The Art And Craft Of Fiction: A Writer's Guide Michael Kardos Fiction Writer’s Bedford St. Martin’s (2012)

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The Art and Craft of Fiction Kardos BEDFORD
ST. MARTIN’S
ISBN 978-1-4576-1390-6
As a beginning fiction writer, could you use some practical ideas on ways
to begin, end, and revise your stories? Support for creating vivid scenes and
characters? This book offers a focused approach designed to help you move
from learning your craft — to practicing art. Brief, friendly, and wonder-
fully readable, The Art and Craft of Fiction gives you all you need — in
under 400 pages.
prepublication praise
“Clear and down-to-earth.” — Wiley Cash, Bethany College
“The perfect text on narrative technique and story writing.”
— Stephen Watkins, University of Mary Washington
“Even advanced writers will find new insights and new angles on old challenges.”
— Laura Valeri, Georgia Southern University
“I wish I’d had something like this book as a beginning writer.”
— Stephanie Vanderslice, University of Central Arkansas
“I love this book!” — Patrick Bizzaro, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
For our e-book and digital options, see the inside back cover.
we want to hear from you. Students: We invite you to send your comments
about this book to artcraftfiction@bedfordstmartins.com.
The Art and
Craft of Fiction
A Writer’s Guide
Michael Kardos
about the author
Michael Kardos (michaelkardos.com) is the author of
the story collection One Last Good Time and the novel
The Three-Day Affair, named by Publishers Weekly as a
best book of fall 2012. His stories have appeared in such
journals as The Southern Review, Crazyhorse, and Prairie
Schooner, and his essays about fiction have been published
in The Writer’s Chronicle and Writer’s Digest. Kardos
received his B.A. from Princeton, his M.F.A. from Ohio
State, and his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri. He currently lives in
Starkville, Mississippi, where he co-directs the creative writing program at
Mississippi State. He also writes for Bedford’s LitBits, where he blogs about
teaching creative writing (bedfordstmartins.com/litbits).
brief contents
art & craft
1 thinking, reading, & writing like a writer
2 the extreme importance of relevant detail
3 starting your story
4 working with the elements of fiction
5 creating scenes: a nuts & bolts approach
6 organizing your story: form & structure
7 writing a compelling story
8 ending your story
9 the power of clarity
10 revising your story
boot camp
11 the mechanics of fiction: a writer’s boot camp
anthology
12 a mini-anthology: 15 stories
The Art and Craft of Fiction is available as a
Bedford e-Book to Go.
Download this PDF-style e-book — for roughly half
the cost of the print text — to your laptop or other
device. It matches our print book page for page and is
optimized for use on your Windows or Mac computer,
iPad, or large-screen Android tablet. You can gain access
to the e-book at this book’s companion site (see below).
The Art and Craft of Fiction comes with a
free & open companion site.
Our companion site adds value, not cost. Here, you can tap
into the e-book and our premier collections of author videos
and multimedia resources. The site features a tutorial,
“Publishing Your Work” created by author Michael Kardos,
and an annotated bibliography of books, magazines, blogs, and sites for
writers looking to further their craft. See bedfordstmartins.com/kardos.
the art and craft
of fiction
a writer’s guide
“ is is the perfect text on narrative technique and story writing for
college fiction writers. Honestly, I can’t see how Kardos might improve it.
e minute you guys publish this book, I’m ordering it — and requiring
it — for my students.”
⁓ S W, University of Mary Washington
“ What I like best, and what is too often missing in other writing texts, is
the practicality of instruction. Kardos wisely focuses on the ‘nuts & bolts’
that can be taught and demonstrated.”
⁓ R S, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania
“ Kardos’s instruction is clear and down- to- earth — and the prose is as
informative and enlightening as it is interesting and fun to read. I look
forward to teaching with this book as soon as it is available.”
⁓ W C, Bethany College
“ Kardos gives students uncomplicated access to the mysterious pro cess of
fiction making.”
⁓ JH, Georgia State University
“ e strength of this book lies in Kardos’s easy, frank pre sen ta tion. is is a
‘how to write’ book that distinguishes itself with a friendly, conversational
tone.”
⁓ AM, Indiana University
“ I was sold on this book as soon as I read the first few paragraphs of the
Mechanics chapter.”
⁓ BW, University of Texas at Dallas
“ Kardos gives a thorough overview of the most important ideas and
techniques on the craft of fiction. Even advanced writers will find
new insights and new angles on old challenges.”
⁓ LV, Georgia Southern University
“ Kardos touches upon the very problems I have seen in the stories my
students write. I love this book!”
⁓ PB, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
“ I like Kardos’s approach of singling out the landmarks of the story arc
and examining their variations. e text is comprehensive, examples
well- chosen, and user- friendliness exemplary. I am impressed.”
⁓ BL, Oregon State University
“ is is the kind of stuff I wish I’d been taught in grad school, and it’s
what I try to teach my undergrads: specific techniques that can enhance
their stories. I wish I’d had something like this book as a beginning
writer.”
⁓ SV, University of Central Arkansas
“ I’ve been looking for a book like this for years. It’s refreshingly different in
or ga ni za tion, with an emphasis on not just the elements of fiction, but on
mechanics, openings and endings, and structure. e brevity and price
are also strengths. I absolutely would adopt this book.”
⁓ LW, East Carolina University
“e content supports the kind of work my students aspire to.”
⁓ M N, Chatham University
bedford/st. martin’s
Boston • New York
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the art and craft
of fiction
a writer’s guide
Michael Kardos
Mississippi State University
bedford/st. martin’s
Boston • New York
FOR BEDFORD/ST. MARTIN’S
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For information, write: Bedford/St. Martin’s,  Arlington Street, Boston, MA 
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ISBN - - - -
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Acknowledgments and copyrights appear at the back of the book on pages –, which
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lections by any means whatsoever without the written permission of the copyright holder.
vii
preface for instructors
Many of us who teach creative writing have struggled at one time or another
with choosing a textbook. e challenge is to find a book that is pedagogically
effective, practical to work into a syllabus, and written in a style that will en-
gage students.
With those considerations in mind, e Art and Craft of Fiction is in-
tended to
▸ provide a practical introduction to writing and revising fiction
▸ fit fluidly into the day- by- day schedule of both the fiction- writing work-
shop and the multigenre workshop
▸ be clear, concise, and engaging
ere’s also a fourth consideration: price. Students, instructors, and university
administrators have quite reasonably become highly attuned to the cost of
textbooks. So everyone involved in the creation of this book has kept afford-
ability in mind.
How the book is structured
You’ll notice right away that this book isn’t or ga nized around the elements of
fiction. As discussed in Chapter , the reason is twofold. First, I wanted this
book to emphasize the interdependence of elements, rather than to imply that
each element stands alone. Second, I believed there had to be a way to or ga-
nize a book about story- making that would more closely align with the actual
pro cess of writing and revising stories.
So instead of the elements- of- fiction approach, these chapters focus on the
major issues that beginning writers face as they’re working on their stories (the
use of relevant detail, the nuts and bolts of scene- writing, the mechanics of fic-
tion) as well as the issues that all fiction writers face (where to start, where to
end, how to be clear, how to make stories compelling, and how to revise). e
chapters are ordered in such a way that they build on one another, but the book
can be taught in any order.
viii | preface for instructors
All told, these chapters comprise an introduction to the writer who wishes
to bridge the gap between his or her desire to tell a story and the ability to do
it effectively. In the pro cess, students will also learn about literature “from the
inside” — an important goal in any creative writing course.
Speaking of mechanics
Chapter , “e Mechanics of Fiction: A Writer’s Boot Camp,” began years
ago, when as a graduate student I created a handout for the first fiction- writing
classes I ever taught. e handout contained exactly one thing: instructions
for punctuating dialogue.
I’ve been expanding and updating the handout ever since.
e purpose of that chapter is to provide, in one place and without going
on too long, some of the most common technical issues that students will face
as fiction writers. e chapter introduction explains exactly why it’s critical for
them to master these technical points: “One of the writer’s most important
jobs is to gain the reader’s trust. Earning that trust is hard work. Losing it is
easy — and one of the easiest ways to lose a reader’s trust is by paying too little
attention to mechanics.”
is review of the mechanics of fiction has proven to be very useful to my
students over the years. ey can refer to it as they write and revise, and I can
expect them to know and use these important tools of the craft.
We placed this chapter in its own section, knowing that different instruc-
tors will want to assign it at different points in the term. (I typically assign it
about two weeks into a term — once it’s already under way, but before stu-
dents begin to hand in their finished drafts.)
The exercises & checklists
e exercises in this book reinforce specific lessons and develop par tic u lar
skills. ere are far too many exercises to assign in a single semester and, we
hope, more than enough to suit any instructor’s needs. Some exercises may be
assigned as homework, others as in- class writing assignments or group activities.
Checklists remind students of key concepts and appear in a con ve nient list —
along with a list of the exercises — on pages xxiv–xxv.
preface for instructors | ix
The mini- anthology
e fifteen stories in the anthology () demonstrate key elements of the fiction-
writing craft, () represent diverse storytelling approaches, and () have been
well received by students. ey are all contemporary. (e oldest story is from
; the most current ones are from .) e decision to include only con-
temporary fiction in the anthology is in no way meant to challenge the impor-
tance to a writer’s apprenticeship of reading older works. Many of the chapters
do, in fact, bring in excerpts from such writers as Poe, Chekhov, Fitzgerald,
Welty, and others. But an equally important part of the fiction writer’s appren-
ticeship is becoming familiar with contemporary writing and developing a
sense of what it looks and feels like.
Most of the examples in this book draw from the anthologized stories.
Many of the stories are discussed in more than one chapter. For that reason,
the stories appear at the end of the book, alphabetized by author, rather than
within the individual chapters. (As a student, I always liked being able to browse
an entire anthology; when I teach a class, I dislike having to page through a
book hunting for a par tic u lar story.)
e stories can be assigned in any order, though for con ve nience here is a
listing that pairs each chapter with the stories that are discussed in them:
CHAPTER 2, THE EXTREME IMPORTANCE OF RELEVANT DETAIL
Jill McCorkle, Magic Words
Percival Everett, e Appropriation of Cultures
John Updike, A & P
Sherman Alexie,is Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona
CHAPTER 3, STARTING YOUR STORY
Kevin Brockmeier, A Fable with Slips of White Paper Spilling from the Pockets
Sherman Alexie,is Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona
Tim O’Brien, On the Rainy River
ZZ Packer, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
Karen Russell, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
Becky Hagenston, Midnight, Licorice, Shadow
x | preface for instructors
CHAPTER 4, WORKING WITH THE ELEMENTS OF FICTION
Jhumpa Lahiri, is Blessed House
Tobias Wol ff, Bullet in the Brain
Tim O’Brien, On the Rainy River
Lorrie Moore, How to Become a Writer
CHAPTER 5, CREATING SCENES: A NUTS & BOLTS APPROACH
Becky Hagenston, Midnight, Licorice, Shadow
Tobias Wol ff, Bullet in the Brain
CHAPTER 6, OR GA NIZ ING YOUR STORY: FORM & STRUCTURE
John Updike, A & P
Tim O’Brien, On the Rainy River
Kevin Brockmeier, A Fable with Slips of White Paper Spilling from the Pockets
Jill McCorkle, Magic Words
Sherman Alexie,is Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona
Barry Hannah, Water Liars
CHAPTER 7, WRITING A COMPELLING STORY
Tim O’Brien, On the Rainy River
Richard Bausch, Tandolfo the Great
George Saunders, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
CHAPTER 8, ENDING YOUR STORY
Becky Hagenston, Midnight, Licorice, Shadow
Jhumpa Lahiri, is Blessed House
Richard Bausch, Tandolfo the Great
Tobias Wol ff, Bullet in the Brain
CHAPTER 9, THE POWER OF CLARITY
ZZ Packer, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
Jill McCorkle, Magic Words
CHAPTER 10, REVISING YOUR STORY
Becky Hagenston, Midnight, Licorice, Shadow
preface for instructors | xi
Acknowledgments
My sincere thanks to the fine folks at Bedford/St. Martin’s who made this book
possible. Ellen ibault is a writer’s dream editor — she was my trusted guide
and unflagging champion from initial concept to finished book, and I’m grate-
ful for her wisdom and generosity. I’d like to thank Joan Feinberg and Denise
Wydra for making this book possible, as well as Karen Henry, Steve Scipi-
one, Lori Roncka, Anna Palchik, Jonathon Nix, Linda McLatchie, Amanda
Legee, Laura Winstead, and Elise Keller.
We are who we are because of our teachers, and I would like to thank mine.
Lee K. Abbott, Michelle Herman, Trudy Lewis, Lee Martin, Erin McGraw, Speer
Morgan, and Marly Swick: ese pages are dripping with your pedagogy.
anks, too, to Becky Hagenston, Richard Lyons, and Catherine Pierce, my
creative writing colleagues at Mississippi State, whose knowledge and friend-
ship I rely on daily.
I would like to thank the following reviewers, who were kind enough to
read parts of this book during its development and help make it stronger:
Abby Bardi, Prince George’s Community College; Nicky Beer, University of
Colorado Denver; Patrick Bizzaro, Indiana University of Pennsylvania; James
Braziel, University of Alabama, Birmingham; Stephanie Carpenter, University
of Michigan– Flint; Wiley Cash, Bethany College; Tony Grooms, Kennesaw
State University; John Holman, Georgia State University; Barry Lawler, Ore-
gon State University; Alyce Miller, Indiana University; Chloe Yelena Miller,
Fairleigh Dickinson University; Keith Lee Morris, Clemson University; Marc
Neison, Chatham University; Anne Panning, State University of New York,
e College at Brockport; R. Clay Reynolds, University of Texas at Dallas;
Susan Jackson Rodgers, Oregon State University; Randall Silvis, Edinboro
University of Pennsylvania; Laura Valeri, Georgia Southern University; Steph-
anie Vanderslice, University of Central Arkansas; Stephen Watkins, University
of Mary Washington; Liza Wieland, East Carolina University; Betty Wiesepape,
University of Texas at Dallas. anks, too, to Christopher Coake, University
of Nevada– Reno, for our many discussions over the years about what might
go into a book such as this, and to Michael Piafsky, Spring Hill College, for his
generous feedback and consistent encouragement.
xii | preface for instructors
anks to my students — all of them, but especially to those who test-
drove the manuscript and contributed the student examples.
Finally, one more hearty thanks to Catherine Pierce — when you’re mar-
ried to your colleague, you get to thank her twice — for her constant support
(I’d have written “tireless support,” but with a newborn we were often tired)
and valuable advice at every stage of this book. I couldn’t have done this with-
out you.
Michael Kardos
Starkville, Mississippi
Resources for The Art and Craft of Fiction
e Art and Craft of Fiction doesn’t end with a print book. Online you’ll find
both free and affordable premium resources to help students get even more
out of this text and your course. To learn about or order any of the following
products, contact your Bedford/St. Martin’s sales representative, e-mail sales
support (sales_support@bfwpub.com), or visit bedfordstmartins.com/kardos
/ cata log.
This book is available as a Bedford e‑Book to Go
is PDF- style e-book matches our print book page
for page and is ready for your tablet, computer, phone,
or e-reader device. You and your students gain access
to the e-book at this book’s companion site (see
below) and can take it with you wherever you go. To
order the e-book for your course, use ISBN - -
- - . At roughly half the cost of the print
book, e Art and Craft of Fiction e‑Book to Go is
con ve nient and affordable.
It also comes with a free & open companion site
Our companion site for e Art and Craft of Fiction adds value, not cost. Here,
students can access our premier collections of author videos and multimedia
resources, including:
preface for instructors | xiii
▸ A tutorial: “Publishing Your Work: How, Where, and When,” by
Michael Kardos. It’s only natural for aspiring writers to wonder who
might read their work. In this tutorial, author Michael Kardos gives
an introduction to literary publishing as well as insight into research-
ing publications, drafting a cover letter, submitting work, and dealing
with rejection. He also explains the roles of agents and editors.
▸ A bibliography: “For Further Reading,” by Michael Kardos. Kardos’s
annotated bibliography of books, magazines, blogs, and Web sites is a
handy resource for fiction writers looking to further their craft.
▸ Anthology author interviews, plus biographies and links. Read the full
texts of interviews that Michael Kardos conducted with several authors
whose stories appear in the anthology. Find out more about the writers’
lives and works through our annotated collection, AuthorLinks.
Packaging options
Take advantage of our collection of author videos — and a course space and
e-portfolio tool available at a discount with student copies of e Art and Craft
of Fiction.
This book comes with video
Bring today’s writers into your classroom. Hear from T. C. Boyle, Ha Jin, Jane
Smiley, and others, on character, voice, plot, and more. Questions, biographies,
and transcripts make each video an assignable module. To package this collec-
tion, free with new student copies of this book, use package ISBN - - -
- . bedfordstmartins.com/videolit/cata log
Our online writing studio: CompClass
CompClass gives students the tools for reading and writing, discussion and re-
sponse, and drafting and feedback that will make them better creative writers.
With CompClass, students never have to ask you what their grade is, where to
find course material, or how they can find a space to draft, revise, and get or ga-
nized. Preloaded with autoscored exercises, a commenting and peer review
space where students can annotate one another’s work, the first- ever peer review
game, and our library of writing resources, CompClass is ready for you to
xiv | preface for instructors
customize and make your own. To order CompClass with the student edition
of e Art and Craft of Fiction, use package ISBN -- - - .
courses .bfwpub .com /yourcompclass
The Bedford e‑Portfolio: simply flexible — and coming in fall 2013
Select. Collect. Reflect. e Bedford e-Portfolio makes it easy for students to
showcase their writing and other coursework — whether for their class, for
their job, or even for their friends. With flexible assessment tools, the Bedford
e-Portfolio lets you map learning outcomes or just invite students to start their
collections. bedfordst martins.com/eportfolio
Get teaching ideas you can use today
Are you looking for free and open professional resources for teaching literature
and writing? How about some help with planning classroom activities?
LitBits: ideas for teaching literature & creative writing
Hosted by a team of instructors, poets, novelists, and scholars, our LitBits blog
offers fresh, regularly updated ideas and assignments for teaching creative writ-
ing, including simple ways to teach with media. Check out Michael Kardos’s
posts on teaching fiction writing at bedfordstmartins.com/litbits.
TeachingCentral: all of our professional resources, in one place
You’ll find landmark reference works, sourcebooks on pedagogical issues,
award- winning collections, and practical advice for the classroom — all free.
bedfordstmartins.com/teachingcentral
Add value to your course
Could your students use some help with style, grammar, and clarity? Have you
ever wanted to put together your own custom anthology? Would you like to
teach with longer works by adding a trade title or two to your course?
Add a handbook & save your students 20%
Package EasyWriter by Andrea Lunsford or A Pocket Style Manual by Diana
Hacker and Nancy Sommers with this text at  percent off. bedfordst martins
.com/easywriter/cata log or bedfordst martins.com/pocket/cata log
preface for instructors | xv
Create your own fiction anthology
e Art and Craft of Fiction includes a brief anthology of fifteen terrific stories,
but are you looking for more? Choose your literature, select a cover, and pub-
lish at bedfordstmartins.com/select.
Save 50% on hundreds of trade titles
Package a trade book for half off with new student copies of e Art and Craft
of Fiction. bedfordstmartins.com/tradeup
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xvii
brief contents
   vii
art & craft
1 thinking, reading, & writing like a writer
2 the extreme importance of relevant detail 
3 starting your story 
4 working with the elements of fiction 
5 creating scenes: a nuts & bolts approach 
6 or ga niz ing your story: form & structure 
7 writing a compelling story 
8 ending your story 
9 the power of clarity 
10 revising your story 
boot camp
11 the mechanics of fiction: a writer’s boot camp 
anthology
12 a mini- anthology:  stories 
 -
this page left intentionally blank
xix
contents
   vii
art & craft
1 thinking, reading, & writing like a writer
Being a Writer Means Paying Attention
Why a Textbook? (And Why is Textbook?)
Rules of the Road
Reading Like a Writer
e Habit of Writing
Finding Ideas for Stories
A Word to the Novelist
What’s the Point of All is? 
2 the extreme importance of relevant detail 
Details and Believability 
Details and Engaging the Reader 
Showing and Telling 
Fiction Writing as Telepathy 
Which Details to Include? 
Nothing More an Feelings 
Details and the Writer’s Sensibility 
xx | contents
3 starting your story 
What Beginnings Do 
Reveal Key Information 
Establish the Story’s Stakes 
Start with a Break from Routine 
Consider Starting In Medias Res 
Whose Perspective Should You Choose? 
Other Information to Convey Sooner Rather an Later 
Ultimately, It’s Your Call 
4 working with the elements of fiction 
Character 
Plot 
Setting 
Point of View (POV) 
Voice 
eme 
5 creating scenes: a nuts & bolts approach 
Dialogue 
Narration 
Description 
Exposition 
Interiority 
Scene- Writing, Final Notes 
contents | xxi
6 or ga niz ing your story: form & structure 
Classic Story Structure and the Freytag Pyramid 
Causality 
Conflict 
Climax 
Conclusion: What Has Changed? 
Form = Meaning 
Other Ways to Tell a Story 
Scene and Summary 
Case Study: Structural Imitation 
7 writing a compelling story 
High Stakes 
Character Desire 
Active Protagonists 
e Atypical Day (A Break from Routine) 
External Conflict 
Internal Conflict / Presenting Characters’ Interior Lives 
Compressed Time Period 
Suspense (As Opposed to Withheld Information) 
Originality 
8 ending your story 
e Challenge 
Strategies for Ending Your Story 
Common Pitfalls 
Getting the Words Right 
Two Final oughts on Endings 
xxii | contents
9 the power of clarity 
Vagueness Versus Ambiguity 
Clear Words 
Clear Sentences 
Clear Stories: A Few Words of Advice 
Clarity: Some Final oughts 
10 revising your story 
e Case for Revision 
What Is “Revision,” Anyway? 
What Is a “First Draft”? 
Twelve Strategies for Revision 
How Do You Know When Your Story Is (Really, Truly) Done? 
boot camp
11 the mechanics of fiction: a writer’s boot camp 
Formatting and Punctuating Dialogue 
Addressing a Person in Dialogue 
Paragraph Breaks in Dialogue 
Double Quotation Marks / Single Quotation Marks 
Quick Quiz: repair this sentence 
Scare Quotes 
Formatting and Punctuating a Character’s oughts 
Comma Splices 
“Who” and “at” 
Exclamation Marks, Question Marks, All Caps 
contents | xxiii
Conjugation of “Lie” and “Lay” 
Quick Quiz: choose the correct sentence 
Sentences at Begin with an “- ing” Word 
Some Final Advice 
e Mechanics of Fiction: practice test 
anthology
12 a mini- anthology: 15 stories 
Sherman Alexie
is Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona 
Richard Bausch
Tandolfo the Great 
Kevin Brockmeier
A Fable with Slips of White Paper Spilling from the Pockets 
Percival Everett
e Appropriation of Cultures 
Becky Hagenston
Midnight, Licorice, Shadow 
Barry Hannah
Water Liars 
Jhumpa Lahiri
is Blessed House 
Jill McCorkle
Magic Words 
xxiv | contents
Lorrie Moore
How to Become a Writer 
Tim O’Brien
On the Rainy River 
ZZ Packer
Drinking Coffee Elsewhere 
Karen Russell
St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves 
George Saunders
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline 
John Updike
A & P 
Tobias Wolff
Bullet in the Brain 
 -
exercises, checklists & tips
exercises
1 Draw on experience 
2 Write a letter & a diary entry 
Recall details 
Show with raw data 
Describe an event 
Choose relevant details 
Use details to convey
emotion 
Use details to tell stories 
3 Inform & convince 
Spark curiosity 
Confess 
Choose the day that’s
different 
Start at the beginning — or
middle 
Try a variety of openers 
contents | xxv
4 Develop your characters 
Connect plot & character 
Experiment with setting 
ink about point of view 
Use narrative distance 
Practice point of view 
Discover voice 
Identify & develop theme 
5 Write a scene — just dialogue 
Continue your scene — add
narration & description 
Continue your scene — add
exposition & interiority 
Create scenes 
6 Plot a story 
Make causal connections 
Create conflict 
Identify how your character
changes 
Evaluate your story’s form 
Practice writing scene &
summary 
Structural imitation 
7 Set the stakes 
Know your character’s desires 
Make your character active 
Break from the everyday 
Build suspense 
Choose the unusual 
8 Experiment with endings 
9 Be clear 
checklists
1 Read like a writer 
Sit down & write 
Beware of clichéd writing 
3 Set the stakes 
Decide on a perspective 
Establish the basics 
6 Focus on climax 
tips
2 Remember all five senses 
4 Make your characters
believable 
Keep point of view consistent 
9 Naming your characters
(a nice trick) 
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the art and craft
of fiction
a writer’s guide
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art & craft
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3
S  , my wife and I went on vacation to Niagara Falls. After
a full day of walking, we decided to ride the gondola up a hillside back to our
hotel’s street. With us in the gondola were a mother and daughter. e girl was
about four years old.
As our car climbed, we all watched the scene below: the falls in the distance,
the Maid of the Mist returning to its dock, cars trolling for parking spaces,
people walking the footpath beside the river. We were fairly high up when the
girl smiled and said, “e people look like broken toothpicks!”
What did the mother do? She corrected her daughter.
“No, honey,” she said, “they look like ants.”
e girl looked down again at the footpath. “e people look like ants,”
she said.
But the people didn’t look like ants. ey looked like broken toothpicks.
being a writer means paying attention
In his  essay “e Art of Fiction,” Henry James famously wrote that to be
a writer one should “try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost.”
But what does that mean, and how does one become such a person?
It means being attuned to the world around you — closely looking (and
smelling and tasting and touching and listening) — rather than being satisfied
with viewing the world through the fuzzy lens of conventional wisdom.
One on whom nothing is lost knows that people seen from high above
don’t always — or ever — look like ants. Sometimes they look like broken tooth-
picks. But we’ll never know if we don’t pay attention.
1thinking, reading,
& writing like a writer
4 | chapter 1 thinking, reading, & writing like a writer
Being a writer, then, means honing your ability to closely observe and
carefully consider everything, taking nothing for granted.
en, of course, you need to find the right words to describe what you see.
why a textbook? (and why this textbook?)
In his book On Writing (), Stephen King has this to say:
If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a
lot and write a lot. ere’s no way around these two things that I’m aware
of, no shortcut.
On the one hand, yes, absolutely. A writer isn’t someone who talks about
writing, or imagines writing, or tells people that he’s a writer. A writer is some-
one who writes — and, as we’ll discuss shortly, someone who reads.
On the other hand, books like King’s presume that study and practice
can go a long way toward instilling good habits that will shorten the fiction
writer’s long apprenticeship.
Now, study and practice are, in a sense, just other words for reading and
writing. But they imply focused study and guided practice, rather than the mere
churning out of pages in the hope that productivity alone will develop the
writer.
is book is intended to provide exactly that focused study and guided
practice. It’s a book that will get you going and, I hope, one that you’ll find
yourself returning to as you continue to develop your craft.
rules of the road
Rather than repeat it over and over in every chapter, I’ll say it once now, up
front: If you try hard enough, you will find exceptions to nearly every rule in this
book.
is is as it should be. Fiction is an art, not a science with inviolable laws.
Other than the chapter devoted to mechanics, this book contains very few rules
anyway. Rather, it contains principles of narrative and aesthetics that many
writers, over time, have come to find effective in telling their stories.
So here’s the deal: Just like in the game of “maul the guy with the ball” that
my friends and I used to play as weird kids, e rules are, there are no rules.
reading like a writer | 5
But here’s the catch: As someone interested in furthering your develop-
ment as an artist, you need to learn the principles of your craft — because they
tend to work.
Flannery O’Connor, one of America’s great fiction writers, put it this way:
It’s always wrong of course to say that you can’t do this or you can’t do
that in fiction. You can do anything you can get away with, but nobody
has ever gotten away with much.
reading like a writer
Not every reader writes, but every writer reads — and usually a lot. Quite simply,
in order to become a good writer, one must become a good reader. at means
reading not only for what a work means but also for how it was done.
Every chapter in this book will discuss fiction in this mode, looking closely
at the technical choices that the authors made in writing their stories.
As you read the anthologized stories (and any other fiction), remember to
be greedy. Ask yourself what, specifically, each work of fiction has to teach you.
What technique can you apply to your next story?
checklist » read like a writer
Some questions to ask of the stories you read include the following:
» Why does this story begin when it does?
» What is different about the day when the story takes place?
» When you close your eyes, what part of the story do you picture most clearly in
your mind? Why might that be?
» What is the main character’s underlying problem, and how does the story bring
this problem into sharper focus?
» Why does the story focus on this main character, as opposed to another charac-
ter in the story? How do you think the author intends readers to feel about him
or her? How do you feel?
» If the story is told from more than one character’s perspective, why do you think
this choice was made?
» Why is this story in the point of view that it is?
6 | chapter 1 thinking, reading, & writing like a writer
» Which parts of the story are dramatized through scenes? Which parts are sum-
marized? Why?
» How would you describe the story’s voice? What does the voice do for the story?
» Is the writing ever less clear than it could be?
» How is the story structured? How else could it be?
» Why does the story end when it does?
» How is this story different from other stories you’ve read?
» What details make this story especially vivid or unexpected?
And once again, perhaps the most important question of all:
» What specific technique(s) would you most readily take from this story and try
in your own story?
In asking this final question, you ensure that you’re learning to identify
and apply par tic u lar techniques that fiction writers use. We aren’t talking
about plagiarism — we’re talking about skills that, once learned, will stay with
you.
Here’s an example. e second half of Tobias Wolff’s story “Bullet in the
Brain” (see p. ) takes place over one split second (actually, a fraction of a
fraction of a second). How does Wolff go about enlarging such a minuscule
time period into several pages of story? How might you go about doing some-
thing like that? And what sort of situation, other than the one that Wolff
describes, might warrant such slowing down of time?
When you read Wolff’s story — and the others in the anthology — like a
writer, you discover choices that you never knew existed. You expand your
notion of what stories can do, and then you get to try to do those things.
the habit of writing
ere’s always a big exam to study for, laundry piling up, a series finale or play-
off game to watch, a friend or family member in need of a favor, or any number
of things that demand your attention.
ere are always reasons not to write — sometimes very good reasons.
And yet a writer finds the time to write anyway. Discipline means doing the
thing you set out to do not when it’s easy, but when it’s hard.
the habit of writing | 7
We all love inspiration because inspiration requires little time or con-
scious effort. Bursts of creative fervor get the heart pumping and make us feel
good about ourselves. A story or novel that we read can inspire and motivate
us, as can a caring, knowledgeable teacher and a classroom of motivated peers.
(A class can also give you deadlines.) A textbook like this one can give you
plenty to think about. But ultimately, only you can make yourself sit down
and write.
Not that writing happens only at the writing desk. By all means, think
about the story you’re writing when you’re in the car, in the grocery aisle, in
bed as you’re falling asleep at night. Keep your story in mind, and your mind
will keep working on your story. Still, there’s no substitute for sitting down and
writing.
checklist » sit down & write
To make the habit of writing a little easier to acquire and maintain, consider the
following:
» If at all possible, designate a par tic u lar time and place to write every day. Doing
so will not only help you schedule your writing time but will also train your brain
to start thinking creatively at that specific place and time.
» I include this remarkably obvious advice only because it can be so hard to fol-
low: Stay offline. Forget Facebook. Forget email. If you have fact- checking or
research to do for your story, save it until the end of your writing session. Other-
wise, keep your workspace Internet- free.
» Turn off the phone. No calls. No texting.
» Designate a certain amount of time each day to devote to your writing, or a
certain number of words per day that you must add to your story before you
quit. (When working on a longer piece of fiction, I prefer trying to meet a words-
per- day quota. When I’m working on a short story, or revising, then I prefer to
work for a set amount of time.)
» Ernest Hemingway used to stop writing every day not when he was out of
ideas, but when he knew exactly what he was going to write next. That way, he
knew that the next day when he sat down to write, he wouldn’t waste any time
before he got going.
8 | chapter 1 thinking, reading, & writing like a writer
» Learn what works for you. Do you work better with music or silence? A window
with a view or sensory deprivation? A crowded public space or your own little
private corner? Do what ever works so that you can develop the habit of writing.
Indeed, what ever you choose might well become what works best for you.
finding ideas for stories
A character? A setting? An image? A situation? An appealing sentence?
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
e end of this chapter contains several prompts to get you going, but
what ever captures your interest is the right way to start thinking about a story.
I’ve never been a journal keeper, but many other writers swear by their
journals, in which they record their thoughts, dreams, and observations — the
raw material that might later find its way into a story.
Even though I don’t keep a journal, once I start writing a story I take plenty
of notes away from the computer. I sketch out character details and make plot
connections. en I return to the computer and write. en I go away from the
computer again. en back. at’s my way of working. It might not be yours.
e chapters in this book contain detailed advice that will help you craft
your stories. For now, consider what intrigues you or puzzles you or keeps you
awake at night. Try to recall something from your day that stopped you cold.
Write it down. at’s a good way to start.
Borrow freely from your own experience, but bear in mind that the aim
of fiction isn’t autobiography. Rather, the purpose of “writing what you know”
is to use the details and emotions that you’re familiar with to tell a new story.
Our bio graphies might well be useful, but only if they spark, rather than
supplant, our imaginations.
From the time you first start thinking about a story to the final revision,
remember to play the “What if” game: “What if this were to happen?” “What
if she were to say this, or do that?” “What if this scene were set here, instead of
there?” What if, what if, what if. Learn to play that game, and you’ll surprise
yourself with the discoveries you make about your own stories. (In Chapter ,
Becky Hagenston describes how she played the “What if” game while writing
her story “Midnight, Licorice, Shadow.”)
a word to the novelist | 9
Be skeptical of looking to tele vi sion, movies, and video games as influences.
Unlike literature, those other media are primarily visual and follow different
narrative principles. ey also often rely on formulaic, contrived plots and char-
acter types — though to be fair, there are good and bad tele vi sion shows, just
as there are good and bad books. e important thing is to learn to recognize,
and assiduously avoid, clichéd writing.
checklist » beware of clichéd writing
Learn to recognize and avoid the following:
» Prepackaged ways of describing the world — people far away who look like
ants, or someone whose heart breaks or who has butterflies in her stomach
» Hackneyed plot conventions — the multiple- personality serial killer; the story
that was all a dream; the story about a novelist with writer’s block (Of course,
the more you read, the more you’ll learn just what is hackneyed and what
isn’t.)
» Simplified or generalized depictions of people (the “strong, silent type,” the
“jock,” the “nerd,” the “prostitute with a heart of gold”) and places (the “unfriendly
big city” or the “idyllic small town”)
e guiding principle is to root your story in what is par tic u lar and origi-
nal, rather than in what is typical or rehashed.
Another way to say this is that if you are someone on whom nothing is
lost, then you know that every person, place, or thing is replete with nuance.
Your job is to find it.
a word to the novelist
is book, like the majority of college courses in fiction writing, is tailored to the
production of short stories rather than novels. e reasons are practical. e
typical semester- long workshop makes it difficult for, say, fifteen people to read
one another’s novel- length manuscripts. It would also be rare for all the students
in a class to have finished drafts of novels ready for discussion, and partially
written novels are often difficult to workshop.
10 | chapter 1 thinking, reading, & writing like a writer
at said — novelists, don’t fret. While our examples draw mainly from
short stories, this is a book about fiction writing. e novelist will benefit from
all of this book’s discussions, and the accompanying website will refer you to
several books tailored specifically to writing novels.
what’s the point of all this?
We read fiction to be entertained and enlightened, to learn about other people
and places without going anywhere, and to see a slice of our own world re-
flected back to us in a way that we find emotionally, intellectually, and artisti-
cally satisfying. Reading fiction is a way to pass the time engaged in a kind of
active imagining, a way of forgetting ourselves for a while.
A well- told story makes us pay attention. It reminds us what it feels like
to be human.
When we write fiction, we also engage in an act of empathy. Writing fic-
tion requires seeing the world vividly through others’ eyes. Even villains don’t
believe they’re villains — rather, everybody is the hero of his or her own story.
at doesn’t necessarily mean finding the good in every character, but it means
finding the stories that our characters, even the minor ones, tell themselves
about themselves in order to get up in the morning and face the day as belea-
guered and misunderstood heroes.
is intense act of empathy means that what you’re doing when you write
stories is important. No matter what your career is or ends up being — writer,
zookeeper, accountant — you’ll only benefit from imagining life from other
people’s perspectives and searching for the most precise language to describe
what you see.
e main characters in the anthologized stories are plenty flawed: a drunken,
gambling- addicted children’s magician; a woman determined to cheat on her
husband; a vicious book critic; an accessory to an amusement- park rampage.
Just as real people are more than the items on their résumés, however, so too
are the people in our stories — provided we try to understand them as thor-
oughly as we try to understand our mothers and fathers and siblings and
romantic partners and children.
what’s the point of all this? | 11
And if we can do that, then we might just be able to remind ourselves — and
others — what it feels like to be human.
So pay attention, and get writing!
exercises: draw on experience
1. Describe a time when you told somebody a lie. Include the details that
explain why you felt the need to tell it.
2. What is the worst job you ever had? Describe in detail what made it so
terrible.
3. Walk outside. What’s the first thing you see that you don’t expect?
Describe it.
4. Draw a map of your childhood neighborhood, labeling every place you can
remember. Where would the most interesting story take place?
5. What would you be convinced to do for $100 million, but not for $1 million?
6. If you were to put three meaningful — but interesting — possessions into
a duffel bag, what would they be? (Avoid photographs, journals, and
jewelry passed down from parents/grandparents.) What if you left this
duffel bag on a train — what sense might someone make of this find?
7. The last time you called in sick from work when you were not actually sick,
why did you do it? Describe what you did instead. If you can’t remember,
make it up.
8. What is the worst present you ever received? Describe it, and explain
what made it awful.
9. If you could apologize to one person from your past, who would it be and
why? Write the imagined meeting between you and that person.
12
I  : You were out late with friends until  a.m. Now
you’re tired, so you decide to skip class on the day a major project is due.
e next time you see your instructor, what will you say?
I couldn’t make it to class because my car broke down.
A statement like that is sure to generate some eye- rolling from your in-
structor, who’s heard it before. is is why you’ll add a few embellishments:
“I was on my way to school when some idiot was texting and drifting into
my lane, and when I swerved I ended up in that ditch with mud from all the
rain. You know the ditch I’m talking about? At the intersection of University
Boulevard and Court Street? Well, that’s where I got stuck until campus
police . . . the tall officer with the red hair — I don’t know his name — he and
I were able to push the car out. But by then, class was almost over, and I was
too muddy to go anywhere anyway.”
details and believability
When we lie, we know instinctively to supply details because the details lend
credibility to our story. e red- headed officer serves as evidence in the case
we’re making.
Jill McCorkle’s short story “Magic Words” (p. ) depicts a character,
Paula Blake, about to embark on an extramarital affair. Knowing that a believ-
able alibi requires the right details, McCorkle’s character has prepared them
ahead of time.
“Where are you going?” Erin asks, mouth sullen and sarcastic as it has
been since her thirteenth birthday two years ago.
2
the extreme importance
of relevant detail
details and engaging the reader | 13
“Out with a friend,” Paula says, forcing herself to make eye contact,
the rest of the story she has practiced for days ready to roll. She’s someone
I work with, someone going through a really hard time, someone brand-
new to the area, knows no one, really needs a friend.
But her daughter never looks up from the glossy magazine spread before
her, engrossed in yet another drama about a teen star lost to drugs and wild
nights. Her husband doesn’t even ask her new friend’s name or where she
moved from, yet the answer is poised and waiting on her tongue. Tonya
Matthews from Phoenix, Arizona.
Liars, cheaters, and con artists — the good ones, anyway — know the value
of a well- chosen detail. So do fiction writers.
exercise: write a letter & a diary entry
Write a one- page story, in the form of a letter, that explains to the recipient
why the writer has quit something important (a job, school, a marriage).
Then write a one- page diary entry that explains the real reason(s) that the
writer actually quit.
details and engaging the reader
On the first day of the semester, I explain to my Introduction to Fiction Writ-
ing class that if they are to learn just one thing about writing this semester, it
should be this — and in large letters, I write on the board:
relevant detail
And I tell them that if they are to learn just two things this semester, the
second thing should be this — and underneath the words “relevant detail,” I
write:
relevant detail
Finally, I tell them that if they are to learn just three things this semester . . .
You get the idea.
I’m being humorous — or trying to be, anyway — but I’m not kidding. e
ability to write with specificity — to write concrete, vivid, sensory details — is
14 | chapter 2 the extreme importance of relevant detail
absolutely fundamental for the fiction writer. A simple reason is that writing is
communication, and the more precise you are, the more clearly you commu-
nicate.
Example: I say “animal.” You think “giraffe.” I mean “dog.” e communi-
cation has failed.
While “dog” is more specific than “animal,” “golden retriever” is more spe-
cific than “dog.” More specific still would be “golden retriever with a dry nose
and a meek bark like it was asking for a raise it knew it didn’t deserve.” One
could conceivably take things too far, though newer fiction writers usually
provide too little detail, rather than too much.
Details do more, however, than provide clarity. ey also engage the reader.
In their classic guide e Elements of Style, William Strunk and E. B. White
emphasize the importance of using concrete details:
If those who have studied the art of writing are in accord on any one
point, it is this: the surest way to arouse and hold the reader’s attention is
by being specific, definite, and concrete. e greatest writers — Homer,
Dante, Shakespeare — are effective largely because they deal in particu-
lars and report the details that matter.
Some beginning writers intentionally avoid specificity, believing that the
use of concrete details would prevent their stories from having broad appeal.
However, writing that avoids specificity tends to be vague or coy, and appealing
to no one.
Only writing that dwells in the realm of the specific will “arouse and hold
the reader’s attention.” Moby Dick might be a timeless novel with universal
themes, but first it’s a book about a par tic u lar ship captain obsessed with hunt-
ing down a par tic u lar sperm whale.
exercises: recall details
1. Write down the name of a favorite novel or story. After the name, write
down as many details from it as you can remember. (In “A & P,” these details
might include Queenie’s dirty pink bathing suit or the can of Kingfish Fancy
Herring Snacks that she is buying.) Why are these the details you recall?
2. Repeat this exercise with four more works.
showing and telling | 15
showing and telling
Perhaps the most common advice given to creative writers is to “show” their
story rather than “tell” it. is advice, while basically sound, can also be mis-
leading. Doesn’t all writing involve “telling”? Unless we include illustrations,
we never actually show anything.
So what does it mean to “show,” and why are writers so often urged to do
it? ink of “showing” as writing the kinds of sentences that paint a picture
for readers, causing the story to occur before their eyes. It’s the kind of writing
that results when you use concrete, relevant details.
Consider this sentence:
Curt broke his ankle playing baseball.
