a character sketch. At the end a character appears unaltered, may seem in fact deeper in his groove than ever. And yet there may be a feeling that something really has in fact happened to him. Often such a story will be based on the semicliché of "loss of last chance to change." Martin, now in late middle-age, yearns to get married and alter his described regular lonely existence. In the past he has met girls, but always been too shy and retiring to press his suit (clichés often lead to ambiguities this way). In the course of the story he meets another girl, better than all the others and more available to him (she doesn't care if his suit is pressed), but again he fails. The reader is to understand as the story ends that Martin has lost his last chance to change and will now stay "forever" as he was. But of course he is not the same at the end of the story as he was at the beginning: he has altered, for that which was there before—the capacity for change—has been removed from his character and circumstances by the action of the story. What's different at the end is that there's no longer any possibility for him to become otherwise than he is; that's what "happened" to him.

  Recognizing the Crucial

  At some point in the creation of his story it is probably necessary, and certainly at least useful, for a writer to have a general overall sense of what it is that happens to his character as a result of the action, how the action changed him, when exactly it happened, and so forth. This awareness of what he's doing can be present before he even begins writing, or when he starts to revise the first draft (probably the best time), or even when he's reading the story over in the magazine that published it — at some point he ought to be aware of what he's doing.

  A good exercise for beginning writers, to make them aware of how incident does alter character, is to describe in some detail an older person they know fairly well. The exercise is to analyze the person's general situation and personality and pattern of life—roughly, in ways that are psychological or sociological rather than "literary" — and then try to figure out, or even just guess, how the older person came to be that way, what happened to him that made him that way. It is necessary to imagine back to an earlier time when the "subject" might have been different, when he was capable of becoming some other way than the way he is now—and then provide an incident that took him past the other possibilities. Take an aunt or uncle, for instance:

  My Uncle Martin is a cynical sort of man, who nevertheless seems to enjoy his life. He is a bachelor who has never married and he has a good time joking with all the widows who live around here. He's nice to them and cheers them up and all, but sometimes he seems to take advantage of them. (Mother says they sometimes pay the bill when he takes them out to dinner.) He often comes to dinner at our house, and I think he is somewhat lonely.

  As to how he came to be this way, my mother once told me about Uncle Martin and some friend of my mother's named Jane. It seems that...

  or:

  My Aunt Genevieve is the only one of my relatives I can't stand. She is always angry and mean and yelling about something. If I were one of her kids I'd move out, and they will soon too. The way she bosses my Uncle Walt around is terrible, and he is a nice guy, although I have to admit he's not good looking or much of a success in business or anything. Dad once told me that Aunt Gen married on the rebound and that disappointment in love had soured her on life. There was apparently only one man in her life, ever, and he treated her very badly and hardly even realized it. She was very beautiful when she was young and she worked in New York a year and was very happy and in love with this young lawyer named Martin. But then one day...

  In trying to track back to the moment when their aunts and uncles first started to become the way they are now, these nieces and nephews seek to isolate a particular episode or sequence of episodes that is crucial, to locate that fork in the road that "ages hence" (in the words of Frost's poem) "has made all the difference." The theory of the exercise is that recognizing a truly crucial episode in life will help the writer to construct a really true crisis in fiction.

  Of course what happens in life isn't just due to taking one big fork in the road instead of another; it is due to a series of small choices and small pressures that cumulatively determine personality and situation, which in turn causes choices and pressures—a constant interaction between behavior and personality and circumstance that eventually becomes your life history. But not every event, even in real life, is equally important.

  A short story writer seeks to isolate those events that are most significant and then focus on them. The sequences that are most important he'll render in detail, dramatizing them in scenes so as to bring them to life. What "happens" to a character may happen over a series of incidents, but there is likely to be one of those incidents that can be regarded as central or crucial: the point at which, or after which, there is no turning back; a climactic moment when all the other possible ways the character could go became significantly less possible.

  Naming the Moment

  There are a great many words and terms that are used to refer to this incident or moment in the story. Four that seem especially useful are "crisis," "critical moment," "climax," and "crucial moment." These words may all seem pretty much alike, but their origins suggest different shadings in their meaning. "Crisis" is from the Greek krisis, meaning "to separate." "Critical" is from the Greek kritikos, meaning "able to judge." "Climax" is from the Greek klimax, meaning "ladder." And "crucial" is from the Latin crux, meaning "cross."

  The word we want for this moment in fiction would partake of all four of these words, their derivations, and more. It would reflect both a general crucial (trying, severe) period and a critical (decisive, of doubtful issue) situation on the one hand, and a particular crucial (final and supreme) and climactic (culminating, ultimate) moment on the other. It would partake of the ladder image, for there is often a series of crises before a final climax which is crucial—the idea of an "ascending action." The ideal term would reflect the idea of separating: separating the past from the future by this incident, and indicating that the moment comprises a sort of watershed from which the river of the character's life runs one way or the other. The ideal word would reflect the idea of judgment, too; for somewhere in the story, in the author's tone, in the character's motivation, in the ironies implicit in the situation—somewhere there would be a sense of the validity or appropriateness of the judgment rendered the character by the action. And the cross image is relevant too—not just in the sense of a life at a crossroads—but in the sense of a supreme trial.

  The ideal term would suggest too that the moment is "dynamic," effecting alteration or movement in
character, in plot, and in the whole story in various ways. Like "central moment" the ideal term would indicate that it is to this point that a story moves and from it that it falls away. Like "dénouement" or "recognition scene" or "moment of revelation," it would suggest that at this point in the story something more of the situation is made apparent or clear, to the reader, perhaps, as well as to the character, and that as a result the character may learn something about himself and others, have a "moment of truth." Like "key moment" the term would suggest mysteries unlocked and discoveries made, and suggest that the scene or episode in question is the keystone that supports the whole arch of the story. Like "moment of reversal" it would suggest a turnabout from the way the story has gone so far to some other way. Like "turning point" the ideal term would suggest the still center of the wheel of action, the point the whole story centers on, turns on.

  "Epiphany" as a Literary Term

  There are many other terms too, besides all these, and perhaps anyway they don't all refer to the same thing. A good deal of the trouble with a lot of the terms in which short stories are discussed is that they come to us originally from drama theory or from the formulas of slick fiction. One term, however, that we have not hitherto mentioned is particularly appropriate to the modern short story and its subtle effects. It is "epiphany," a word that James Joyce used in special, but confusing ways.