Although informative and concise, the sentence doesn’t come alive in our
minds. It summarizes, or “tells,” a fact. Compare it with a sentence that describes
in sensory detail exactly what happened:
Curt slid into second base underneath the shortstop’s glove and came to a
sudden, ankle- popping halt when his cleat hit the bag.
Unlike the first sentence, the second one paints a picture; it “shows” Curt
breaking his ankle.
Which is the better sentence? It all depends. Despite the oft- given advice to
“show, don’t tell,” the truth is that stories require both showing and telling — just
examine any story in the anthology. An important skill to develop is learning
when to show and when to tell, and how each type of writing contributes to
the story. For instance, Percival Everett’s story “e Appropriation of Cultures”
(see p. ) begins with a sentence that “tells”:
Daniel Barkley had money left to him by his mother.
is sentence quickly provides the reader with necessary information, so
there really is no reason to “show” it:
e estate attorney, seated at the end of the conference table, opened up
his leather briefcase and handed Daniel Barkley a notarized copy of his
mother’s will . . .
16 | chapter 2 the extreme importance of relevant detail
Everett’s story isn’t about the pro cess of being willed money. All the reader
needs to know is that Daniel is living off his mother’s inheritance — hence, the
brief “telling” sentence of exposition.
Beginning fiction writers, however, tend to tell too much and show too
little. erefore, they need to develop and practice the techniques that writers
use to show their stories unfolding. (at is why Chapter  is devoted entirely
to scene- writing.)
Everett’s story contains a scene in which Daniel, an African American
man, goes to a white family’s house to see about buying their truck. To write
“Everyone watched Daniel warily as he arrived” would be to summarize — to
“tell” rather than “show.” While the statement might be accurate, the lack of
details prevents us from seeing Daniel’s arrival clearly in our minds.
Here is what Everett actually writes:
A woman in a house coat across the street watched from her porch, safe
inside the chain- link fence around her yard. From down the street a man
and a teenager, who were covered with grease and apparently engaged in
work on a torn- apart Dodge Charger, mindlessly wiped their hands and
studied him.
Rather than write a sentence that summarizes Daniel’s arrival, Everett provides
the raw sensory data that invites the reader to imagine the scene and arrive at
his or her own conclusion.
In fact, a common mistake is to provide conclusions or explanations rather
than the raw data itself. Compare these sentences that “tell” (which I’ve writ-
ten) with the raw data that “shows,” found in the actual works.
CONCLUSION RAW DATA
Gatsby, a wealthy man,
threw extravagant
parties each weekend.
Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons
arrived from a fruiterer in New York — every
Monday these same oranges and lemons left his
back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. ere was
a machine in the kitchen which could extract the
juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a
little button was pressed two hundred times by
a butler’s thumb.
⁓ F. SF, The Great Gatsby
showing and telling | 17
CONCLUSION RAW DATA
Ever since the accident,
Leroy and Norma Jean
have been drifting
apart — or rather Norma
Jean has been drifting
away from Leroy,
spending less and less
time at home.
Before his accident, when Leroy came home he
used to stay in the
house with Norma Jean,
watching TV in bed and playing cards. She would
cook fried chicken, picnic ham, chocolate pie
—
all
his favorites. Now he is home alone much of the
time. In the mornings, Norma Jean disappears,
leaving a cooling place in the bed. She eats a cereal
called Body Buddies, and she leaves the bowl on the
table with the soggy tan balls floating in a milk
puddle.
⁓ B A M, “Shiloh”
e grandmother put a
high premium on how
people appeared; she
therefore made sure
always to dress with
class, even on a car trip.
e children’s mother still had on slacks and still
had her hair tied up in a green kerchief, but the
grandmother had on a navy blue dress with a small
white dot in the print. Her collars and cuffs
were
white organdy trimmed with lace and at her
neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth
violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident,
anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know
at once that she was a lady.
⁓ F O’C, “A Good Man
Is Hard to Find”
In that last example, my “conclusion” almost reads like detail. e first half
of the sentence makes a claim, and the second half of the sentence gives an
example to support the claim. Still, the sentence is unnecessarily abstract, espe-
cially the phrase “with class.” We can’t visualize “class” (or what the grandmother
considers “class”), but we can visualize a navy blue dress with a small white dot
in the print and white organdy collars and cuffs trimmed with lace.
Don’t take my word for it, though. Here are Flannery O’Connor’s own
words on the matter:
e first and most obvious characteristic of fiction is that it deals with re-
ality through what can be seen, heard, smelt, tasted, and touched.
18 | chapter 2 the extreme importance of relevant detail
exercises: show with raw data
Now it’s your turn. For each conclusion provided, write an alternative
sentence (or paragraph) in which you provide the raw data that makes the
conclusion unnecessary.
1. My sister was always the favorite child.
2. Edna’s parents wasted their considerable fortune on frivolities that, in
time, they would come to regret.
3. The train terminal looked as if it hadn’t been open for years.
4. Jack threw the worst New Year’s Eve parties.
fiction writing as telepathy
Open any of the anthologized stories to just about any page, and you’ll find
examples of details that produce images in the reader’s mind. In Writing Fic‑
tion, Stephen King refers to this image transfer, beginning with the writer and
ending with the reader, as a form of telepathy.
Look, here’s a table covered with a red cloth. On it is a cage the size of a
small fish aquarium. In the cage is a white rabbit with a pink nose and pink-
rimmed eyes. In its front paws is a carrot- stub upon which it is contentedly
munching. On its back, clearly marked in blue ink, is the numeral .
Do we see the same thing? We’d have to get together and compare
notes to make absolutely sure, but I think we do.
In his  novel Atonement, Ian McEwan’s precocious young character
Briony marvels at the effect of fiction in these same terms:
A story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page,
she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to the reader’s.
It was a magical pro cess, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder
at it.
Well, that’s exactly what we’re doing now. We’re stopping to wonder at it.
which details to include? | 19
exercise: describe an event
In a paragraph, describe an event at which many people are present, such as
a parade or a sporting event. Appeal to at least three senses, and ideally to
all five.
which details to include?
If you were to walk outside for ten seconds, whether you were in a bustling
city, a suburban street, or a pasture, your brain would absorb enough sensory
detail for a thousand- page book. Every day contains an infinite amount of raw
data. Although writing a story feels like an act of creation, in a sense you’re
always omitting far more than you could ever hope to include in the fictional
world.
is is where the “relevant” part of “relevant detail” comes into play. What
do you include?
tip: remember all five senses
Most of us tend to describe the world visually. But a story with only visual
details will be a flatter fictional world than one that also includes smells,
tastes, sounds, and tactile sensations. Here is Paula Blake observing her
house hold’s typical disarray in Jill McCorkle’s story “Magic Words” on
page 262:
And now she looks around to see the table filled with cartons of Chinese
food from last night and cereal boxes from the morning, and the tele vi sion
blares from the other room. Her son is anxious to get to his sleepover;
her daughter has painted her toenails, and the fumes of the purple enamel
fill the air. Her husband is studying a map showing the progression of
killer bees up the coast. He speaks of them like hated relatives who are
determined to drop in, whether you want them to or not. Their arrival is
as inevitable as all the other predicted disasters that will wreak havoc on
human life.
20 | chapter 2 the extreme importance of relevant detail
Report what is newsworthy (the strange or unexpected)
Were I to describe a dog in a story, I wouldn’t mention that it had four legs
because four legs on a dog isn’t news. What if it had three legs, however, or
whipped up a decent soufflé? at I’d mention.
In Stephen King’s example of telepathy, the numeral  marked in blue ink
on the rabbit’s back is strange and therefore newsworthy.
Sometimes newsworthiness is all about context. In John Updike’s story
“A & P” (p. ), after some extremely detailed descriptions of three teenage
girls in their bathing suits, Sammy explains what makes the girls’ clothing
newsworthy and therefore worth describing:
You know, it’s one thing to have a girl in a bathing suit down on the beach,
where what with the glare nobody can look at each other much anyway,
and another thing in the cool of the A & P, under the fluorescent lights,
against all those stacked packages, with her feet paddling along naked over
our checkerboard green- and- cream rubber- tile floor.
Report details that represent other details
Well- chosen details also tend to represent other unstated details. Karen Rus-
sell’s story “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” (p. ) chronicles a
pack of girls, the children of werewolves, who are attending a boarding school
at their parents’ insistence in order to acquire the social skills they’ll need to
live among humans. Jeanette is progressing faster than the others, causing the
pack to turn on her. Here is a detail that Claudette, the story’s narrator, pro-
vides so that we’ll understand just how much Jeanette has changed:
She was the most successful of us, the one furthest removed from her origins.
Her real name was GWARR! but she wouldn’t respond to this anymore.
Jeanette spiffed her penny loafers until her very shoes seemed to gloat.
Once we have that detail about the penny loafers, we really don’t need much
more. We understand exactly why the other girls have come to hate and fear her.
nothing more than feelings | 21
exercises: choose relevant details
1. Go outside and, for fifteen minutes, quietly observe your surroundings,
writing down everything you observe. Then circle the descriptions that
(a) are unusual or surprising and (b) feel representative of other details.
2. Write a paragraph that captures the feel of the place, emphasizing and
expanding on the details you circled.
nothing more than feelings
Isn’t that one of the main reasons why we read fiction — to feel something? e
conveyance of feelings from writer to reader just might be the highest order of
fiction. And this, too, comes down to the details.
Raymond Carver, one of the most influential short- story writers of the
twentieth century, explains:
It’s possible, in a poem or short story, to write about commonplace things
and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those
things — a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman’s earring — with
im mense, even startling power.
ere’s a moment toward the end of e Great Gatsby that perfectly illus-
trates the emotional power of the well- chosen detail. e scene takes place after
a car accident, when Tom and Daisy Buchanan are back at home and Gatsby
is loitering outside, keeping vigil, convinced that he’s protecting Daisy from a
potentially violent husband. He still believes — or at least is holding out hope —
that Daisy is going to leave Tom for him. Yet the scene, described by narrator
Nick Carraway, gives a different impression:
I walked back along the border of the lawn, traversed the gravel softly, and
tiptoed up the veranda steps. e drawing- room curtains were open, and
I saw that the room was empty. Crossing the porch where we had dined that
June night three months before, I came to a small rectangle of light which
I guessed was the pantry window. e blind was drawn, but I found a rift
at the sill.
Daisy and Tom were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table,
with a plate of cold fried chicken between them, and two bottles of ale.
22 | chapter 2 the extreme importance of relevant detail
He was talking intently across the table at her, and in his earnestness his
hand had fallen upon and covered her own. Once in a while she looked up
at him and nodded in agreement.
Witnessing this scene, we know better than Gatsby that this is no breakup,
but rather a reconciliation. e moment is quiet, domestic, even cozy. Tom and
Daisy have acted wildly irresponsibly, their behavior made possible because
they are superrich, yet their reconciliation is understated and ordinary — at
their kitchen table, picking at leftovers. In Nick’s words:
ere was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture, and
anybody would have said that they were conspiring together.
We know that Daisy and Tom will stay together because of those two bot-
tles of ale and that plate of cold fried chicken. We contrast this simple snack
to the orgiastic events that Gatsby has thrown all summer in an attempt to
impress Daisy — and we can’t help feeling sorry for Gatsby, whose efforts were
all in vain and who is now maintaining his pointless vigil outside, still hold-
ing on to that last bit of hope, not yet allowing himself to see that his dream
is over.
Two bottles of ale. A plate of cold fried chicken. And, if there was any
doubt left, Tom’s hand casually covering Daisy’s as they talk. ose three details
convey — show — everything a reader needs to know, and evoke everything a
reader needs to feel.
exercises: use details to convey emotion
1. a. Write a paragraph depicting a character leaving a place he loves. Don’t
mention his feelings toward the place or the other people there.
Rather, let the details convey his emotions.
b. Now write a paragraph depicting a character leaving a place that he
can’t stand. Again, don’t mention his feelings toward the place or
the other people there. Rather, let the details convey his emotions.
2. Write a brief scene in which two characters observe something together
(for example, a couple eating in a restaurant, a police officer who has
details and the writer’s sensibility | 23
pulled over a motorist). Narrate the scene from the perspective of the
character who draws the correct conclusion from the observed details.
Then have the other character, who has observed the same details,
announce his or her incorrect conclusion to the narrator.
details and the writer’s sensibility
Writing details requires thinking in details — having trust, or faith, in the phys-
ical world’s potential to carry meaning and emotion. So by all means, jump
right into the details when writing a first draft. You’ll need them, because the
details will lead you to character development, to plot, to setting . . . to just
about everything.
In Sherman Alexie’s story “is Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Ari-
zona” (p. ), the ashes of Victor’s father are placed into two receptacles:
Victor’s father, his ashes, fit in one wooden box with enough left over to
fill a cardboard box.
is particularly unceremonious depiction is made more overtly comic by the
line that follows:
“He always was a big man,” omas said.
Despite the comedy, the detail of the two boxes of ashes later becomes
important: When the young men arrive back home at the reservation, Victor
tells omas to keep one of the boxes “that contained half of his father.” Vic-
tor’s offer (and omas’s ac cep tance) cements their ties both to Victor’s father
and to each other and repairs, symbolically, some of the tribal ties that have been
severed in their community.
is key moment in the story is made possible by the seemingly minor
detail of there being two boxes of ashes.
Not only do details help you to express your story, but they also help to
define what it is you’re trying to express. So as you write, be as specific as you
can, and remember that details aren’t an adornment to your story. ey are
your stor y.
24 | chapter 2 the extreme importance of relevant detail
exercises: use details to tell stories
1. Describe in detail a character performing an activity that you know about
but that most people don’t (for example, throwing out a runner at home
plate, playing “Stars and Stripes Forever” on the piccolo, repairing a lawn
mower).
2. Make a list of thirty facts about yourself: physical attributes, hobbies and
interests, specific fears, family history, or anything else. Stay away from
any abstract words. (No writing “I’m honest,” for instance, or “I’m a good
friend.”) When you are done, circle the five facts that, if you were a
character in a story, would be most useful in giving the reader a clear
sense of that character.
3. Find four unusual objects in your home. Make all four objects “relevant
details” in the same story.
4. Describe an ordinary object (a telephone, a lamp) from the perspective of
a character who has never come across it before.
5. Describe a familiar place from the perspective of a character who has
just arrived there for the first time.
6. Find a photograph of someone in your family and write a detailed
physical description, based on the photo, that evokes a sense of the
person you’re describing.
25
T’   Head & Shoulders shampoo ad campaign with the tagline
“You never get a second chance to make a first impression.”
And what’s true for shampoo is generally true for fiction.
e beginning of a story presents a world of possibilities for a writer, and
each beginning will make a different first impression. e first sentence matters
because a story has exactly one of them. e same is true about a first paragraph
and a first scene.
what beginnings do
Beyond making a favorable first impression on the reader, the beginning of a
story typically needs to complete certain narrative tasks. Before long, a story
must
▸ Introduce the characters and the relationships among them
▸ Present the underlying situation and the beginning of conflict
▸ Establish the tone, voice, and point of view (its storytelling approach)
▸ Establish the setting
▸ Give us a reason to keep reading
is might sound like a lot — and it is — but it needn’t be overly compli-
cated. Consider fairy tales. e Brothers Grimm began many of their fairy
tales by conveying just this sort of information:
Once upon a time, in a large forest, close to a village, stood the cottage where
the Teddy Bear family lived. ey were not really proper Teddy Bears, for
3
starting your story
26 | chapter 3 starting your story
Father Bear was very big, Mother Bear was middling in size, and only
Baby Bear could be described as a Teddy Bear.
Right away, we’re told the story’s setting — its time (the past, when magical
things happened) and place (the cottage, the village, the forest). We’re intro-
duced to the Bear family, their relationships, and their key characteristics. We’re
also introduced to the storytelling approach — it is being told to us by an all-
knowing third- person narrator, in a fairly formal storytelling voice.
Here’s another one:
Next to a great forest there lived a poor woodcutter with his wife and his
two children. e boy’s name was Hansel and the girl’s name was Gretel.
He had but little to eat, and once, when a great famine came to the land,
he could no longer provide even their daily bread.
As with “Goldilocks and the ree Bears,” the beginning of “Hansel and
Gretel” lays out its setting as well as its principal characters and their relation-
ships to one another. It also immediately reveals the family’s predicament: A
famine has made this already poor family desperate for food.
Notice the similarities between the storytelling approach taken by the
Brothers Grimm and Kevin Brockmeier in his  story “A Fable with Slips of
White Paper Spilling from the Pockets” (p. ):
Once there was a man who happened to buy God’s overcoat. He was rum-
maging through a thrift store when he found it hanging on a rack by the
fire exit, nestled between a birch- colored fisherman’s sweater and a cotton
blazer with a suede patch on one of the elbows.
Here, too, we’re introduced immediately to the main character (the man), the
story’s initial setting (a thrift store), and its time (“once” — like the Grimm fairy
tale, some unspecified time in the past). e narrative voice is somewhat less
formal than in the Grimm tale. e phrase “who happened to buy” sounds
casual, and even a little comic in the way it downplays what a reader would
assume is an extraordinary event. We also get a sense of the story’s underlying
situation and its conflict. A man has bought God’s overcoat. Surely this fact
must lead to something.
reveal key information (spill the beans) | 27
Brockmeier’s beginning illustrates one other thing that story openings do:
▸ e beginning of a story gives the reader a sense of what kind of story
the story is going to be. It lays out the rules of the game.
When I was growing up, most board games printed their rules on the
inside of the box. Nowadays, board games usually come with instruction man-
uals. In any event, when you buy a new game, first you learn the rules and then
you play the game.
Stories don’t work that way. Stories — all stories — have “rules,” but the
rules get revealed as the game is being played. As we read the beginning of a
story, we come to understand the story’s rules — what sort of things are per-
missible in the story’s world, and what aren’t. We also start to determine such
things as whether the story will be sincere, or ironic, or comic, or somber, and
whether the prose will be lyrical or workmanlike.
is laying out of a story’s own rules is sometimes referred to as a
“contract” — that this, the story establishes a contract with its readers. A highly
realistic story in which, on page , the mother ship lands and beams all the
characters aboard would be said to be violating the story’s contract.
From Brockmeier’s first two sentences, we anticipate a story that in terms
of content and tone will resemble a fable or fairy tale (“Once there was a
man . . .”), but one that also is rooted in the real, modern- day world of thrift
stores with fire exits. A story like Brockmeier’s includes highly realistic char-
acters and also fantastical elements, such as God’s overcoat, without violating
the contract or breaking the rules, whichever phrase you prefer.
reveal key information (spill the beans)
e opening sentence of “A Fable with Slips of White Paper Spilling from
the Pockets” is a wonderful example of the following maxim: It’s a good idea
to reveal key information, especially hard‑ to‑ swallow information, as soon as
possible.
By telling us immediately that this is “God’s overcoat,” we, the readers,
aren’t allowed to argue the point. We can’t say, “No, it isn’t.” Because it is. We’re
told it is and must accept that fact as part of the story’s premise.
28 | chapter 3 starting your story
Perhaps the best example of front- loading hard- to- swallow information is
the first sentence of Franz Kafka’s  novella e Metamorphosis:
Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from unsettled dreams to find that he
had turned into a giant cockroach.
When we begin reading Kafka’s novella, we don’t think: “No, Gregor didn’t.
People can’t turn into cockroaches.” Of course we don’t. Rather, we accept the
situation as presented and keep reading. Why? Because we’re told about it up
front. e author is making a first impression that says, “My story features a
man- cockroach. Deal with it.”
So one answer to the question “How do I begin?” is to begin with what ever
information the reader needs most in order to appreciate — or simply believe —
your stor y.
e corresponding advice is that you shouldn’t withhold vital information
as a secret until the end of your story. Sometimes new writers like to “surprise”
the reader at the end with shocking facts. e two characters are really a single
character with multiple personalities! e whole story was actually just a
dream! ese sort of “surprises” (I put the word in quotation marks because
they rarely surprise) will disappoint all but the most naïve reader.
Rather than mislead or trick the reader, give us the important information
up front. Make us care, and go from there.
exercise: inform & convince
Go online and find a weird news story, something that is factually true but
doesn’t seem plausible. (You can even Google “weird news.”) Then write the
first paragraph of a short story, based on the news piece, that readers must
believe.
Even stories that do not feature heavenly outerwear or giant, sentient insects
often front- load information that the reader needs in order to appreciate and
care about what happens. Here is how Sherman Alexie begins his story “is Is
What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” (p. ):
Just after Victor lost his job at the BIA, he also found out that his father
had died of a heart attack in Phoenix, Arizona. Victor hadn’t seen his father
reveal key information (spill the beans) | 29
in a few years, only talked to him on the telephone once or twice, but there
still was a ge ne tic pain, which was soon to be pain as real and immediate
as a broken bone.
Victor didn’t have any money. Who does have money on a reservation,
except the cigarette and fireworks salespeople? His father had a savings
account waiting to be claimed, but Victor needed to find a way to get
to Phoenix. Victor’s mother was just as poor as he was, and the rest of his
family didn’t have any use at all for him. So Victor called the Tribal Council.
Notice how this opening quickly establishes its characters, setting, and
tone. But beyond that, it gives us the story’s underlying situation (Victor must
deal with the practicalities of the death of his father, with whom he didn’t
have a close relationship, a problem compounded by his lack of funds to get to
Phoenix). Finally, this paragraph ends with the promise of immediate conflict,
specifically an uncomfortable meeting between Victor and the Tribal Coun-
cil. Surely the council won’t simply agree to give Victor all the money he needs.
at would be too easy.
Notice, too, that in revealing certain information, Alexie arouses our cu-
riosity. We know that Victor hasn’t seen his father in a few years, but we know
nothing of the nature of their rift. We know that Victor’s family “didn’t have
any use at all for him,” but we don’t know why that is. By providing us with
information, Alexie causes us to ask questions about the story that we hope
will be answered before long.
e opening to Richard Bausch’s story “e Man Who Knew Belle Starr”
looks, at first, like a relatively straightforward paragraph of exposition in
which basic information about McRae’s situation is revealed. Yet the story
withholds just enough information to create little mysteries that make us want
to keep reading:
On his way west McRae picked up a hitcher,[1] a young woman carry ing
a paper bag[2] and a leather purse, wearing jeans and a shawl — which she
didn’t take off, though it was more than ninety degrees out and McRae
had no air- conditioning.[3] He was driving an old Dodge Charger with a
bad exhaust system and one long crack in the wraparound windshield. He
pulled over for her, and she got right in, put the leather purse on the seat
between them, and settled herself with a paper bag on her lap between her
hands.[4] He had just crossed into Texas from Oklahoma. is was the
third day of the trip.
30 | chapter 3 starting your story
is opening raises a number of questions:
[] Why is McRae heading west? And why does he pick up the hitch-
hiker?
[] What is in the bag?
[] Why won’t she take off her shawl?
[] Seriously, what’s in the paper bag? It’s been mentioned twice already.
She sure is protective of it. Must be important.
exercise: spark curiosity
Write the opening paragraph or two of a story. Reveal necessary information
about your character and his or her situation — but in doing so, see if you
can plant little mysteries the way that Bausch does in “The Man Who
Knew Belle Starr.” If you don’t already have a story in mind, here’s a
prompt: A character arrives at work convinced that he or she is about
to be fired.
establish the story’s stakes
Readers need a reason to keep reading. ey need to see fairly quickly why what
they’re reading matters. A story’s stakes are what make a story matter to the
story’s characters and to the reader.
“is Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” immediately provides
reasons to care about Victor and to understand why he wants what he wants.
e story matters to us because it matters to Victor, and because we sense that
Victor’s quest will not be an easy one. I’m not just referring to his lack of money.
I mean that already, in the story’s first paragraphs, we see Victor’s ambivalence.
On the one hand, he and his father weren’t close. at should make the man’s
death a little easier on Victor. On the other hand, Victor feels “a ge ne tic pain,
which was soon to be pain as real and immediate as a broken bone.” Before the
end of the story, Victor will have to deal with his conflicting feelings about his
father — and that internal voyage is what pulls us into the story at least as much
as the prospect of his trip to Phoenix.
establish the story’s stakes | 31
checklist » set the stakes
» What does your main character have to gain or lose in your story? What is at
stake for him or her?
» How can you introduce the stakes early in your story?
Tim O’Brien takes a different approach toward presenting the stakes at the
beginning of his story “On the Rainy River” (p. ) — a direct appeal to the
reader:
is is one story I’ve never told before.
Quite simply, this sentence appeals to our desire to know somebody else’s in-
timate secrets. After reading that sentence, we naturally want to know () the
story that’s been kept secret and () why it’s been kept secret.
But the paragraph doesn’t end there. e stakes get raised:
Not to anyone. Not to my parents, not to my brother or sister, not even to
my wife. To go into it, I’ve always thought, would only cause embarrass-
ment for all of us, a sudden need to be elsewhere, which is the natural
response to a confession.
So the narrator isn’t simply revealing a long- held secret — he’s making a confes-
sion. Confessions, as we know, tend to be juicy and worth sticking around for.
e paragraph continues:
Even now, I’ll admit, the story makes me squirm. For more than twenty
years I’ve had to live with it, feeling the shame, trying to push it away, and
so by this act of remembrance, by putting the facts down on paper, I’m
hoping to relieve at least some of the pressure on my dreams.
Considering that he’s kept the story from his wife and family for twenty
years, we can assume that this is no run- of- the- mill, I-forgot- to- take- out- the-
trash confession. is narrator seems thoughtful and honest, and he has a secret
that has been weighing heavily on him for twenty years. Now, finally, he’s going
to come clean and reveal his secret in the hopes of unburdening himself.
at’s something we’ll stick around to hear.
32 | chapter 3 starting your story
exercise: confess
Your main character has something to confess. What is it? Write out the
confession in his or her voice. Even if your story doesn’t end up including
the confession, you will have learned something important — and almost
certainly useful — about your character’s inner life.
start with a break from routine
Imagine a story that begins like this:
When the alarm clock went off at : a.m., Phil hit the snooze button.
Nine minutes later, same as every weekday morning, he hit it again. Finally
he arose from his bed and went into the bathroom to brush his teeth. He
took a long, hot shower, got dressed in his suit and tie, and went down-
stairs to brew a pot of his favorite coffee — hazelnut. He sat at the kitchen
table and looked out the window. e sun was just coming up. A neigh-
borhood kid rode his bike past the house, a stack of newspapers under his
arm. Phil didn’t receive a paper. He read all his news online. After drain-
ing two cups of coffee, Phil put on his shoes and left the house. He arrived
at the office eleven minutes later, same as always. He said hello to his co-
workers and went into his office, where he began to check his email. Phil
was an insurance broker, and he received dozens of emails a day — most,
it seemed, from angry clients. When he looked up from his computer, his
colleague, Sean, was standing in the doorway wearing a giraffe suit.
QUESTION: Where does this story actually begin?
CLUE: Where does Phil’s story diverge from his ordinary routine?
Phil’s story does not begin with the alarm clock going off. Beginning writ-
ers often confuse the beginning of a character’s day with the beginning of a
character’s story. ey are not the same.
In the sample story opening above, Phil’s morning routine is just that —
routine. It isn’t news. Part of the problem is that nothing particularly distin-
guishes Phil’s morning from that of millions of other hardworking citizens. e
bigger problem, though, is that it isn’t even unusual for him. He awakes, he
showers, he drinks coffee, he drives to work. Does it matter that he prefers
start with a break from routine | 33
hazelnut- flavored coffee to a basic French roast? Probably not. (If it does, we
can certainly work that detail into the story later.)
Just as it’s a mistake to begin this story in bed with the alarm clock going
off, it would be a mistake to start it with Phil’s drive to work. e drive, like
the hot shower and cup of coffee, is just a preface to what really matters.
e giraffe suit? Now that’s news:
One ursday morning, Phil looked up from his computer terminal to
find his colleague, Sean, standing in the doorway wearing a giraffe suit.
Or:
“So what do you think?” asked Sean, standing in the doorway of Phil’s
office dressed in a giraffe suit. Like Phil, Sean was an insurance broker.
e office had a strict dress code: suit, tie. No facial hair.
“What do I think about what?” Phil asked.
Or:
Yesterday it was a gorilla suit. e day before, an elephant. Sean’s wife had
left him over the weekend, and now all week he’d been coming to the office
dressed as one large mammal or another. Phil, who had always considered
Sean to be one of the more boring brokers at Midwest Insurance, couldn’t
decide if he was more amused or annoyed. He had dozens of emails to
return and calls to make. Time was money. Still, it was always interesting
to see a fellow human being crack open like an egg.
e story possibilities, and the ways of telling them, are endless. But they
all begin after Phil’s morning routine is over, at the moment when his routine
gets disrupted.
Stories, with few exceptions, are about the day that’s different — the day
that a man happens to buy God’s overcoat. e day that Victor loses his job,
learns about his father’s death, and decides he must travel to Phoenix, Arizona.
ey are about the disruption from one’s ordinary routine. A wise place to
begin, therefore, is at the moment when this disruption first announces itself.
(In e Metamorphosis, this difference actually does announce itself in Gregor’s
bed, because that’s when he realizes that he has turned into a giant cockroach.
In that one example, the beginning of a character’s day happens to coincide
34 | chapter 3 starting your story
with the beginning of his story. But Gregor’s morning, we can safely assume,
will be far from routine.)
Karen Russell’s story “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”
(p. ) and ZZ Packer’s story “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere” (p. ) both take
place over a large portion of a school year. Note that neither story begins at
home, or on the long car ride to the academy. Instead, they both begin at their
respective institutions during that first moment that reveals how uprooted the
characters feel. In “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere,” freshman orientation is a
disorienting experience for Dina that immediately arouses her suspicion:
Orientation games began the day I arrived at Yale from Baltimore. In my
group we played heady, frustrating games for smart people. One game ap-
peared to be charades reinterpreted by existentialists; another involved
listening to rocks. en a freshman counsellor made everyone play Trust.
e idea was that if you had the faith to fall backward and wait for four
scrawny former high- school geniuses to catch you, just before your head
cracked on the slate sidewalk, then you might learn to trust your fellow-
students. Rus sian roulette sounded like a better way to go.
“No way,” I said. e white boys were waiting for me to fall, holding
their arms out for me, sincerely, gallantly. “No fucking way.”
e opening paragraph of “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves”
reveals just how out- of- place the girls are upon arriving at their new school. It
reveals, too, how at first the narrator considers herself one of a pack. ere is no
“I” perspective, but rather a “we,” something that will begin to shift later in the
story as the narrator, Claudette, develops her own identity apart from the pack:
At first, our pack was all hair and snarl and floor- thumping joy. We forgot
the barked cautions of our mothers and fathers, all the promises we’d made
to be civilized and ladylike, couth and kempt. We tore through the austere
rooms, overturning dresser drawers, pawing through the neat piles of the
Stage  girls’ starched underwear, smashing light bulbs with our bare fists.
ings felt less foreign in the dark. e dim bedroom was windowless and
odorless. We remedied this by spraying exuberant yellow streams all over
the bunks. We jumped from bunk to bunk, spraying. We nosed each other
midair, our bodies buckling in kinetic laughter. e nuns watched us from
the corner of the bedroom, their tiny faces pinched with dis plea sure.
consider starting in medias res | 35
e place you start your story has a lot to do with what your story is ulti-
mately about. Karen Russell could have started her story the day that Claudette
first learns that there will be a dance with the boys’ school — when Claudette
first understands that her socialization will be put to the test. Or it could have
begun even later, at the dance itself. Instead, Russell begins when the girls
first arrive at their school. e story therefore covers months instead of days or
hours, making it less about a single event and more about the steady erosion of
Claudette’s ties to her roots — her pack — as she becomes indoctrinated into
“civilized” society.
Unlike Russell’s story, which covers months, John Updike’s story “A & P”
(p. ) begins just minutes before it ends. Maybe Updike could have begun
it earlier, when Sammy first started working at the grocery store. In that ver-
sion, we might see more of Sammy’s transition from child to adult and might
better understand how Lengel’s words to Queenie were the latest in a series of
uncaring actions committed by Sammy’s boss, how they were the straw that
broke the camel’s back and led to Sammy’s quitting his job.
But that isn’t the story that Updike wrote. “A & P” narrates just a few
minutes in the grocery story on a ursday afternoon. It begins when the three
girls enter the store and ends moments after they buy their herring snack and
leave. Beginning so close to the end, the story emphasizes Sammy’s sudden,
nearly inexpressible flash of insight about adulthood conveyed in the story’s
final phrase: “and my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going
to be to me hereafter.”
exercise: choose the day that’s different
Jot down the major events in your main character’s life. Where does your
main character “break from routine” for the specific story that you want to
tell? Write that opening sentence, paragraph, and page.
consider starting in medias res
Brockmeier’s and Alexie’s stories both begin with the narrator providing nec-
essary information to the reader using exposition. is is what the third ex-
ample of the giraffe- suit story does, as well:
36 | chapter 3 starting your story
Yesterday it was a gorilla suit. e day before, an elephant. Sean’s wife had
left him over the weekend, and now all week he’d been coming to the of-
fice dressed as one large mammal or another.
However, a story that begins in medias res, a Latin phrase meaning “into
the middle of things,” drops us — well, into the middle of things. Here are a
few stories that do just that from the first sentence:
He had been reading to her from Rilke, a poet he admired, when she fell
asleep with her head on his pillow.
⁓ R C, “The Student’s Wife”
I read about it in the paper, in the subway, on my way to work.
⁓ J B, “Sonny’s Blues”
I was pop u lar in certain circles, says Aunt Rose.
⁓ G P, “Goodbye and Good Luck”
In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits.
⁓ J U, “A & P”
Look back at the first paragraph of “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by
Wolves.” Even though that story begins at the start of the school year, Karen
Russell’s story begins in medias res, dropping us into the middle of the action.
Who are the “Stage  girls”? What are the nuns doing there? And what, exactly,
is this “pack” being referred to? ese questions will all get sorted out — but
not right away.
e practice of beginning a story in medias res isn’t new: Homer did it
in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. More recently, so did George Lucas in the
original Star Wars movie — which, we’re told right away, is “episode four” and
therefore truly the middle of things. Star Wars begins with a thrilling battle
scene before we have any clue who is fighting or what the battle is about. Because
we haven’t yet been introduced to the characters and situation, a story that
begins in medias res often causes momentary confusion. Yet it has the benefit
of urgency and, done well, can generate in the reader an oddly satisfying sensa-
tion of not quite keeping up with the story. Most action/adventure films begin
in medias res because of a need to hook the viewer with something immedi-
ately thrilling. Raiders of the Lost Ark begins with Indiana Jones skillfully evad-
ing a booby- trapped cave, then stealing a huge jewel, then running like mad
when a giant boulder threatens to crush him. At this point, we don’t know
anything about the characters or the plot, but we’re intrigued because the events
themselves are so gripping.
A story that begins in medias res eventually will need to supply the missing
pieces. A reader (or viewer) will be willing to remain confused for only so long
before becoming frustrated. e second scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark features
Indiana Jones back on safer ground, at the university where he teaches anthro-
pology. In this second scene, we learn all the necessary information that would
have been supplied up front in a “once upon a time” opening.
Becky Hagenston begins her story “Midnight, Licorice, Shadow” (p. )
in medias res. A “once upon a time” beginning might read:
Donna and Jeremy, her boyfriend of three weeks, were trying to name
their new cat. e cat used to belong to a woman they’d robbed and killed.
Now it was theirs. ey were holed up in a motel room now, and Donna
was feeling an increased urgency to name the cat. at was because Jeremy
had said, “If we don’t have a name by tomorrow morning, it’s bye- bye,
Mister Kitty.” He didn’t like when something didn’t have a name. He felt
it was bad luck.
Instead, Hagenston drops us into the middle of things:
“Midnight, Licorice, Shadow,” she says. “Cocoa, Casper, Dr. Livingston.”
“Alfred Hitchcock,” he says. “Dracula. Vincent Price.”
ey have had the cat for nearly three days.
“Cinderblock?” she tries. “Ice bucket?”
It’s useless. e harder they try to think of a name, the more elusive it
becomes.
“Tomorrow, then,” Jeremy says. “If we don’t have a name by tomorrow
morning, it’s bye- bye, Mr. Kitty. No offense, Cupcake,” he tells the cat,
and gives it a quick rub on the head.
Donna looks at the animal, sprawled on the orange motel carpet like a
black bearskin rug. One of his fangs is showing. His monkey paws are
kneading at the air.
consider starting in medias res | 37
38 | chapter 3 starting your story
We don’t learn for seven paragraphs that they’re in a motel room, and we
won’t learn for several pages about the murder, or about Jeremy’s superstition
about things not having names. e story as Hagenston begins it emphasizes
the oppressiveness of the relationship between Donna and Jeremy, and the
urgency they feel, especially Donna. She’s desperate to name that cat. Why? we
wonder, and we keep reading to find out.
exercise: start at the beginning — or middle
Write the first page of a story with a “once upon a time” opening, and then
write the first page of the same story beginning in medias res. If you need
a prompt, write about the time when you got into the most trouble as a
child (over age ten). To help fictionalize the story, write it in the third
person and change all names.
whose perspective should you choose?
Knowing what you want to write about isn’t the same as knowing whose per-
spective to tell it from. Your choice will inform just about every other aspect
of your story, just as your version of the first day of school is no doubt different
from your teacher’s.
checklist » decide on a perspective
Chapter 4 provides an in- depth discussion of point of view; for now, here are some
things to consider:
» Who has the most at stake? The most to gain or lose? Whoever is most heavily
invested in the outcome of your story might well be the natural character to
designate as your point- of- view character.
» On the other hand, some characters don’t make especially good narrators, such
as very young children and those with extremely limited perspectives or com-
munication skills. A point-of-view character who is (1) delusional, (2) drunk, or (3)
a dog presents challenges that are extremely hard to overcome. In the novel The
Great Gatsby, Gatsby doesn’t tell his own story. He is no slouch, but he can’t tell
other information to convey sooner rather than later | 39
his own story because he would have neither the words nor the perspective.
(Plus, by the end of the novel he’s dead.) Nick Carraway tells Gatsby’s story be-
cause Nick possesses the narrative and interpretive skills that Gatsby lacks, as
well as the capacity to change.
» Is your story less about a single character than about several people or a com-
munity? If so, then your story might best be told from several characters’
perspectives, as in Jill McCorkle’s story “Magic Words” (p. 262).
other information to convey sooner rather than later
Early on in your story — probably within the first page or two — it’s usually a
good idea to provide some basic information about the characters.
checklist » establish the basics
» Your main character’s name. Yes, some stories never name their characters, using
“he” or “she” or “the man” or “the woman” throughout. Ernest Hemingway’s
story “Hills Like White Elephants” is a commonly cited example. However, the
decision not to name your character should be just that — a decision — rather
than an oversight. (The main character in Kevin Brockmeier’s story “A Fable with
Slips of White Paper Spilling from the Pockets” (p. 211) goes unnamed. Why do
you think that is?) In general, readers like to know the names of the characters
in a story, and not naming them will not make them more universal. (See “Details
and Engaging the Reader” in Chapter 2.)
» Your main character’s sex. It can be very disorienting for a reader to assume
that a story’s main character is female and then, on page 9, to learn that he is
male.
» The basic relationships between characters. A story that begins
Bill kissed Brittany on the cheek and went off with Sonya to get married.
is confusing because we don’t yet know Brittany’s relationship to Bill or Sonya.
Instead, consider something like:
40 | chapter 3 starting your story
Bill kissed Brittany, his youn gest sister, on the cheek and went off with
Sonya to get married.
Or:
Bill kissed Brittany, his girlfriend of eleven years, on the cheek and went
off with Sonya to get married.
These are two entirely different stories. Readers deserve to know which it is so
that we will create the proper picture in our minds.
ultimately, it’s your call
When does your character’s routine get interrupted? What are your story’s stakes?
What key information needs to be revealed? What are the benefits of beginning
either “once upon a time” or in medias res? Once you’ve given these matters
some thought, you’ll be well on your way to making a strong — and strongly
favorable — first impression.
Whenever you work on a new story, bear in mind that the beginning might
well change. As you write, your understanding of your own story grows, and
that requires a rethinking of the beginning. You might change the point of view
or change the tense from present to past. You might change the voice, making
it more formal or less formal. Sometimes, the beginning — the first page or
section — will end up staying in place all the way through to the final draft. But
maybe not. You might end up using the first attempt elsewhere in the story, or
maybe it will need to get cut completely once you realize that a different begin-
ning would be better. Always, though, you’ll learn something about your story
from that first attempt — so the effort isn’t ever wasted.
e good news about fiction writing is that you can unmake or revisit your
decisions as you continue to work. Nothing is irreversible. Remember: We
aren’t performing surgery. We aren’t defusing bombs. If we make a misstep,
nobody is going to die. In fact, we will make missteps, guaranteed. Most of the
time, they aren’t actually missteps. ey’re necessary steps — that is, necessary
parts of a creative pro cess.
So start your story already!
ultimately, it’s your call | 41
exercises: try a variety of openers
1. As with so many other aspects of fiction writing, our best teachers are the
stories and novels we read. Seeing how other authors begin their stories,
we learn to see what works and why. Read the first page (or section) of
every story in the anthology. Which is your favorite? Why? Now try to
write an opening of your own based on the opening that you liked
(using all of your own story’s content, of course).
2. Write ten different first sentences for your story- in- progress. Make them
truly different from one another. Start one with dialogue, another with
a character’s interior thought, another with an emphasis on setting.
Only after writing all ten sentences should you read them over and
start to decide which you like best, and why.
3. Write the same story opening in vastly different styles. For example:
a. Begin with a one- sentence paragraph of at least 150 words.
b. Write the same basic paragraph using sentences of no more than
5 words each.
c. Begin with a moderately long sentence (20– 30 words); follow it with
a short one (7 words or fewer), then a long one, then a short one.
d. Begin the same story with highly formal language. (But play it
straight. No satire.)
e. Begin the same story with casual, vernacular language.
4. Begin with a claim about the world that is germane to your story — for
example, “There are two kinds of drivers” or “Dogs should never, ever
be let off leash.” Then continue the paragraph.
5. Begin your story with a detailed description of an image — something
in the physical world — that will be central to your story.
42
C. P. Set-
ting. Point of view. Voice.
eme.
No book about fiction
would be complete without
a discussion of these fun-
damental concepts. Yet the
reason that this book isn’t
or ga nized around the ele-
ments of fiction is that no-
body, as far as I know, writes fiction element by element: first character, then
plot, then point of view. Or first plot, then setting, then character. Or any
other order. at’s because there is no plot without character, just as there’s
no setting without point of view. e elements of fiction are interdependent,
even inseparable. Henry James argued this point as far back as  when he
wrote:
A novel is a living thing, all one and continuous, like any other organism,
and in proportion as it lives will it be found, I think, that in each of the
parts there is something of each of the other parts.
To see this concept in action, try the following exercise from John Gardner’s
book e Art of Fiction ():
Describe a landscape as seen by an old woman whose disgusting and detest-
able old husband has just died. Do not mention the husband or death.
4
character
setting
theme tone/voice
point of view
plot
working with
the elements of fiction
character | 43
At first glance, this might appear to be an exercise about setting. But the exer-
cise also shows how description is colored by the consciousness of whoever is
doing the describing: in other words, character and point of view. It also tests
our ability to establish tone, and introduce themes, and maybe even lay the
groundwork for plot.
Gardner’s exercise makes us see that when we write one element of fiction,
we’re pretty much writing them all.
As you read this chapter, remember that no element stands alone. Henry
James will be glad that you did.
character
Unless you’re doing something highly experimental, your story will have people
in it. e most important person is referred to as the “main character” or “pro-
tagonist” or sometimes the “focal character.” e pro cess of establishing the
people in your story is called “characterization.” Here are the primary methods
that writers go about it.
1. Appearance. We learn about characters from what they look like, what they
wear, and what the characters themselves make of their own appearance, as in
this description of Sanjeev, the focal character in Jhumpa Lahiri’s story “is
Blessed House” (p. ):
In the mirror of the medicine cabinet he inspected his long eyelashes — like
a girl’s, Twinkle liked to tease. ough he was of average build, his cheeks
had a plumpness to them; this, along with the eyelashes, detracted, he
feared, from what he hoped was a distinguished profile. He was of average
height as well, and had wished ever since he had stopped growing that
he were just one inch taller. For this reason it irritated him when Twinkle
insisted on wearing high heels, as she had done the other night when they
ate dinner in Manhattan.
Notice how this description does more than merely describe Sanjeev’s physi-
cal appearance so that we can imagine what he looks like; from his outer
appearance, we also learn about his inner life: He feels diminished by his wife,
Tw in k le.
44 | chapter 4 working with the elements of fiction
2. Accessories. A wealthy, high- powered lawyer who drives a brand- new Porsche
is a different character from one who drives a Honda Civic with , miles
on it. A character who carries a photograph of his new girlfriend in his wallet is
different from one who carries a picture of his ex- girlfriend who dumped him
years earlier. Objects in stories have meaning, and by detailing a character’s
objects, you give the reader insight into the character.
3. What a character says (and how he says it).
“Would you please pass the ketchup?”
“Pass the damn ketchup. Now.”
Two different personalities? You bet.
4. What a character does (and how he does it). Actions speak louder than words,
no? e character who demands ketchup seems rude until you compare him
to the character who climbs across the table, knocking plates and glasses out
of his way, to reach the bottle himself.
e man who proposes to his girlfriend in a quiet park is different from
the man who proposes by way of the JumboTron during the Super Bowl.
5. Personal history (backstory). Our pasts influence us. e same is true for fic-
tional characters. In “is Blessed House,” Sanjeev is confused by his feelings
of irritation toward his wife, given the attributes he’s been raised to value in a
potential spouse:
Now he had one, a pretty one, from a suitably high caste, who would soon
have a master’s degree. What was there not to love?
It’s helpful when writing fiction to remember the incredibly complex rela-
tionship between past and present in real life. “B” doesn’t always follow “A”
when we’re talking about human beings. e child of an abusive parent might
grow up to become an abuser herself, or she might campaign against child
abuse. She might distance herself from her past and try not to think about it,
or maybe she’ll become an animal person in order to avoid forming deep hu-
man connections.
In life and in fiction, our pasts influence who we are, but not in any pre-
dictable way. It all depends on the character.
character | 45
6. What others say about — or to — a character. For most of Harper Lee’s
 novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout Finch — the narrator and young
protagonist — has nothing but bad things to say about her neighbor Mrs.
Dubose. “Mrs. Dubose was plain hell,” she claims early on. And later: “e
neighborhood opinion was unanimous that Mrs. Dubose was the meanest old
woman who ever lived.”
e novel gives plenty of examples to back up Scout’s impression. Yet after
Mrs. Dubose dies, Scout’s father, Atticus, claims, “She was the bravest person
I ever knew.”
It’s a surprising pronouncement. Yet we’ve come to view Atticus Finch as
the book’s moral center, and certainly the most mature character. So when
Atticus makes his character assessment of Mrs. Dubose, we, like Scout, have
no choice but to reconsider our impression of her.
7. What a character thinks. Imagine anksgiving dinner: the extended family —
three generations — seated at the dining room table, the smell of cider warming
on the kitchen stove. Outside there are snow flurries, but inside is warm and cozy.
One character looks around the table and thinks:
I’ve waited all my life for this.
Another chews on a forkful of turkey and thinks:
I’ve got to get away from here.
When you reveal a character’s thoughts, you reveal the character. (See
“Interiority” in Chapter  for more about writing characters’ thoughts.)
8. What the story’s narrator tells us. In “is Blessed House,” we’re given the
following information about Sanjeev:
After graduating, he moved from Boston to Connecticut, to work for a
firm near Hartford, and he had recently learned that he was being consid-
ered for the position of vice president. At thirty- three he had a secretary of
his own and a dozen people working under his supervision who gladly
supplied him with any information he needed.
Exposition, even coming from a third- person narrator, is rarely objective.
It not only relays information but also reveals somebody’s feelings about the
46 | chapter 4 working with the elements of fiction
information being relayed. (See “Point of View” later in this chapter.) Sanjeev
has a secretary “of his own.” His subordinates “gladly” supply him with infor-
mation. e depiction, in conveying facts about Sanjeev’s professional life, also
communicates the man’s pride in his own accomplishments.
tip: make your characters believable
▸ For believability, give your likable characters flaws and your unlikable
characters redeeming qualities. A character who seems perfect in
every way will come across as too perfect to the reader and, ironically,
imperfect — unrealistic, boring, or just plain annoying. And a relent-
lessly villainous villain will seem cartoonish and less than believable.
▸ For believability and complexity, give your characters some opposing
or surprising traits. Maybe your fisherman is allergic to seafood. Your
panhandler has the name of Francis Alexander III. Your ballet dancer’s
happiest memory is the winter when her leg was broken and she
couldn’t dance.
The challenge of characterization
As you go about developing your characters, remember that the purpose — and
the challenge — of characterization is to create fictional people who seem as
flesh- and- blood as the people we know in our real lives. is is no easy task,
because what makes people flesh- and- blood, above all else, is that they can’t
ever be reduced to a set of characteristics. People, no matter how much we know
about them, are mysterious, unpredictable, surprising creatures. To imply less
in fiction is to discount the complexity of being human. In his essay “e Magic
Show,” Tim O’Brien writes:
Characterization is achieved not through a “pinning down” pro cess but
rather through a pro cess that opens up and releases mysteries of the human
spirit. e object isn’t to “solve” a character — to expose some hidden se-
cret — but instead to deepen and enlarge the riddle itself. Too often, I
character | 47
believe, characterization fails precisely because it attempts to characterize.
It narrows; it pins down; it explicates; it solves. . . . e magician’s credo is
this: don’t give away your secrets. Once a trick is explained — once a secret
is divulged — the world moves from the magical to the mechanical.
As you go about creating your characters, let them surprise you from time
to time. Let them befuddle you, madden you with their inconsistencies, and
take your breath away — the way real people do.
exercises: develop your characters
1. Write a two- page story that focuses on a single character. Use all eight
methods of characterization described above.
2. Write down answers to the following questions about your main
character, and ideally all the major characters in the story you’re working
on. Take your time with these, and make your answers as specific as
possible. While not every answer will necessarily end up in your finished
story, knowing the answers will help you better understand your
characters.1
a. What is your character’s full name?
b. What is your character’s most noticeable physical characteristic?
c. What article of clothing do you most associate with your character?
d. What object, small enough to be held or kept in a pocket, does your
character habitually carry around? What is the significance of this
object?
e. What specific smell, or smells, do you associate with your character?
f. What does your character habitually say? Where did your character first
come across this catchphrase?
g. What is your character’s happiest memory?
is questionnaire, used and modified with permission, is adapted from one in Jesse Lee Kercheval’s
book Building Fiction: How to Develop Plot and Structure ().
48 | chapter 4 working with the elements of fiction
h. What is your character’s saddest/worst memory?
i. If your character were about to die, what would be his or her last
thought?
j. What, specifically, does your character imagine his or her life will be like
five years down the road?
plot
Plot is what happens in a story — usually meaningful events of a causal nature.
Just as a sentence must have a verb, a story must have something happen.
e reason has to do with the close relationship between character and
plot: Plot is the way that characters get tested and reveal their truest, deepest
selves.
When Tandolfo, the main character of Richard Bausch’s story “Tandolfo
the Great” (p. ), buys a multitiered wedding cake in anticipation of ask-
ing the woman he loves to marry him, he is acting on his desires. But he can’t
simply go over to the young woman’s house — first he must perform his magic
act at a bratty kid’s birthday party. e party tests him; the way Tandolfo
handles himself at the party reveals his character to us and causes him to change
his plans by the end of the story.
Because of plot’s close relationship to story structure, a more detailed
discussion of plot is found in Chapter , “Or ga niz ing Your Story: Form and
Structure.” ere, we will discuss the elements of plot, including causality, con-
flict, and change. For now, bear in mind that when you think about plot, you’re
also, always, thinking about character — a point made by Henry James in “e
Art of Fiction” when he wrote:
What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but
the illustration of character?
exercise: connect plot & character
Choose a story from the anthology, and write down aspects of the plot that
help us better understand the main character. Then write down aspects of
the main character that contribute to moving the plot forward.
setting | 49
setting
e fundamental purpose of setting is to present a believable and vivid world
for the reader to imagine. But settings can, and should, do more than simply
convey when and where a story takes place.
In her  essay “Place in Fiction,” Eudora Welty wrote, “Location is the
crossroads of circumstance, the proving ground of ‘What happened? Who’s
here? Who’s coming?’ — and that is the heart’s field.”
At the least, your story’s setting(s) should do the following:
▸ Contribute to the story’s mood
▸ Contribute to the story’s themes
▸ Contribute to characterization
▸ Present plot possibilities
Ask yourself this question: If you changed your story’s setting, how much
would it change the story? If the answer is “not much,” then either you should
give the setting a more necessary relationship to the material, or you should
change the setting to one that would better serve the story.
Anders, the main character in Tobias Wolff’s story “Bullet in the Brain”
(see p. ), would behave with sarcastic nastiness just about anywhere — but
the bank where the story is set serves several purposes. Most obvious is plot: It
gets robbed. is setting also provides several opportunities for Anders to re-
veal his relentlessly critical personality, both in his dealings with the robbers
and other customers and in the way he takes the time to scrutinize, and find
fault with, the big ceiling mural in the middle of the robbery:
e domed ceiling had been decorated with mythological figures whose
fleshy, toga- draped ugliness Anders had taken in at a glance years earlier
and afterward declined to notice. Now he had no choice but to scrutinize
the paint er’s work. It was even worse than he remembered.
QUESTION: Why is there a mural on the bank’s ceiling?
ANSWER: So that Anders can scrutinize it and find fault.
I’ve noticed that certain locations come up again and again in student
drafts — a partial list includes kitchens, cars, restaurants, and office cubicles.
50 | chapter 4 working with the elements of fiction
Plenty of stories have been published with these settings. Yet too often in be-
ginners’ hands these settings do little more than provide a place for the story
to unfold, whereas a different setting might be more useful or relevant.
Ernest Hemingway’s  short story “Hills Like White Elephants” has
very little plot, and the story consists almost entirely of a conversation between
its two main characters. But the remote train station, with tracks leading into
the distance in either direction, emphasizes the fact that the couple is at a cross-
roads in their relationship. On the near side of a river, where they wait, the land
is described as having no shade and no trees. And the other side?
Across, on the other side, were fields of grain and trees along the banks of
the Ebro. Far away, beyond the river, were mountains. e shadow of a cloud
moved across the field of grain and she saw the river through the trees.
So one side is barren, the other side fertile. e landscape thus becomes a
physical representation — that is, a symbol — of the choice that the girl must
make: whether or not to have an abortion.
When you go about choosing your settings, take time to consider what will
most meaningfully contribute to the story.
exercises: experiment with setting
1. Choose one of the anthologized stories and rewrite a scene, changing
the setting to someplace significantly different. Feel free to deviate
from the original story’s plot as much as necessary.
2. For every scene in the story you’re writing, brainstorm three alternate
settings that would significantly affect each scene.
3. Choose one scene from your story- in- progress and write it with two
different meteorological conditions (such as rain, snow, fog, or eclipse).
If your scene takes place indoors, change the environment — for example,
the lighting or temperature. Or move the scene outside.
point of view (pov)
Point of view (POV) is the narrative perspective and psychological distance
from which a story is told.
First- person (“I”) POV
In a first- person story, one of the characters, usually the main character, relates
the story directly to the reader. Consequently, everything in a first- person story,
both what gets told and how it gets told, comes from — and is limited to — that
character’s perspective. An appealing aspect of the first- person POV is exactly
this close identification with a single character who narrates the story in his or
her own voice.
Subjectivity and reliability
When you or I tell a story, we do so subjectively. We can’t help it: We’re human.
First- person narrators, too, are influenced by their own experiences and per-
sonalities. ey can be unintentionally biased, or lack the facts necessary for
objectivity, or be downright liars. But narrators nearly always have an agenda
that makes them less than fully objective.
Part of understanding a story involves inferring the degree to which the
narrator, intentionally or not, is distorting the truth.
For example, here’s my own first- person story:
When I was in high school, I was so pop u lar that all the girls were too
intimidated to date me. I’d say, “How about we go to a movie on Friday?”
and every girl I asked would say something like “You must be joking” or
“Absolutely not” or “Fat chance, weirdo.” ey were obviously intimidated
by me. ey knew how pop u lar I was.
You might conclude that I’m trying awfully hard to convince the reader (and
probably myself) of something that just isn’t so. In literary terms, I’m being
an “unreliable narrator.”
e term, however, implies that there are reliable (completely truthful and
unbiased) narrators — and this is rarely, if ever, so. Nor are “unreliable narra-
tors” always unrelentingly obtuse; our blind spots are rarely everywhere. But
first- person narrators, just like living, breathing people, have reasons for telling
their stories, and these reasons color the stories they tell. Often what’s most
Of course, this story is merely a fictional example. In real life, I was incredibly pop u lar in high school.
I really was. You can believe me now, since footnotes never lie.
point of view (pov) | 51
52 | chapter 4 working with the elements of fiction
compelling about the stories we read — and, ideally, the stories we write — is
precisely this gap between the objective facts and the distorted worldview that
the narrator constructs in order to live with him- or herself.
Eudora Welty’s  short story “Why I Live at the P.O.” is narrated by
Sister, who voices strong beliefs about exactly how and why she’s been wronged.
Here is the story’s opening paragraph:
I was getting along fine with Mama, Papa- Daddy and Uncle Rondo until
my sister Stella- Rondo just separated from her husband and came back
home again. Mr. Whitaker! Of course I went with Mr. Whitaker first, when
he first appeared here in China Grove, taking “Pose Yourself ” photos, and
Stella- Rondo broke us up. Told him I was one- sided. Bigger on the one side
than the other, which is a deliberate, calculated falsehood: I’m the same.
Stella- Rondo is exactly twelve months to the day younger than I am and
for that reason she’s spoiled.
We immediately assume that there’s another side to this story — very likely
a more accurate side. (Was Sister really getting along fine with the rest of the
family before Stella- Rondo returned? Is Stella- Rondo actually spoiled? And if
so, is it for the reason that Sister gives?) Because Sister is our narrator, however,
the other side of the story must be inferred from what Sister tells us.
The “double I”
A first- person story always encompasses two time periods: () the time when
the story takes place and () the time when the story is being narrated. Some-
times, both times are made explicit. J. D. Salinger’s  novel e Catcher in
the Rye takes place during the week when Holden Caulfield is expelled from
Pencey Prep. e novel is being narrated six months later, when Holden is
recuperating in a medical facility. When the novel takes place, Holden is an
emotional mess. When he narrates the story, he’s a little older, wiser, and
more clear- headed. He’s had six months to reflect on his own story and make
some sense out of it.
A first- person story won’t always make explicit this time lag between the
events and the telling of those events, but the lag is nearly always present. is
means that there’s always the “I” who experiences the story and the “I” — the
same person, but older — who narrates it. is older, wiser “I” — our narrator —
often has thoughts and insights unavailable to the younger “I.”
When you write a sentence like “I didn’t know then that . . . ,” you’re
making use of what some writers have called the “double I,” giving readers
access into the mind of the character both then and now.
Although the events in To Kill a Mockingbird begin when Scout Finch is
five years old, Scout’s narration immediately employs the “double I” to reveal
that she is in fact an adult looking back at her childhood. e novel begins:
When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at
the elbow. When it healed, and Jem’s fears of never being able to play foot-
ball were assuaged, he was seldom self- conscious about his injury. His left
arm was somewhat shorter than his right; when he stood or walked, the
back of his hand was at right angles to his body, his thumb parallel to his
thigh. He couldn’t have cared less, so long as he could pass and punt.
When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we
sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident.
e novel doesn’t ever tell us exactly how old the grown Scout is when she’s tell-
ing her story, but as we read, we know we’re in the hands of a narrator who has
had plenty of time to reflect on the formative events from her youth and the
proper way in which to tell them.
exercise: think about pov
For each first- person story in the anthology, what is the lag between the
story’s events and the telling of those events? Which stories make the most
explicit use of the “double I”? Why do they use it?
Second- person (“you”) POV
In the second- person point of view, you play the role of the story’s main char-
acter. Sound strange? Of course it is — that’s why it’s rarely used. While there’s
nothing wrong with writing in the second person, this point of view usually
draws attention to itself in a way that first- and third- person POVs typically
don’t.
point of view (pov) | 53
54 | chapter 4 working with the elements of fiction
Actually, there are two types of second- person POVs. One is a bit like the
first- person POV, except that the pronoun has changed from “I” to “you.” Jay
McInerney’s use of the second- person POV, along with the present tense, in his
 novel Bright Lights, Big City, creates the odd effect of dropping us — the
reader — into the unfamiliar world, and body, of his protagonist:
You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time
of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is
entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy. You are at a nightclub
talking to a girl with a shaved head.
e other type of second- person POV is what we can call the “instructional”
point of view. Lorrie Moore’s  story “How to Become a Writer” (p. )
humorously parodies the step- by- step advice of the self- help book genre:
First, try to be something, anything, else. A movie star/astronaut. A movie
star/missionary. A movie star/kindergarten teacher. President of the World.
Fail miserably. It is best if you fail at an early age — say, fourteen. Early,
critical disillusionment is necessary so that at fifteen you can write long
haiku sequences about thwarted desire.
Third- person (“he” or “she”) POV
In this perspective, the separation between narrator and character is most
apparent. Unlike in the first- person POV, the narrator isn’t a character in the
story. e author determines how much the narrator knows, which characters’
thoughts the narrator will have access to, and what voice the narrator will
employ to tell the story.
ere are three primary varieties of third- person points of view: objective,
omniscient, and limited omniscient.
Objective POV
In the objective point of view, the narrator gives readers access only to factual
information (exposition) and what can be directly observed — as if by a movie
camera that can film long shots and close- ups, but never a shot from inside a
character’s head. An objective narrator doesn’t report on characters’ thoughts
or feelings.
“Hills Like White Elephants” is a commonly cited example of a story told
in the objective POV. Here is how the story begins:
e hills across the valley of the
Ebro were long and white. On
this side there was no shade and
no trees and the station was be-
tween two lines of rails in the
sun. Close against the side of
the station there was the warm
shadow of the building and a cur-
tain, made of strings of bamboo
beads, hung across the open door
into the bar, to keep out flies. e
American and the girl with him
sat at a table in the shade, outside
the building. It was very hot and
the express from Barcelona would
come in forty minutes. It stopped
at this junction for two minutes
and went to Madrid.
“What should we drink?” the
girl asked. She had taken off her
hat and put it on the table.
“It’s pretty hot,” the man said.
“Let’s drink beer.”
e story’s setting, particularly
the dichotomy between the two
sides of the valley, comes from
our objective narrator. We’re to
assume that the setting carries
thematic meaning.
We learn basic facts of the story
through exposition: We’re in
Spain. It’s hot. A couple is waiting
for a train to Madrid.
A possible power discrepancy
between these two people is being
implied: He’s described as “the
man,” she as “the girl.” And he’s
the one who chooses what they’ll
drink.
Before long, the couple begins to talk about the topic they’ve been avoid-
ing: whether or not the girl should have an abortion, and what this operation
would mean for their relationship. But because they never mention the word
“abortion” and because we’re denied access to the characters’ thoughts, the
effect is as if we’re overhearing a conversation never intended for our ears:
e girl looked at the bead curtain, put her hand out and took hold of two
of the strings of beads.
“And you think then we’ll be all right and be happy.”
“I know we will. You don’t have to be afraid. I’ve known lots of people
that have done it.”
point of view (pov) | 55
56 | chapter 4 working with the elements of fiction
“So have I,” said the girl. “And afterwards they were all so happy.”
“Well,” the man said, “if you don’t want to you don’t have to. I
wouldn’t have you do it if you didn’t want to. But I know it’s perfectly
simple.”
Omniscient POV
An omniscient narrator gives us access not only to the story’s exterior world
but also to the minds of the story’s characters. e omniscient narrator is some-
times called “godlike” because it knows, and can report on, everything:
In Alabama, a tornado touches down.
Within minutes, things begin to change. Tiny green tomatoes ripen
instantly. Chickens lose their feathers. Whole cotton fields spoil; their
curled leaves smell like rust. e blotch on the TV map turns blue to red
in three counties. Cars scatter like grass clippings.
A woman in Montgomery opens her cupboard to find every dish cracked
in thirds. A man in Mobile gets up from his recliner just as it bursts its
seams, spews white stuffing into the living room. People all over the state
report prank phone calls — hang- ups. Alarms engage for no reason.
⁓ KM, “Not People, Not This”
Omniscient narrators can zip from character to character, telling us what
they know and what they don’t know. e omniscient POV rarely stays in one
character’s perspective for long, so it tends to be used when the story’s primary
concern is a group of people, or even a whole community, rather than a single
character.
Limited omniscient POV (third‑ person limited POV)
e difference between “omniscience” and “limited omniscience” is merely one
of degree. e limited omniscient story is typically told by a narrator with access
to the thoughts and feelings of a single character:
He’d thought he would put the clown outfit on, deliver the cake in per-
son, an elaborate proposal to a girl he’s never even kissed. He’s a little un-
balanced, and he knows it.
⁓ R B, “Tandolfo the Great” (p. )
In some limited omniscient stories, like Jill McCorkle’s “Magic Words” (p. ),
the perspective shifts, section by section, among a small number of characters.
But each entire section sticks with a single character’s perspective.
Narrative distance in third‑ person stories
A third- person story can travel into a character’s mind just as in a first- person
story, but it can also provide psychological distance, or an understanding of
the story that is unavailable to the character himself — as in the opening sen-
tence of Kevin Brockmeier’s story “A Fable with Slips of White Paper Spilling
from the Pockets” (p. ):
Once there was a man who happened to buy God’s overcoat.
e man doesn’t know that the coat he has bought belongs to God, but
the narrator does. In the coat’s pockets the man finds slips of paper that con-
tain people’s prayers. He tries to answer some of them, an overwhelming but
enriching experience — until one day when he loses the coat. At first he misses
it dearly. But then comes a sentence that makes terrific use of the separation
between narrator and character:
We are none of us so delicate as we think, though, and over the next few
days, as a dozen new accounts came across his desk at work, the sharpness
of his loss faded.
at first clause in par tic u lar, with its bighearted claim — We are none of
us so delicate as we think, though — comes from the narrator’s sensibility, not the
character’s.
In the following example from Jill McCorkle’s story “Magic Words,” ask
yourself if these insights about Paula Blake’s marriage come from Paula, or if
the narrator is making insights that Paula herself couldn’t make or wouldn’t
be able to put into words:
ey are both seeking interests outside their lackluster marriage. His are all
about threat and encroachment, being on the defense, and hers are about
human contact, a craving for warmth like one of the bats her husband
fears might find its way into their attic.
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58 | chapter 4 working with the elements of fiction
In third- person stories, both omniscient and limited omniscient, the psy-
chological distance — or narrative distance — between narrator and character
frequently shifts throughout the story. e manipulation of narrative distance
is as important a tool for fiction writers as the placement of a camera is for a
photographer or a filmmaker.
In his book e Art of Fiction, John Gardner depicts the same action —
a man leaving his house — in increasingly “close” perspectives. (Gardner’s
examples appear on the left, with my annotations on the right.)
It was winter of the
year . A large
man stepped out of
a doorway.
Notice how the exposition is followed by a
character’s formal name. e “camera” seems
as though it’s someplace across the street.
Henry J. Warburton
had never much
cared for snowstorms.
Here, the narrator gives us access to something
that isn’t directly observed: the man’s dislike of
snowstorms.
Henry hated
snowstorms.
As we move “closer” to the character, he’s being
referred to by his first name. e language
becomes less formal. is sentence seems to be
less a crafted statement about his dislike of snow
than a gut- level reaction to it.
God how he hated
these damn snow-
storms.
Here, the perspective moves even closer to Henry.
Rather than the narrator interpreting Henry’s
feelings in the narrator’s own voice, we now
have language that represents Henry’s own
way of describing his feelings about the snow.
(e narrator knows exactly what Henry is
thinking, which is: “God how I hate these
damn snowstorms.”)
Snow. Under your
collar, down inside
your shoes, freezing
and plugging up your
miserable soul.
is is the closest perspective of all, so close that
we’re given Henry’s feelings before even he can
shape them into coherent thoughts and sentences.
e use of fragments emphasizes the rawness of
his sensations upon encountering the snow.
As you read fiction and write it, pay attention to shifts in narrative dis-
tance and the effect these shifts have on the story.
exercise: use narrative distance
Write a brief scene set in a doctor’s waiting room. In the first paragraph,
describe the scene in a distant third- person POV. Then write a second
paragraph, continuing the scene, from the perspective of a single character,
in a much closer third- person POV.
Can third‑ person narrators be unreliable?
Yes. In fact, they almost always are. Especially when the narrative distance is
“close” to the character, third- person narration can be every bit as unreliable
as first- person narration:
Her mother had been pretty
once too, if you could be-
lieve those old snapshots in
the album, but now her looks
were gone and that was why
she was always after Connie.
⁓ J C O,
“Where Are You Going,
Where Have You Been?”
Despite being given information in
the third person as if it were fact, we
infer that it’s only Connie’s opinion
that (1) her mother’s looks are gone
and (2) jealousy accounts for her
mother’s unkindness toward her.
ese sentences, therefore, do more
than simply describe Connie’s
mother: ey also characterize
Connie as vain and naïve.
exercises: practice pov
1. An airplane makes an emergency landing in which everyone survives
unharmed. Describe the event in the first- person voice of three passengers:
a thirteen- year- old skateboarder, a forty- year- old insurance executive,
and a sixty- year- old farmer.
2. A sixteen- year- old girl gets expelled from her high school. Write this scene
in the third person from the perspective of a sympathetic, mature narrator.
(Imagine that your narrator is the school psychologist, a grandparent, or
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60 | chapter 4 working with the elements of fiction
another adult.) Then write it from the perspective of an unsympathetic,
immature narrator (such as a sibling or a school rival). Do not reveal who the
narrator is, but try to embody that person’s voice when writing each scene.
3. Describe a Memorial Day parade from the third- person perspectives of:
a. A soldier who has recently returned from the battlefield. Do not
mention the war or that he is a soldier.
b. The drum majorette who yesterday got accepted into her favorite
university. Do not mention college.
c. The trombonist whom the drum majorette just dumped that morning.
Do not mention the drum majorette or the breakup.
tip: keep pov consistent
Whatever point of view you choose for your story, establish it quickly and
remain consistent. In par tic u lar, a third- person story that for several pages
stays in one character’s perspective and then, mid- paragraph, suddenly
changes to another’s won’t seem omniscient. It will seem like a mistake — a
“point- of- view violation.” At the very least, it will be jarring:
Beth looked around: no customers, no employees. She slipped the ear-
rings into her coat pocket. Piece of cake. She could sell these at school for
ten bucks, easy. Then, too late, she glanced into the mirror up by the ceil-
ing and saw some skinny teenager stocking shelves at the rear of the
store. He was pretty sure he’d seen her take something, and he won-
dered if he should tell his boss, or maybe call the police.
If you’ve already established Beth as your focal character, why not keep
everything in her perspective?
Beth looked around: no customers, no employees. She slipped the ear-
rings into her coat pocket. Piece of cake. She could sell these at school for
ten bucks, easy. Then, too late, she glanced into the mirror up by the ceil-
ing and saw some skinny teenager stocking shelves at the rear of the
store. He had to have seen her. The nerd was sure to rat her out to his
boss, maybe even call the cops, if it meant a ten- cent raise.
voice | 61
voice
Voice is a story’s distinctive narrative presence.
e word “voice,” of course, is being used figuratively. A person’s voice —
yours, mine — is a physical thing, an acoustical phenomenon that can be mea-
sured in decibels and pitch. A voice has timbre, a musical quality that lets you
distinguish Michael Jackson from Kermit the Frog, even if they were both
singing the same melody in the same register.
In literature, there are only agreed- upon symbols on a page (letters and punc-
tuation marks) that make up words and sentences. e writer uses these non-
acoustical building blocks to create a meta phorical sense of the human voice.
e principal elements that establish a voice in fiction include the following:
▸ Diction (word choice), such as the use of bigger or smaller words, the use
of concreteness or abstraction, the use of standard En glish or vernacular.
▸ Syntax (the arrangement of words into sentences), such as whether the
sentence construction is simple or complex, whether the sentences are
rhythmical, lyrical, choppy, literal, or meta phorical.
▸ Tone (the attitude that the narrator has with respect to the story), such
as whether the narrator is objective or invested, earnest or ironic.
▸ e use of (or lack of ) comparative language (similes and meta phors).
In a first- person story, the narrative voice can’t help revealing the personality
of the character doing the narrating, just as we all reveal things about ourselves
when we talk — whether it’s our interests, our biases, or the region that gave us
our par tic u lar dialect, whether we’re long- winded or terse or trusting or skepti-
cal. But every story has a narrative voice, as the following excerpts demonstrate:
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in
London that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most deli-
cious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked,
or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a
ragout.
⁓ J S, “A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children
of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or
Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public” ()
62 | chapter 4 working with the elements of fiction
e cat followed me down the steep stairs, and, nearly throwing me head-
long, exasperated me to madness. Uplifting an axe, and forgetting, in my
wrath, the childish dread which had hitherto stayed my hand, I aimed a
blow at the animal which, of course, would have proved instantly fatal had
it descended as I wished. But this blow was arrested by the hand of my
wife. Goaded, by interference, into a rage more than demoniacal, I with-
drew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain.
⁓ E A P, “The Black Cat” ()
is blind man, an old friend of my wife’s, he was on his way to spend the
night. His wife had died. So he was visiting the dead wife’s relatives in Con-
necticut. He called my wife from his in- laws’. Arrangements were made.
⁓ R C, “Cathedral” ()
e morning of June th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of
a full- summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass
was richly green. e people of the village began to gather in the square,
between the post office and the bank, around ten o’clock; in some towns
there were so many people that the lottery took two days and had to be
started on June th. But in this village, where there were only about three
hundred people, the whole lottery took less than two hours, so it could
begin at ten o’clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow
the villagers to get home for noon dinner.
⁓ S J, “The Lottery” ()
I am all alone in my pad, man, my piled- up- to- the- ceiling- with- junk pad.
Piled with sheet music, with piles of garbage bags bursting with rubbish
and encrusted frying pans piled on the floor, embedded with unnamable
flecks of putrefied wretchedness in grease. My pad, man, my own little
Lower East Side Horse Badorties pad.
⁓ W K, The Fan Man ()
e bullet smashed Anders’ skull and ploughed through his brain and
exited behind his right ear, scattering shards of bone into the ce re bral cor-
tex, the corpus callosum, back toward the basal ganglia, and down into
the thalamus.
⁓ T W, “Bullet in the Brain” ()
theme | 63
exercises: discover voice
1. For each of the six previous excerpts, describe the narrative voice in terms
of diction, syntax, and tone. How does the voice seem to contribute to
the overall effect?
2. Choose a story from the anthology and rewrite the first page, sentence
by sentence, in a dramatically different voice.
3. In a paragraph or two, narrate a recent event from your life (in either
first- or third- person POV) using highly formal diction, but without
being ironic.
theme
emes are the ideas and beliefs that a story embodies and communicates.
A useful way to think about theme is that it’s what your story is about at its
deepest level. John Updike’s “A & P” (p. ) tells the story of a teenager who
quits his job. ematically, one could say that the story is about the loss of
innocence, a sort of initiation into an adult world where grand gestures go
unappreciated and even unnoticed.
Every story in this anthology — every story for that matter — contains
themes, because every story is about something (and usually more than one
thing).
Ideally, your story’s themes (or “about- ness”) will not be neatly packaged
truisms. Sometimes a beginning writer will write a story to demonstrate a
belief that is already commonly accepted (driving drunk has negative conse-
quences) or to sway the reader on some hot- button issue about which he or she
has a strong opinion (the death penalty should/shouldn’t be abolished). e
problem with these approaches is that they put theme ahead of story, and con-
sequently they tend to result in heavy- handed stories too easily reducible to
simplistic themes.
Although stories have themes in them, stories aren’t primarily a delivery
system for ideas. Other kinds of writing communicate ideas more efficiently:
essays, articles, manifestos, blog entries. Stories, rather, are the narratives of
par tic u lar people in par tic u lar situations. emes derive from these narratives,
64 | chapter 4 working with the elements of fiction
not the other way around. Otherwise, the story is likely to leave readers cold,
because readers become emotionally invested in people and their par tic u lar
conflicts, not in abstract ideas.
at doesn’t mean you can ignore the themes in your own work, leaving
it to future literary scholars to find them. In fact, the pro cess of writing and
revising fiction involves a continual teasing out of what the heck the story is
that we’re telling. “What is this story about at its deepest level?” you ask — and
the answer will help you choose details and characters and settings and situa-
tions that will bring the story into sharper focus.
In “A & P,” for example, Sammy’s co- workers establish the story’s thematic
interest in the zest for life that somehow disappears, Sammy fears, with the
onset of responsible adulthood. His boss, Lengel, not only introduces the story’s
conflict; he also represents everything that Sammy is against: He is of an older
generation with no sense of humor or any aesthetic (or, apparently, sexual)
appreciation for the three girls in bikinis. Lengel views their presence in his
store as nothing but a rude distraction from the important business of running
a grocery. e story’s other male character, Stokesie, is only three years older
than Sammy, yet he is already married “with two babies chalked up on his fuse-
lage.” He has succumbed, in Sammy’s view, to the very pressures to conform
that Sammy hopes to resist.
Note Updike’s choice of setting, too: e A & P itself is situated in a town
five miles from the beach, yet “people in this town haven’t seen the ocean for
twenty years.” e story’s setting highlights its thematic interest in Sammy’s
struggle between youthful frivolity (the beach) and adult responsibility (the
A & P).
As you read, pay attention to how a story’s many details contribute to its
themes.
exercises: identify & develop theme
1. Jot down the major themes of your favorite story in the anthology. How,
specifically, does the story go about communicating its themes?
2. For the story you’re currently working on, write down the major themes.
When you’re done, ask yourself what changes you could make to your
story to better illuminate its themes.
65
C this sentence:
A man worked the same job at a hardware store for thirty years.
In just thirteen words, we’ve traversed three de cades, sailing past a man’s
entire working life. How long did it take you to read? A couple of seconds? at’s
the power of summary: It’s remarkably efficient.
Now imagine going to the movie theater, paying for your popcorn and soda,
taking your seat, and waiting through the previews. e movie starts. Director
James Cameron looks straight into the camera and says:
On a remote planet, a man controls his own avatar in order to infiltrate
the local humanoid civilization and gain access to the planet’s minerals,
but then he falls in love with one of the humanoids and ends up becoming
his own avatar for good. Also, the special effects are very cool. e end.
Wouldn’t that be a great movie?
No? But it’s so efficient — just three sentences instead of  minutes.
ink about all the time left in your day.
en again, my summarized version wasn’t particularly thrilling. You won’t
be telling your friends, “You have got to watch that amazing summary of
Avatar.”
Clearly, summary — despite its efficiency — has its limitations. Most signifi-
cant is that we don’t watch movies or read books to hear about an experience.
We want to experience the experience.
5creating scenes:
a nuts & bolts approach
66 | chapter 5 creating scenes: a nuts & bolts approach
At one point or another, you’ve been so engrossed in a novel or story that
you forgot you were reading. at’s what fiction does at its best — it makes us
forget we’re sitting in a chair, holding a book. We don’t notice that we’re turning
pages, or that the tele vi sion is on in another room, or that somewhere outside
a dog is barking. We tune out everything except for the story, which unfolds
before our eyes, and we’re there. It’s the par tic u lar spell that a work of fiction
is able to cast.
But in order for the spell to work — for your readers to lose themselves in
the story and experience the experience — summary alone won’t do. We need
other tools.
Speaking of tools, think back to that man in the hardware store. In those
thirty years, his life entailed more than merely selling hammers and drills.
Maybe he married and raised children who grew up to be doctors or bricklay-
ers or bank robbers. Or maybe he used to be an obese man but went on a diet,
lost a lot of weight, trained hard, and ran a marathon. Or he ran ten miles and
collapsed from dehydration. Maybe he put himself through business school at
night and became the store manager. irty years of anybody’s life will see
innumerable triumphs and failures, both large and small, and this man — we’ll
name him Ben — surely experienced his share.
Let’s imagine that we’re writing a story about the time when Ben ran all
those miles and then collapsed:
Ben ran hard, eyes squinting with determination, but it was fiercely hot
that day with no breeze, and after ten miles he found himself unable to
push his body any longer.
Although that sentence includes plenty of detail, it, too, is summary, not a
scene. So what exactly is scene? And how does it differ from summary?
One big difference between summary and scene — maybe the biggest
difference — is that scenes unfold before us in something approximating real
time. For instance, when characters say things to each other in a scene, we’re
given their actual words as dialogue.
dialogue | 67
dialogue
Compare this story opening:
A man and a woman are trying to name their cat.
with this one:
“Midnight, Licorice, Shadow,” she says. “Cocoa, Casper, Dr. Livingston.”
“Alfred Hitchcock,” he says. “Dracula. Vincent Price.”
e first example summarizes what the characters are doing. e second
example, the actual beginning to Becky Hagenston’s story “Midnight, Licorice,
Shadow” (p. ), lets us listen in on their conversation as it happens. We have
entered the world of scene, and in doing so we start to learn a few things about
the characters and their predicament. Subtle things. For instance, all those names
in a row suggest that these two people are a little desperate to name their cat.
Also, the man’s suggestions seem darker and more mysterious than the woman’s.
Perhaps he, too, is dark and mysterious?
Now compare this line of summary:
e man threatens to get rid of the cat if they can’t choose a name by
tomorrow.
with this line of dialogue:
“Tomorrow, then,” Jeremy says. “If we don’t have a name by tomorrow
morning, it’s bye- bye, Mr. Kitty. No offense, Cupcake,” he tells the cat.
Here the dialogue provides the same basic facts as the summary. But it
also gives us a peek at Jeremy’s personality. He uses words like “Cupcake” and
“bye- bye” — but is he actually a sweet, innocent man? Maybe he plans to find
the cat a good home. en again, James Bond’s adversaries always tell him
“good- bye” just before trying to kill him. So maybe Jeremy’s words — “bye- bye,
Mr. Kitty” — are more sinister than we might first believe. To know for sure,
we’ll have to read on. So we do, because we want to know more — about him,
and the woman, and why it’s so important for them to name their cat.
68 | chapter 5 creating scenes: a nuts & bolts approach
e dialogue, in other words, has engaged us, has gotten us involved in the
characters and their story, and we become curious about all the little pieces that
don’t quite add up. We want to understand, so we keep reading.
Dialogue is an important tool in scene- writing — in fact, it’s the most
immediate tool we have in fiction. By “immediate,” I mean that through dia-
logue, readers gain access to characters directly, without any mediation or
interpretation or judgment by the story’s narrator. We hear exactly what the
characters say, in their own words, and we’re left to form our own judgments.
Given the immediacy of dialogue, it shouldn’t surprise you that authors
often use it for the most important moments in their stories. To understand
why, imagine our hardware- store salesman again, running — or more accurately,
failing to run — that marathon:
By mile ten, Ben knows that it doesn’t matter if the race is  miles or 
miles. He isn’t going to finish. He tries for one last surge, then staggers over
to a table where young volunteers are handing out cups of water. A boy is
watching him and frowning.
He asks Ben if he’s okay. Ben answers the boy’s question, then goes
home.
You should feel shortchanged by that last line, which is what the whole
scene was driving toward. We expect — we deserve — to hear exactly what the
kid asks, and what Ben says in response. Otherwise, the author is being stingy
and the reader feels cheated.
So let’s fix the problem:
By mile ten, Ben knows that it doesn’t matter if the race is  miles or
 miles. He isn’t going to finish. He tries for one last surge, then staggers
over to a table where young volunteers are handing out cups of water. A
boy is watching him and frowning.
“You don’t look so hot,” the kid says.
“My whole life is a waste,” Ben says.
See the difference? rough dialogue, we present the scene as it unfolds.
And by including Ben’s actual words, we give readers a surprising glimpse into
his inner life. is race, to him, is more than just a race. His failure to finish
it speaks to a broader failure.
dialogue | 69
Or not. It’s our story to write. Maybe Ben isn’t so down on himself. After
all, he has run ten miles, which is more than I could do. Maybe he believes — as
I would — that ten miles is worth celebrating:
“You don’t look so hot,” the kid says.
“Oh, I haven’t looked hot in forty years,” Ben says. “Just give me my
water and tell me ‘congratulations.’ ”
By giving voice to our characters, we’re forced to make important decisions
about them. How would Ben feel about quitting the race after ten miles? And
how would he express these feelings to the boy? Scene- writing requires the
author to make all sorts of small and large decisions that will affect the rest of
the story.
Tips for writing dialogue
1. Dialogue is not real speech. It is intended to seem like real speech. ink about
a food magazine with a delicious dish on the cover. Most of the time, it isn’t
real food that’s being photographed. It’s fake. Delicious food, when photo-
graphed, doesn’t look very delicious, while artificial food — painted plastic —
looks more like delicious food than delicious food does. is sort of substitution
happens all the time in any artistic medium. Paradoxically, artifice done well
often seems more real than actual reality.
In the classic horror movie Psycho, director Alfred Hitchcock was going to
use animal blood to simulate human blood, but it looked wrong on film. (e
movie was shot in black and white.) Instead, he used chocolate syrup, which
looked more like blood than actual blood did.
Similarly, the purpose of fictional dialogue is to represent, or seem like,
real speech. Actual real speech won’t work. Have you ever listened to a recorded
conversation? All those hesitations, the “um’s” and “you know’s” — it’s a real
mess. We’re all terribly inarticulate, and we digress like crazy. Well- written
dialogue captures the feel of real speech — often right down to the hesitations,
inarticulateness, and digressions — but it is a crystallized version of those
things.
70 | chapter 5 creating scenes: a nuts & bolts approach
You’ll want to avoid writing a line like this:
“Well, um, would you like to, uh, you know, go out . . . with, um . . . me . . .
on a date sometime?”
Instead, you only need to hint at the character’s ner vous ness:
“So would you like to, you know, go out on a date sometime?”
2. Unless there is very good reason, avoid having your character say too much all
at once. Rarely in life do we get to pontificate for very long. Conversations are
just that — people speaking back and forth, and over each other, and around
each other. It doesn’t seem very realistic for a character to speak uninterrupted
for five or six sentences — unless, of course, he’s giving a speech or lecturing
somebody. But even then, it’s often better to condense the dialogue to just a
couple of sentences.
3. Dialogue carries meaning. It moves the story forward, or reveals character. It
never does nothing. In real life, people say things all the time that don’t mean
much. ey dial up friends to kill time. In fiction, however, dialogue should
never be killing time. at’s because fiction is a concentrated, highly focused
version of reality, and dialogue a concentrated form of speech. If your charac-
ter does digress, the digression should mean something in the context of your
story. Truly idle banter does not make for compelling fiction.
Along the same lines, it’s often wise to omit the routine beginnings
and endings of conversations. Read the following phone call. Try not to fall
asleep.
“Hello?”
“Hi, is this Alice?”
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“Jack.”
“Oh, hi, Jack. How’s it going?”
“It’s going okay. How’re you?”
“Not bad,” Alice said.
“Oh, that’s good,” Jack said. “Listen, do you still have that leaf blower?
I’m doing a bunch of yard work today and wondered if I could borrow it.”
“Sure. You can come over whenever.”
“How’s two o’clock?” Jack asked.
dialogue | 71
“Two o’clock would be fine.”
“I’ll see you then.”
“Okay,” Alice said.
“Okay. Bye.”
“Bye.”
Realistic? Sure. Good fiction? No. In fiction, we need only the heart of the
conversation. e rest is flab.
“Any chance I can borrow your leaf blower?” Jack asked.
“Sure,” Alice said. “Come over whenever.”
“How’s two o’clock?”
4. Often, the deeper meaning of a conversation is conveyed through subtext.
Linguists tell us that we never say exactly what we mean. We couldn’t even if
we tried. ere’s always a “meta- message” going on underneath the words that
get said.
Sarcasm is an obvious example:
“Gee, Bob, you look so handsome in that twenty- year- old sports jacket with
the pit stains. Charming, really.”
at’s what the speaker says. However, the subtext — what she really means —
is probably more like:
Bob, how could you even consider wearing that old, dirty suit? You clearly
have no fashion sense at all. I can’t believe I have to be seen with you.
But all dialogue, not just sarcasm, gives the writer a chance to convey more
than the words themselves. In Richard Bausch’s story “Tandolfo the Great”
(p. ), Tandolfo is a clown/magician with gambling debt and girl troubles.
He’s just arrived at a bratty kid’s house to perform at a birthday party, and
neither the kids nor the adults make his life any easier as he tries to set up his
equipment.
Here is what he says (text):
“I need a table, folks. I told somebody that over the telephone.”
But here is what he means (subtext):
My life is hard, and none of you is giving me an ounce of the respect that
I deserve. Has my life really come to this?
72 | chapter 5 creating scenes: a nuts & bolts approach
5. When writing dialogue tags (also called “dialogue attributions”), opt for the
word “said” over more colorful verbs. In not one of our examples so far has a char-
acter “chortled.” Nobody “smiled” a line of dialogue or “laughed” it or “sighed”
it. e reason: e word “said” functions almost like punctuation to the reader,
whose eyes sail right by it. at’s what you want to have happen. We want our
readers to forget that they’re reading.
But if you write “I’m hungry,” he whined, the word “whined” causes us to
blink. It jolts us momentarily out of the story, disrupting the reading experi-
ence. And that’s something to be avoided at all costs.
is advice also holds true for adverbs and adverbial phrases. You almost
never need to explain how something was said.
“I’m hungry,” he said complainingly.
“I’m hungry,” he said in a complaining tone.
In dialogue, we want the things that characters actually say — the stuff in
quotes — to do the work. Readers shouldn’t need to be told that a character
“whined” his words. If you feel the need to write a detailed dialogue attribution,
that’s a good indication that the dialogue itself can be revised to more accurately
convey the sentiment.
“For the hundredth time, I’m hungry,” he said.
In practice, we sometimes use words other than “said.” A character might
“ask” something. Maybe it’s necessary to show that a character “whispers” or
“shouts” something. But use even those words sparingly. Stick with “said.”
Or stick with nothing. at’s a good option, too. If it’s clear who is doing
the talking, there’s no reason to use a dialogue tag at all:
“I’m hungry,” he said.
“ere’s an extra slice of pizza in the fridge,” she said.
“Does it have meat on it? If it does, I won’t eat it.” [no tag needed]
“Is pepperoni meat?” [no tag needed]
“Please tell me you’re joking,” he said. [Here I include the tag because
it’s been a while since I last used one, and I don’t want the reader to
become confused.]
dialogue | 73
We’ve spent a good deal of time discussing dialogue because it’s funda-
mental to scene- writing. It’s fundamental because it happens in real time, is
immediate, and is particularly useful in revealing the personalities of our
characters.
Dialogue is so fundamental, in fact, that it is possible to write an entire
scene consisting of nothing else.
exercise: write a scene — just dialogue
Go ahead; give it a try. Write a scene in a page or two consisting only of
dialogue between two characters. And no idle chatter — something must
be at stake. Your two characters can be in disagreement, or they can be
working together, as in Becky Hagenston’s “Midnight, Licorice, Shadow”
(p. 227), to solve a problem. But remember: only back- and- forth dialogue.
And be sure to use correct punctuation and formatting (see Chapter 11).
Here is how Margaret, a student, approached this exercise. Her dialogue
is between a mother and her young son.
Margaret X
Exercise: write a scene — just dialogue
Draft 1
“And they all lived happily ever after,” she said.
“And then what?”
“What do you mean?”
“What happened after they lived happily ever after?”
“That’s the end of the story,” she said. “Nothing else happens.”
“Nothing happened after they put the bad guy in the dungeon forever?
There wasn’t a party or something?”
“Oh. Well, not nothing, I suppose. Maybe they had a party. I’m sure they
just keep on living, but what matters is that they were happy. There’s nothing
else left to say.”
74 | chapter 5 creating scenes: a nuts & bolts approach
narration
ink of narration as the stage directions in your story. What are your charac-
ters doing? If somebody walks across the room and opens a door, that’s narration.
When I wrote about my hardware salesman staggering over to a table where
young volunteers were handing out cups of water, that sentence was narration.
Here is Jeremy’s dialogue in “Midnight, Licorice, Shadow” again, this time
with a bit of narration added:
“Tomorrow, then,” Jeremy says. “If we don’t have a name by tomorrow
morning, it’s bye- bye, Mr. Kitty. No offense, Cupcake,” he tells the cat,
and gives it a quick rub on the head.
at “quick rub on the head” helps the reader visualize what’s going on in the
scene. It also further characterizes Jeremy. e action would seem loving com-
ing from another character. Coming from him, it seems creepy.
Narration can also help you avoid writing dialogue that includes infor-
mation solely for the reader’s benefit:
“Billy, you just exhaled slowly and descended that metal slide. I don’t
blame you — it was pretty high up.”
What’s wrong with this dialogue? Much of it exists only so that the reader will
know what’s going on.
“But that’s stupid,” he said. “Nobody can be happy forever. The bad guy
wasn’t happy. He didn’t get all that gold,
and
he got put in the dungeon.
There’s gotta be something else. Did you skip a page?”
“Nope, that’s the end, I promise. Want to look for yourself?”
“But how do they expect me to believe that?”
“Why can’t someone live happily ever after?”
“Because! Because grandpa died, and Blake couldn’t come over and play
today, and that guy from next door went to be a soldier and his mom cried,
and all that makes me not happy. So people can’t live happily ever after. Can
they?”
“You tell me. If you were writing the story, how would you have ended it?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I’d make it end so people would at least
believe it.”
description | 75
Narration will make the scene more vivid and allow us to write natural-
sounding dialogue.
Billy peered over the edge of the slide, let out the breath he was holding,
and climbed back down the ladder. [narration]
“I don’t blame you, pal,” his dad said. [dialogue]
description
Just like it sounds, description refers to anything that is described in a story: a
house, a tree, a face, a cat. Description helps the reader to imagine the fictional
world in vivid, sensory detail, a concept covered in Chapter . We might expand
the example above by adding some description:
Billy peered over the edge of the slide. He was higher up than the two girls
on the swing- set at the top of their arc, higher even than the monkey bars
that reflected the bright morning sunlight and made him squint. He let
out the breath he was holding and climbed back down the long ladder.
“I don’t blame you, pal,” his dad said.
In “Midnight, Licorice, Shadow,” Hagenston follows Jeremy’s paragraph
of dialogue/narration with description:
“Tomorrow, then,” Jeremy says. “If we don’t have a name by tomorrow
morning, it’s bye- bye, Mr. Kitty. No offense, Cupcake,” he tells the cat,
[dialogue] and gives it a quick rub on the head. [narration]
Donna looks at the animal, sprawled on the orange motel carpet like a
black bearskin rug. [description] One of his fangs is showing. [description]
A word about perspective
You’ll notice that it’s impossible to describe a scene without considering through
whose eyes and ears we’re experiencing the world. Unless your story is being told
from an omniscient or objective point of view (see “Point of View” in Chapter ),
each scene will most likely be written from the perspective of a single character.
In Hagenston’s example above, Donna — and not Jeremy — compares the
sprawled cat to a bearskin rug. at’s her subjective observation.
Tobias Wolff’s story “Bullet in the Brain” (p. ) describes a man named
Anders who finds himself in the middle of a bank robbery. At one point, one
76 | chapter 5 creating scenes: a nuts & bolts approach
of the robbers puts a gun to Anders’s chin and tells him to look up at the ceiling.
Any other person in that same situation would probably not take much notice
of the mural painted on the ceiling. But Anders can’t help himself. He is a book
critic by profession, and a nasty one at that. Here is Wolff’s complete description
of the bank’s ceiling as seen through Anders’s hypercritical eyes:
Anders had never paid much attention to that part of the bank, a pompous
old building with marble floors and counters and pillars, and gilt scrollwork
over the tellers’ cages. e domed ceiling had been decorated with mytho-
logical figures whose fleshy, toga- draped ugliness Anders had taken in at a
glance many years earlier and afterward declined to notice. Now he had no
choice but to scrutinize the paint er’s work. It was even worse than he remem-
bered, and all of it executed with the utmost gravity. e artist had a few
tricks up his sleeve and used them again and again — a certain rosy blush
on the underside of the clouds, a coy backwards glance on the faces of the
cupids and fauns. e ceiling was crowded with various dramas, but the
one that caught Anders’ eye was Zeus and Europa — portrayed, in this ren-
dition, as a bull ogling a cow from behind a haystack. To make the cow
sexy, the paint er had canted her hips suggestively and given her long, droopy
eyelashes through which she gazed back at the bull with sultry welcome.
e bull wore a smirk and his eyebrows were arched. If there’d been a
bubble coming out of his mouth, it would have said, “Hubba hubba.”
e thoroughness of the description and the critic’s obvious disapproval
heighten the scene’s comedy and tell us as much about Anders as it does about
the ceiling being described. Who in the world would take the time to consider
all these details in the middle of a bank robbery, facing imminent death?
Anders, that’s who.
What does all of this mean for your scene? Even a scene with just two people
will usually focus on one of them. When you decide whose story you’re telling,
you’re really making a decision that will affect every other aspect of your story.
exercise: continue your scene — add narration & description
Your turn. In this draft, you will be expanding and revising the scene that
you began. First, you’ll need to select a focal character. It could be either
one. Which will you choose? It’s up to you. Which character seems more
description | 77
intriguing? Which has more at stake in the outcome of the scene? Whose
story, ultimately, is it?
Work to hone the dialogue — to enhance the realism, eliminate unnecessary
lines, add others, and generally sharpen the scene. Edit out any dialogue that
feels as if it’s solely for the reader’s benefit (such as “I’m so glad you just
climbed down from that slide”). You now have other tools for conveying
information to the reader.
In this draft, you’ll be adding narration and description. Bear in mind that
narration and description are not merely tools to tell the reader what’s going
on. They also color the scene emotionally, making readers understand more
than what is being said explicitly. So choose your details, and your way of
expressing them, with care.
This draft will probably be somewhat longer than your first draft, unless
you’ve edited down your dialogue a great deal.
Save this draft as a new file.
Here is Margaret’s completed draft for this exercise.
Margaret X
Exercise: continue your scene — add narration & description
Draft 2
THE TALE OF THE GOLDEN SWORD
“And they all lived happily ever after.” Ellen closed the storybook in her
hands and smiled at her son, Nathan.
He sat up straighter in bed. “And then what?”
“What do you mean?” Ellen asked.
When Nathan leaned forward, his racecar bed squeaked under the weight
shift. “What happened after they lived happily ever after?”
“That’s the end of the story,” Ellen said. “Nothing else happens.”
78 | chapter 5 creating scenes: a nuts & bolts approach
He fell back onto his sheets. “Nothing happened after they put the bad
guy in the dungeon forever and ever and ever? There wasn’t even a party or
something?”
Ellen looked around the cluttered bedroom. Toys lay everywhere. Books,
everywhere. The carpet looked clean at rst glance, but it wasn’t. It needed
vacuuming. And the shelves needed a good dusting.
“Well, not nothing, I suppose,” she said. “Maybe they did have a party. But
they just keep on living. What matters is that they were happy for the rest of
their lives.”
When Nathan frowned, he looked much older, his expression nearly
identical to that of Ellen’s father after a long day presiding over family court.
“But that’s stupid. Nobody can be happy forever. The bad guy wasn’t happy!
He didn’t get all that gold, and he got put in the dungeon. There’s got to be
something else. Did you skip a page?”
Ellen glanced down at the book and noticed, as if for the rst time, the
cheery cover: the prince riding full speed along the countryside, the princess
holding on to his middle, his dark, windswept hair, her long, curly locks, his
shiny boots, her shiny dress, his gleaming stallion, her silver crown, his
golden sword brandished above his head.
“Why can’t someone live happily ever after?” she asked him.
“Because grandpa died, and Blake couldn’t come over and play yesterday,
and that guy from next door went to be a soldier and it made his mom cry.”
He was breathing a little heavily. “Bad things always end up happening.”
Ellen pushed back her hair and posed another question. “If you were
writing the story, how would you have ended it?”
Nathan reached for the stued dragon at his side and tucked it close to
his chest. “I don’t know,” he said. “But it needs to end so people can believe it.”
exposition
Remember the sentence that opened this chapter:
A man worked the same job at a hardware store for thirty years.
Alone, this sentence of exposition is summary, not scene. Exposition is, by
definition, a way of “telling,” as opposed to “showing” — and telling is, gener-
ally, at odds with scene- writing. However, sometimes we need to convey infor-
mation quickly to a reader within the scene itself. In that case, exposition is the
exposition | 79
ideal tool. You can include a sentence or more of exposition right in the middle
of a scene. And like magic, what once was summary has now become an impor-
tant component of a scene.
Ben tries for one last surge, then staggers over to a water station. [narration]
One of the boys behind the table studies him with squinted eyes and a
slightly tilted head. e boy can’t be older than twelve or thirteen, but he
looks exactly like Ben’s physician looked before diagnosing him with
gallstones. [two sentences of description]
“You don’t look so hot,” the kid says. [dialogue]
Ben worked the same job at a hardware story for thirty years. No wife,
no kids. Never even left the state of Delaware. He thought he might be-
come a marathon runner, and now he’s about to quit before his first race is
even halfway through. [a paragraph of exposition]
“My whole life is a waste,” Ben says. [dialogue]
e paragraph of exposition situates the marathon in a broader context of
Ben’s entire life, a life that seems defined by monotony and lack of adventure.
When he finally says, “My whole life is a waste,” the exposition gives us greater
appreciation for why he might say such a thing.
Here is the actual beginning to “Midnight, Licorice, Shadow.” Notice the
single, brief sentence of exposition, which efficiently gives the reader necessary
information without disrupting the scene.
“Midnight, Licorice, Shadow,” she says. “Cocoa, Casper, Dr. Livingston.”
“Alfred Hitchcock,” he says. “Dracula. Vincent Price.”
ey have had the cat for nearly three days. [exposition]
“Cinderblock?” she tries. “Ice bucket?”
It’s useless. e harder they try to think of a name, the more elusive it
becomes.
“Tomorrow, then,” Jeremy says. “If we don’t have a name by tomorrow
morning, it’s bye- bye, Mr. Kitty. No offense, Cupcake,” he tells the cat,
and gives it a quick rub on the head.
Donna looks at the animal, sprawled on the orange motel carpet like a
black bearskin rug. One of his fangs is showing. His monkey paws are
kneading at the air.
When it comes to exposition in scenes, less is often more. Newer writers
often overexplain. If you’ve already done a good job of presenting your story’s
80 | chapter 5 creating scenes: a nuts & bolts approach
physical world — coming up with precise dialogue, vivid description and
narration — then there’s no need to explain the same things in exposition.
In other words, if you’ve already “shown” it, there’s no reason to then “tell” it.
“Tomorrow, then,” Jeremy says. “If we don’t have a name by tomorrow
morning, it’s bye- bye, Mr. Kitty. No offense, Cupcake,” he tells the cat,
and gives it a quick rub on the head. Jeremy was definitely a man of great
contradiction.
interiority
So far we’ve discussed four elements of scene- writing:
▸ Dialogue
▸ Narration
▸ Description
▸ Exposition
ere’s only one more to discuss, but it’s a biggie. It also happens to be the
thing that literature can do and that movies and TV can’t.
Say we’re shooting a movie about Ben and his marathon. Maybe we take
a ride in a he li cop ter and film him from several hundred feet in the air. We see
a pack of runners, each indistinguishable from the next except for the colors of
their clothing. Zoom in closer. We set up the camera on a street corner as Ben
runs by. From that distance, we see Ben’s struggling gait, maybe even the sweat
pouring down his face. We could mount a camera to the back of a car driving
directly in front of him, filming his face.
Still closer?
We could mount a camera to his shoulder, or to the baseball cap he’s wear-
ing. During the winter Olympics, small cameras are now mounted to the skiers’
helmets to give viewers glimpses of the race from the athletes’ perspective.
Horror movies often employ this technique, giving us the killer’s perspective.
In the story “Midnight, Licorice, Shadow,” the sentence “His monkey paws
are kneading at the air” is “shot,” if you will, from a camera that is situated on
the shoulder of Donna, the story’s focal character. e story could have read,
simply, “His paws are kneading at the air.” e phrase “monkey paws” is a cuter
interiority | 81
way to describe the paws. It’s subjective. And which character in the story would
have this subjective opinion about the cat’s paws? Donna, the story’s focal
character.
What, though, if we could move the camera closer still, right inside a
character’s head? Movies can’t do that. Neither can TV. Not without invasive
surgery, which the Screen Actors Guild does not yet permit.
Film and TV can approximate the technique of going “inside” a character’s
head by using voice- over. But any movie director will tell you that is clunky
moviemaking.
Literature, however, is an ideal medium for presenting the thoughts and
feelings of a character, because in literature the camera is meta phorical. us, no
surgery is required.
Ben tries for one last surge. He imagines the crowd cheering for him at
the finish line. I owe it to them to finish this race, he thinks, [interiority]
and staggers over to a water station. [narration] One of the boys behind
the table studies him with squinted eyes and a slightly tilted head. e
boy can’t be older than twelve or thirteen, but he looks exactly like Sam’s
physician looked before diagnosing him with gallstones. [description]
Let’s see how Hagenston incorporates Donna’s interior thoughts into her
scene:
Donna looks at the animal, sprawled on the orange motel carpet like a
black bearskin rug. One of his fangs is showing. His monkey paws are
kneading at the air.
“Monkey Paw!” she says, but Jeremy is already headed out the door, car
keys jangling. He’d invited her to go along — there’s some house in Red-
lands he wants to check out — but she wants to stay with the cat, who now
has his eyes closed in feline ecstasy and is purring louder than the air condi-
tioner. She doesn’t want to leave him (Merlin? Jasper?) all alone in a strange
motel. In an hour or so she’ll walk across the parking lot to the Carrows and
get a chef’s salad for her and a cheeseburger for Jeremy (he always comes
back hungry) and maybe she’ll give some of her dinner to the cat.
Notice how the line describing the cat’s “monkey paws” is immediately
followed by Donna’s exclamation: “Monkey Paw!” e cat’s cute paws are
something she would notice — indeed, something she did notice, which she
82 | chapter 5 creating scenes: a nuts & bolts approach
immediately offers up as a potential name for the animal. e longer paragraph
combines moments of narration (“Jeremy is already headed out the door, car
keys jangling”), description (“eyes closed in feline ecstasy”), and exposition
(“He’d invited her to go along . . .”), but the overall effect of the paragraph is
to convey the thoughts and feelings of Donna, the focal character. We learn what
she wants (to stay with the cat), what she doesn’t want (to leave the cat alone),
and what she expects (to walk across the parking lot for dinner; maybe to share
some of her dinner with the cat).
Two other points about interiority
1. When writing interior monologue, there is no need to state the obvious —
especially if the dialogue has already done the work.
“I can’t believe I just won the lottery!” she said. How awesome! she thought.
Instead, save interiority for moments when a character’s thoughts aren’t obvi-
ous, or when what a character thinks is something she has not or would not
say aloud.
“I can’t believe I just won the lottery — how wonderful!” she said, smiling
for the TV camera. But she knew the truth. Now every distant relative
would come crawling out of the woodwork begging for money. Every
neighbor, too, and her co- workers at the tire plant, and all the people from
her church. Everyone. One, two, three, ready or not, here they come.
2. You almost never need to state the emotion that your character is feeling.
Jennifer got into her car clutching her first paycheck in three months. She
felt so happy.
What’s the problem with stating Jennifer’s emotion? ere are two. e
first is that the reader is being “told” about, rather than “shown,” Jennifer’s hap-
piness. Better to show her happiness with a par tic u lar action or thought:
Jennifer got into her car clutching her first paycheck in three months. She
tried to imagine what it would be like at the end of the month, sending off
the rent check without the accompanying prayer that it not bounce.
scene- writing, final notes | 83
e second problem is that while the emotions we feel are highly specific,
the names for them are awfully general. ere are many, many different shades
of happiness. e excited happiness that comes from hitting a home run is
different from the peaceful, contented happiness of sitting in front of a fire,
reading a good book. So merely telling us that a character is feeling “happy”
or “angry” or “sad” doesn’t actually tell us much. Instead of naming the emotion,
give a detail — a par tic u lar thought, as in the example above, or a physical action,
or a bit of dialogue — that reveals to the reader exactly what this character is
feeling.
scene- writing, final notes
You now know the elements of scene- writing, which are the tools you need to
write complete scenes:
▸ Dialogue
▸ Narration
▸ Description
▸ Exposition
▸ Interiority
Should you keep these elements in mind as you write your stories? Abso-
lutely. ink about learning to drive a car. When you first learned, you probably
ran through a series of steps in order to be sure you remembered them all. Put
on the seat belt. Adjust the mirrors. Step on the brake. Put the key in the ignition.
Put the car into gear. Use the turn signal. Look in the rearview mirror. e side
mirror. In time, the actions become second nature, but until then it’s extremely
useful to be deliberate in what you’re doing. Learning to write scenes is like
learning to do anything else: It takes practice, but not just any sort of practice.
You want to develop good habits now, and to repeat those good habits again
and again until they become second nature.
Does this mean that every scene you write needs to include every element
of scene- writing? Not necessarily. But quite likely. Could you build a house
without using a basic tool, like a screwdriver? I suppose. But I’m not sure I’d
want to live in it.
84 | chapter 5 creating scenes: a nuts & bolts approach
at said, part of what gives a story its par tic u lar style is the balance among
elements. John Updike’s story “A & P,” for instance, has little dialogue but plenty
of description because Sammy, the story’s focal character and first- person nar-
rator, is a very observant character. George Saunders’s story “CivilWarLand in
Bad Decline” (p. ), on the other hand, has lots of dialogue, a source of much
of the story’s comedy.
No two writers will write a scene the same way because no two writers
view the world — and the world of their stories — the same way. None of these
elements is any more or less important than another. What matters most is that
you consider the tools available to you and practice using them. If you decide
to write a scene with little interiority, that’s your choice to make. But you
should be making that choice, rather than simply forgetting that interiority is
an option. Your scene can have lots and lots of description, or almost none,
but there should be a reason for either decision that stems from the story itself.
What it demands. Everything you do as a writer must be in the best interest of
your stor y.
exercise: continue your scene — add exposition & interiority
In this draft, you will be adding exposition and interiority and revising what
you’ve already got. By now you should know your focal character. Whether
you’re writing in the first- person or third- person point of view, the interior
thoughts should come solely from that character.
This draft will probably be somewhat longer than your prior draft. When
you are done, you’ll have written a complete scene!
Remember to save this draft as a new file.
Let’s take a look now at two completed scenes. e first is the entire open-
ing scene to the story “Midnight, Licorice, Shadow.” e second is Margaret’s
completed exercise.
As you read, ask yourself which scene- writing elements are being used,
and when, and how, and why.
scene- writing, final notes | 85
“Midnight, Licorice, Shadow,” she says. “Cocoa, Casper, Dr. Livingston.”
“Alfred Hitchcock,” he says. “Dracula. Vincent Price.”
ey have had the cat for nearly three days.
“Cinderblock?” she tries. “Ice bucket?”
It’s useless. e harder they try to think of a name, the more elusive it
becomes.
“Tomorrow, then,” Jeremy says. “If we don’t have a name by tomorrow
morning, it’s bye- bye, Mr. Kitty. No offense, Cupcake,” he tells the cat,
and gives it a quick rub on the head.
Donna looks at the animal, sprawled on the orange motel carpet like a
black bearskin rug. One of his fangs is showing. His monkey paws are
kneading at the air.
“Monkey Paw!” she says, but Jeremy is already headed out the door, car
keys jangling. He’d invited her to go along — there’s some house in Red-
lands he wants to check out — but she wants to stay with the cat, who now
has his eyes closed in feline ecstasy and is purring louder than the air con-
ditioner. She doesn’t want to leave him (Merlin? Jasper?) all alone in a
strange motel. In an hour or so she’ll walk across the parking lot to the
Carrows and get a chef’s salad for her and a cheeseburger for Jeremy (he
always comes back hungry) and maybe she’ll give some of her dinner to
the cat. ey’ve been feeding him dry food because, as Jeremy says, wet
food makes a cat’s shits stinkier. Donna thinks the cat’s shits are stinky
enough as it is. Still, she likes him. She wants the three of them to drive off
together tomorrow morning, like a family on vacation. So far, they’ve trav-
eled over five hundred miles together, the cat curled up on Donna’s lap
while Jeremy drives.
If she can just come up with his name, the way she came up with her
own. She was born Lacey Love and changed her name to Donna when she
left home at sixteen. She liked the wholesome, s’ sound of it, the
name of a girl in a song. Sometimes she thinks about changing it again, to
something more serious: Joan, perhaps, or Agnes. More and more, she feels
like a Joan or an Agnes.
“Tango,” she says to the cat. “Flower. Bambi. Mr. Jarvis.”
e cat jerks his head up and fixes his yellow eyes on hers in what seems
like an accusatory way, but she tells herself he must have heard something
outside that startled him, something too faint for human ears.
86 | chapter 5 creating scenes: a nuts & bolts approach
Margaret X
Exercise: continue your scene — add exposition & interiority
Draft 3
THE TALE OF THE GOLDEN SWORD
“And they all lived happily ever after.” Ellen closed the storybook in her
hands and smiled at her son, Nathan.
He sat up straighter in bed. “And then what?”
“What do you mean?” Ellen asked.
Nathan leaned forward, and his racecar bed squeaked under the weight
shift. “What happened after they lived happily ever after?”
A kid down the street had given Nathan a copy of
The Tale of the Golden
Sword
for his birthday. For days it became his requested bedtime story. By
now he knew every line.
“That’s the end of the story,” Ellen said. “You know that. Nothing else
happens.”
He fell back onto his sheets. “Nothing happened after they put the bad
guy in the dungeon forever and ever and ever? There wasn’t even a party or
something?”
Ellen looked around the cluttered bedroom. Toys lay everywhere. Books,
everywhere. The carpet looked clean at rst glance, but it wasn’t. It needed
vacuuming. The shelves needed dusting. The day needed ve or six more
hours in it.
“Well, not nothing, I suppose. Maybe they did have a party,” she said. “But
they just keep on living. What matters is that they were happy for the rest of
their lives.”
When Nathan frowned, he looked much older, his expression nearly
identical to that of Ellen’s father after a long day presiding over family court.
“But that’s stupid. Nobody can be happy forever. The bad guy wasn’t happy!
He didn’t get all that gold, and he got put in the dungeon. There’s got to be
something else. Did you skip a page?”
He reached forward and took the book out of her hands. He ipped to
the back page and stared at it, decoding the small shapes into letters and
words. Only moments before, he had been mouthing the hero’s lines along
with her while she read. He’d even said his favorite lines out loud. He ipped
between pages as Ellen tried to explain that she had not in fact skipped
anything.
Nathan let the book drop from his hands. “But how do they expect me to
believe this?”
scene- writing, final notes | 87
exercises: create scenes
1. Write a scene between two characters in which the first character tries,
but fails, to get something from the second character. Use all five
scene- writing elements (dialogue, narration, description, exposition,
and interiority).
2. Write a scene in which a character gets what he or she wants.
3. Write a scene that occurs in a crowded place. Include a conversation
between two people that gets interrupted several times by the things
occurring in this crowded place.
4. Write a scene that uses mainly dialogue, description, and narration to
emphasize the external world of your story (as opposed to your character’s
interior life).
Ellen glanced down at the book that had started all the trouble and noticed,
as if for the rst time, the cheery cover: the prince riding full speed along the
countryside, the princess holding on to his middle, his dark, windswept hair,
her long, curly locks, his shiny boots, her shiny dress, his gleaming stallion,
her silver crown, his golden sword brandished above his head.
“Why can’t someone live happily ever after?” she asked him.
He cast his eyes around the room, as if looking for an answer among the
trophies and army men and books and all those toy cars. “Because grandpa
died, and Blake couldn’t come over and play yesterday, and that guy from next
door went to be a soldier and it made his mom cry.” He was breathing a little
heavily. “Bad things always end up happening.”
Ellen remembered a time in the not- so- distant past when Nathan had
both needed and wanted her to read him these stories. She also remembered
a painful moment in the more recent past when she oered to read him a
story, but he said he could do it by himself. She pushed back her hair and
posed another question. “If you were writing the story, how would you have
ended it?”
Nathan reached for the stued dragon at his side and tucked it close to
his chest. “I don’t know,” he said. “But it needs to end so people can believe it.”
He rolled over, knocking the book o the bed. It hit the oor with a thud.
88 | chapter 5 creating scenes: a nuts & bolts approach
5. Write the same scene using mainly interiority to emphasize your focal
character’s thoughts and feelings, and how he or she interprets the
external world.
6. Go to a public place and listen to people talk. Try to transcribe an actual
conversation. Then sharpen it into fictional dialogue that retains its realism.
7. Write a scene in which the external world has a direct effect on the scene:
a couple swimming in the ocean, for instance, when a shark is spotted in
the water; or a character caught in a thunderstorm.
8. Try rewriting the scene you’ve been crafting throughout this chapter
by radically altering your use of scene- building elements. For instance,
try rewriting the scene so that there are only three total lines of dialogue.
89
A  , a well- written paragraph, a compelling scene: ese
are worthy achievements. Yet they are ultimately component parts. e end goal,
after all, is to write a story — to shape an entire narrative from start to finish.
To some degree, a writer must figure out how to tell a story every time he
or she sits down to tell one. at never changes, no matter how experienced the
writer. Still, by learning the foundations of story structure, you’ll increase
the likelihood that all the work you put into those sentences, paragraphs, and
scenes will result in a successful story.
A story without structure might intrigue us at first with its situation or
characters. Before long, however, it loses focus. We’re reading a scene and won-
dering, Why am I reading this scene? Or the plot takes a turn that feels un-
motivated or strains credibility. A story without structure often becomes
one- dimensional just when it should be getting more emotionally and intel-
lectually complex, and you’re likely to feel the iron hand of the writer controlling
the characters.
How do you avoid these problems? Let’s start by seeing what many suc-
cessful stories do.
classic story structure and the freytag pyramid
e person usually referenced in discussions about short- story structure is
Gustav Freytag (– ) — even though Freytag neither wrote short stories
nor wrote about them. Rather, his interest was in plays, specifically ancient
Greek and Shakespearean tragedies. In his  book Technique of the Drama,
he described the form that many of these plays take:
6or ga niz ing your story:
form & structure
90 | chapter 6 or ga niz ing your story: form & structure
▸ An introduction lays out the time and place of the action, introduces the
characters and their relation to one another, sets the mood, and presents
a complication.
▸ e rising action increasingly complicates the drama, leading to the climax.
▸ e climax depicts the rising action coming to a head, resulting in some
point of no return.
▸ e falling action shows the fallout from the climactic scene.
▸ e catastrophe (remember, Freytag was interested in tragedies) amounts
to the conclusion, showing life irrevocably changed.
Graphically, the Freytag Pyramid, as it became known, looks like this:
introduction
Act
IA
ct V
Act III
Act II Act IV
rising action
falling action
climax
catastrophe
(conclusion)
The modified pyramid
When fiction writers today talk about the Freytag Pyramid, they’re usually refer-
ring to a modified pyramid. e contemporary short story, not surprisingly,
differs quite a lot from Greek and Shakespearean drama. For one thing, short
stories are short — shorter than three- hour plays, anyway — and often spend
little time on introductions and conclusions.
In fact, it’s common for the contemporary short story to start right at the
beginning of the rising action, at the moment when conflict begins. Whatever
would be contained in an introduction gets folded into the rising action and is
revealed in smaller doses. (See Chapter , “Starting Your Story,” for a complete
discussion of story openings.)
classic story structure and the freytag pyramid | 91
John Updike’s short story “A & P” (p. ) is narrated by a teenager,
Sammy, who works a tedious job in a grocery store. Notably, the story does not
begin with Sammy talking about the repetitiveness of his days, or by describing
his co- workers or the store itself. Instead, the story begins at the precise moment
when an otherwise typical day at the A & P gets interrupted.
In walk these three girls in nothing but bathing suits. I’m in the third check-
out slot, with my back to the door, so I don’t see them until they’re over by
the bread. e one that caught my eye first was the one in the plaid green
two- piece. She was a chunky kid, with a good tan and a sweet broad soft-
looking can with those two crescents of white just under it, where the sun
never seems to hit, at the top of the backs of her legs. I stood there with my
hand on a box of HiHo crackers trying to remember if I rang it up or not.
I ring it up again and the customer starts giving me hell. She’s one of these
cash- register- watchers, a witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones
and no eyebrows, and I know it made her day to trip me up. She’d been
watching cash registers for fifty years and probably never seen a mistake
before.
From this opening paragraph, we assume that most of Sammy’s days do
not include girls in bathing suits walking into the A & P. Yet today that’s just
what has happened, and the event immediately causes tension for reasons that
are soon made clear.
e conflict intensifies over several points in the narrative. is intensifica-
tion constitutes the story’s rising action. Lengel, the boss, confronts the girls,
telling them that “this isn’t the beach.” en he tells them to be “decently
dressed” the next time they come into the store. One of the girls replies, “We
are decent.” Customers stop what they’re doing to watch the developing con-
frontation.
ese moments matter because they matter to Sammy. He believes that the
girls are being treated unjustly. He also sees an opportunity to look like a hero
in front of them, an opportunity that leads to the story’s climax: the confron-
tation between Sammy and his boss during which Sammy quits his job.
Unlike in the original Freytag diagram on page , the climax in “A & P”
occurs close to the end of the story. After Sammy quits, there’s a brief conver-
sation between Sammy and his boss, who makes sure that Sammy understands
92 | chapter 6 or ga niz ing your story: form & structure
the consequences of his actions. en Sammy goes outside to find the girls,
who are nowhere to be seen. His heroism has gone unappreciated and probably
unnoticed.
e story ends with a conclusion that barely concludes at all — a single
sentence that reveals Sammy’s deepening understanding about the unpleasant
world of adulthood. “A & P,” like many contemporary stories, doesn’t conclude
in any final, absolute way. e story reveals neither Sammy’s immediate nor
long- term future. Rather, it ends at the place in the falling action where we get
only a glimmer of the future awaiting him. (See Chapter , “Ending Your Story,”
for a complete discussion of story endings.)
Graphically, the structure of “A & P” — and many other contemporary
short stories — looks more like this:
rising action
falling action
Conflict
Climax
Conclusion
exercises: plot a story
1. Think about the story you’re writing. Does it begin with conflict? Does it
contain complications that build to a crisis? Do you have a moment or
scene in mind that will be the story’s climax? Where might the story end?
2. Plot the key moments of your story on the modified Freytag Pyramid.
3. Choose a favorite short story, either from the anthology or elsewhere.
Plot that story’s action on the modified Freytag Pyramid pictured
above.
causality | 93
causality
In his  book Aspects of the Novel, E. M. Forster famously illustrated the dif-
ference between a story (a series of events in chronological order) and a plot
(a series of causal events) as follows:
e king died, and then the queen died. [story]
e king died, and then the queen died of grief. [plot]
What makes the second sentence a plot, and a heck of a lot more intriguing
than the first sentence, is that the two deaths are connected — and not just by
the fact that two members of the same family happen to die. Rather, the first
death causes the second. It makes us wonder about that queen. Can one really
die of grief? What are the symptoms? We wonder about the king, too, whose tie
to the queen was evidently so strong that his demise leads directly to her own.
Real life versus fiction
Real life often feels random and chaotic: Robbers enter a bank, and a customer
gets struck by a stray bullet. Wrong place, wrong time. Bad luck. Could’ve hap-
pened to anyone. In fiction, however, anyone won’t do. If a person ends up tak-
ing a bullet, he or she needs to be someone — the exact right someone. In Tobias
Wolff’s story “Bullet in the Brain” (p. ), robbers enter a bank and shoot
Anders, a professional critic, because he can’t help being relentlessly critical —
even to the robbers when his life is being threatened.
Or events in real life might seem completely unrelated:
. A woman decides to go through with an extramarital affair.
. After being assaulted, a teenage girl escapes from a young man’s car
and walks home in a daze.
In Jill McCorkle’s short story “Magic Words” (p. ), a woman is driving
at night to a motel to commence an affair when she sees a teenage girl walking
along the road. e girl isn’t just any girl, however. She attends school with the
woman’s daughter. e girl is clearly distressed and begins to sob uncontrol-
lably as soon as she’s inside the woman’s car. By caring for this girl and driving
94 | chapter 6 or ga niz ing your story: form & structure
her home, the woman allows herself — causes herself — to end the affair before
it begins.
If real life often feels random and chaotic, filled with unrelated events,
then why, you might be asking, would we want the fiction we write to be other-
wise?
Fiction, we need to remember, isn’t real life; rather, it is an artistic repre-
sen ta tion of what real life feels like. ink for a moment about a landscape
painting. Why would an oil paint er use oil paint for her landscapes if she were
striving for a realistic image? Why not grind up real leaves and real dirt and
real bark instead and brush that onto a canvas? For that matter, why not make
the canvas many miles wide to best replicate the actual landscape being painted?
(e comedian Steven Wright has a joke about owning a map of his city that’s
“actual size.”)
ese are absurd propositions, but they make a point. Every art form uses
artifice as a means of representing reality, and causality is a tool that fiction
writers use to make a story’s events seem real, relevant, and emotionally satis-
fying. It also happens to be an extremely useful way to navigate your story
through a series of rising actions to its climax and conclusion.
Examples of causality
In “A & P,” Sammy doesn’t simply quit his job at the grocery store out of
the blue. He feels he was provoked by the way that his boss treated the three
young female customers. We might argue that Sammy’s decision to quit is
bold and gallant, or we might think it foolhardy. Either way, Sammy’s decision
is motivated — caused — by the events that preceded it. e presence of the
three girls in bathing suits causes Sammy’s boss, because of the sort of person
he is, to speak to them in a way that causes Sammy, because of who he is, to quit
his job.
In Tim O’Brien’s story “On the Rainy River” (p. ), the arrival of a draft
notice causes the narrator, Tim, to flee to Canada. However, his fear of losing
the respect of his family and community causes him to remain rooted at the
US- Canadian border for several days until he can sort out what to do. e
proprietor of the lodge where he is staying, a wise and quiet older man, intuits
causality | 95
Tim’s predicament and takes him in a small motorboat right up to the Cana-
dian shoreline. e physical reality of Canada, so close that Tim can swim to it,
causes him to decide, once and for all, whether he’ll live out his life forever
estranged from his friends and family, or whether he’ll go to Vietnam and serve
despite his strong objections to the war. e story’s chain of causality leads him
to the exact spot where a decision can no longer be deferred.
Striking a balance
Often, stories by new writers lack sufficient causality. One event occurs, then
another, then another. Each might be well written, but readers quickly lose
interest in a series of sequential events (the king dying and then the queen
dying) if these events lack causal connections. Lack of causality is why we’re
usually bored by other people’s dreams. So I was walking along this country road
in my underwear, and then a turtle started to sing Beatles songs, and then my cell
phone turned into a van. Since anything can happen in a dream at any moment
for any reason — or, as likely, for no reason at all — dreams don’t usually make
compelling narratives to anyone except maybe the psychoanalyst, whose job is
to hunt for causes among the apparent randomness.
Or a writer might include causal connections that strain credibility.
Example: Raymond commits an armed robbery because, years earlier, his third‑
grade teacher once yelled at him and gave him detention.
Call this the “billiard ball” version of causality, in which the cue ball strikes
just one other ball, which moves in a perfectly predictable direction. Readers
will have a hard time accepting the notion that a single lousy day in the third
grade, all by itself, would result in a man’s decision, years later, to commit a
felony. e story doesn’t jibe with what we know about the complexity of
human behavior.
But what if . . .
. . . while sitting in detention that afternoon in the third grade, Raymond
were to meet an older kid, a true delinquent, and fall under his spell. is older
kid convinces Raymond (causes Raymond through charm or persuasion) to
hurl bricks through his teacher’s window to get back at her, an act that causes
Raymond to get expelled from the first of many schools. And while he always
96 | chapter 6 or ga niz ing your story: form & structure
feels a twinge of sorrow for the bad things he does, he can’t shake the unmis-
takable rush of energy and power whenever he’s in the midst of a destructive
act. Neither evil nor immoral, he’s constantly in a battle of wills with himself
to stay out of trouble . . . until one day when he’s depositing a paycheck in the
bank for three days of labor (three days rather than the week he’d been hired
for because he got into a scuffle with another employee), and he looks around
at the exits and the security cameras and thinks: I’d never get away with it,
not in a million years. But I’m gonna do it anyway.
So maybe there can be a causal connection between third- grade detention
and armed robbery, after all — but the chain of causality requires more than
two links. If you examine the stories in the anthology, and stories everywhere,
you’ll see just how often causality contributes to effective storytelling.
exercises: make causal connections
1. Revisit the diagram you made of your story- in- progress. Are the key
moments you plotted on the Freytag Pyramid causally related? If not,
see if you can tighten the causal connections between them. Or consider
changing the moments themselves to create a stronger sense of causality.
2. Are your causal connections believable? If not, ask yourself “What if . . .”
and try adding more connective tissue, as in Raymond’s story above.
conflict
Imagine this story:
A young man loves his job at the grocery store. Life gets even better when
three pretty girls walk in wearing bathing suits. He flirts with them, and
the one he likes best agrees to go on a date with him. His generous boss,
Lengel, says, “Sammy, my boy, how about you take the rest of the day off?
Catch a movie with your new friend.” Sammy and the young woman go to
see a matinee and have a very nice dinner together afterward. It’s the start
of something good.
In a word: blech.
Sammy’s ideal day is exactly wrong for fiction. Where’s the story? ere is
none. Unlike the actual story “A & P,” nothing happens here that puts our main
conflict | 97
character to the test. We never see him under pressure. In my version, there’s
no actual or even implied threat to Sammy’s wonderful day.
e sort of day we’d most like to experience in our actual lives — a day with
only happiness and green grass and butterflies and nothing to worry about — is
exactly wrong for fiction. Conversely, the kind of day we’d least like to experi-
ence in our lives — a day filled with stress and hard decisions — is exactly right
for fiction.
Kurt Vonnegut put it this way:
Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters,
make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what
they are made of.
at last part of Vonnegut’s advice is key. e purpose isn’t to be mean- spirited
or nihilistic, dropping pianos out of the sky onto our characters’ unsuspecting
heads. To do so would reveal only that our characters are squishy.
Nor must these “awful things” result in a tragic story. Not all fiction need
be bleak.
But all fiction needs trouble. And the trouble that we create in a story should
reveal something about our characters that the absence of that par tic u lar trouble
would not reveal. To create the right sort of trouble, we have to know our
characters well enough to understand what motivates them to act. e story’s
conflict will bump up against those motivations, moving characters away from
their comfort zones and into unfamiliar, uncomfortable territory.
It might be helpful to think about conflict as having both external and
internal components. e external conflict gives narrative existence to a char-
acter’s internal struggle; the internal conflict gives significance to the story’s
external events.
Let’s look again at Tim O’Brien’s story “On the Rainy River.” Tim, the
story’s narrator, is against the war in Vietnam. His being drafted — an exter-
nal event — creates the story’s basic conflict: Will Tim join the military? Or
will he flee to Canada? Tim delays resolution to this conflict with an external
action: getting into his car and driving north toward the Canadian border.
Doing so only amplifies his ambivalence, his internal conflict, causing him to
hole up at the Tip Top Lodge, where he can do some heavy thinking about
whether he’ll serve, and what kind of person he’d be if he does, and what kind
98 | chapter 6 or ga niz ing your story: form & structure
of person he’d be if he doesn’t. His ruminations, however, don’t get him very
far. What ultimately causes him to resolve his conflict is another external event:
Elroy takes Tim in his motorboat, ostensibly on a fishing trip, within a few
dozen yards of Canadian territory — easily close enough to jump out and
swim — transforming Tim’s internal conflict into a full- blown crisis with a
choice that can no longer be delayed.
For ten or fifteen minutes Elroy held a course upstream, the river choppy
and silver- gray, then he turned straight north and put the engine on full
throttle. I felt the bow lift beneath me. I remember the wind in my ears,
the sound of the old outboard Evinrude. For a time I didn’t pay attention
to anything, just feeling the cold spray against my face, but then it oc-
curred to me that at some point we must’ve passed into Canadian waters,
across that dotted line between two different worlds, and I remember a
sudden tightness in my chest as I looked up and watched the far shore
come at me. is wasn’t a daydream. It was tangible and real.
In this passage, Tim sees that his thoughts of flight, until now, were just
daydreams. is close to Canada, however, at the precipice of a potentially new
beginning, Tim feels the full force of a decision that will cause his life to fork
in one of two opposing directions. Only here — on this motorboat, so close to
the Canadian shore — must he reveal himself for who he is. Here we’ll see what
he is made of.
exercises: create conflict
1. What does your main character desire, and what would be the gravest
threat to that desire?
2. What would cause your character to face his or her worst fear?
3. Create a dilemma for which there are only bad solutions.
climax
In “A & P,” when Sammy confronts his boss and quits his job, he is demon-
strating his allegiance to the girls over his allegiance to Lengel, not just in his
thoughts but in action. He knowingly alters his own fate.
climax | 99
You might notice how at that point in the story, the storytelling approach
changes. Before then, the story had very little dialogue. But the moment when
Sammy quits is full of dialogue, the effect being to underscore its importance
and allow the reader to participate in the scene as it unfolds.
“Did you say something, Sammy?”
“I said I quit.”
“I thought you did.”
“You didn’t have to embarrass them.”
“It was they who were embarrassing us.”
I started to say something that came out “Fiddle- de- doo.” It’s a saying
of my grandmother’s, and I know she would have been pleased.
“I don’t think you know what you’re saying,” Lengel said.
“I know you don’t,” I said. “But I do.” I pull the bow at the back of my
apron and start shrugging it off my shoulders. A couple customers that had
been heading for my slot begin to knock against each other, like scared pigs
in a chute.
e reader must be able to experience this moment of high tension along
with Sammy. To summarize it (“en Sammy quit his job and left the store”)
would be to commit an ungenerous act upon the reader.
e climactic scene in “On the Rainy River” is prolonged for several pages
as Tim, right up against the Canadian shore, is pulled harder and harder in
opposing directions. In a paragraph that incrementally reveals the forces pulling
at him, Tim describes how his “whole life seemed to spill out into the river.” He
writes:
I saw my brother and sister, all the townsfolk, the mayor and the entire
Chamber of Commerce and all my old teachers and girlfriends and high
school buddies. Like some weird sporting event: everybody screaming from
the sidelines, rooting me on — a loud stadium roar. Hotdogs and popcorn —
stadium smells, stadium heat. A squad of cheerleaders did cartwheels along
the banks of the Rainy River.
Tim’s hallucination expands to include historical figures, fictional charac-
ters, his future wife and unborn daughter, and the Viet nam ese soldier he would
one day kill. It’s a total vision of past, present, and future, real and imagined,
personal and po liti cal. Crammed into a single, lengthy paragraph, the effect is
100 | chapter 6 or ga niz ing your story: form & structure
overwhelming and smothering, which is exactly the effect this vision has on
Tim. Were you to cut that paragraph completely out of the story, you wouldn’t
alter the plot one iota. All you’d be losing is the entire story — for that para-
graph, smack in the heart of the story’s climactic scene, causes us to feel, right
along with Tim, the full weight bearing down on him.
Your story’s conflict, what ever it is, will need to come to a climactic mo-
ment. And that moment should most likely be given its due space, dramatized
rather than summarized, so that the reader can experience this crucial part of
your story along with the characters.
checklist » focus on climax
» What is your story’s climax? Does it have one? Will it be written (has it been
written) in scene? If not, why not?
» How will the story’s setting help to amplify or focus the story’s climax?
conclusion: what has changed?
On the Freytag Pyramid, the climax is the point at the top. After that, we change
direction. We were rising; now we’re falling. e story’s conflict has built to
the point where the pressure has to find release. e climax is where release
happens, resulting in some kind of change.
In much short fiction of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
change came about by way of a plot twist/surprise/reversal of fortune. e sto-
ries by O. Henry exemplify this type of story. In “e Gift of the Magi,” a man
sells his watch to buy his wife fancy jeweled combs for her beautiful hair.
Unbeknownst to him, his wife sells her hair to buy him a platinum chain for
his pocket watch. Irony abounds, but love prevails.
Most contemporary literary writers, however, focus as much on changes
to their characters’ internal states as on changes to their external circum-
stances. is internal change often comes as a change in perception, or a real-
ization or an insight that the character didn’t — or couldn’t — have made when
the story began. James Joyce first used the term “epiphany” to describe this
conclusion: what has changed? | 101
phenomenon in his own writing. e word “epiphany” in a Christian context
describes a manifestation of the divine. Joyce’s use of the term was secular; he
was describing the phenomenon of a character experiencing a moment of
unexpected, shimmering insight.
We can say that Sammy experiences an epiphany at the end of “A & P”
when he suddenly realizes how hard the world is going to be to him hereafter.
e story ends with both a change in Sammy’s circumstance (he’s out of a job)
and a change of perception (he has begun to develop a richer understanding of
adulthood).
In the story “On the Rainy River,” Tim has an epiphany when he realizes,
finally, that he will make what he considers to be the cowardly, rather than
courageous, choice:
I would go to the war — I would kill and maybe die — because I was embar-
rassed not to.
Tim’s change, like Sammy’s, includes both a change in circumstance (he
has resolved his ambivalence and will go to Vietnam rather than to Canada)
and a change in his understanding about himself (he can’t, after all, summon
the heroism he had always hoped lay dormant inside him).
But just as not every person is capable of surfing or performing heart sur-
gery, not every main character is capable of insight. And an epiphany can feel
every bit as forced, as imposed by the author, as a grand piano to the head. No
law says that your character must grow as a human being or learn a valuable
lesson about himself or anything else.
By the end of Charles Dickens’s story A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge
has completely transformed from a nasty miser to a man of compassion and
charity. Such A-to- Z change is highly unusual. Often, and especially in short
fiction, a change from, say, M to P is plenty.
e main character in Kevin Brockmeier’s story “A Fable with Slips of
White Paper Spilling from the Pockets” (p. ) begins with a man finding
God’s overcoat. In the pockets of the overcoat, the man discovers the prayers
of all the people he comes in contact with. At first, he fantasizes about becom-
ing some “benevolent stranger” who answers these prayers. But as we might
102 | chapter 6 or ga niz ing your story: form & structure
expect in that situation, the man quickly becomes overwhelmed. “ere were
so many prayers,” Brockmeier writes, “there was so much longing in the world,
and in the face of it all he began to feel helpless.”
One day, the man discovers that he has misplaced the coat. Without it, he
loses access to the prayers of others. By now, he’s gotten used to the constant
barrage of prayers, and at first he feels a terrible sense of loss. Gradually, the loss
fades. Yet the man doesn’t return to being the same person he was at the start
of the story. He has changed — but not from A to Z. His change is subtler.
Eventually he was left with only a small ache in the back of his mind, no
larger than a pebble, and a lingering sensitivity to the currents of hope
and longing that flowed through the air.
His experience of wearing the coat has changed him, but no more than we
might reasonably expect a person to change — no more than we might expect
ourselves to change. Yet even a small, permanent change, one that leaves a man
with a “lingering sensitivity” that he did not have before, can be a very big deal.
Imagine if the world were filled with people like that.
Must your main character change?
Your main character probably will, and probably should, undergo some change
or development or regression, or reveal an aspect of his or her personality that
had as yet gone unrevealed.
Longtime editor Rust Hills suggests that if your Scrooge is to remain a
Scrooge, then the story should show how your character loses what ever poten-
tial for change might have existed when the story began — this loss of the
potential for change being, itself, a kind of change.
exercise: identify how your character changes
Write down, specifically, the ways in which your character changes by the
end of your story. What has changed about her external circumstance? What
has changed internally: about her beliefs, or the way she views herself or
others? What has she learned? What hasn’t she learned? Are these changes
permanent or temporary?
other ways to tell a story | 103
form = meaning
In a  letter to the founding editor of Poetry magazine, Ezra Pound famously
wrote that “rhythm must have meaning.” e rhythm of a poem should never
be made in de pen dently of the work’s meaning, because a poem’s formal attri-
butes, like rhythm and meter, always affect meaning.
Pound’s contention is no less true of fiction. ere must always be a neces-
sary relationship between a story’s form and its meaning, because a story’s form
is part of what creates its meaning.
Jill McCorkle’s story “Magic Words” is told in sections that alternate among
three point- of- view characters. is technical choice suggests that “Magic
Words” is less the story of any single character than the story of the intercon-
nectedness of them all. We could even say that, thematically, the story speaks
to the interconnectedness of all our seemingly disparate lives.
Sherman Alexie’s story “is Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona”
(p. ) features a character, omas Builds- the- Fire, who is the reservation’s
self- appointed storyteller. But nobody wants to hear omas’s stories, including
Victor, the narrator. Still, omas isn’t dissuaded from telling them. “Phoenix,
Arizona” is peppered with brief anecdotes from Victor’s and omas’s past. In
one, Victor steps on a wasp nest. In another, omas jumps off the school’s roof
in an attempt to fly. Why are these anecdotes in the story? ey don’t serve to
move the plot forward, yet they accomplish through form what omas him-
self tries to accomplish within the story — to demonstrate how a community’s
shared stories are essential in binding that community together.
other ways to tell a story
McCorkle’s and Alexie’s stories embody the successful search for meaningful
form. ey are also both departures, to some degree, from classic story structure.
e following forms do not usually require a wholesale disregard of the
central concepts we’ve been discussing, such as conflict, causality, and climax.
However, the following forms do draw our attention away from certain ele-
ments of the traditionally told story in order to emphasize some aspect of the
par tic u lar story being told.
104 | chapter 6 or ga niz ing your story: form & structure
The out- of- sequence story
We often see this technique in movies: e films of Quentin Tarantino, includ-
ing Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, are boldly out of sequence, entangling the
viewer immediately in their frenetic, chaotic worlds. Jonathan Nolan’s short
story “Memento Mori” (and his brother Christopher Nolan’s film Memento),
in which a man has absolutely no long- term memory, is a striking example of
how a work’s content demands a par tic u lar sequence.
A plot need not be presented in chronological order. In fact, stories that
begin in medias res are usually out of sequence since they must at some point
fill in the skipped- over material. e first section of Becky Hagenston’s story
“Midnight, Licorice, Shadow” (p. ) involves a cat- naming session. e sec-
ond section fills in the backstory, depicting the moment three weeks earlier
when the two characters first met.
The frame story
A frame story is a story that contains another story (or stories) within it. Geoffrey
Chaucer’s e Canterbury Tales, written in the fourteenth century, are framed
as tales told by a group of pilgrims to pass the time as they travel to Canterbury.
Washington Irving’s Sketch Book, published in , contains framed stories
as well, including the familiar “e Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van
Winkle.”
Often the outer frame provides contextual information or encourages the
reader to believe the story- within- the- story. We’re familiar with these techni-
ques from ghost stories and urban legends: So check out this completely creepy
thing that happened. It might sound unbelievable, but I swear it’s true because it
happened to my brother’s girlfriend.
e narrator, in providing this brief frame, is attesting that it actually hap-
pened. It isn’t just some made- up story; it’s something that happened to a real
person: the narrator’s roommate or aunt or best friend. e film e Blair Witch
Project begins with the following statement: In October of 1994 three student
filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Mary land, while shooting
a documentary. . . . A year later their footage was found.
other ways to tell a story | 105
Washington Irving’s story “Sleepy Hollow” is essentially an urban legend
(more accurately, a “rural legend”) about an easily frightened schoolteacher
who gets run out of town by the Headless Horse man (or, quite possibly, by the
town’s prankster). It begins with a statement that this story was “found among
the papers of the late Diedrich Knickerbocker” and ends with a postscript
“found in the Handwriting of Mr. Knickerbocker” that explains how and when
the narrator first heard the story.
Frame stories can lack immediacy because the frame serves as a buffer
between the reader and the story- within- the- story, which is often where the real
drama lies. If, for example, a story begins by telling us that John is finally get-
ting rescued from his lifeboat, then we already know that () a ship goes down
and () John survives. As we read the story of the sinking ship, we’ll always be
one step removed from the drama because we know it isn’t really unfolding
before us — we’re already aware of the outcome.
Beginning writers sometimes include frames at the start of their stories
that unnecessarily delay the real story:
I’m lying in bed, staring at the cracks in my ceiling, my mind reeling over
the crazy thing that happened to me today.
ere’s no need for that sort of frame — better to start the story with the crazy
thing that happened.
e question is always whether the frame is a necessary part of the whole.
Here’s the most basic test: Cut the frame. How does your story change? If it
doesn’t change very much, then you might be well served to get rid of the frame
and allow your story- within- the- story to come alive.
The collage story
Rick Moody’s short story “Demonology” () faces the narrative challenge
of presenting the sudden and untimely death of the narrator’s sister. She had a
seizure and then died. Earlier, I wrote that the difference between real life and
fiction was that events in fiction don’t happen to random people. But what if
that’s the point of your story — to present a crisis that comes out of nowhere,
rather than being the logical culmination of a causal plot?
106 | chapter 6 or ga niz ing your story: form & structure
“Demonology” has two unusual features. e first is its form: It is con-
structed entirely of brief anecdotes about the narrator’s sister. Each runs just a
paragraph or two, yet collectively they form a remarkably complete collage of
her life. Why does the story take this form, specifically? For one thing, the col-
lage story is or ga nized less by causality than by theme and pattern; each sec-
tion bears a relationship to the whole, but one section doesn’t lead causally to
the next. e other reason has to do with the career of the narrator’s sister:
She worked at a photo lab. e story is therefore told in snapshots, mirroring
the fragmented understanding that she had of other people’s lives from looking
at their photographs.
e second unusual feature is the story’s final paragraph. “Demonology”
ends with its narrator directly addressing the story’s narrative shortcomings:
I shouldn’t clutter a narrative with fragments, with mere recollections of
good times, or with regrets, I should make Meredith’s death shapely and
persuasive, not blunt and disjunctive.
Faulting himself for telling the story as he has, the story’s narrator reveals
the frustration of creating a narrative out of real life. In doing so, he’s also
exposing the fiction at the heart of all traditionally told narratives. e end of
the story therefore reveals just why this unconventional story has taken the
form that it has. e narrator, because of his intense feelings for his sister, her
life, and her death, refuses to reduce her to a character, or her real life to the sort
of narrative we readers have come to expect.
Metafiction
Fiction that reveals itself as fiction or that directly addresses the fictional pro cess,
as “Demonology” does, is called metafiction. Metafiction isn’t itself a form, but
it affects form by disrupting the reader’s “vivid and continuous dream” that
John Gardner explains is at the heart of much well-told fiction.
John Barth’s  story “Lost in the Funhouse” is a work of metafiction
that narrates a thirteen- year- old boy’s In de pen dence Day at the beach while
simultaneously exposing the boy’s story as a work of fiction. No matter how
interested you become in Ambrose’s story, the running editorial commentary
other ways to tell a story | 107
won’t let you lose yourself in the narrative. A portion of the story’s second
paragraph reads:
En route to Ocean City he sat in the back seat of the family car with his
brother Peter, age fifteen, and Magda G___, age fourteen, a pretty girl an
exquisite young lady, who lived not far from them on B___ Street in the
town of D___, Mary land. Initials, blanks, or both were often substitutes
for proper names in nineteenth- century fiction to enhance the illusion of
reality. It is as if the author felt it necessary to delete the names for reasons
of tact or legal liability. Interestingly, as with other aspects of realism, it is
an illusion that is being enhanced, by purely artificial means.
A story like “Lost in the Funhouse” isn’t for everyone, and metafiction car-
ries inherent risks. Readers are constantly being reminded that they’re reading
words on a page, and that what they’re reading isn’t real, which are exactly the
two things that a fiction writer usually tries to make readers forget. When the
Wizard of Oz confesses to Dorothy that he’s just an “old Kansas man” himself
with nothing more than a few decent special effects, Dorothy, despite being
terrified of him up to that point, feels terribly let down. Once the magic is dis-
pelled, she gives up any hope of being transported by it. (at is, until Glinda
arrives on the scene.)
Usually, we don’t want readers to see the gears and wheels of our mecha-
nisms. But if your story deals with the nature of narrative itself, then you might
want to consider metafiction, which is the fiction writer’s way of revealing
what’s behind the curtain.
Others
Of course there are others! We’re talking about writers, who, after all, are rule-
breakers and boundary- pushers by nature. Kevin Brockmeier’s novel e Illu‑
mination follows a woman’s journal that gets passed among six characters. In
David Mitchell’s novel Cloud Atlas, a character reads a book that contains a
story, which itself contains a story, and so on. His novel is structured like a series
of nesting dolls in which one fits inside the other, which fits inside the other and
then inverts midway through.
108 | chapter 6 or ga niz ing your story: form & structure
exercise: evaluate your story’s form
On a sheet of paper, brainstorm the following questions: What is your story
about? Are there any aspects of form that you might include to underscore
your story’s major thematic concerns?
scene and summary
Chapter  explains the details of scene- writing. Most stories, however, include
both scene and summary. When you write a story, you’re constantly deciding
which to use.
e stories in the anthology vary widely in terms of their use of scene and
summary. “A & P,” for example, is structured as one continuous scene, with
summary information provided in bits and pieces. “is Is What It Means to
Say Phoenix, Arizona” is made up of multiple scenes — the longer ones in the
narrative present, the shorter ones in flashback. Where summary information
is needed, Alexie typically provides it at the beginning of scenes:
Victor didn’t find much to keep in the trailer. Only a photo album and a
stereo. Everything else had that smell stuck in it or was useless anyway.
[summary]
“I guess this is all,” Victor said. “It ain’t much.” [Dialogue signals the
transition into scene.]
Keep in mind that the word “dramatize” contains the word “drama.” e
parts of stories that we choose to dramatize (write in scene) should contribute
to the story’s unfolding drama.
Imagine a story in which, say, a young woman is rushing to her mother’s
hospital bedside. e scene includes the following dialogue:
“Yes, I’m here to see my mother,” Julie said. “Her name is Samantha Boswell.
Can you tell me what room she’s in?”
“Let’s see,” the nurse said. “It looks like she’s in room . It’s down that
hallway, the third door on the left.”
“ank you,” Julie said. “Can I see her now?”
“Absolutely,” the nurse said. “Visiting hours go on for another three
hours.”
scene and summary | 109
Is the dialogue believable? Sure. But this fairly lengthy exchange is quite
likely extraneous to the story. Unless the nurse is an important character, or
this exchange truly gives valuable insight into Julie’s personality or complicates
the plot, we don’t need it.
A simple line of summary would be more appropriate:
At the nurses’ station, Julie learned that her mother was in room .
Or maybe we don’t need this information at all, and we’d be better off jump-
ing right into the scene once Julie has arrived at her mother’s room.
Here is how Sherman Alexie gets Victor and omas out of a taxicab in
“is Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona”:
Victor paid for the taxi and the two of them stood in the hot Phoenix
summer. ey could smell the trailer.
ere’s no mention of any interaction with the cab driver, who isn’t impor-
tant to the story.
“at’ll be fourteen dollars,” the cabbie said.
“Do you have change for a twenty?” Victor asked.
at sort of chitchat would waste the reader’s time and cause the story to lose
focus.
exercises: practice writing scene & summary
To get a feel for the different effects that scene and summary have on a
story’s focus and pacing, write the same section of a story two different
ways.
1. Write a paragraph that summarizes an event, followed by a page- long
scene that picks up right after the first event.
2. Now reverse it: Write a page- long scene that dramatizes what you’d
previously summarized, followed by a paragraph that summarizes what
the first version had dramatized in scene.
110 | chapter 6 or ga niz ing your story: form & structure
case study: structural imitation
is chapter has approached form and structure in a variety of ways: with theory,
examples, exercises, and close readings. We’ve examined classically constructed
stories and interesting deviations.
Now it’s time for a case study.
is imitation exercise will help you see, experientially, how one section
of a par tic u lar story follows the previous one, how it leads to the next, and how
all these parts contribute to the whole.
The assignment
First, you’ll analyze one of the anthologized stories to uncover the function of
each section. en you’ll write an original story, with your own characters, plot,
voice, et cetera, in which each section of the story serves the same structural
purpose as in the story you analyzed.
To see the assignment in action, let’s look at the story “Water Liars” by
Barry Hannah (p. ).
is brief story is told in eight sections. Our job is to describe each section
according to its function in the story, using accurate yet broad language. For
instance, here is the story’s entire first section:
When I am run down and flocked around by the world, I go down to Farte
Cove off the Yazoo River and take my beer to the end of the pier where
the old liars are still snapping and wheezing at one another. e line- up is
always different, because they’re always dying out or succumbing to consti-
pation, etc., whereupon they go back to the cabins and wait for a good day
when they can come out and lie again, leaning on the rail with coats full
of bran cookies. e son of the man the cove was named for is often out
there. He pronounces his name Fartay, with a great French stress on the
last syllable. Otherwise you might laugh at his history or ignore it in favor
of the name as it’s spelled on the sign.
I’m glad it’s not my name.
is poor dignified man has had to explain his nobility to the semilit-
erate of half of America before he could even begin a decent conversation
with them. On the other hand, Farte, Jr., is a great liar himself. He tells
about seeing ghost people around the lake and tells big loose ones about
the size of the fish those ghosts took out of Farte Cove in years past.
case study: structural imitation | 111
We might describe the function of the story’s first section like this:
Section  introduces the place where the story’s narrator and others habitu-
ally congregate. It also overviews the sort of people who gather there, and
zeroes in on one of them.
Here is the story’s second section:
Last year I turned thirty- three years old and, raised a Baptist, I had a sense
of being Jesus and coming to something decided in my life — because we
all know Jesus was crucified at thirty- three. It had all seemed especially
important, what you do in this year, and holy with meaning.
On the morning after my birthday party, during which I and my wife
almost drowned in vodka cocktails, we both woke up to the making of a
truth session about the lovers we’d had before we met each other. I had a
mildly exciting and usual history, and she had about the same, which sur-
prised me. For ten years she’d sworn I was the first. I could not believe her
history was exactly equal with mine. It hurt me to think that in the era
when there were supposed to be virgins she had allowed anyone but me, and
so on.
I was dazed and exhilarated by this information for several weeks.
Finally, it drove me crazy, and I came out to Farte Cove to rest, under the
pretense of a fishing week with my chum Wyatt.
I’m still figuring out why I couldn’t handle it.
We might describe the function of that section like this:
Section  is a flashback, told in summary, that describes a conflict between
the narrator and another character (in this story, his wife) that has led the
narrator to go to the place described in section .
And so on. Remember, the purpose isn’t to summarize the plot, but rather
to describe the function that each section has in the story. A sentence or two for
each section should suffice.
Were you to choose “Water Liars” as your model, after working through
all eight sections, you would then use that same structure to write an original
story. Feel free to change the point of view as well as the tense. Each section in
your story can be longer or shorter than in the original. e only requirement
is that your story follow the same section- by- section structure as described in
your outline.
112 | chapter 6 or ga niz ing your story: form & structure
Other than its basic structure, your story shouldn’t resemble “Water Liars”
at all. All the details need to be completely your own.
If you’re concerned that this imitation assignment is overly rigid and might
inhibit your creativity, consider the Shakespearean sonnet: fourteen lines, rhym-
ing iambic pentameter, specific rhyming pattern with a rhetorical “turn” near
the end — in other words, a far more rigid structure than this assignment.
Yet the sonnet is a form that poets have embraced for many hundreds of years
and shows no signs of inhibiting creativity. In fact, you might well find that
when you don’t have to invent a structure for your story, your creativity will
flourish.
I urge you not just to think about this assignment, but actually to do it.
You’ll be glad you did, because it will allow you to put everything discussed in
this chapter into practice.
Which story should you choose as the basis for your structural imitation?
Consider which story intrigues you the most. Consider which story you like
the most.
It’s up to you.
Student example. To see this exercise in action, here is a student’s imitation of
section  of “Water Liars.”
Margaret X
Exercise: structural imitation
THE SQUARE
Fairly routinely during my high school years I would play hooky with the
other burnouts and unkies at the plaza next door to our school, The Square,
we called it. Sometimes there would be about a dozen of us, broken o into
our respective clans, but more often, it seemed, there would be just a few of
us, sitting together, not necessarily friends but certainly allies. We didn’t do
much besides smoke cigarettes and talk shit but not for lack of ambition;
nobody really had any money or could get too far away because of a math test
in fth period or some bullshit quiz or what ever. Nobody had anything but the
case study: structural imitation | 113
passing time, I suppose, and we were all stuck there in it, together. We would
make plans for the weekend and exchange stories about last weekend or the
weekend before that.
Despite our individual egos, we all knew our rank at The Square, and if
anyone ever forgot, Ray, a se nior in his fth year, would remind them. Ray was
like our president, elected by his years of ser vice at The Square. Having been
around longer than any of us, he was full of wisdom about how best to avoid
school security or how not to lose credit in a course because of absences or
how to get your cell phone back from the principal. He was good like that and
always willing to help a fellow classmate out.
I was unduly cynical and jaded for my young years, not a favorite playmate
among what my mother considered my age- appropriate peers. And so although
Ray was in his fth year when I was only starting my rst, we became fast
friends. It was through Ray that I learned how to talk to girls, hand- roll
cigarettes, open the school windows, shoplift from Starbucks, and ride the
metro for free — not the most wholesome skills, granted, but each helpful to
me for one reason or another, even if it was just to relieve the bouts of
boredom and dread common to my class and generation.
114
W I    student at the University of Missouri, I worked on
the editorial staff of the literary journal e Missouri Review. Each year, the
journal sponsored an Editors’ Prize in fiction, poetry, and the essay. Writers
from all over the world submitted their work. e winner in each genre re-
ceived a cash prize and publication in the journal.
A friend and I were in charge of the fiction part of the prize. We recruited
a small group of other graduate students, and together over a period of about
eight weeks our job was to select ten finalists from among all the short- story
entries. From those finalists, the magazine’s editor would select a winner.
One year, we received , entries.
is is what we call a lot of stories. e time spent reading them was, as
you’d expect, tremendous. Still, we didn’t actually find it too difficult to reduce
the pool of stories from , — most of which were competently written — to
a group of about fifty. e pro cess of winnowing fifty manuscripts down to ten
finalists was excruciating. It’s very likely that even the forty we didn’t choose
as finalists went on to be published anyway, in some other journal. ere was no
stopping those stories.
But more relevant to this chapter than the question of which ten stories
made the cut is what made those fifty stories rise above the other ,. What
made them compelling, when so many others were merely competent? What
made them better?
7
writing a compelling
story
high stakes | 115
high stakes
Here is what “high stakes” doesn’t have to mean: a group of thieves, pretending
to be terrorists, holding people hostage in an office building (as in the movie
Diehard ), or an asteroid headed for Earth that must be deflected with a perfectly
timed atomic blast (as in the movie Armageddon).
A high- stakes story requires neither terrorists nor Earth’s imminent destruc-
tion. For the stakes to be high, a story needs only for a character to care a great
deal about something: a man quietly tortured by his love for a co- worker who’s
about to marry another man (“Tandolfo the Great”), or a young woman strug-
gling with her identity during her first year away at college (“Drinking Coffee
Elsewhere”), or a man inexplicably troubled by his wife’s sexual past, which she
has until now hidden from him (“Water Liars”).
A story about a man stirring up trouble during a bank robbery (“Bullet
in the Brain”) might seem more inherently high- stakes than a man hanging
out on a dock, trying to get to the root of his sour feelings (“Water Liars”). e
author’s job is to make what ever story is being told one that matters — a lot —
to its characters and, therefore, to the reader.
As diverse as they are, the stories in this book’s anthology all feature char-
acters who experience their problems urgently. And that urgency infects the
reader.
Richard Bausch’s “Tandolfo the Great” (p. ) begins comically, yet it is
a comedy imbued with desperation and self- loathing:
“Tandolfo,” he says to his own image in the mirror over the bathroom sink.
“She loves you not, oh, she doesn’t, doesn’t, doesn’t.”
We soon learn that time is of the essence: Tandolfo’s co- worker, whom he
secretly loves, is moving to Houston. He’ll never see her again — unless he con-
fesses his love to her right away. is need to act now, right now, raises the stakes
by transforming his internal desires into action.
e narrator of Tim O’Brien’s story “On the Rainy River” (p. ) con-
veys the story’s high stakes more directly: He explains them. Here is how he
conveys the intense pressure he felt at the moment when he could have — but
didn’t — swim to Canada to avoid the Vietnam draft:
116 | chapter 7 writing a compelling story
at close — twenty yards — and I could see the delicate latticework of the
leaves, the texture of the soil, the browned needles beneath the pines,
the configurations of geology and human history. Twenty yards. I could’ve
done it. I could’ve jumped and started swimming for my life. Inside me,
in my chest, I felt a terrible squeezing pressure. Even now, as I write this, I
can still feel that tightness. And I want you to feel it — the wind coming off
the river, the waves, the silence, the wooded frontier. You’re at the bow of
a boat on the Rainy River. You’re twenty- one years old, you’re scared, and
there’s a hard squeezing pressure in your chest.
What would you do?
Would you jump? Would you feel pity for yourself? Would you think
about your family and your childhood and your dreams and all you’re
leaving behind? Would it hurt? Would it feel like dying? Would you cry,
as I did?
I tried to swallow it back. I tried to smile, except I was crying.
Now, perhaps, you can understand why I’ve never told this story before.
exercises: set the stakes
1. Write a scene in which a character finally does the thing he or she has
always wanted to do, but never before had the guts.
2. Write the first two pages of a story that the narrator has kept secret
for his or her entire life up until now.
character desire
Waiter: Can I get you anything else?
Customer: No, thank you. I have everything I need.
What you have just read is not compelling. Characters need to want things.
Otherwise, there’s no conflict, no stakes, and therefore no story.
Waiter: Can I get you anything else?
Customer: Why, yes. Please get me my wife back.
Waiter: Sir?
Customer: My wife. She left me last night. I’d like her back. Please
bring her back.
character desire | 117
Almost nothing is more fundamental to storytelling than character
desire — especially strong desire, as the motivational continuum will demon-
strate.
The motivational continuum
I’d been teaching this concept for a number of years before a student of mine
(thanks, Jerry!) finally gave it the name that stuck. Here’s how it works. ink
about your own life and write down a few expectations having to do with things
you care about. For example: I expect to graduate this spring. I expect to get a new
car once my junky one finally dies.
Go ahead. Write them down.
Now think about your hopes: I hope to get a job when I graduate. I hope
that I can afford that new car when my old one inevitably dies.
A stronger desire than a hope is a dream. What are your dreams? I dream
that after graduation I land a job reporting on international affairs for a major
national newspaper. I dream that I win a car.
Expectations lie at the center of the continuum. Hopes and dreams lie to
one side. Now let’s look at the other side.
What are your fears? I fear that I won’t find a job. I fear that I won’t graduate. I
fear that my car will die and I won’t be able to afford a new one. What will I do then?
Worse than fears are your dreads: I dread flunking out of school. I dread my
car dying on a deserted road in the middle of the night. I dread landing a great job
but then one of my parents falling ill, forcing me to abandon either my dream job
or my parent.
e reason Jerry’s name for this continuum of feelings fits so well is that
our feelings motivate us to act. e stronger we feel about something, the more
motivated we are.
Graphically, the motivational continuum looks like this:
Now here’s the point: Compelling stories (in other words, stories with high
stakes) tend to dwell in the outer reaches of the motivational continuum. ey deal
118 | chapter 7 writing a compelling story
in the realm of characters’ dreams and dreads, rather than with mere expecta-
tions. e customer in my first example expects coffee and peach cobbler.
Nobody wants to read about a man who expects, and is either granted or denied,
cobbler. However, the man in the second example dreads going home to an
empty house for the first time in thirty- five years, a fact that will make even
simple cobbler- eating fraught with emotion.
Dreads Fears Expectations Hopes Dreams
Tandolfo, the protagonist in Richard Bausch’s story, isn’t completely
naïve. Certainly he can’t expect his co- worker, who has shown him only vague
signs of friendly affection, to break up with her boyfriend and reveal her love
for him. What motivates him to act — to buy that giant wedding cake, profess
his love for her, and presumably make a fool of himself — is that he dreams
that the grandness of his action will stir some feeling inside of her that hereto-
fore had been hidden even from herself. Yet what causes him to get drunk first,
and to behave so badly at the kid’s birthday party, is that he dreads confirma-
tion of what he surely must know is the more likely truth: She does not love him
and never will.
Dreams and dreads, despite being at the far reaches of the continuum,
aren’t opposites. e opposite of a high school student’s dream of getting drafted
into the NBA (a dream that includes fame, fortune, and a chance to travel the
world) isn’t a failure to make the NBA. Rather, his dread is to be utterly forgot-
ten, reduced to working at his dad’s garage the rest of his life while his finest
moment was the night during high school when he scored thirty- six points
against a weak team.
e narrator of “On the Rainy River” does not fear being drafted to serve
in Vietnam. He dreads it. And having received the draft notice, he dreads the
choice he has to make. e story succeeds because Tim O’Brien makes us feel
the desperation that his protagonist feels, caught between two options, both
active protagonists | 119
of which he dreads: either risking his life in a war he is fervently against, or
fleeing to Canada and disgracing himself in the eyes of everyone he loves.
Another person might merely fear going to war, or hope that life in Canada
might somehow turn out okay. is young man, however, dreads both options,
and his being thrust into a problem for which there are only terrible solutions
is precisely what gives the story its high stakes.
As you write, think about what, specifically, your characters dread, fear,
expect, hope, and dream. en take a close look at the outer reaches of the
motivational continuum, which tend to spawn our most urgent and compelling
stories.
exercises: know your character’s desires
1. Complete the motivational continuum for an important character in your
story, listing dreads, fears, expectations, hopes, and dreams.
2. Brainstorm a list of predicaments that threaten to
a. thwart expectations
b. dash hopes and dreams
c. stir fears and dreads
3. Which of these predicaments will put your character to the greatest test?
4. Based on your answers above, write the first page of the story.
active protagonists
Nothing can suck the energy out of a story like a passive protagonist. I don’t
necessarily mean a character without desire. He might want things; he just
never goes after any of them. is problem occurs most commonly in first-
person stories in which the narrator serves as our eyes and ears but doesn’t
become actively engaged in the story’s events.
Certain stories might demand that a character be unable to act — an abused
spouse, say, whose fear or denial might inhibit action. More often, however, a
protagonist’s passivity isn’t a necessary aspect of the character’s personality but
120 | chapter 7 writing a compelling story
rather is an unintended consequence of authorial timidity. Either we’re protect-
ing our characters, not wanting bad things to happen to them, or we care too
much about decorum. We instinctively stop our protagonists — and often any-
one else in the story — from “making a scene,” when making a scene is exactly
what our characters should be doing. Charles Baxter, in his  book e
Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot, explains:
People who have practiced good manners and conflict- avoidance all their
lives have to remember to leave those habits of mind at the door when they
enter the theater of fiction. Stories thrive on bad behavior, bad manners,
confrontations, and unpalatable characters who by wish or compulsion
make their desires visible by creating scenes.
Tandolfo, in “Tandolfo the Great,” could have been merely a sad sack.
He’s a loner with a heap of problems, and he’s been quietly in love with his co-
worker for a long time without ever having let her know. Surely that is a recipe
for a passive protagonist. Yet in Richard Bausch’s hands, Tandolfo is highly
active, forcing his fate at every turn. Maybe he is usually a passive, sad sack, but
today, when the story takes place, he has bought a big wedding cake that he
plans to give to the woman he has until now loved only from afar. When the
birthday boy, at whose house Tandolfo must perform his magic act, turns out
to be a brat, Tandolfo doesn’t quietly tolerate the kid’s bad behavior. Rather,
he grabs the kid’s tongue and calls him a “little prick” in front of all the children
and their parents.
Ill advised? Of course.
Active? Definitely.
Compelling? Absolutely.
If your main character isn’t a key actor in all the scenes you’re writing, it’s
worth asking yourself if you’ve chosen the best main character for your story.
And if you have, then consider revising the scenes to give your main character
a more active role.
You’ve probably noticed that high stakes, character desire, and active pro-
tagonists have a lot to do with one another. Characters are most inclined to be
active when they face the actualization of their dreams and dreads; in other
the atypical day (a break from routine) | 121
words, when they care urgently about what is happening; in other words, when
the stakes are high.
exercises: make your character active
1. A typically quiet character intentionally upends the table during
Thanksgiving dinner. Write the scene that causes him or her to do it.
2. Write a scene in which a character interrupts an argument between
two other people (such as parents or co- workers) to make a dramatic
announcement that spins the scene in a new direction.
3. Write a scene in which your protagonist is caught stealing a meaningful
object from someone he or she loves.
the atypical day (a break from routine)
Tandolfo has for some time quietly pined for the woman he loves. But the day
when this story takes place is the day that’s different. It’s the day when the
woman’s imminent departure from his life, her move to Houston, causes him
to act.
Compelling stories almost always depict the day (or more generally, the
time period) that represents a meaningful break from routine. If I were to walk
out of my campus office into the quad, typically a site of lounging and games
of Frisbee, to see a military he li cop ter hovering low, that would be unusual.
However, if I were a soldier in a war zone, my seeing the he li cop ter would be
typical. Maybe the day that’s different would be the morning when I crawled
out of my army- issue sleeping bag and saw zero he li cop ters or tanks but did see
a group of soldiers tossing around a Frisbee.
Even quiet stories about people’s daily lives, so- called slice- of- life stories,
usually contain some break from what’s routine. A story will lack urgency, and
be far less compelling, if there’s nothing special about today — if the story can
just as easily take place yesterday or tomorrow or next year.
122 | chapter 7 writing a compelling story
exercises: break from the everyday
1. Ask yourself how each story in the anthology depicts a break from the
characters’ usual routines. For example:
a. “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” depicts the time
when Victor and Thomas leave the reservation to claim the body
of Victor’s father.
b. “A & P” depicts the day when Sammy quits his job.
2. Now ask yourself how the story you’re writing depicts a break from
routine. (How is today different?)
3. What causes the break from routine? (Why must today be different?)
external conflict
In his book Making Shapely Fiction, Jerome Stern advises against writing what
he calls “e Bathtub Story.” It’s a story in which a single character is confined
to a single space. In a bathtub story, Stern writes:
[T]he character thinks, remembers, worries, plans, what ever. Before long,
readers realize that the character is not going to do anything. Nothing is
going to happen in terms of action. e character is not interacting with
other people, but is just thinking about past interactions. Problems will not
be faced but thought about. Troubles will not occur but will be remem-
bered. at’s the problem with the bathtub story: e character is never
going to get out of the bathtub.
A cousin of the bathtub story is the “driving and thinking” story. e main
character either is driving someplace alone and, we realize, doomed never to
get out of the car or interact with anyone in the story’s dramatic present, or is
in some sort of public transportation (a bus, a plane). Often, a story like that
is spent mainly in flashback, with the character reflecting on past events. Even
if the story happens to describe a few of the other people on the bus (an el der ly
woman, a bratty kid), none of those characters does anything to affect the story
significantly — nor does the main character do anything significant in the story’s
present. He sits. He thinks.
internal conflict/presenting characters’ interior lives | 123
One- character stories with no external conflict are very difficult to make
compelling. e external world (other people, places, events) presents opportu-
nities to challenge your characters and move them to action. ese opportuni-
ties are worth seizing, rather than avoiding (see “Active Protagonists,” p. ).
internal conflict/presenting characters’ interior lives
A story also needs to reveal something about the interior lives of its characters
and the pressures weighing on them. A typical story that fails to do this depicts
an athlete playing “the big game.” e game might be a nail- biter, but we aren’t
biting our nails. Why, after all, should we care about the outcome of a fictional
sporting event? A story that focuses exclusively on the external situation at the
expense of its characters and what motivates them will not be compelling.
e line “this time, it’s personal” is a cliché of the detective genre, but the
sentiment is exactly right. e story must always be personal to the protagonist.
We won’t care about a story’s external events unless we’re made to understand
why they matter to the characters in the story. (See “High Stakes,” p. .)
George Saunders’s story “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline” (p. ) is a story
with plenty of external conflict involving a man who works at an amusement
park on the brink of bankruptcy. When a co- worker begins to commit atroci-
ties against potential vandals, the protagonist becomes implicated, going so far
as to bury a teenager’s severed hand on park grounds to protect his deranged
co- worker. Why would he do this? He is worried about the welfare of his two
young sons, should he lose his job:
I did a horrible thing. Even as I sit here I’m an accomplice and an obstructor
of justice.
But then I see myself in the penitentiary and the boys waking up scared
in the night without me, and right then and there with my feet in the creek
I decide to stay clammed up forever and take my lumps in the afterlife.
Characters expose their inner lives in many ways: ey ruminate, they
speak, they act out. Chapter  details the myriad ways that characters reveal
themselves in fiction. But reveal themselves they must.
124 | chapter 7 writing a compelling story
compressed time period
A surefire way to make your short story more compelling — specifically, more
focused and tension- filled — is to compress the story’s timeline as much as possible.
Several stories in the anthology take place over part of a single day; at least one
takes place over just several minutes.
In John Updike’s “A & P” (p. ), Sammy quits his job impulsively, in
immediate response to the three girls being chastised by his boss. Imagine if,
instead, Sammy had brooded inwardly but done nothing for a month or two
before quitting. Much of the tension would have drained right out of the story.
“Tandolfo the Great” chronicles just a few hours in the life of its protago-
nist. He buys a wedding cake, which sits in his car while he performs magic at
a bratty kid’s party, and then he rushes to the home of the woman he loves. In
this one emotion- filled afternoon, Tandolfo’s dreams and dreads are confronted.
is is not to say that your story must take place over a single day. Maybe
it will, but each story has its own demands. As you write, ask yourself if there
are ways to compress the timeline. If you find yourself beginning a paragraph
or section with a phrase like “e following week,” ask yourself why that can’t
be changed to “e next morning” or even “Two hours later.”
suspense (as opposed to withheld information)
Suspense, the sort of writing that keeps us riveted to the page, requires the
reader’s knowledge, not ignorance. While it might be tempting to wait until
the last page to reveal that your bug- eating protagonist is actually an iguana,
withholding such crucial information as the species of your protagonist causes
the reader to imagine your story incorrectly. Readers are imagining a bug- eating
person. You, the writer, are imagining a reptile.
at’s an extreme and rather silly example, but the point is that readers
need to imagine your story accurately and know what the stakes are so that
they can experience the mounting tension right along with your character.
Imagine someone slowly overinflating a balloon. You know enough about the
physics of air and stretched rubber to know what’s going to happen. Still, it’s
suspenseful to watch, to wait in uncomfortable anticipation for the inevitable
explosion.
originality | 125
Jonathan Lethem’s  novel Motherless Brooklyn depicts a private inves-
tigator, Lionel Essrog, who suffers from Tourette’s syndrome, a disorder as-
sociated with vocal tics and, in some cases, the uncontrollable shouting of
obscenities. In trying to crack the case, Essrog finds himself in what is surely the
worst possible place for a man with a bad case of Tourette’s: a Zen center where
everyone has taken a vow of silence. Of all the fates that could befall a detec-
tive with this condition, surely nothing is worse than to have to sit among abso-
lutely silent people having to be absolutely silent himself. e suspense comes
from our knowing his condition, knowing him, and watching as he tries desper-
ately to contain his uncontrollable shouts and expletives. As human beings
who’ve come to care about this character, we don’t want him to fail. And yet as
readers, we do. We want that balloon to explode even as we’re covering our ears.
We suspect that Essrog will not only fail, but fail spectacularly. What we
don’t know, and what we read to find out, is exactly how he’ll fail and what the
repercussions will be.
exercises: build suspense
1. Write the first paragraph of a story that reveals your main character’s vice or
Achilles heel (something that will cause him or her trouble later in the story).
2. Write a scene in which your main character must endure a deep- seated,
specific fear in order to achieve a larger goal. (For instance, a man faces his
deep fear of drowning in order to hunt for his wedding ring that has fallen
into the river. A child faces her fear of the dark in order to soothe her baby
brother to sleep.)
originality
First, a caveat: Being original doesn’t have to mean being completely revolu-
tionary. Too much focus on being wholly original can lead a writer to gimmicks
that () overshadow the story and () aren’t actually original.
Yet originality is important because it means avoiding what’s easy, whether
that’s the rehashing of stale plots, characters, and settings, or going along with
conventional wisdom, or telling a story the way it’s always been told.
Why must the most pop u lar boy in school be captain of the football team?
Why must the most pop u lar girl be the head cheerleader? (And why are you
126 | chapter 7 writing a compelling story
writing about the “most pop u lar” kid, anyway?) Why must the beautiful woman
in the story have blond hair and blue eyes? And for her to seem beautiful, why
must her hair and eyes be described, rather than her unusually erect posture,
her faded Metallica T-shirt, or her skill at pinball? And why must she be beau-
tiful? Can’t a guy fall for the girl with crooked teeth or a weird blotch the
shape of Florida on her neck?
In every aspect of your story, make the effort to avoid stock details. Make
the reader imagine your par tic u lar world, not the world they could have in-
vented themselves.
Of course, the only way for a writer to know what’s actually fresh, versus
what might seem fresh but is in fact a cliché, is to read and read widely.
Here’s an idea that might not seem stale yet is something I see all the time
in my roles as an editor and a teacher: a story in which the protagonist works
a meaningless job in an office cubicle.
Problem : e overabundance of these stories suggests that they are
not fresh.
Problem : Often, the corporation’s actual purpose doesn’t matter in
terms of plot or theme. e company that sells greeting cards could
just as easily sell breakfast cereal, and the story wouldn’t be any different.
at’s because the company serves as a symbol (usually some vague
commentary about the emptiness of corporate existence) rather than as
an actual place of employment.
Problem : Often, the main character holds some undefined or unimportant
position in the company. e specifics of what he or she actually does
typically have no relevance in terms of characterization or plot or theme.
Problem : e cubicle doesn’t provide much for the writer to work
with in terms of setting. With few variations, a cubicle is a cubicle,
except for the Meaningful Photograph attached to the cubicle wall.
ere’s nothing wrong with writing about a cubicle- dweller, but because
it’s so common, the writer needs to work extra hard to make the story original.
Or maybe the character can, instead, be a marine biologist or a bereavement
counselor or a minor- league mascot or a drummer in a tribute band — or hold
some other job that presents refreshing opportunities for characterization, set-
ting, conflict, and theme.
originality | 127
High school se niors work lots of jobs: ey are salesclerks and lifeguards.
ey flip burgers. ey park cars. But the narrator in Tim O’Brien’s story “On
the Rainy River,” who has just been drafted into the army during the Vietnam
War, does none of those things: He removes blood clots from the necks of dead
pigs at a meatpacking plant, a job he describes in detail:
As a carcass passed by, you’d lean forward and swing the gun up against
the clots and squeeze the trigger, all in one motion, and the brush would
whirl and water would come shooting out and you’d hear a quick splatter-
ing sound as the clots dissolved into a fine red mist.
Of all the jobs that the author could have given his teenage protagonist,
he chose “pig declotter” — not because it was a job the author himself ever had
as a teenager (he didn’t), but because the gun and gore foreshadow the charac-
ter’s future as a soldier in Vietnam. And this foreshadowing isn’t solely for the
reader to uncover; the character, fearing what lies ahead at the end of summer,
is sharp enough to make the connection himself:
In the eve nings I’d sometimes borrow my father’s car and drive aimlessly
around town, feeling sorry for myself, thinking about the war and the pig
factory and how my life seemed to be collapsing toward slaughter.
Not only is this job thematically relevant and vividly described, but it is
also unusual. How many other declotters have you read about in fiction?
e job, like the meat, is fresh.
exercises: choose the unusual
1. If you’ve written a scene set in a common place (somebody’s kitchen, a
restaurant, a car), change the setting to someplace less common: a reptile
zoo, a rooftop, a high diving board. Ask yourself how the new setting
might influence the scene.
2. Think about all the jobs held by everyone in your extended family. Which
would make the most interesting job in a story? Why?
3. Tobias Wolff’s story “Bullet in the Brain” takes place amid the sort of bank
robbery we’re all familiar with from TV and the movies. How is this story
made fresh? Choose a few favorite stories from the anthology and jot
down ways that the authors made their material fresh.
128
W I   , every four years my family would spend hours on
the living- room sofa watching the Olympics on tele vi sion. e gymnastics com-
petitions were particularly fierce, and it always struck me how much seemed to
ride on that final dismount off the uneven bars or the balance beam or the rings.
When a gymnast “sticks the landing” after a seemingly impossible midair
somersault, we know it. e feet plant down right where they’re supposed to
with no waggle, no adjustments; the athlete’s weight is perfectly centered. Every-
thing is in its place. at image of confidence and mastery over one’s body lin-
gers in the minds of millions of viewers and, more important, in the minds
of the judges as they tabulate their scores.
When we read a story that “sticks the landing,” we know that, too. Every
word feels right. A strong ending simultaneously closes down and opens up the
story. It closes the story in the sense that the main conflict has been brought
to some provisionary, if not final, resolution. A strong ending also opens the
story up in that its world continues to live on, or resonate, in our minds even
after we finish reading.
I’m no gymnast. Were you to toss me into the air and spin me around, I
suppose I might get lucky and land on my feet. More likely, I’d land on my head
or my back and end up in the emergency room. Likewise, it’s hard to luck
one’s way into the right ending for a story. New writers can choose to be con-
soled or alarmed by the fact that experienced writers often struggle with the
end of their stories. In a  interview with the Paris Review, Ernest Heming-
way said that he rewrote the ending of his novel A Farewell to Arms thirty- nine
times before being satisfied with it.
8
ending your story
strategies for ending your story | 129
Interviewer: Was there some technical problem there? What was it that
had stumped you?
Hemingway: Getting the words right.
the challenge
You’ve written several thousand words, and now it’s time to wrap things up. A
good ending, you’ve probably noticed from reading other stories, is one that is
simultaneously unexpected and inevitable. It’s unexpected in the sense that
you didn’t anticipate it playing out exactly as it does; it’s inevitable in the sense
that after you read it, you think, of course! Given that character in that situa-
tion, it’s the only way the story could have ended.
To throw one more fairly vague requirement into the pot: A strong ending
somehow feels like an end. To use that word again, it resonates.
Unexpectedness, inevitability, and resonance — that might sound like a tall
order. Remember, though, that fiction writers have a luxury that competitive
gymnasts don’t: revision. We can keep working at that single landing — shaping,
reshaping, reconceiving if necessary — for as long as it takes until we feel ready
to impress the Rus sian judge.
strategies for ending your story
Bear in mind that what follows are strategies, not tricks, and certainly not rules.
Yet they demonstrate how other writers bring their stories to an emotionally
and intellectually satisfying end.
For the end, look to the beginning
If you’re stuck on the ending, or even if you aren’t, it’s worth taking a look at how
your story starts. You started there for a reason, and there could be something
worth returning to at the end. Repetition is satisfying to a reader, especially
when, the second time around, the meaning changes or our understanding
deepens.
Becky Hagenston’s story “Midnight, Licorice, Shadow” (p. ) begins
with a series of names in rapid succession.
130 | chapter 8 ending your story
“Midnight, Licorice, Shadow,” she says. “Cocoa, Casper, Dr. Livingston.”
“Alfred Hitchcock,” he says. “Dracula. Vincent Price.”
ese, we learn, are potential names for the cat that Donna and her new
boyfriend, Jeremy, have recently taken in. When the story begins, we know
nothing about these people or their situation, only that they seem to have an
urgent need to name this animal. Midway through the story, we learn the
reason for the urgency: Jeremy believes that “not knowing something’s name
is like having a bad spirit floating around.” If they don’t come up with a name
for the cat in three days’ time, Jeremy is going to kill it — which is exactly what
he does late in the story. e trouble for Donna is that she herself is attached
to no single name. She was born Lacey Love and has since changed her name
whenever she feels her identity shifting. “I don’t feel like a Donna anymore,”
she admits near the story’s end. However, she doesn’t know whom she does feel
like. She is therefore in the same predicament as the cat, which Jeremy has just
strangled. e implication of Donna finding herself suddenly nameless —
which, given Jeremy’s logic, is “like having a bad spirit floating around” — is
dire. e story ends, as it began, with a desperate (and, we have to assume, fruit-
less) naming session:
“Linda,” Jeremy says, coming toward her, and she can see it in his eyes,
how badly he wants that to fit, but it doesn’t. “Betty,” he says, holding one
of her hands in both of his own. “Amber. Millicent. Penny.”
“Helen,” she whispers back. “Cynthia, Regina, Anne.”
At the story’s beginning, the naming session in the hotel room, although
urgent, seems playful, as do the names they suggest. e naming session at the
end of the story is foreboding. By now we understand what happens when
Jeremy can’t find a name that fits. We know what is most likely about to happen
to Donna — and, as her whisper implies, so does she.
Reconsider that object
In “Midnight, Licorice, Shadow,” the repetition is verbal. e story ends with
its two principal characters engaging in a conversation that mirrors an earlier
conversation. Another sort of refrain is the return to an object of significance
strategies for ending your story | 131
for which the meaning has changed in the eyes of the protagonist, implying a
change or development in character.
Jhumpa Lahiri’s story “is Blessed House” (p. ) begins with a young
woman, Twinkle, finding a porcelain Christ effigy in the house that she and
her husband have just moved into. (ey are newlyweds, and Hindu.) While
she is charmed and amused by the found object, her husband, Sanjeev, the
story’s point- of- view character, is not. “We should call the Realtor,” he sug-
gests. “Tell him there’s all this nonsense left behind. Tell him to take it away.”
eir disagreement over the effigies (Twinkle discovers several more scattered
throughout the house) comes to a head when Sanjeev threatens to remove a
statue of the Virgin Mary from their front lawn, where Twinkle has displayed
it. “Don’t you dare,” she says, followed by “I hate you.”
Of course their disagreement over the effigies is about more than just the
objects themselves. Rather, the objects are the focal point for a larger disagree-
ment about how one should behave. Sanjeev is serious, scholarly, and concerned
with how others see him. Twinkle is spontaneous and free- spirited. When the
couple throws a house warming party to be attended by all of Sanjeev’s acquain-
tances, Twinkle is the natural host, putting everybody at ease, though her
actions fill Sanjeev with jealousy and anger. e guests follow her around the
house on a trea sure hunt for more effigies, and when she finds a solid silver
bust of Christ, an object of actual beauty, he finds himself hating the object
“because he knew that Twinkle loved it.” Although Twinkle promises to keep
this latest find in her study, Sanjeev comes to understand that “for the rest of
their days together she would keep it on the center of the mantel, flanked on
either side by the rest of the menagerie.” e story ends with an image of San-
jeev standing with the Christ bust in his arms, following Twinkle as she and
their guests continue their impromptu trea sure hunt.
When the story opens, the objects are a source of curiosity that reveals the
couple’s differing values and personalities. By the story’s end, the objects have
become symbols of Twinkle’s power in the relationship, of her ability to dis-
miss Sanjeev’s piousness and civility — and, to his way of thinking, to dismiss
him.
When you read Richard Bausch’s story “Tandolfo the Great” (p. ), it will
be useful to track the evolving meaning of the wedding cake — what it means
132 | chapter 8 ending your story
to Tandolfo upon its mention at the beginning of the story as “a big pink wed-
ding cake, with its six tiers and scalloped edges and its miniature bride and
groom on top,” and what it comes to symbolize to him by the final paragraph,
when he sits in his car, “gazing at the incongruous shape of the cake there in
the falling dark,” awaiting its destruction.
ere is no shortage of classic short stories that end with a focus on a key
object that represents the protagonist’s evolving hopes and fears, dreams
and dreads. Notable examples include Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s  story
“e Yellow Wallpaper,” Sherwood Anderson’s  story “e Egg,” and Tim
O’Brien’s  story “e ings ey Carried.”
Look to the future
Once, when I was having trouble ending a story, my professor suggested that
I imagine my main character five or ten years into the future. I should imagine
his life in as much detail as I could, and while I wouldn’t actually be writing
that future into the story, I should consider nudging the end of the story in that
direction.
e “Common Pitfalls” section that follows warns against giving too much
away at the end, wrapping up your story with a nice neat bow. A number of
s and s movies, ensemble comedies like Animal House and Fast Times
at Ridgemont High, contain brief “where are they now” epilogues. (At the end
of Animal House, we learn that John Belushi’s character, Bluto, becomes a US
senator. In Fast Times, we learn that Sean Penn’s character, Jeff Spicoli, saves
Brooke Shields from drowning and then blows the reward money, hiring Van
Halen to perform at his birthday party.) Your story should almost certainly
resist this narrative device. Definitively pinning down your characters in simple
terms (character  becomes A; character  becomes B) not only undercuts the
complexity and mystery of character but also brings a story’s narrative energy
to a grinding halt.
Nevertheless, the end of a story can and often should begin to reveal what
sort of challenges lie ahead for your protagonist. In Anton Chekhov’s 
story “e Lady with the Dog,” a middle- aged banker, Gurov, is content to carry
on meaningless extramarital affairs until he meets the younger Anna while
strategies for ending your story | 133
vacationing in Yalta. He expects his liaison with her to be just another fling, yet
when his vacation ends and he returns home to his family, Gurov is shocked
to discover that he can’t put Anna out of his mind. He is, for the first time in his
life, fully in love. is is new, frightening territory for him.
After several failed attempts to sever ties and return to their separate
lives, Gurov and Anna finally decide to pursue their relationship in earnest,
knowing full well that doing so will make their lives immeasurably more
difficult.
en they discussed their situation for a long time, trying to think how
they could get rid of the necessity for hiding, deception, living in different
towns, being so long without meeting. How were they to shake off these
intolerable fetters?
“How? How?” he repeated, clutching his head. “How?”
And it seemed to them that they were within an inch of arriving at a
decision, and that then a new and glorious life would begin. And they
both realized that the end was still far, far away, and that the hardest, the
most complicated part was only just beginning.
“e Lady with the Dog” ends there, without revealing exactly what this
couple will face, but with an understanding that great difficulties lie ahead,
difficulties that are the price of admission into this “new and glorious life.”
Karen Russell’s story “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” (p. )
depicts a group of girls, raised up until this time by their werewolf parents, who
are sent to a boarding school to become socialized human beings. e parents
have sent their girls away for the noblest of reasons — an education they could
not themselves provide — and yet the school serves mainly to embarrass the
girls about their former, animalistic lives and drive a wedge into their commu-
nal existence. At the end of the story, Claudette returns home to her family’s
cave for a brief visit. We can mea sure how much Claudette has changed by the
way she views her childhood home:
e cave looked so much smaller than I remembered it. I had to duck my
head to enter. Everybody was eating when I walked in. ey all looked up
from the bull moose at the same time, my aunts and uncles, my sloe- eyed,
lolling cousins, the parents. My uncle dropped a thighbone from his mouth.
134 | chapter 8 ending your story
Claudette and the other girls of St. Lucy’s have been taught to eat with
forks and knives. ey have learned to speak politely at parties and how to
dance ballroom steps. eir education seems surface- level, except for this: eir
pack mentality and regard for one another has been trained out of them,
making “St. Lucy’s” a story about a negative side of education that is rarely
talked about. e story’s final sentences prove just how far Claudette’s “educa-
tion” has taken her away from her family:
ey stared up at me expectantly, panting in the cool gray envelope of the
cave, waiting for a display of what I had learned.
“So,” I said, telling my first human lie. “I’m home.”
ere is nothing more human, the story suggests, than telling a lie. We are
watching Claudette, in a sense, pass her final exam. What will happen to her
five, ten years down the road? We don’t know exactly, but we suspect she’ll
never be able to live in that cave again with her family. at part of her, the part
that shares a communal meal with her pack, has been trained away. Rather,
she’ll live among the humans. Considering, however, that human existence in
this story is defined by its shallowness, selfishness, and deception, we view
Claudette’s successful inculcation into human society as the tragic but inevi-
table result of her education.
Consider this: You might already have written it
In an attempt to make sure the reader understands our stories, we sometimes
include more than we need to at the end — maybe even a lot more. If you find
yourself at the end of a story suddenly writing a scene that takes place in a brand-
new setting, or jumping ahead in time months or years, ask yourself whether
those large leaps are necessary.
In an early draft of his story “A & P” (p. ), John Updike included a
scene that took place later in the day, in which Sammy went down to the beach
to look for the girls who’d left him standing alone in the A & P parking lot.
In revision, Updike cut that scene after coming to see that it was superfluous.
(Always the productive writer, Updike later used that extra writing in another
story, “Lifeguard.”) We might not know all the particulars of Sammy’s fate —
what exactly his parents say when they learn he has quit his job, or if Sammy
common pitfalls | 135
finds new employment, or if he ever moves away from his hometown — but we
do know what matters most for this story. e events at the A & P awaken in
him a sense of an unjust, unpleasant aspect of adulthood — and this is as much
of a conclusion as “A & P” needs.
When you are first composing a story, it can be helpful to include more
rather than less. at extra scene might get cut eventually, but in writing it
you’ll have learned something useful. When it comes time to finalizing a draft,
however, take a critical look at the last part of your story.
A former teacher of mine suggests that if the ending doesn’t seem to be
working, try cutting the story’s last line. Doing so increases the likelihood that
you’ll finish with a necessary part of the narrative, rather than with a com-
mentary about the story or something too overtly thematic. If the ending
still feels wrong, he suggests cutting the entire last paragraph. And what if
that doesn’t work? Maybe the entire page, or — as with Updike’s “A & P” — the
entire last scene, is superfluous.
common pitfalls
Tricking your reader
Chapter  warned against beginning a story with your character waking up
in bed (specifically with the alarm clock going off). is also happens to be a
problematic way to end your story. If you end your story with your main char-
acter waking up in bed, implying that the whole story was nothing but a dream,
then your reader has every right to throw your manuscript across the room,
come over to your house, and lodge a formal complaint.
Why? While you might have been aiming to surprise us, what you’ve really
done is trick us. Unlike an unexpected ending that arises from the mysterious
and often contradictory nature of character, a trick ending comes directly from
the iron hand of the author, who causes us to invest our emotional energy in
characters who do not exist, in a story that does not matter.
e “and then I woke up” ending is but the most infamous type of trick
ending. Trick endings are all too common in the drafts of beginning writers,
and these endings are nearly always unsuccessful. Jerome Stern, in his book Mak‑
ing Shapely Fiction, includes a long list of endings to avoid. Most are variations
136 | chapter 8 ending your story
on the trick ending. He advises, for instance, to avoid writing a story that
ends:
He realized he was alone, and slowly blinked his third eye. [Surprise! e
main character is really an alien.]
I can’t help it if that’s all I understand. After all, I’m just a dachshund.
[Surprise! e main character is really a dog.]
e guillotine blade fell swiftly, severing my head from my body. [Surprise!
A dead narrator has been telling this story.]
To these I would add:
“I’ll take over from here,” his other personality said. [Surprise! e narrator
has multiple personalities.]
Trick endings — or to use a kinder term, surprise endings — are most com-
mon among beginning writers who are more interested in providing a shock
than in telling a story. ey are nearly always a mistake. Not only do they almost
never shock, but they also negate everything that preceded the ending, treating
the story as an elaborate setup for a punch line. ey encourage the reader to
invest emotionally in a story that isn’t actually the story at all.
Deus ex machina
A completely understandable reason for writing the trick ending is that we can’t
come up with another one that works. With no clear way to end the story, we
decide to have the character wake up, or be a dog or a Martian, hoping to deflect
What about the movie e Wizard of Oz? you might be wondering. What about Chuck Palahniuk’s
novel Fight Club? A reasonably observant viewer will see right away that Dorothy is dreaming, since
just before landing in Oz, she gets knocked unconscious and falls into her bed. So her awakening
later on isn’t really a surprise ending. (Furthermore, the author Salman Rushdie makes a persuasive
argument that Dorothy’s return to Kansas is the weakest part of the film.) As for Fight Club, the reve-
lation that the narrator and Tyler Durden are one and the same happens midway through the novel
(and film adaptation), not at the end.
common pitfalls | 137
the fact that we don’t know how the story should draw to a close. A similar
manifestation of our failure to find a proper ending is the deus ex machina. It
means, in Latin, “god from the machine” and refers to the manner in which
ancient Greek playwrights ended their dramas: Actors playing the gods liter-
ally descended onto the stage in a cranelike mechanism to sort out all the di-
lemmas created by the human characters.
Today, we use the phrase deus ex machina to refer to any ending in which
we sense the meddling, godlike hand of the author resolving characters’ pre-
dicaments for them. Lightning strikes our villain dead. Our down- and- out pro-
tagonist, on the story’s last page, learns of a deceased relative who has willed
him her estate.
A student of mine once turned in a first draft in which a man is on the
verge of losing the family clothing store. e man has taken on a second loan
and is about to default on it. To make matters worse, he hasn’t been honest
with his wife about the extent of their financial difficulties. is student did a
fine job laying out the man’s predicament. Feeling the need to “fix” his char-
acters’ problems, however, the author ended the story with the man finding a
suitcase full of money, at least a million dollars, in the alley behind his store.
(It’s quickly explained that there had been a bank robbery earlier that day,
and that the robbers, fleeing the scene, must have tossed the suitcase into the
alley.)
e trouble with an ending like that, beyond the obvious logistical im-
probabilities and coincidences, is that it lets our protagonist off the hook far
too easily. We never get to see what the man would actually do when the going
gets tough, because the author has swept in, godlike, and resolved everything
for him.
Many of the examples in the “Tricking Your Reader” section above are
actually instances of deus ex machina. at is, they are ways that an author stops
the story without having to deal with the story. Even death can be a form of
deus ex machina. Although it might not seem like it, we treat our protagonists
too easily when we kill them off. Let them stay alive and have to deal with the
consequences of their actions. Now that’s hard.
138 | chapter 8 ending your story
Everything ties up in a neat little bow
Life is complicated, and so — we hope — are our stories. At the end of “Tan-
dolfo the Great,” Tandolfo still has his gambling debts. We can assume he
hasn’t kicked the booze. He’s still a second- rate clown/magician. He has, how-
ever, finally accepted the fact that he won’t get the girl, for she does not love
him. His symbolic gesture of leaving the wedding cake in the road suggests
that from now on he’ll see the world a little more as it truly is. at’s as much
resolution as this story needs to provide. No easy solutions; no neat little bows.
Setting out to teach your characters — or, worse,
the reader — a lesson
It’s not that readers don’t like to learn things. Sure we do. If your protagonist
is a poker player or a gardener, and from reading the story we gain an increased
appreciation for card- counting or beets — well, that’s great.
What readers resist is a story that sets out to teach a lesson. Fiction’s
strength is its depiction of nuance, its admission that life is complicated. Writ-
ing a story that “teaches” a character (and, in turn, the reader) that it’s wrong
to drink and drive, say by having the protagonist smash into a tree and cripple
his wife, reduces the art form to an after- school special or public ser vice an-
nouncement.
If your story demands that a character drive into a tree, go ahead and write
it. But let that plot decision serve the interest of the story, not the lesson.
Along those lines, readers resist stories that serve mainly to argue a par tic-
u lar stance on a hot- button issue. Can you write a story about a pro- life char-
acter? Of course. A pro- choice character? Sure. But the story itself isn’t the
forum to argue your — the author’s — particular side on an issue. Like “lesson”
fiction, much “issue” fiction is really thinly disguised lecturing. Nobody likes to
be lectured to, even when it’s disguised as a story. Especially when it’s disguised
as a story.
getting the words right | 139
Solving a problem versus stating a problem
I already made the case against solving our characters’ problems for them, but
Anton Chekhov takes things a step further, arguing that a story’s problems need
not be solved at all. “e task of a writer,” he asserts, “is not to solve the problem
but to state the problem correctly.” Certainly he followed his own advice with
“e Lady with the Dog.” We don’t know how the problems that Gurov and
Anna have gotten themselves into will be solved, yet by the end of the story
we have a deep understanding of their predicament.
is is not to say that a story’s plot need not come to some crisis or resolu-
tion. Gurov and Anna, after all, do come to the decision to give their relation-
ship a shot. eir decision, however, hardly “solves” their problems, which will
become increasingly messy once their relationship is out in the open. But
those later concerns, and how exactly they play out, aren’t the subject of this
story.
My student who wrote the story about the clothing- store own er ultimately
decided that his story could end with his protagonist still in debt. Not only
did the author not need to solve his character’s money troubles; those troubles
didn’t need to be solved at all. More important was conveying what it felt like
for this man to live with the daily fear of losing the family business (handed
down from his father), as well as the secrets he kept from his wife in a misguided
attempt to protect her. e author was able to keep the bank robbery in the
story but used it as a way for his protagonist to imagine, briefly, doing some-
thing hasty and criminal for cash. e man even enters a bank late in the story
with his meager sales from the day and looks around at the tellers, the video
cameras . . . but he’s no bank robber. He deposits the money and leaves — but
not before an unexpected and ambiguous wink at a sleepy security guard reveals
either an impotent display of power or — depending on your interpretation — a
genuine threat. A wink that says, “Next time, you’d better be on your toes.”
getting the words right
Even when you know, or think you know, how to end your story, there’s always
the matter — as Hemingway bluntly put it — of getting the words right. We
140 | chapter 8 ending your story
want to convey that the story is over. And yet we also want the story to linger
in our readers’ minds.
ere’s no easy trick to this; finding the right words to end a story requires
a well- tuned ear and a fierce attention to the meaning, sound, and rhythm of
language.
Tobias Wolff’s story “Bullet in the Brain” (p. ) concludes with a mem-
ory of the moment in which the protagonist first became a critic in the best
sense — that is, the moment, during a pickup baseball game years earlier, when
Anders first became attuned to the musical possibilities of language. e story
ends with vivid, sensory imagery followed by a repetition of a grammatically
incorrect, but strangely pleasing, phrase uttered by the kid playing shortstop
in their pickup baseball game:
[F]or now Anders can still make time. Time for the shadows to lengthen
on the grass, time for the tethered dog to bark at the flying ball, time for
the boy in right field to smack his sweat- blackened mitt and softly chant,
ey is, they is, they is.
Wolff is particularly adept at finding resonant language to end his stories.
Another way he “gets the words right” is to write them in such a way that they
apply to both the immediate and the larger predicament of the characters. In his
story “Hunters in the Snow,” three friends, none of them upstanding citizens,
go on an ill- fated hunting trip, during which Tub shoots Kenny over a misun-
derstanding. Tub and Frank load Kenny, who is clearly (to the reader, anyway)
dying, onto the back of their truck and set out for the hospital. However, they
have misplaced the directions and don’t really know where they’re going.
e story’s second- to- last paragraph includes images of the night sky, that
ancient navigational system, that offer Kenny reason to be optimistic:
Kenny lay with his arms folded over his stomach, moving his lips at the
stars. Right overhead was the Big Dipper, and behind, hanging between
Kenny’s toes in the direction of the hospital, was the North Star, Pole Star,
Help to Sailors. As the truck twisted through the gentle hills the star went
back and forth between Kenny’s boots, staying always in his sight. “I’m
going to the hospital,” Kenny said.
two final thoughts on endings | 141
e story’s final paragraph, however, shifts away from Kenny’s perspective,
toward a more objective truth:
But he was wrong. ey had taken a different turn a long way back.
In this context, the wrong turn taken refers both to their current drive to the
hospital and to the course of their lives. At some point years ago, each of these
three damaged characters took a wrong turn.
Let’s return for a moment to Karen Russell’s story “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls
Raised by Wolves.” Here again is that story’s final paragraph:
“So,” I said, telling my first human lie. “I’m home.”
e last paragraph could have been written:
“So, I’m home,” I said, telling my first human lie.
Ending the story as she does, however, Russell gets the words right by draw-
ing attention to “home,” something that Claudette no longer has. Saying she’s
“home” is a lie because she knows that she doesn’t belong in her family’s home
anymore. Where, then, is her home? Back with the other humans? Not really.
is is the tragedy of Claudette’s experience at the boarding school: It has
caused her to lose any sense of having a home.
two final thoughts on endings
The problem might not be the ending
When you find yourself struggling to get the ending right, the problem might
lie elsewhere. e ending, rather than being the problem, might merely be the
symptom of the real problem, which is that you don’t yet understand your
own story well enough.
From time to time, sit back and consider the questions we ask when we
read like a writer: What is the story about? What are its central questions? What
do the characters want? What do they fear? If you aren’t sure, you might need
to revise parts of your story to bring these matters more to the forefront. e
142 | chapter 8 ending your story
end of a story nearly always has thematic implications; therefore, until we know
our story’s thematic concerns — what, ultimately, the story is about — we won’t
know whether we’re moving toward the right ending.
You don’t need to write your story from start to finish
If an ending comes to you midway through your draft, go ahead and write it.
Or maybe a final scene or image comes to you even earlier, just as you start
working on the draft. Great — write it. You might change your mind about the
ending once more of the story is written (always be open to revising — think of
Hemingway!), but at least some of what you wrote will be useful.
Some writers, when starting out on a new story, have no idea how it might
end. Others have a clear sense of how their stories will end before setting down
word one. Be open to your own creative pro cess.
exercises: experiment with endings
1. Write the end of your story by referring back to the story’s beginning, as in
“Midnight, Licorice, Shadow.”
2. Write a different ending to the same story with an emphasis on an object
that appeared earlier on, as in “This Blessed House” or “Tandolfo the Great.”
3. Write a different ending to the same story that provides only a glimpse of
your main character’s long- term future, as in “The Lady with the Dog” or
“Magic Words.”
4. Write a final sentence to your story that speaks simultaneously to your
protagonist’s immediate and more general predicaments, like the ending
sentence of “Hunters in the Snow.”
5. Once you have a complete draft of your story, try cutting the last line. Try
cutting the last paragraph. Ask yourself how the story has changed, and
whether it is weaker or stronger as a result.
6. Write the ending line to a story that doesn’t yet exist. Now try to write the
ending paragraph. Given that ending, where might the story begin? What
might it be about?
143
T  can be summed up in two words: Be clear.
Whether your prose is direct and declarative or lyrical and syntactically
ambitious, you should strive for clarity. Unclear writing is like a phone call
with too much static. e static says nothing about the nature of the conversa-
tion. It only makes you want to end the call.
Sometimes, simple errors impede clarity — like when a writer inadvertently
changes the name of a character mid- story, or begins a scene on a cloudy day
and then, a few pages later, mentions the bright shadows being cast on the grass.
Errors like these are common in early drafts and are easily corrected. Chapter
 deals with a number of mechanical errors that detract from a story’s clarity.
is chapter deals less with errors than with aesthetics and craft, suggest-
ing ways to focus on clarity so that your reader will experience your story as
you intend.
vagueness versus ambiguity
First, we need to dispel the notion that there is something arty in being vague.
As discussed in Chapter , details are the key to fiction. Vague writing creates
confusion. e trouble with a sentence like “e animal stands in the yard” or,
worse, “An animal is over there” is that it’s imprecise. e writer has an image
in her head, say an elephant standing in some character’s backyard, that doesn’t
match what the reader imagines, maybe a dog in a field. Given the extreme
vagueness of the sentence “An animal is over there,” the reader might not have
any image in his head at all.
9the power of clarity
144 | chapter 9 the power of clarity
Quite possibly, the writer doesn’t, either. I’ll ask a student who writes about
a man working “a boring office job” what the man’s job actually is. What does
the company do? What does the man’s day- to- day work consist of? e writer
should know, but sometimes he doesn’t. Yet how can a writer convey a par tic-
u lar world to the reader if he hasn’t fully imagined the world himself?
A number of chapters in this book have already argued against withholding
information from the reader. Vagueness is either a form of withheld information
or an indication that the writer isn’t yet imagining her own story in sufficient
detail.
A story that states, “He did it again,” and then waits for pages and pages
before revealing who the “he” is or what it is that he did is being coy with the
reader. A story about a man who left dirty dishes in the sink again is quite a
different story from one about a man who smacked around his children again.
Readers deserve to know which story it is they’re reading.
Ambiguity is another matter. An ambiguous story is one that opens itself
up to multiple interpretations, given the available evidence. Readers might
argue over Jhumpa Lahiri’s story “is Blessed House” (p. ) — whether
Twinkle’s behavior is a positive antidote to Sanjeev’s relentless somberness, or
whether she is ultimately undermining her husband in his job and his religion.
e story contains ample evidence, details about the characters and their life
together, to support multiple interpretations.
In summary: An ambiguous story offers multiple ways to understand it.
A vague story offers no way to understand it — not without the reader inventing
details and making connections that aren’t in the story, essentially doing the
writer’s work.
clear words
The ten- dollar word
As long as we’re dispelling notions, let’s talk about big words for a minute. Some
beginning writers are drawn to them. Rather than write, Five kittens hid in the
shrubs, she writes, A plethora of puerile, terrestrial creatures used the lush topogra‑
phy to impede all knowledge of their existence, with a belief that lofty diction is
always called for and that bigger words are preferable to smaller ones.
clear words | 145
“Five kittens hid in the shrubs,” however, paints a clear picture — whereas
“A plethora of puerile, terrestrial creatures used the lush topography to impede
all knowledge of their existence” is less precise, pseudo- poetic, and unneces-
sarily wordy. It’s an inferior sentence, unless the writer is going for comedy.
In fact, sometimes a writer will intentionally deploy lofty diction for comic
or ironic effect. Richard Bausch’s story “Tandolfo the Great” (p. ) contains
a scene in which a drunk, hostile Tandolfo is forcibly removed from the house
where he was performing his magic tricks for a group of children. Sprawled on
the grass, his clothes torn and his face bloody, Tandolfo tries to salvage a bit of
dignity with the adults who just threw him out:
“I would say that even though I wasn’t as patient as I could’ve been, the
adults have not comported themselves well here,” he says.
Tandolfo’s mea sured, formal address to the adults stands in ironic contrast
to the near- slapstick situation that preceded it. It’s a very funny moment in the
story, made funnier because of Tandolfo’s diction.
An expansive working vocabulary is of course extremely useful for a writer.
We want to use the most precise words when we write, and we can’t use words
we don’t know. (e phi los o pher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote, “e limits of
my language mean the limits of my world.”) Authors from Henry James to Vir-
ginia Woolf to David Foster Wallace display enormous lexicons in their writing,
deploying words with laserlike precision.
However, a sentence like “e more my neighbor praised his son’s many
achievements, the more disinterested I became” impedes clarity because the
words aren’t used with precision. e man is either praising his son or he is list-
ing (or enumerating, or maybe cata loging) his son’s achievements, but he proba-
bly isn’t “praising” the achievements themselves. And the word “disinterested”
is being used incorrectly: at word means “impartial” (like a judge), rather
than “not interested.” e better word, in this context, is “uninterested.”
A clearer sentence would be “e more my neighbor listed his son’s many
achievements, the less interested I became.” Or: “As my neighbor listed his son’s
many achievements, I became bored.” Or perhaps even better: “As my neighbor
listed his son’s many achievements, I began to sweep leaves out of the garage
and think about the errands I needed to run later that day.”
146 | chapter 9 the power of clarity
With that last sentence, losing the ten- dollar words freed me up to paint
the scene in greater detail. It’s a more precise sentence, a clearer sentence.
Even a ten- dollar word used correctly will call undue attention to itself if
it doesn’t match the sentence’s overall level of diction. e sentence “Jack hit
the brakes and the car stopped forthwith” stops us forthwith. “Suddenly” would
match the more casual diction (“hit the brakes”) of the rest of the sentence.
Or, the word can be cut entirely from the sentence: “Jack hit the brakes and the
car stopped.”
Or what about this one: “Jack hit the brakes.”
Adjectives and adverbs
Nouns and verbs are key. Adam swam. Tracy hiked. e dog buried its bone.
Little more needs to be said about those parts of speech, except that it’s gener-
ally more vivid and eco nom ical to use active rather than passive verbs. (e
dog buried its bone, rather than e bone was buried by the dog.) But this
advice is nothing new — you’ve probably been told to avoid the passive voice
all your life.
Adverbs, however — and, to a lesser degree, adjectives — are worthy of your
skepticism because they’re often indicators that a sentence isn’t as clear as it
could be. In his book On Writing, Stephen King puts it bluntly: “e adverb is
not your friend.”
Often, by choosing a more precise noun or verb, you render the adjective
or adverb unnecessary and make the sentence clearer and more concise.
He lived in a gigantic house.
She ran quickly to the mailbox.
He felt very frightened.
He lived in a mansion.
She raced to the mailbox.
He felt terrified.
King goes on to explain that the goal isn’t merely to edit out your adverbs, but
to write in such a way that your story won’t need them in the first place:
Consider the sentence He closed the door firmly. It’s by no means a terri-
ble sentence (at least it’s got an active verb going for it), but ask yourself if
firmly really has to be there. You can argue that it expresses a degree of
clear sentences | 147
difference between He closed the door and He slammed the door, and
you’ll get no argument from me . . . but what about context? What about
all the enlightening (not to say emotionally moving) prose which came
before He closed the door firmly? Shouldn’t this tell us how he closed the
door? And if the foregoing prose does tell us, isn’t firmly an extra word?
Isn’t it redundant?
Hard- and- fast rules? No. Principles of craft and aesthetics? Yes.
Your finished story will almost certainly have some adjectives in it, and it
may well contain a couple of adverbs. Your mission, however, is to be certain
that these parts of speech are never being used as crutches to bolster weak or
imprecise prose.
Don’t be very conscientious in your search for the right word. Be ruthless.
clear sentences
Often, a writer doesn’t set out to be imprecise or hazy. She knows what she
means.
Mother and daughter argued for over an hour until, just after midnight,
she finally said, “Oh, the heck with you,” and stormed out of the house.
e writer knows who is still at home and who has left. Trouble is, the reader
doesn’t.
Who?
Here’s an example of an unnecessarily unclear opening:
Arnie knew better than to take the threat seriously, but now Cassandra was
standing by the open front door, her suitcase in hand, telling him to “have
a nice life.”
e sentence isn’t badly written — but who are these people?
Arnie knew better than to take the threat seriously, but now Cassandra, his
five- year- old daughter, was standing by the open front door, her suitcase
in hand, telling him to “have a nice life.”
Ah. Now we know what we should be imagining while we read.
148 | chapter 9 the power of clarity
Readers need enough contextual information to understand the implica-
tion of what is written. A story that begins
Ralph Gwinn landed the MetroMart contract.
should fairly quickly — in the next few sentences — give us context. Or you
could rewrite the opening sentence so it contains the context:
Ralph Gwinn, my mentor at the firm, landed the MetroMart contract.
Ralph Gwinn, who for the past two months had been sleeping with my
wife, landed the MetroMart contract.
Ralph Gwinn, fresh out of rehab, landed the MetroMart contract.
tip: naming your characters (a nice trick)
Learning to write fiction is hard work, and there are very few tricks. But
here’s one. To avoid reader confusion, give your characters names that dif-
fer from one another. Specifically:
▸ Avoid using the same starting letter.
▸ Avoid names that rhyme with one another.
▸ Avoid starting all the names with either vowels or consonants.
▸ Vary the syllable count.
Even a careful reader might confuse characters named Rickie and Mickey, or
Laura and Lauren. (Confession: My extended family includes a Laura, a Lauren,
and a Lori, and at family gatherings I usually end up saying, “Hiya, cousin.”)
In my example on page 147, I used the names Arnie and Cassandra, which
are sufficiently different.
When?
Sentences are generally clearest when time cues are placed at the beginning.
Consider the following:
clear sentences | 149
I jogged down the street to the supermarket for food — past the post
office, past the dry cleaners and the bank where I’d once tried to pass a bad
check — at  a.m.
Very likely, until you read those last words, you assumed that the scene
was taking place in daytime. With the time cue at the end of the sentence, I’ve
caused you to picture the scene incorrectly. By moving it to the beginning of
the sentence, I can be sure that you picture the scene correctly — a jog to the
supermarket in the dead of night:
At  a.m., I jogged down the street to the supermarket for food — past the
post office, past the dry cleaners and the bank where I’d once tried to pass
a bad check.
Then and now — verb tenses
Most stories contain at least some sentences that refer to events that occurred
before the story began. Stories with flashbacks contain lots of these sentences.
e verb tenses to use for maximum clarity when referring to a time prior to
the story’s “narrative present” are the past tense and the past perfect tense.
A story written in the present tense usually employs the past tense when
referring to events occurring before the story began.
Leroy has been in Kentucky for three months, and his leg is almost healed,
but the accident frightened him and he does not want to drive any more
long hauls. He is not sure what to do next. In the meantime, he makes things
from craft kits.[1] He started by building a miniature log cabin from notched
Popsicle sticks. He varnished it and placed it on the TV set,[2] where it
remains. It reminds him of a rustic Nativity scene.[3]
⁓ B A M, “Shiloh”
[] So far, the paragraph is told in the present tense.
[] e story switches to the past tense to describe the time when Leroy made
a miniature log cabin — an event that happened before the story’s “now.”
[] We’re back to the present tense; presumably, the Popsicle- stick cabin still
reminds him of a Nativity scene.
A story written in the past tense employs the past perfect tense when referring
to prior events.
150 | chapter 9 the power of clarity
Marian Peters came[1] back from the kitchen. She was a tall woman with
worried eyes, who had once possessed a fresh American loveliness.[2] Charlie
had never been sensitive to it and was always surprised when people spoke of
how pretty she had been. From the first there had been an instinctive an-
tipathy between them.[3]
⁓ F. SF, “Babylon Revisited”
[] e story is being narrated in the simple past tense.
[] Her “fresh American loveliness” ended prior to this story’s beginning;
thus the sentence uses the past perfect tense (“had possessed”).
[] e rest of the paragraph continues to describe events that occurred prior
to this story’s beginning, and therefore maintains the past perfect tense.
You might find, however, that using many past perfect verbs in a row
becomes unwieldy and awkward (“Once he had eaten his sandwich, he had
gone out back and had dug the garden and then had watered it”). For that rea-
son, stories written in the past tense often signal the shift into backstory with
one or two uses of the past perfect, but then continue on in the simple past
tense as long as clarity isn’t being sacrificed.
“You were just kidding,” the dean said, “about wiping out all of mankind.
at, I suppose, was a joke.” She squinted at me. One of her hands curved
atop the other to form a pink, freckled molehill on her desk.
“Well,” I said, “maybe I meant it at the time.” I quickly saw that this was
not the answer she wanted. “I don’t know. I think it’s the architecture.”[1]
rough the dimming light of the dean’s-office window, I could see the
fortress of the old campus. On my ride from the bus station to the cam-
pus, I’d barely glimpsed[2] New Haven — a flash of crumpled buildings
here, a trio of straggly kids there. A lot like Baltimore. But everything had
changed[3] when we reached[4] those streets hooded by gothic buildings.
I imagined how the college must have looked when it was founded, when
most of the students owned slaves. I pictured men wearing tights and
knickers, smoking pipes.
“e architecture,” the dean repeated.[5]
⁓ ZZ P, “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere” (p. )
[] So far, the story is being told in the past tense.
[] e shift to the past perfect (“had glimpsed”) signals the transition to
backstory.
clear sentences | 151
[] Continued use of the past perfect (“had changed”) cements the backstory
in time.
[] Here, and for the remainder of the paragraph, the tense reverts to the
simple past tense, because it’s evident that we’re continuing to describe this
same memory of the character’s ride to college.
[] Despite the continued use of the simple past tense, we know that the
memory is over, and we’ve returned to the story’s present moment,
because of (a) the paragraph break and (b) the fact that the dean is speaking
again, clearly continuing the conversation she and the narrator are
having.
Where?
As with time cues, location cues usually belong early in the sentence:
Josh and I played cards for days on end — gin rummy, hearts, poker — until
one morning he threw down the cards he was holding, said, “I can’t stand
it anymore,” and leapt off the life raft into the frigid sea.
at sentence works only if we already know the characters’ predicament
(or if I’m aiming for comedy). Otherwise, this way of revealing their location
is unnecessarily jarring. e clearer sentence reads:
In the life raft, Josh and I played cards for days on end — gin rummy, hearts,
poker — until one morning he threw down the cards he was holding, said,
“I can’t stand it anymore,” and leapt into the frigid sea.
Here is how Richard Bausch provides a sentence of backstory in “Tandolfo
the Great” (p. ). Notice how it begins by orienting us in time and space:
is morning at the local bakery he picked up a big pink wedding cake, with
its six tiers and scalloped edges and its miniature bride and groom on top.
Sentence length
A series of short sentences might be the best way to convey a staccato scene:
He stood at the podium. Cleared his throat. “Ladies and . . .” He looked
out at the audience and felt his hands begin to sweat. “Sorry,” he said, and
coughed into his hand. “I’m a little ner vous.”
152 | chapter 9 the power of clarity
Yet short sentences might be at odds with a scene meant to convey fluidity
or continuousness:
e gulls flew overhead. ey made smooth arcs over the beach. One
dipped lower than the rest. It snatched a French fry from the sand. It soared
away. e others chased it over the water.
e fluidity of the scene is being undercut by the choppy prose rhythm.
Longer sentences might work better:
e gulls flew overhead in wide loops over the beach. One dipped lower
than the rest, snatched a French fry from the sand, and soared away, the
others chasing it over the water.
Or you might find a combination of longer and shorter sentences useful.
Here, a character’s distress is communicated with a long sentence, which is
followed by a short sentence — a fragment, really — that provides temporary
closure to the character’s thoughts:
Too much to do, April thought, and too little time before the in- laws
knocked on her door with their talk of how lovely, just lovely the house
looked, while they studied the windowsills for dust, the windows for streaks,
and the sofa for dog hair, which never came off the fabric no matter how
diligently you vacuumed. Ah, marriage.
Here is another section from ZZ Packer’s story “Drinking Coffee Else-
where,” in which the narrator recounts a session with her psychiatrist. Notice
the varying sentence lengths, particularly how the shorter sentences empha-
size the narrator’s unwillingness to open up:
We spent the first ten minutes discussing the Iliad, and whether or not
the text actually states that Achilles had been dipped in the River Styx.
He said it did, and I said it didn’t. After we’d finished with the Iliad,
and with my new job in what he called “the scullery,” he asked questions
about my parents. I told him nothing. It was none of his business. Instead,
I talked about Heidi. I told him about that day in Commons, Heidi’s plan
to go on a date with Mr. Dick, and the invitation we’d been given to the
gay party.
clear stories: a few words of advice | 153
Writing the long sentence
In his book e Art of Fiction, John Gardner explains that in order to write a
long sentence that has clarity and focus, it is best to expand only one or two of
a sentence’s components, or what Gardner calls “syntactic slots.”
For example, consider the following sentence:
1 2 3
e woman drove to the theater.
To lengthen this sentence, the writer might expand only the first component:
e woman, who had just left the babysitter with three pages of typed
instructions and a promise to call her cell if anything, anything at all,
seemed remotely out of the ordinary, drove to the theater.
Or instead of loading up component , the writer might add details to compo-
nents  and :
e woman drove slowly but carelessly, a constant drift into the middle
lane while she texted the babysitter (dangerous, she knew, but any more
dangerous than leaving her kids with that thirteen- year- old who was prac-
tically a baby herself?), to the theater — a brick, one- screen, magical place
of popcorn with extra butter flavor, and soda, and sticky aisles, and, most
important, a seat in the dimly lit back row, where she could close her eyes
and allow herself ninety exquisite minutes of peace.
To broaden Gardner’s advice a little: Long sentences are clearest when only
some, rather than all, parts are expanded and modified. To expand everything
is to emphasize everything, which is the same as emphasizing nothing.
clear stories: a few words of advice
A story written in multiple sections should generally orient the reader in
time and space near the beginning of each section. at way we’ll know how
Although I borrow this concept from Gardner, the examples — for better or worse — are my own.
154 | chapter 9 the power of clarity
each section relates to the ones that came before. Simple phrases like “e
next morning” and “At work later that afternoon” are enormously helpful to
a reader.
A story told from multiple characters’ perspectives — either in omniscient or
in shifting, third- person limited omniscient points of view (see Chapter ) —
should make clear whose perspective we’re reading whenever there’s a switch
to a new character.
Jill McCorkle’s story “Magic Words” (p. ) is told from the perspective
of three characters — a married woman on the brink of having an affair, a
violent teenager, and a retired schoolteacher. e story begins:
Because Paula Blake is planning something secret, she feels she must
account for her every move and action, overcompensating in her daily
chores and agreeing to what ever her husband and children demand.
e second section begins:
e kids are doing what they call creepy crawling. eir leader picked the
term up from the book Helter Skelter.
e third section begins:
When Agnes Hayes sees the boy bagging groceries in the market, her
heart surges with pity, his complexion blotched and infected, hair long
and oily.
Because the story establishes each section quickly and clearly, at no point
do we wonder, “Who am I reading about right now?” Such a question would
pull us out of the story.
clarity: some final thoughts
Remember that “clarity” and “simplicity” aren’t the same. By all means, write
the complex story, the difficult story, the subtle story. Just write it clearly.
Here is the opening paragraph of Toni Morrison’s  novel Beloved, for
which I’ve provided several annotations. While Morrison’s novel is complex at
just about every level — emotionally, intellectually, narratively — the writing
is always clear.
clarity: some final thoughts | 155
 was spiteful.[1] Full of baby’s venom. e women in the house knew
it and so did the children.[2] For years each put up with the spite in his
own way, but by  Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only vic-
tims.[3] e grandmother, Baby Suggs, was dead, and the sons, Howard
and Buglar, had run away by the time they were thirteen years old — as
soon as merely looking in the mirror shattered it (that was the signal for
Buglar); as soon as two tiny[4] hand prints appeared in the cake (that
was it for Howard).[5] Neither boy waited to see more; another kettle-
ful of chickpeas smoking in a heap on the floor; soda crackers crumbled
and strewn in a line next to the doorsill. Nor did they wait for one of
the relief periods: the weeks, months even, when nothing was disturbed.
No.[6] Each one fled at once — the moment the house committed what
was for him the one insult not to be borne or witnessed a second time.
Within two months, in the dead of winter, leaving their grandmother,
Baby Suggs; Sethe, their mother; and their little sister, Denver, all by
themselves in the gray and white house on Bluestone Road.[7] It didn’t
have a number then,[8] because Cincinnati didn’t stretch that far.[9]
In fact, Ohio had been calling itself a state only seventy years when
first one brother and then the next stuffed quilt packing into his hat,
snatched up his shoes, and crept away from the lively spite the house felt
for them.[10]
[] Morrison begins with a very short sentence; we don’t know what “”
means, but we trust that we’ll be told before long.
[] Okay:  is a house. And in it are women and children. (But no men,
evidently.)
[] is is a historical novel, taking place in . e description “Sethe
and her daughter Denver” implies that Sethe is the main character,
since Denver is being described in relation to her.
[] Notice how few adverbs and adjectives this paragraph contains. e word
“tiny” is a rare exception. Whose “tiny” hand prints might these be? We
don’t yet know. It’s a mystery we’ll keep in the back of our minds as we
keep reading the novel.
[] Morrison introduces three more characters and explains exactly who
they are. We also know that the boys ran away following events that
seem supernatural. So the book’s opening two sentences weren’t necessarily
metaphors — the house might actually be “spiteful.”
156 | chapter 9 the power of clarity
[ ] Notice the varying sentence lengths: Here is a one- word sentence that
emphasizes the finality of the boys’ decision to flee the house.
[ ] More “when” — winter. More “who” — Sethe, her mother, and her
daughter are left in the house. More “where” — a gray and white house on
Bluestone Road.
[] In case there was any doubt left, “” is the house number.
[ ] More “where” — we’re talking about a spot in Ohio that would later
become part of Cincinnati.
[] is sentence reiterates some previous information, emphasizing the
frightened urgency with which the boys fled and the fact that the house
did, in fact, feel spite toward the family.
e opening paragraph of Beloved conveys a lot of information and estab-
lishes a mood of darkness and urgency. e paragraph, like the novel it intro-
duces, is intricate and, at times, difficult. It is also a model of clarity.
exercises: be clear
1. Write a two- page scene that has at least five characters in it. Make sure
that the reader understands the character relationships and always knows
what is going on and who is doing what.
2. Write a two- page story that takes place in three different locations over
five different time periods. Make sure the reader never gets confused.
3. Following the advice in the section “Writing the Long Sentence,” write a
clear sentence of at least 80 words. (Avoid stringing together several
smaller sentences with semicolons.)
4. In a paragraph, describe a place where lots of people congregate (parade,
football game, wedding, funeral, accident scene, beach, or another place)
in which no sentence is longer than 5 words.
5. Write a paragraph describing the same place using only sentences of 20
words or more. Use no adverbs and only active voice.
6. Choose a passage from one of the stories in the anthology (or from any
favorite story or novel) and annotate it for clarity, as in the opening
paragraph of Toni Morrison’s Beloved.
157
the case for revision
Writers revise. It’s a simple truth.
Writers get to revise — fortunately. Most people don’t have multiple chances
to get something right. You miss a question on an exam, you’ve missed it. You
miss a last- second shot, the buzzer goes off, that’s it. Game over. You perform
surgery and remove the wrong kidney, you don’t get a redo. Neither does your
patient.
For writers, it’s different. When we write a story, we get a second chance,
and a third, and as many as we want until we’re satisfied that we’ve said a thing
the best way we know how. We talk about “writing” stories, but what we really
spend much of our time doing is revising them into being.
Revision gets a bum rap. e thrill of unbridled inspiration fares better in
literary lore — like how Jack Kerouac wrote his  novel On the Road in a
three- week creative frenzy, tapping out sentence after sentence of what he called
“spontaneous prose” onto a single, continuous roll of typing paper. But what
seldom gets mentioned is how Kerouac then spent the next four years revising
his manuscript before any publisher would touch it.
is chapter contains a number of strategies to get you revising. Over time,
you’ll discover what works best for you. You’ll refine your own pro cess. But
the most important thing is that you do it. Many authors, in fact, come to see
revision as their favorite part of the writing pro cess. Bernard Malamud went
so far as to call revision “one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.” When we
revise, we’re no longer starting from scratch, staring at a blank page or computer
10 revising your story
158 | chapter 10 revising your story
screen. Instead, we get to roll up our sleeves, take what’s already in front of us,
and shape it into art.
what is “revision,” anyway?
It’s a sincere question. Before computers, writers wrote longhand or typed a first
draft, marked it up, wrote a second draft, marked it up, wrote a third draft, and
so on.
Some writers still work that way. Most, however, use computers, on which
we continually revise our work as we work. at’s why it always rings a little
false to me when I hear talk about “drafts” as if they are discrete and countable,
like nickels.
It hardly needs to be said that writers work differently from one another.
Some write quickly at first, getting the basic story onto the page. In her 
book Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott talks about the “shitty first draft” that must
get written in order to write “good second drafts and terrific third drafts.”
Others create their initial drafts more slowly. at’s how I work — slowly —
revising and polishing each sentence as I go. Maybe I’ll end up deleting the
very paragraph I’ve just spent an hour writing. But maybe I’ll keep it, or move
it to a different part of the story. I might try adding a new scene to the begin-
ning of a story or maybe cutting the first several pages. On the one hand, I’m
meticulous when I write a first draft. On the other hand, I know that every-
thing I write is expendable at this beginning stage, when I don’t yet know my
own story very well.
Becky Hagenston’s compositional pro cess for her short story “Midnight,
Licorice, Shadow” (p. ) seems to blend writing and revising into a single,
ongoing activity:
When I first started writing this story, the only conflict I had in mind was
that a couple couldn’t figure out what to name their cat. I knew, of course,
that this was not enough, but I also didn’t know anything about the couple.
is is my first crack at the first scene:
“Midnight, Licorice, Shadow,” she says. “Cocoa, Casper, Dr. Livingston.”
“Alfred Hitchcock,” he says. “Dracula. Vincent Price.”
ey have had the cat for four days.
what is a “first draft”? | 159
“Cinderblock?” she tries. “Bedspread?”
It’s useless. e harder she tries to think of his name, the more elusive
it becomes.
“Tomorrow, then,” James says. “If we don’t have a name by tomor-
row.” He slices a finger across his neck. “No offense, Cupcake,” he tells
the cat.
Marjorie looks at the animal, sprawled on their kitchen floor like a
black bearskin rug. One of his fangs is showing. His monkey paws are
kneading the air. “Monkey Paw!” she says, but James is already out
the door. She hears his car start in the garage. “One more day,” she
tells the cat.
Soon, she will leave for work and the cat, this animal purring on the
kitchen floor, will spend its last day of life all alone, drinking water,
crunching on chow, maybe gazing out the window at the neighbor across
the street, the crazy one who’s always on the porch talking to himself.
James was already creepy, but there just wasn’t enough to work with.
Already, I had lost momentum and the story had stalled. en I thought:
But what if they aren’t a married couple in their own kitchen, with jobs to
go to? What if they’re in a motel, and hardly know each other, and don’t
have jobs? But if they don’t have jobs, what do they do? Where did the cat
come from? Why is James so creepy, and should his name really be James,
or something else? And Marjorie’s name isn’t quite right, either, but maybe
she knows her name doesn’t fit, so she’s invented another one for herself?
What if they’re criminals of some kind? I’ve never written a story about
criminals; that could be fun . . . and what’s a nice girl like Marjorie (or
what ever her name is) doing in a place like this?
It’s always a series of questions that propels a story for me. I need to find
out the answers, and the only way to do that is to write the story.
what is a “first draft”?
As I’ve already alluded to, when we continually hone a story on a word pro cessor,
the definition of “draft” becomes somewhat muddy. But for the purposes of
this book, a first draft is what you get when you’ve taken a story as far as you can on
your own.
When you’re done with a first draft, you’ve already addressed as best you
can any problems you know about — “the ending doesn’t work,” or “the story’s
160 | chapter 10 revising your story
climax is rushed over.” At this point, you no longer know what can be im-
proved.
en — and not before — is often the right time to share your work with
a writing workshop. If you know on your own what needs to be improved, you
don’t yet need the workshop’s feedback. For instance, if one of your characters
works as an emergency room physician, but you haven’t yet done enough re-
search to make the hospital scene completely believable, then you’re going to
be told that the hospital scene isn’t believable. But if you already knew that,
then what’s the point of the workshop?
You want the workshop members, or any trusted readers, to tell you what
you don’t know: things that will push you to explore the unexplored, to recog-
nize how the story has opened doorways that you hadn’t considered. Now, it
might take you many attempts to get to this point I’m calling a first draft. You
might have rewritten the beginning or ending a half- dozen times. You might
have added and removed characters, changed the plot. You’ll certainly have re-
worked many, many sentences. But to get meaningful, helpful feedback from
readers, give them a draft that feels as finished to you as possible.
en comes the hard part. Although this draft is as finished as you could
make it, you need to tell yourself — and believe — that the story can, should,
and will change in revision, and probably a lot. Revision, after all, isn’t about
correcting typos or shuffling a few words around. Rather, it’s about seeing your
story anew (think “re- vision”), being willing to make everything messy again
and maybe take the story in an entirely new direction.
For newer writers, the thought of mucking up a perfectly decent draft trig-
gers everything from unease to terror. Experienced writers, however, have learned
that most of the good stuff happens in revision, and so it pays to be fearless.
twelve strategies for revision
1. Save each major revision as a new file. I put this first because I can’t encourage
it strongly enough: When you embark on a significant revision, save the story as
a new file on your computer. Doing so will make you a braver reviser. What’s
the worst that can happen? You’ll make some changes you don’t like, or maybe
cut something you later decide should’ve stayed. No problem: You’ll still have
twelve strategies for revision | 161
the old file to return to. You might never return to the older file, but just know-
ing it’s there will keep you from being tentative in your revisions, fearing that
you’ll lose something that might be precious.
And while we’re on the topic of saving things — save your work often. Get
used to hitting that Save key, because at some point you’ll lose power or your
word pro cessor will quit on you, and even a lost hour of work can feel tragic.
Along those lines, back up your work. Do it often, at least once per writing
session. Email the file to yourself. Save it on a flash drive. Just do it. Please. Do
it for me. I’ll sleep better.
2. Read your own work “like a writer.” Remember those questions from Chapter
 that are helpful to ask of the published fiction you read? Well, those same
questions will benefit your own work- in- progress.
For con ve nience, here they are again — with a few modifications and
references to the chapters in the book that elaborate on each point.
▸ Why does your story begin when it does? What would happen if you
started earlier or later in the story’s chronology? (Chapter )
▸ What is different about the day when your story takes place? (Chapter )
▸ When you close your eyes, what part of your story do you picture most
clearly in your mind? Why might that be? (Chapters  and )
▸ What is the main character’s underlying problem, and how does your
story bring this problem into sharper focus? (Chapters  and )
▸ Why did you select this main character, as opposed to another character
in the story? How do you want readers to feel about him or her? What
methods of characterization do you use? (Chapters  and )
▸ Why is your story in the point of view that it is? (Chapter )
▸ Which parts of the story are dramatized in scene? Which parts are sum-
marized? Why? (Chapters  and )
▸ How would you describe your story’s voice? What does the voice do for
the story? (Chapter )
▸ Is the writing ever less clear than it could be? (Chapter )
▸ How is your story structured? How else could it be? (Chapter )
162 | chapter 10 revising your story
▸ Why does your story end when it does? What would happen if you
ended it earlier or later in the story’s chronology? (Chapter )
▸ How is your story different from other stories you’ve read? (Chapter )
▸ What details can you add or change to make your story more vivid or
unexpected? (Chapter )
3. Start with the big stuff. You wouldn’t hang photographs on a wall about to be
demolished in a home renovation. You’d probably wait for the new wall. Simi-
larly, any fundamental changes to your story — like changing your narrator or
point of view — are usually better made before you spend time revising, say,
the narrator’s description of the view from his beach house. After all, a different
narrator will describe that same view differently. Or maybe he’ll live in a city.
4. Break revision into small, distinct tasks. It’s harder to revise a whole story than
to change the setting of one scene from a restaurant to a street fair, then to do
some additional research so your ice- fishing scene will be more realistic, and
then to rewrite any passive- voice sentences that would be stronger in the active
voice. By coming up with a plan to revise your story one step at a time, you’ll
avoid the vague and potentially overwhelming mission of making your story
“better.”
5. Ask yourself what your story is about.is is the same question we ask of the
stories we read — what, at its deepest level, is the story getting at? Revision often
involves finding ways to bring out the story’s “about- ness” — in other words,
its themes. Bear in mind, though, that in fiction you rarely want to explain
your story’s themes to the reader. is is delicate territory; readers don’t want
to feel as if you’re hammering themes into their heads. So take a little time to
figure out what your story is about, and then get back to the business of putting
your par tic u lar characters into their par tic u lar situations, choosing details that
will evoke the story’s themes.
6. Less fact, more fiction. In a first draft, we often borrow characters, plots, and
settings from real life. But once you’ve written a draft, with its own narrative
thrust and emerging characters and thematic concerns, the “real” story elements
might well need to give way to more of your imaginative creations. If a character
twelve strategies for revision | 163
was originally based on a family member or a friend or someone from the news,
in revision you should think about ways to allow your character to become
fully himself or herself, with no real- life analog. If you set a scene in a house
that resembles your childhood home (which is easier than having to invent a
home from scratch with its par tic u lar layout and furnishings), in revision you
should ask yourself if that’s the right home for the story you’re telling.
Joyce Carol Oates described her pro cess of revising “away from the real”
when working on her  story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You
Been?” e story is based on an actual killer nicknamed “e Pied Piper of
Tucson,” whose profile in Life magazine first drew Oates’s attention.
An early draft of my story . . . had the rather too explicit title “Death and
the Maiden.” It was cast in a mode of fiction to which I am still partial —
indeed, every third or fourth story of mine is probably in this mode —
“realistic allegory,” it might be called. . . . In subsequent drafts the story
changed its tone, its focus, its language, its title. It became “Where Are You
Going, Where Have You Been?” Written at a time when the author was
intrigued by the music of Bob Dylan, particularly the elegiac song “It’s All
Over Now, Baby Blue,” it was dedicated to Bob Dylan. e charismatic
mass murderer drops into the background and his innocent victim, a fifteen-
year- old, moves into the foreground. She becomes the true protagonist of
the tale.
7. Try writing “away from the page.” Suppose that the motivations of one of your
characters is eluding you. Try this: Open up a new file and write a brief autobi-
ography from that character’s point of view. Have her spill her guts. You might
not put all of it into the story, or maybe any of it, but you’ll have figured out
something important about your character. And you just might use some of it.
Brenda Ueland, in her  book If You Want to Write: A Book about Art,
In de pen dence, and Spirit, wrote:
No writing is a waste of time — no creative work where the feelings, the
imagination, the intelligence must work. With every sentence you write,
you have learned something. It has done you good.
at’s how I like to think about revision generally, but particularly about
writing “away from the page.” I’ve found this to be an extremely helpful strategy
164 | chapter 10 revising your story
for exploring some as yet untapped aspect of what ever I’m working on. By
writing away from the page, I can dig for answers and insight without the pres-
sure of having to figure out where, or if, my discoveries belong in the actual
story.
8. Be open to changing what you set out to do. e story you set out to write
probably won’t end up being the same story you actually write. e journey
from our brain to the page is filled with all kinds of detours and roadside attrac-
tions.
Sometimes, revision means changing what you’ve written to come closer
to your original vision. At other times, the draft you ended up writing might
be leading you to a better work of fiction than the one you originally set out
to write. (See Joyce Carol Oates’s statement about her pro cess in # above.)
One reason to keep asking yourself what your story is about (see # above)
is that sometimes your story’s “about- ness” changes as you write, and for the
better. Once you understand what has changed, you can revise in that new
direction.
9. Read your story aloud. ere’s no better way than reading aloud to catch
inconsistencies in voice, or stilted dialogue, or description that goes on too
long, or any number of problems that can elude us, no matter how long we stare
at the computer monitor or printed page. When we read our stories aloud, prob-
lems tend to announce themselves.
is, incidentally, is a very good reason to read your work in public, even
if your “public” is a few friends who’ve gathered to read their work to one
another. In preparing for such a reading — imagining other people hearing your
words — and then from the reading itself, you’ll become highly attuned to your
work’s strengths and weaknesses.
10. Take your trusted readers seriously . . . We all want to be told that our first
drafts are beautiful works of art, surely publishable once we move a few commas
around. But that just isn’t the case with first drafts — and honest, informed
criticism is far more valuable than any ephemeral ego boost you might get from
a well- meaning friend or family member.
twelve strategies for revision | 165
at’s where a writing workshop comes into play.
If you care at all about the work you do, then it isn’t easy to listen to some-
body, or a class full of somebodies, telling you what isn’t working. Of course, a
workshop ought to tell you, too, what is working. But when it comes to criti-
cism, try to have a thick skin and distance yourself, for the moment, from your
own work. Listen. Take plenty of notes. Ask for clarification if you need it, but
don’t defend your draft or tell the group that they just don’t understand your
subtleties. Writers don’t get to explain their stories. e stories must speak for
themselves.
11. . . . but remember that you can’t please everyone. e last thing you want to
do is take fifteen classmates’ critiques of your story and incorporate every single
suggestion into a revised draft. You’ll end up with the story equivalent of one of
Dr. Moreau’s creatures — some strange hyena/puma/armadillo hybrid.
e fact is, some criticism is better than other criticism. Some readers are
more careful readers than others, and even among the careful and well- meaning,
some will be better readers of your work than others. Or maybe you’ll receive
two pieces of advice that are equally good but mutually exclusive. I once led a
workshop in which the class was split over whether the story would be stron-
ger with a male or a female protagonist. Both sides had valid arguments — it
came down to which story the writer wanted to write. Part of the writing experi-
ence is learning how to handle readers’ feedback, some of which will be contra-
dictory, to determine what is most useful to you as you revise.
12. Resist the urge to start over too soon with a new idea. Every semester, a student
who’s been working diligently on his story for weeks comes up to me the day
before his draft is due and says, in a kind of manic excitement, “I have a new
idea. A better idea. I’m going to write it to night and turn in that story instead.”
His brand- new idea exists only as potential, while the story he’s been work-
ing on all this time feels, to him, soaked with actuality. It’s only natural, this
Or, in the absence of a workshop, a few trusted readers who care more about your development as a
writer than about telling you what they think you want to hear.
166 | chapter 10 revising your story
urge to walk away from a flawed almost- draft and start anew with some fresh
idea that, being only an idea, feels as promise- laden as a dewy morning full of
puppies and rainbows.
Resist this urge.
As you gain experience, you’ll begin to recognize when something truly
isn’t working. But walking away too soon or for the wrong reason is a mistake —
just as it’s a mistake to think that your new story, once you actually sit down
to work on it, will be any easier to write than the old one.
Sometimes what’s hardest to write — technically, emotionally, intellectu-
ally — is the thing most worth writing. So resist the urge, born of panic, to ditch
the story you’ve been working on for the last- minute story. e one you’ve spent
time on is probably better than you think it is, and certainly better than a last-
minute story will be, no matter how much adrenaline and caffeine you throw
at it.
how do you know when your story is
(really, truly) done?
ere’s always another way to say something, a new direction your story could
take. And don’t forget that you change over time — your interests, viewpoints,
and artistic preferences are never static. Last year’s story, the one you wrote and
revised until it seemed exactly right, might seem wrong to you now that you’ve
had new experiences and learned new things — and not just about writing. You
see the world differently at different points in your life. You aren’t the same
writer you were last year, or even last month.
For these reasons, you could, in theory, revise the same story for the rest
of your life. I would advise against this. At some point, you need to say, “ere.
It’s done.” When you’ve followed the strategies discussed in this chapter and
believe you’re done revising, give your story a final edit for conciseness, clarity,
and mechanical correctness.
But then how do you know your story is done?
▸ When you’ve made all the changes you can make, gone through all the
revision strategies you know, and find yourself adding back the same
commas you just took away, it’s a decent indication that you’re done.
how do you know when your story is (really, truly) done? | 167
▸ When your creative writing instructor tells you that your story seems
finished, that’s a decent indication, too.
▸ When you submit a story to a literary journal for publication, you’re tell-
ing yourself that the story is done.
▸ If your story is accepted for publication and appears in a print or online
journal, then you know it’s done.
Or do you?
e truth is that writers sometimes revise their stories yet again, after they
appear in journals but before they appear in a collection of stories.
Surely, though, once a story appears in a book, then it’s done. No more
revising . . .
Not so fast. Raymond Carver’s story “e Bath” appeared in his  story
collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Two years later, he
published a significantly revised version of the same story, retitled “A Small,
Good ing,” in his collection Cathedral. In an interview, Carver explained
that revising the story had to do with the fact that, two years later, he’d become
a different man and writer.
“e Bath” appeared in a magazine. It won I no longer know what prize,
but the story bothered me. It didn’t seem finished to me. ere were still
things to say, and while I was writing Cathedral . . . things happened for
me. e story “Cathedral” seemed to me completely different from every-
thing I’d written before. I was in a period of generosity. I looked at “e
Bath” and I found the story was like an unfinished painting. So I went back
and rewrote it. It’s much better now.
Does this mean that a story is never done? Instead of looking at it like that,
I’d say that you have several opportunities to call your story finished — though
ultimately the story is done when you truly believe that it is.
And if later you change your mind? Well, that’s your prerogative. You’re
the writer.
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boot camp
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171
I ’  come across an error in a published novel or story, then you
know what a jarring experience it is. When we’re engrossed in a work of fiction,
lost in what John Gardner calls the “fictional dream,” we stop being aware that
we’re reading words on a page. All sense of we disappears, and only the story’s
world exists.
At the moment we notice the error (factual, grammatical — it matters
little), we’re yanked out of the story. e fictional world disappears, and we’re
startled awake from the fictional dream. We notice, suddenly, the book in
our hands and are reminded that we’re reading. is is the last thing a writer
wants.
Worse yet, once we spot the error, we start to wonder what other errors
might be out there waiting for us. We become suspicious of the work. We lose
trust in the writer.
One of the writer’s most important jobs is to gain the reader’s trust. Earn-
ing that trust is hard work. Losing it is easy. And one of the easiest ways to lose
a reader’s trust is by paying too little attention to the mechanics — things like
spelling, grammar, punctuation, and usage. To quote John Gardner again:
“Learning to write fiction is too serious a business to be mixed in with leftovers
from freshman composition.”
With that in mind, this chapter is devoted to key technical issues that fic-
tion writers commonly come across. Will mastery of the mechanics of writing
make you a better, wiser person? Will it make you more fun at parties? Will it
enrich your inner life? Yes, yes, and yes.
But more to the point, you need to master the mechanics because they are
some of our most basic tools. You might find, as you read this chapter, that you
11 the mechanics of
fiction: a writer’s
boot camp
172 | chapter 11 the mechanics of fiction: a writer’s boot camp
already know some — maybe even most — of what’s contained here. e truth,
however, is that you need to know all of it. After all, would you trust a carpenter
who knows how to use most, but not all, of his tools, or a surgeon who’s only
occasionally unpredictable with her scalpel? Failure to master the mechanics
of writing signals to a reader (or an editor or a teacher) that you are less than
fully committed to your own work. And if you aren’t committed, then why
should anyone else be?
Okay, enough with the preamble. Roll up your sleeves. Or drop and give
me twenty.
Anyway, welcome to boot camp.
formatting and punctuating dialogue
When writing dialogue, the period or comma always goes inside the quotation
marks. Also, remember to capitalize only the beginning of the sentence and
the beginning of the quotation.
INCORRECT
“Look at that piñata.” She said.
“Look at that piñata,” She said.
CORRECT
“Look at that piñata,” she said.
She said, “Look at that piñata.”
“I wonder,” she said, “if anyone will break that piñata.”
If what precedes or follows the line of dialogue is a complete sentence,
then be sure to use a period, not a comma, at the end of each sentence.
Exceptions include MLA documentation and work published in the United Kingdom and Austra-
lia. But we’re talking now about creative work published in the United States.
addressing a person in dialogue | 173
INCORRECT
“You’re a funny guy,” she smiled at me.
CORRECT
“You’re a funny guy.” She smiled at me.
“You’re a funny guy,” she said, smiling at me.
e following examples are punctuated correctly:
“Look at that piñata.” She pointed toward the colorful, stuffed bird hang-
ing from a tree branch.
She tapped me on the shoulder. “Look at that piñata.”
“I like you,” she said. “You’re a funny guy.”
Compare that last example and this next one, which is also punctuated cor-
rectly:
“I like you,” she said, “because you’re a funny guy.”
e difference? “You’re a funny guy” is a complete sentence. “Because you’re a
funny guy” is a fragment, part of the longer sentence “I like you because you’re
a funny guy.”
addressing a person in dialogue
When a character addresses another character by name, always put a comma
before and after the name.
“You need some help? Why, I’ll run right over Jonathan,” Sara said.
Written that way, Jonathan is about to suffer an awful fate. Let’s hope that
Sara is riding a bicycle, rather than driving a cement truck. What this writer
probably means is:
“You need some help? Why, I’ll run right over, Jonathan,” Sara said.
174 | chapter 11 the mechanics of fiction: a writer’s boot camp
By adding a single comma, we transform Sara from psychopathic accomplice
to good pal.
All of the following sentences are correctly punctuated. Note the place-
ment of commas before and after the character being addressed.
“Louis, please come down from the roof,” Mr. Brenner said.
“Louis,” Mr. Brenner said, “please come down from the roof.”
“Please, Louis, come down from the roof,” Mr. Brenner said.
Mr. Brenner said, “Please come down from the roof, Louis.”
paragraph breaks in dialogue
ere are no hard- and- fast rules when it comes to paragraph breaks. e best
way to get a feel for when to break your paragraphs is by reading other writers
and seeing what they do. e stories in this book provide many examples of
how writers choose to break their paragraphs. Often, however, a change in
speaker warrants a new paragraph, as in the example below from Richard
Bausch’s story “Tandolfo the Great” (p. ).
“Hey, guys — it’s Tandolfo the Great.” e boy’s hair is a bright blond
color, and you can see through it to his scalp.
“Scram,” Tandolfo says. “Really.”
“Aw, what’s your hurry, man?”
“I’ve just set off a nuclear device,” Tandolfo says with grave seriousness.
“It’s on a timer. Poof.”
double quotation marks / single quotation marks
Unless there’s a specific reason to do otherwise, always use double quotation
marks ( “ ” ). Use single quotations marks ( ‘ ’ ) when you’re putting quotation
marks inside another quotation. For example:
“So then,” she explained, “my boss leaned over and whispered, ‘You’re
fired.’ ”
She said, “You use the word ‘awesome’ way too often.”
formatting and punctuating a character’s thoughts | 175
scare quotes
Scare quotes, sometimes called “air quotes,” are the written equivalent of mak-
ing quotation marks with your fingers while talking. ey tend to draw unnec-
essary attention and are rarely needed. Instead of writing
I thought that movie was “incredible.”
you probably only need to write:
I thought that movie was incredible.
Even if you are being sarcastic, trust the reader to ascertain the sarcasm
from the context, rather than from using a scare quote.
When I said I was too sick to go to school, my mother said of course I
should stay home. And while I was there, I could mow the lawn, vacuum
the house, and clean out the gutters. What a saint my mother is.
ere’s no need to write:
What a “saint” my mother is.
formatting and punctuating a character’s thoughts
In contemporary fiction, it’s most common not to use quotation marks when
you write a character’s thoughts. Usually, you don’t need to use italics either.
In the following paragraph, the shaded sentences read like a line of dia-
logue that the character asks herself. However, because the words aren’t actually
said — just thought — no quotation marks are needed.
quick quiz: repair this sentence
Fix all that’s wrong with the following:
You always use the word ‘awesome’, it’s driving me crazy Cindy.
176 | chapter 11 the mechanics of fiction: a writer’s boot camp
She ran out the door and drove to work, all the time thinking about her
boyfriend. Why would he give me wilting roses for our anniversary? she
wondered. And they’d only been together six months. What will he give
me after a year, a dead puppy?
Another common way of expressing a character’s thoughts is to do so indi-
rectly, from the perspective of the third- person narrator. In the following
example, notice how the pronouns change from “me” and “our” to “her” and
“their,” and all sentences remain in the past tense.
She ran out the door and drove to work, all the time thinking about her
boyfriend. Why would he give her wilting roses for their anniversary? And
they’d only been together six months. What would he give her after a year,
a dead puppy?
comma splices
Comma splices are a type of run- on sentence in which two in de pen dent clauses
are connected only by a comma. ey are grammatically incorrect.
INCORRECT
I ran over to the car, Bill said, “Get in.”
He had a dog, it weighed eleven pounds.
CORRECT
I ran over to the car, and Bill said, “Get in.”
When I ran over to the car, Bill said, “Get in.”
He had a dog. It weighed eleven pounds.
He had a dog; it weighed eleven pounds.
He had a dog, and it weighed eleven pounds.
He had an eleven- pound dog.
“who” and “that” | 177
A word about sentence fragments
If run- on sentences are a problem, shouldn’t fragments also be? e short answer
is not always. While run- on sentences tend to read like mistakes, fragments
sometimes aid in the pacing of a story as well as in establishing a story’s voice.
e second half of Tobias Wolff’s story “Bullet in the Brain” (p. )
contains a number of long sentences detailing everything that Anders, at the
moment of his death, fails to remember. e story then shifts to what he does
remember, and with this shift in focus comes a corresponding shift in the prose
to short bursts of images, told in fragments:
is is what he remembered. Heat. A baseball field. Yellow grass, the
whirr of insects, himself leaning against a tree as the boys of the neighbor-
hood gather for a pickup game.
ese fragments are effective not only because they provide a counterpoint to
the longer, more fluid sentences that precede them, but also because they mir-
ror the way the images themselves come to Anders — with surprising force
and clarity.
“who” and “that”
“Who” refers to people:
ose are the men who stole my car.
“That” refers to things:
I’ll take home any pie that you don’t want.
What about animals? Doesn’t anyone care about the animals? It depends
on how the animal is represented in the story. A character habitually vexed by
a garden- ravaging rabbit might shout:
ere’s the rabbit that keeps digging up my carrots.
On the other hand, a character talking about his beloved pet might say:
Winston is a dog who knows exactly how to enjoy a sunny afternoon.
178 | chapter 11 the mechanics of fiction: a writer’s boot camp
exclamation marks, question marks, all caps
Avoid the temptation to use multiple punctuation marks for emphasis. Exces-
sive punctuation comes across as melodramatic and suggests a deficiency in
the writing that’s being compensated for in the punctuation. e same holds
true for all caps. If you have any friends who habitually email or text in all caps,
then you’ll understand immediately. For example:
When I told my father what I’d done, he said, “What are you, crazy?!”
When I told my father what I’d done, he said, “What are you, crazy??”
When I told my father what I’d done, he said, “WHAT ARE YOU,
CRAZY???”
You should know that I gave myself a headache just typing that last sen-
tence. Please, let the prose itself convey the full emotion. If you feel the need
to use three exclamation marks in a row, it’s an indication that the scene
might need to be revised to more accurately convey the intensity of the emo-
tion being expressed.
When I told my father what I’d done, his face turned red, then purple, then
a shade I’d never seen before. “What are you, crazy?”
conjugation of “lie” and “lay”
“Lie” and “lay” are two tricky verbs. Yet you need to know how to conjugate
them, because they are very common and often get used in stories.
“Lie,” meaning “to recline,” is an intransitive verb and doesn’t require a direct
object.
PRESENT TENSE: LIE
She lies down on the sand.
PAST TENSE: L AY
Yesterday, she lay on the beach and read a book.
conjugation of “lie” and “lay” | 179
PAST PARTICIPLE: LAIN
She had lain on the beach all afternoon, until a thunderstorm rolled in.
PRESENT PROGRESSIVE: LYI N G
I’m lying here in bed until my headache goes away.
“Lay” is a transitive verb and requires a direct object.
PRESENT TENSE: LAY
She lays the towel down on the sand.
PAST TENSE: LAId
She laid her towel on the sand and looked up at the cloudy sky.
PAST PARTICIPLE: LAId
Five minutes after she had laid her towel on the sand, it started to rain.
PRESENT PROGRESSIVE: L AYI N G
She’s laying her son in his crib very carefully so that he won’t wake up and
start to cry.
quick quiz: choose the correct sentence
Which sentence is correct? Why?
I lie myself down to take a nap.
I lay myself down to take a nap.
And now for a caveat
Let’s say we’re writing a story from the first- person perspective, using an informal
voice. Does our narrator need to conjugate “lie” and “lay” correctly? Not at all.
180 | chapter 11 the mechanics of fiction: a writer’s boot camp
So then my stupid dog lays down in the middle of the freeway and yawns.
In the context of this story, it might be fine to use the wrong verb. After all,
we’re trying to get the narrator’s personality onto the page, and it’s certainly
possible that our narrator wouldn’t know which verb to use, or care even if he
did. But a character’s ignorance should never be a reflection of the author’s.
e use of “lay” rather than the correct verb “lie” should be a decision made in
the ser vice of the story’s voice. And to make that decision, the writer needs to
know the correct verb.
sentences that begin with an “- ing” word
If you find yourself writing a sentence that begins with an “- ing” word, take a
very careful look. Often, sentences that begin either with a verb in its present-
participle form or with a gerund are fraught with problems.
1. Sometimes the problem has to do with sentence logic:
Running out the door, she drove to work.
e problem with this sentence is that it implies that the two actions occur
simultaneously, which is logically impossible. You can’t run out the door and
drive to work at the same time. Instead, the sentence could be written, “She
ran out the door and drove to work,” which implies that one action follows the
other. Or you could write, “She slammed the door behind her and rushed to
work.”
2. Other times, the sentence contains a misplaced modifier:
Stalling out and leaking pints of oil, Ben knew it was time to trade in his
old car.
Unless Ben is the one stalling out and leaking oil, the sentence should be
revised:
Ben knew it was time to trade in his old car when it began to stall out and
leak pints of oil.
some final advice | 181
3. A third problem is how often sentences beginning with an “‑ ing” word rely on
the linking verb “to be,” producing a syntactically awkward result:
Eating a big breakfast is how Sue starts her morning.
e sentence becomes a lot less tortured if we (a) change the sentence’s subject
to Sue, our character, rather than the “- ing” word “eating,” and (b) replace the
linking verb “is” with an active verb:
Sue starts her morning with a big breakfast.
Sue eats a big breakfast to start her morning.
Note: Karen Russell begins her story “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by
Wolves” (p. ) with a vivid linking- verb sentence:
At first, our pack was all hair and snarl and floor- thumping joy.
However, the sentence doesn’t begin with an “- ing” word.
some final advice
Proofread carefully for usage errors that spell‑ check won’t catch (for example:
there/their/they’re; your/you’re; its/it’s).
Avoid spelling mistakes of any kind whatsoever. We are well into the age of spell-
check and online dictionaries, which make it easy to look up anything that
needs looking up.
“A lot” is two words. But you knew that already.
“All right” is also two words.
“A while” (two words) follows a preposition: “I studied for a while, then took a
break.”
“Awhile” (one word) is an adverb and doesn’t require a preposition: “I studied
awhile, then took a break.”
Avoid clichés like the plague or you’ll break my heart.
Call your mother.
182
The Mechanics of Fiction: Practice Test
Rewrite each sentence so that it is correct. Some sentences might contain
more than one error, and others might contain no errors.
1. I like her alot, she reminds me of my grandmother.
2. I lied down on the rug and petted my dog.
3. “Hey Michael”. He said. “You should join our poker game”.
4. “Are you kidding?!” I replied. “You guys cheat”.
5. Fran thought, “Will I ever get a date for the prom?”
6. Putting on her shoes, Debra went outside and got the mail.
7. “Look at that strange map,” she went over and picked it up.
8. I have laid here for hours, and I’m still not tan!!
9. “Missouri is located in the Midwest.” He shut his geography book.
10. I lay my book down and lied there waiting for the movie to start.
11. Purring outside my window all night long, I felt like throwing a shoe at
that cat.
12. Are you alright?
13. That’s enough already David.
14. “Look Son I’ve had just about enough.” He said.
15. Never count you’re money until the dealing’s done.
Extra Credit
Rewrite the following passage to correct all the errors:
While many of they’re friends believe in “Santa Claus”, my two children don’t,
they just believe in getting alot of presents. Its a good thing they’re still crazy
about the Easter Bunny.
anthology
SHERMAN ALEXIE
This Is What It Means to Say
Phoenix, Arizona 185
RICHARD BAUSCH
Tandolfo the Great 198
KEVIN BROCKMEIER
A Fable with Slips of White
Paper Spilling from the
Pockets 211
PERCIVAL EVERETT
The Appropriation of Cultures
218
BECKY HAGENSTON
Midnight, Licorice, Shadow
227
BARRY HANNAH
Water Liars 239
JHUMPA LAHIRI
This Blessed House 244
JILL McCORKLE
Magic Words 262
LORRIE MOORE
How to Become a Writer
279
TIM O’BRIEN
On the Rainy River 287
ZZ PACKER
Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
303
KAREN RUSSELL
St. Lucy’s Home for Girls
Raised by Wolves 324
GEORGE SAUNDERS
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
341
JOHN UPDIKE
A & P 359
TOBIAS WOLFF
Bullet in the Brain 366
185
Sherman Alexie
u is Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona
Sherman Alexie was born in
1966 and grew up on the
Spokane Indian Reservation in
Wellpinit, Washington. He at-
tended Gonzaga University in
Spokane to prepare for a ca-
reer in medicine before trans-
ferring to Washington State
University, where he majored in American studies and dedicated himself to
writing. His first collection of stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in
Heaven, was published in 1993 and won the PEN/Hemingway Award. He has
gone on to publish numerous books of poetry and fiction, an acclaimed novel
for young adults, and the screenplay for the 1998 movie Smoke Signals, which
was based on the short story “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona.”
His many awards include a Lila Wallace– Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, the
Stranger Genius Award, the Pushcart Prize, the PEN/Malamud Award, the PEN/
Faulkner Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.
12
“When you look at great writers, you’re
looking at people who are actually better
readers. Period. So that’s where you start.”
⁓ from Jack Central, March , 
a mini- anthology:
15 stories
186 | chapter 12 a mini-anthology: 15 stories
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188 | chapter 12 a mini-anthology: 15 stories
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alexie: this is what it means to say phoenix, arizona | 195
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alexie: this is what it means to say phoenix, arizona | 197
198
“I start writing with an image or a voice,
but I don’t know anything when I start.
e only thing I know is that I’m
starting. And learn it as I go. at’s why
it’s so hard, you have to learn all over
again, because each one is different. I’ve
written sixteen books, and I had to learn
how to write each one of them.”
⁓ from e Washington Post,
November , 
Richard Bausch
u Tandolfo the Great
Richard Bausch was born in
1945 in Georgia and grew up
in the Washington, D.C., area.
He served in the Air Force and
later attended George Mason
University and the Iowa Writ-
ers’ Workshop. He is the author
of eleven novels and eight story
collections. His stories have
appeared in periodicals such
as The New Yorker, Harper’s,
and The Southern Review and
have been selected for The O.
Henry Prize Stories, Best Amer-
ican Short Stories, and New Sto-
ries from the South. He has won two National Magazine Awards, a Guggenheim
Fellowship, a Lila Wallace– Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, the Award of the
American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excel-
lence in the Short Story. Bausch currently holds the Moss Chair of Excellence in
En glish at the University of Memphis.
for Stephen & Karen & Nicholas Goodwin
“Tandolfo,” he says to his own image in the mirror over the bathroom
sink. “She loves you not, oh, she doesn’t, doesn’t, doesn’t.”
He’s put the makeup on, packed the bag of tricks — including the rabbit
that he calls Chi- Chi, and the bird, the attention getter, Witch. He’s to do a
birthday party for some five- year- old on the other side of the river. A crowd of
babies, and the adults waiting around for him to screw up — this is going to
be one of those tough ones.
He has fortified himself, and he feels ready. He isn’t particularly worried
about it. But there’s a little something else he has to do first. Something on the
order of the embarrassingly ridiculous: he has to make a delivery.
is morning at the local bakery he picked up a big pink wedding cake,
with its six tiers and scalloped edges and its miniature bride and groom on
top. He’d ordered it on his own; he’d taken the initiative, planning to offer it
to a young woman he works with. He managed somehow to set the thing on
the back seat of the car, and when he got home he found a note from her an-
nouncing, excited and happy, that she’s engaged. e man she’d had such dif-
ficulty with has had a change of heart; he wants to get married after all. She’s
going off to Houston to live. She loves her dear old Tandolfo with a big kiss
and a hug always, and she knows he’ll have every happiness. She’s so thankful
for his friendship. Her magic man. Her sweet clown. She actually drove over
here and, finding him gone, left the note for him, folded under the door
knocker — her notepaper with the tangle of flowers at the top. She wants him
to call her, come by as soon as he can, to help celebrate. Please, she says. I want
to give you a big hug. He read this and then walked out to stand on the side-
walk and look at the cake in its place on the back seat of the car.
“Good God,” he said.
He’d thought he would put the clown outfit on, deliver the cake in person,
an elaborate proposal to a girl he’s never even kissed. He’s a little unbalanced,
and he knows it. Over the months of their working together at Bailey & Brecht
department store, he’s built up tremendous feelings of loyalty and yearning
toward her. He thought she felt it, too. He interpreted gestures — her hand
lingering on his shoulder when he made her laugh; her endearments, tinged as
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they seemed to be with a kind of sadness, as if she were afraid for what the world
might do to someone so romantic.
“You sweet clown,” she said. She said it a lot. And she talked to him about
her ongoing sorrows, the man she’d been in love with who kept waffling about
getting married, wanting no commitments. Tandolfo, a.k.a. Rodney Wilbury,
told her that he hated men who weren’t willing to run the risks of love. Why, he
personally was the type who’d always believed in marriage and children, life-
long commitments. It was true that he had caused difficulties for himself, and
life was a disappointment so far, but he believed in falling in love and starting
a family. She didn’t hear him. It all went right through her, like white noise on
the radio. For weeks he had come around to visit her, had invited her to watch
him perform. She confided in him, and he thought of movies where the friend
stays loyal and is a good listener, and eventually gets the girl: they fall in love.
He put his hope in that. He was optimistic; he’d ordered and bought the cake,
and apparently the whole time, all through the listening and being noble with
her, she thought of it as nothing more than friendship, accepting it from him
because she was accustomed to being offered friendship.
Now he leans close to the mirror to look at his own eyes through the
makeup. ey look clear enough. “Loves you absolutely not. You must be crazy.
You must be the Great Tandolfo.”
Yes.
Twenty- six years old, out- of- luck Tandolfo. In love. With a great over-
sized cake in the back seat of his car. It’s Sunday, a cool April day. He’s a little
inebriated. at’s the word he prefers. It’s polite; it suggests something faintly
silly. Nothing could be sillier than to be dressed like this in broad daylight
and to go driving across the bridge into Virginia to put on a magic show.
Nothing could be sillier than to have spent all that money on a completely
useless purchase — a cake six tiers high. Maybe fifteen pounds of sugar.
When he has made his last inspection of the clown face in the mirror, and
checked the bag of tricks and props, he goes to his front door and looks
through the screen at the architectural shadow of the cake in the back seat.
e inside of the car will smell like icing for days. He’ll have to keep the win-
dows open even if it rains; he’ll go to work smelling like confectionery de-
lights. e whole thing makes him laugh. A wedding cake. He steps out of the
house and makes his way in the late afternoon sun down the sidewalk to the
car. As if they have been waiting for him, three boys come skating down from
the top of the hill. He has the feeling that if he tried to sneak out like this at
two in the morning, someone would come by and see him anyway. “Hey,
Rodney,” one boy says. “I mean, Tandolfo.”
Tandolfo recognizes him. A neighborhood boy, a tough. Just the kind to
make trouble, just the kind with no sensitivity to the suffering of others.
“Leave me alone or I’ll turn you into spaghetti,” he says.
“Hey guys, it’s Tandolfo the Great.” e boy’s hair is a bright blond color,
and you can see through it to his scalp.
“Scram,” Tandolfo says. “Really.”
“Aw, what’s your hurry, man?”
“I’ve just set off a nuclear device,” Tandolfo says with grave seriousness.
“It’s on a timer. Poof.”
“Do a trick for us,” the blond one says. “Where’s the scurvy rabbit of
yours?”
“I gave it the week off.” Someone, last winter, poisoned the first Chi- Chi.
He keeps the cage indoors now. “I’m in a hurry. No rabbit to help with the
driving.”
But they’re interested in the cake now. “Hey, what’s that? Jesus, is that
real?”
“Just stay back.” Tandolfo gets his cases into the trunk and hurries to the
driver’s side door. e three boys are peering into the back seat. To the blond
boy he says, “You’re going to go bald, aren’t you?”
“Hey man, a cake. Can we have a piece of it?” one of them says.
“Back off,” Tandolfo says.
Another says, “Come on, Tandolfo.”
“Hey, Tandolfo, I saw some guys looking for you, man. ey said you
owed them money.”
He gets in, ignoring them, and starts the car.
“Sucker,” the blond one says.
“Hey man, who’s the cake for?”
He drives away, thinks of himself leaving them in a cloud of exhaust.
Riding through the green shade, he glances in the rear- view mirror and sees
the clown face, the painted smile. It makes him want to laugh. He tells him-
self he’s his own cliché — a clown with a broken heart. Looming behind him
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is the cake, like a passenger in the back seat. e people in the cake store had
offered it to him in a box; he had made them give it to him like this, on a card-
board slab. It looks like it might melt.
He drives slow, worried that it might sag, or even fall over. He has always
believed viscerally that gestures mean everything. When he moves his hands
and brings about the effects that amaze little children, he feels larger than life,
unforgettable. He learned the magic while in high school, as a way of making
friends, and though it didn’t really make him any friends, he’s been practicing
it ever since. It’s an extra source of income, and lately income has had a way
of disappearing too quickly. He has been in some travail, betting the horses,
betting the sports events. He’s hung over all the time. ere have been several
polite warnings at work. He has managed so far to tease everyone out of the
serious looks, the cool study of his face. e fact is, people like him in an ab-
stract way, the way they like distant clownish figures: the comedian whose
name they can’t remember. He can see it in their eyes. Even the rough charac-
ters after his loose change have a certain sense of humor about it.
He’s a phenomenon, a subject of conversation.
ere’s traffic on Key Bridge, and he’s stuck for a while. It becomes clear
that he’ll have to go straight to the birthday party. Sitting behind the wheel of
the car with his cake behind him, he becomes aware of people in other cars
noticing him. In the car to his left, a girl stares, chewing gum. She waves, rolls
her window down. Two others are with her, one in the back seat. “Hey,” she
says. He nods, smiles inside what he knows is the clown smile. His teeth will
look dark against the makeup.
“Where’s the party?” she says.
But the traffic moves again. He concentrates. e snarl is on the other
side of the bridge, construction of some kind. He can see the cars in a line,
waiting to go up the hill into Roslyn and beyond. Time is beginning to be a
consideration. In his glove box he has a flask of bourbon. More fortification.
He reaches over and takes it out, looks around himself. No police anywhere.
Just the idling cars and people tuning their radios or arguing or simply staring
out as if at some distressing event. e smell of the cake is making him woozy.
He takes a swallow of the bourbon, then puts it away. e car with the girls in
it goes by in the left lane, and they are not looking at him. He watches them
go on ahead. He’s in the wrong lane again; he can’t remember a time when his
lane was the only one moving. He told her once that he considered himself of
the race of people who gravitate to the non- moving lanes of highways, and
who cause green lights to turn yellow merely by approaching them. She took
the idea and ran with it, saying she was of the race of people who emit enzymes
which instill a sense of impending doom in marriageable young men.
“No,” Tandolfo/Rodney said. “I’m living proof that isn’t so. I have no
such fear, and I’m with you.”
“But you’re of the race of people who make mine relax all the enzymes.”
“You’re not emitting the enzymes now, I see.”
“No,” she said. “It’s only with marriageable young men.”
“I emit enzymes that prevent people like you from seeing that I’m a mar-
riageable young man.”
“I’m too relaxed to tell,” she said, and touched his shoulder. A plain af-
fectionate moment that gave him tossing nights and fever.
Because of the traffic, he’s late to the birthday party. He gets out of the
car and two men come down to greet him. He keeps his face turned away,
remembering too late the breath mints in his pocket.
“Jesus,” one of the men says, “look at this. Hey, who ordered the cake?
I’m not paying for the cake.”
“e cake stays,” Tandolfo says.
“What does he mean, it stays? Is that a trick?”
ey’re both looking at him. e one spoken to must be the birthday boy’s
father — he’s wearing a party cap that says . He has long, dirty- looking
strands of brown hair jutting out from the cap, and there are streaks of sweaty
grit on the sides of his face. “So you’re the Great Tandolfo,” he says, extending
a meaty red hand. “Isn’t it hot in that makeup?”
“No, sir.”
“We’ve been playing volleyball.”
“You’ve exerted yourselves.”
ey look at him. “What do you do with the cake?” the one in the  cap
asks.
“Cake’s not part of the show, actually.”
“You just carry it around with you?”
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e other man laughs. He’s wearing a T-shirt with a smiley face on the
chest. “is ought to be some show,” he says.
ey all make their way across the lawn, to the porch of the house. It’s a
big party, bunting everywhere and children gathering quickly to see the clown.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” says the man in the  cap. “I give you Tan-
dolfo the Great.”
Tandolfo isn’t ready yet. He’s got his cases open, but he needs a table to
put everything on. e first trick is where he releases the bird; he’ll finish with
the best trick, in which the rabbit appears as if from a pan of flames. is al-
ways draws a gasp, even from the adults: the fire blooms in the pan, down
goes the “lid” — it’s the rabbit’s tight container — the latch is tripped, and the
skin of the lid lifts off. Voilà! Rabbit. e fire is put out by the fireproof cage
bottom. He’s gotten pretty good at making the switch, and if the crowd isn’t
too attentive — as children often are not — he can perform certain sleight- of-
hand tricks with some style. But he needs a table, and he needs time to set up.
e whole crowd of children is seated in front of their parents, on either
side of the doorway into the house. Tandolfo is standing on the porch, his
back to the stairs, and he’s been introduced.
“Hello boys and girls,” he says, and bows. “Tandolfo needs a table.”
“A table,” one of the women says. e adults simply regard him. He sees
light sweaters, shapely hips, and wild hair; he sees beer cans in tight fists,
heavy jowls, bright ice- blue eyes. A little row of faces, and one el der ly face. He
feels more inebriated than he likes, and tries to concentrate.
“Mommy, I want to touch him,” one child says.
“Look at the cake,” says another, who gets up and moves to the railing on
Tandolfo’s right and trains a new pair of shiny binoculars on the car. “Do we
get some cake?”
“ere’s cake,” says the man in the  cap. “But not that cake. Get down,
Ethan.”
“I want that cake.”
“Get down. is is Teddy’s birthday.”
“Mommy, I want to touch him.”
“I need a table, folks. I told somebody that over the telephone.”
“He did say he needed a table. I’m sorry,” says a woman who is probably
the birthday boy’s mother. She’s quite pretty, leaning in the door frame with a
sweater tied to her waist.
“A table,” says still another woman. Tandolfo sees the birthmark on her
mouth, which looks like a stain. He thinks of this woman as a child in school,
with this difference from other children, and his heart goes out to her.
“I need a table,” he says to her, his voice as gentle as he can make it.
“What’s he going to do, perform an operation?” says .
It amazes Tandolfo how easily people fall into talking about him as though
he were an inanimate object or something on a tele vi sion screen. “e Great
Tandolfo can do nothing until he gets a table,” he says with as much mysteri-
ousness and drama as he can muster under the circumstances.
“I want that cake out there,” says Ethan, still at the porch railing. e
other children start talking about cake and ice cream, and the big cake Ethan
has spotted; there’s a lot of confusion and restlessness. One of the smaller
children, a girl in a blue dress, approaches Tandolfo. “What’s your name?” she
says, swaying slightly, her hands behind her back.
“Go sit down,” he says to her. “We have to sit down or Tandolfo can’t do
his magic.”
In the doorway, two of the men are struggling with a folding card table.
It’s one of those rickety ones with the skinny legs, and it probably won’t do.
“at’s kind of shaky, isn’t it?” says the woman with the birthmark.
“I said, Tandolfo needs a sturdy table, boys and girls.”
ere’s more confusion. e little girl has come forward and taken
hold of his pant leg. She’s just standing there holding it, looking up at him.
“We have to go sit down,” he says, bending to her, speaking sweetly, clown-
like. “We have to do what Tandolfo wants.”
Her small mouth opens wide, as if she’s trying to yawn, and with pale
eyes quite calm and staring she emits a screech, an ear- piercing, non- human
shriek that brings everything to a stop. Tandolfo/Rodney steps back, with his
amazement and his inebriate heart. Everyone gathers around the girl, who
continues to scream, less piercing now, her hands fisted at her sides, those pale
eyes closed tight.
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“What happened?” the man in the  cap wants to know. “Where the
hell’s the magic tricks?”
“I told you, all I needed is a table.”
“What’d you say to her to make her cry?”  indicates the little girl,
who is giving forth a series of broken, grief- stricken howls.
“I want magic tricks,” the birthday boy says, loud. “Where’s the magic
tricks?”
“Perhaps if we moved the whole thing inside,” the woman with the birth-
mark says, fingering her left ear and making a face.
e card table has somehow made its way to Tandolfo, through the con-
fusion and grief. e man in the  cap sets it down and opens it.
“ere,” he says, as if his point has been made.
In the next moment, Tandolfo realizes that someone’s removed the little
girl. Everything’s relatively quiet again, though her cries are coming through
the walls of one of the rooms inside the house. ere are perhaps fifteen chil-
dren, mostly seated before him, and five or six men and women behind them,
or kneeling with them. “Okay, now,”  says. “Tandolfo the Great.”
“Hello, little boys and girls,” Tandolfo says, deciding that the table will
have to suffice. “I’m happy to be here. Are you glad to see me?” A general
uproar commences. “Well, good,” he says. “Because just look what I have in
my magic bag.” And with a flourish he brings out the hat that he will release
Witch from. e bird is encased in a fold of shiny cloth, pulsing there. He can
feel it. He rambles on, talking fast, or trying to, and when the time comes to
reveal the bird, he almost flubs it. But Witch flaps his wings and makes enough
of a commotion to distract even the adults, who applaud and urge the stunned
children to follow suit. “Isn’t that wonderful,” Tandolfo hears. “Out of no-
where.”
“He had it hidden away,” says the birthday boy, managing to temper his
astonishment. He’s clearly the type who heaps scorn on those things he can’t
understand, or own.
“Now,” Tandolfo says, “for my next spell, I need a helper from the audi-
ence.” He looks right at the birthday boy — round face, short nose, freckles.
Bright red hair. Little green eyes. e whole countenance speaks of glutted
appetites and sloth. is kid could be on Roman coins, an emperor. He’s not
used to being compelled to do anything, but he seems eager for a chance to
get into the act. “How about you,” Tandolfo says to him.
e others, led by their parents, cheer.
e birthday boy gets to his feet and makes his way over the bodies of the
other children to stand with Tandolfo. In order for the trick to work, Tan-
dolfo must get everyone watching the birthday boy, and there’s a funny hat he
keeps in the bag for this purpose. “Now,” he says to the boy, “since you’re part
of the show, you have to wear a costume.” He produces the hat as if from be-
hind the boy’s ear. Another cheer goes up. He puts the hat on the boy’s head
and adjusts it, crouching down. e green eyes stare impassively at him; there’s
no hint of awe or fascination in them. “ere we are,” he says. “What a hand-
some fellow.”
But the birthday boy takes the hat off.
“We have to wear the hat to be onstage.”
“Ain’t a stage,” the boy says.
“Well, but hey,” Tandolfo says for the benefit of the adults. “Didn’t you
know that all the world’s a stage?” He tries to put the hat on him again, but
the boy moves from under his reach and slaps his hand away. “We have to wear
the hat,” Tandolfo says, trying to control his anger. “We can’t do the magic
without our magic hats.” He tries once more, and the boy waits until the hat
is on, then simply removes it and holds it behind him, shying away when Tan-
dolfo tries to retrieve it. e noise of the others now sounds like the crowd at
a prizefight; there’s a contest going on, and they’re enjoying it. “Give Tandolfo
the hat. We want magic, don’t we?”
“Do the magic,” the boy demands.
“I’ll do the magic if you give me the hat.”
“I won’t.”
Nothing. No support from the adults. Perhaps if he weren’t a little tipsy;
perhaps if he didn’t feel ridiculous and sick at heart and forlorn, with his wed-
ding cake and his odd mistaken romance, his loneliness, which he has always
borne gracefully and with humor, and his general dismay; perhaps if he were
to find it in himself to deny the sudden, overwhelming sense of the unearned
affection given this lumpish, slovenly version of stupid complacent spoiled
satiation standing before him — he might’ve simply gone on to the next trick.
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Instead, at precisely that moment when everyone seems to pause, he leans
down and says, “Give me the hat, you little prick.”
e green eyes widen.
e quiet is heavy with disbelief. Even the small children can tell that
something’s happened to change everything.
“Tandolfo has another trick,” Rodney says, loud, “where he makes the
birthday boy pop like a balloon. Especially if he’s a fat birthday boy.”
A stirring among the adults.
“Especially if he’s an ugly slab of gross flesh like this one here.”
“Now just a minute,” says .
“Pop,” Rodney says to the birthday boy, who drops the hat and then,
seeming to remember that defiance is expected, makes a face. Sticks out his
tongue. Rodney/Tandolfo is quick with his hands by training, and he grabs
the tongue.
“Awk,” the boy says. “Aw- aw- aw.”
“Abracadabra!” Rodney lets go and the boy falls backward onto the lap
of one of the other children. More cries. “Whoops, time to sit down,” says
Rodney. “Sorry you had to leave so soon.”
Very quickly, he’s being forcibly removed. ey’re rougher than gangsters.
ey lift him, punch him, tear at his costume — even the women. Someone
hits him with a spoon. e whole scene boils over onto the lawn, where some-
one has released Chi- Chi from her case. Chi- Chi moves about wide- eyed,
hopping between running children, evading them, as Tandolfo the Great can-
not evade the adults. He’s being pummeled, because he keeps trying to return
for his rabbit. And the adults won’t let him off the curb. “Okay,” he says finally,
collecting himself. He wants to let them know he’s not like this all the time;
wants to say it’s circumstances, grief, personal pain hidden inside seeming
brightness and cleverness. He’s a man in love, humiliated, wrong about every-
thing. He wants to tell them, but he can’t speak for a moment, can’t even
quite catch his breath. He stands in the middle of the street, his funny clothes
torn, his face bleeding, all his magic strewn everywhere. “I would at least like
to collect my rabbit,” he says, and is appalled at the absurd sound of it — its
huge difference from what he intended to say. He straightens, pushes the grime
from his face, adjusts the clown nose, and looks at them. “I would say that even
though I wasn’t as patient as I could’ve been, the adults have not comported
themselves well here,” he says.
“Drunk,” one of the women says.
Almost everyone’s chasing Chi- Chi now. One of the older boys approaches,
carry ing Witch’s case. Witch looks out the air hole, impervious, quiet as an
idea. And now one of the men, someone Rodney hasn’t noticed before, an older
man clearly wearing a hairpiece, brings Chi- Chi to him. “Bless you,” Rodney
says, staring into the man’s sleepy, deploring eyes.
“I don’t think we’ll pay you,” the man says. e others are filing back into
the house, herding the children before them.
Rodney speaks to the man. “e rabbit appears out of fire.”
e man nods. “Go home and sleep it off, kid.”
“Right. ank you.”
He puts Chi- Chi in his compartment, stuffs everything in its place in the
trunk. en he gets in the car and drives away. Around the corner he stops,
wipes off what he can of the makeup; it’s as if he’s trying to remove the stain
of bad opinion and disapproval. Nothing feels any different. He drives to the
suburban street where she lives with her parents, and by the time he gets there
it’s almost dark.
e houses are set back in the trees. He sees lighted windows, hears music,
the sound of children playing in the yards. He parks the car and gets out. A
breezy April dusk. “I am Tandolfo the soft- hearted,” he says. “Hearken to me.”
en he sobs. He can’t believe it. “Jeez,” he says. “Lord.” He opens the back
door of the car, leans in to get the cake. He’d forgot how heavy it is. Staggering
with it, making his way along the sidewalk, intending to leave it on her door-
step, he has an inspiration. Hesitating only for the moment it takes to make
sure there are no cars coming, he goes out and sets it down in the middle of
the street. Part of the top sags from having bumped his shoulder as he pulled
it off the back seat. e bride and groom are almost supine, one on top of the
other. He straightens them, steps back and looks at it. In the dusky light it
looks blue. It sags just right, with just the right angle expressing disappoint-
ment and sorrow. Yes, he thinks. is is the place for it. e aptness of it, sitting
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210 | chapter 12 a mini- anthology: 15 stories
out like this, where anyone might come by and splatter it all over creation,
makes him feel a faint sense of release, as if he were at the end of a story. Every-
thing will be all right if he can think of it that way. He’s wiping his eyes, think-
ing of moving to another town. Failures are beginning to catch up to him, and
he’s still aching in love. He thinks how he has suffered the pangs of failure and
misadventure, but in this painful instance there’s symmetry, and he will make
the one eloquent gesture — leaving a wedding cake in the middle of the road,
like a sugar- icinged pylon. Yes.
He walks back to the car, gets in, pulls around, and backs into the drive-
way of the house across the street from hers. Leaving the engine idling, he rolls
the window down and rests his arm on the sill, gazing at the incongruous shape
of the cake there in the falling dark. He feels almost glad, almost, in some
strange inexpressible way, vindicated. He imagines what she might do if she
saw him here, imagines that she comes running from her house, calling his
name, looking at the cake and admiring it. He conjures a picture of her, at-
tacking the tiers of pink sugar, and the muscles of his abdomen tighten. But
then this all gives way to something else: images of destruction, of flying dollops
of icing. He’s surprised to find that he wants her to stay where she is, doing
what ever she’s doing. He realizes that what he wants — and for the moment
all he really wants — is what he now has: a perfect vantage point from which to
watch oncoming cars. Turning the engine off, he waits, concentrating on the
one thing. He’s a man imbued with interest, almost peaceful with it — almost,
in fact, happy with it — sitting there in the quiet car and patiently awaiting
the results of his labor.
⁓ 
211
“I try to keep faith with the idea that
each sentence’s inflections will help
determine the one that follows and that
gradually, if I pay close attention, all
those sentences will add up to a coherent
and meaningful story — and also,
somehow, mysteriously, with an
expression of my own personality.”
⁓ from an interview with
Michael Kardos, May 
Kevin Brockmeier
u A Fable with Slips of White Paper
Spilling from the Pockets
Born in 1972, Kevin Brockmeier
grew up in Little Rock, Arkan-
sas, and graduated from Mis-
souri State University with an
interdisciplinary major in cre-
ative writing, philosophy, and
theater. He received his M.F.A.
from the Iowa Writers’ Work-
shop and has gone on to pub-
lish three novels, two story col-
lections, and two novels for
children. His stories have ap-
peared several times in The
O. Henry Prize Stories and Best
American Short Stories anthol-
ogies, and in 2007 he was named one of Granta Magazine’s Best Young Amer-
ican Novelists. He has received the Chicago Tribune’s Nelson Algren Award for
Short Fiction, the Italo Calvino Short Fiction Award, and a National Endow-
ment for the Arts Fellowship.
Once there was a man who happened to buy God’s overcoat. He was rum-
maging through a thrift store when he found it hanging on a rack by the
fire exit, nestled between a birch- colored fisherman’s sweater and a cotton blazer
with a suede patch on one of the elbows. ough the sleeves were a bit too long
for him and one of the buttons was cracked, the coat fit him well across the
chest and shoulders, lending him a regal look that brought a pleased yet dif-
fident smile to his face, so the man took it to the register and paid for it. He
was walking home when he discovered a slip of paper in one of the pockets.
212 | chapter 12 a mini- anthology: 15 stories
An old receipt, he thought, or maybe a to- do list forgotten by the coat’s previ-
ous own er. But when he took it out, he found a curious note typed across the
front: Please help me figure out what to do about Albert.
e man wondered who had written the note, and whether, in fact, that
person had figured out what to do about Albert — but not, it must be said,
for very long. After he got home, he folded the slip of paper into quarters and
dropped it in the ceramic dish where he kept his breath mints and his car
keys.
It might never have crossed his mind again had his fingers not fallen upon
two more slips of paper in the coat’s pocket while he was riding the elevator up
to his office the next morning. One read, Don’t let my nerves get the better of me
this afternoon, and the other, I’m asking you with all humility to keep that boy
away from my daughter.
e man shut himself in his office and went through the coat pocket by
pocket. It had five compartments altogether: two front flap pockets, each of
which lay over an angled hand- warmer pocket with the fleece almost com-
pletely worn away, as well as a small inside pocket above the left breast. He
rooted through them one by one until he was sure they were completely empty,
uncovering seven more slips of paper. e messages typed across the front of
the slips all seemed to be wishes or requests of one sort or another. Please let my
mom know I love her. I’ll never touch another cigarette as long as I live if you’ll just
make the lump go away. Give me back the joy I used to know.
ere was a tone of quiet intimacy to the notes, a starkness, an open-
hearted pleading that seemed familiar to the man from somewhere.
Prayers, he realized.
at’s what they were — prayers.
But where on earth did they come from?
He was lining them up along the edge of his desk when Eiseley from tech-
nical support rapped on the door to remind him about the ten o’clock meeting.
“Half an hour of coffee and spreadsheet displays,” he said. “Should be relatively
painless,” and he winked, firing an imaginary pistol at his head. As soon as
Eiseley left, the man felt the prickle of an obscure instinct and checked the
pockets of his coat again. He found a slip of paper reading, e only thing I’m
asking is that you give my Cindy another few years. Cindy was Eiseley’s cat, famil-
iar to everyone in the office from his Christmas cards and his online photo di-
ary. A simple coincidence? Somehow he didn’t think so.
For the rest of the day the man kept the coat close at hand, draping it over
his arm when he was inside and wearing it buttoned to the collar when he was
out. By the time he locked his office for the night, he believed he had come to
understand how it worked. e coat was — or seemed to be — a repository for
prayers. Not unerringly, but often enough, when the man passed somebody
on the street or stepped into a crowded room, he would tuck his hands into
the coat’s pockets and feel the thin flexed form of a slip of paper brushing his
fingers. He took a meeting with one of the interns from the marketing divi-
sion and afterward discovered a note that read, Please, oh please, keep me from
embarrassing myself. He grazed the arm of a man who was muttering obsceni-
ties, his feet planted flat on the sidewalk, and a few seconds later found a note
that read, Why do you do it? Why can’t you stop torturing me?
at afternoon, on his way out, he was standing by the bank of elevators
next to the waiting room when he came upon yet another prayer: All I want —
just this once — is for somebody to tell me how pretty I look today. He glanced
around. e only person he could see was Jenna, the receptionist, who was
sitting behind the front desk with her purse in her lap and her fingers covering
her lips. He stepped up to her and said, “By the way, that new girl from supplies
was right.”
“Right about what?”
“I heard her talking about you in the break room. She was saying how
pretty you look today. She was right. at’s a beautiful dress you’re wearing.”
e brightness in her face was like the reflection of the sun in a pool of
water — you could toss a stone in and watch it fracture into a thousand pieces,
throwing off sparks as it gathered itself back together.
So that was one prayer, and the man could answer it, but what was he to
do with all the others?
In the weeks that followed, he found thousands upon thousands more.
Prayers for comfort and prayers for wealth. Prayers for love and prayers for good
fortune. It seemed that at any one time half the people in the city were likely
to be praying. Some of them were praying for things he could understand, even
if he could not provide them, like the waitress who wanted some graceful way
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214 | chapter 12 a mini- anthology: 15 stories
to back out of her wedding or the UPS driver who asked for a single night of
unbroken sleep, while some were praying for things he could not even under-
stand: Let the voice choose lunch this time. Either Amy Sussen or Amy Goodale.
Nothing less than 30 percent. He walked past a ring of elementary school stu-
dents playing Duck, Duck, Goose and collected a dozen notes reading, Pick
me, pick me, along with one that read, I wish you would kill Matthew Brantman.
He went to a one- man show at the repertory theater, sitting directly next to
the stage, and afterward found a handful of notes that contained nothing but
the lines the actor had spoken. He made the mistake of wearing the coat to a
baseball game and had to leave at the top of the second inning when slips of
white paper began spilling from his pockets like confetti.
Soon the man realized that he was able to detect the pressure of an in-
coming prayer before it even arrived. e space around him would take on a
certain elasticity, as though thousands of tiny sinews were being summoned
up out of the emptiness and drawn tight, and he would know, suddenly and
without question, that someone was offering his yearning up to the air. It was
like the invisible re sis tance he remembered feeling when he tried to bring the
common poles of two magnets together. e sensation was unmistakable. And
it seemed that the stronger the force of the prayer, the greater the distance it
was able to travel. ere were prayers that he received only when he skimmed
directly up against another person, but there were others that had the power
to find him even when he was walking alone through the empty soccer field in
the middle of the park, his footsteps setting little riffles of birds into motion.
He wondered whether the prayers were something he had always subconsciously
felt, he and everyone else in the world, stirring around between their bodies
like invisible eddies, but which none of them had ever had the acuity to recog-
nize for what they were, or whether he was able to perceive them only because
he had happened to find the overcoat in the thrift store. He just didn’t know.
At first, when the man had realized what the coat could do, he had
indulged in the kind of fantasies that used to fill his daydreams as a child. He
would turn himself into the benevolent stranger, answering people’s wishes
without ever revealing himself to them. Or he would use the pockets to read
people’s fortunes somehow (he hadn’t yet figured out the details). Or he would
be the mysterious, slightly menacing figure who would take people by the
shoulder, lock gazes with them, and say, “I can tell what you’ve been thinking.”
But it was not long before he gave up on those ideas.
ere were so many prayers, there was so much longing in the world, and
in the face of it all he began to feel helpless.
One night the man had a dream that he was walking by a hotel swimming
pool, beneath a sky the same lambent blue as the water, when he recognized
God spread out like a convalescent in one of the hotel’s deck chairs. “You!” the
man said. “What are you doing here? I have your coat. Don’t you want it back?”
God set his magazine down on his lap, folding one of the corners over,
and shook his head. “It’s yours now. ey’re all yours now. I don’t want the
responsibility anymore.”
“But don’t you understand?” the man said to him. “We need you down
here. How could you just abandon us?”
And God answered, “I came to understand the limitations of my char-
acter.”
It was shortly after two in the morning when the man woke up. In the
moonlight he could see the laundry hamper, the clay bowl, and the dozens of
cardboard boxes that covered the floor of his bedroom, all of them filled with
slips of white paper he could not bear to throw away.
e next day he decided to place an ad in the classified pages: “Purchased
at thrift store. One overcoat, sable brown with chestnut buttons. Pockets worn.
Possibly of sentimental value. Wish to return to original own er.” He allowed
the ad to run for a full two weeks, going so far as to pin copies of it to the bul-
letin boards of several nearby churches, but he did not receive an answer. Nor,
it must be said, had he honestly expected to. e coat belonged to him now. It
had changed him into someone he had never expected to be. He found it hard
to imagine turning back to the life he used to know, a life in which he saw
people everywhere he went, in which he looked into their faces and even spoke
to them, but was only able to guess at what lay in their souls.
One Saturday he took a train to the city’s pedestrian mall. It was a mild
day, the first gleam of spring after a long and frigid winter, and though he did
not really need the coat, he had grown so used to wearing it that he put it on
without a second thought. e pedestrian mall was not far from the airport,
and as he arrived he watched a low plane passing overhead, dipping through
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the lee waves above the river. A handful of notes appeared in his pockets: Please
don’t let us fall. Please keep us from going down. Let this be the one that makes the
pain go away.
e shops, restaurants, and street cafés along the pavement were quiet at
first, but as the afternoon took hold, more and more people arrived. e man
was walking down a set of steps toward the center of the square when he dis-
covered a prayer that read, Let someone speak to me this time — anyone, anyone
at all — or else . . . e prayer was a powerful one, as taut as a steel cord in the
air. It appeared to be coming from the woman sitting on the edge of the dry
fountain, her feet raking two straight lines in the leaves. e man sat down
beside her and asked, “Or else what?”
She did not seem surprised to hear him raise the question. “Or else . . .”
she said quietly.
He could tell by the soreness in her voice that she was about to cry.
“Or else . . .”
He took her by the hand. “Come on. Why don’t I buy you some coffee?”
He led her to the coffee house, hanging his coat over the back of a chair and
listening to her talk, and before long he had little question what the “or else”
was. She seemed so disconsolate, so terribly isolated. He insisted she spend the
rest of the afternoon with him. He took her to see the wooden boxes that were
on display at a small art gallery and then the Victorian lamps in the front room
of an antique store. A movie was playing at the bargain theater, a comedy, and
he bought a pair of tickets for it, and after it was finished, the two of them
settled down to dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Finally they picked up a bag
of freshly roasted pecans from a pushcart down by the river. By then the sun
was falling, and the woman seemed in better spirits. He made her promise to
call him the next time she needed someone to talk to.
“I will,” she said, tucking her chin into the collar of her shirt like a little
girl. ough he wanted to believe her, he wondered as he rode the train home
if he would ever hear from her again.
It was the next morning before he realized his overcoat was missing. He
went to the lost- and- found counter at the train station and, when he was told
that no one had turned it in, traveled back to the pedestrian mall to retrace his
steps. He remembered draping the coat over his chair at the coffee house, but
none of the baristas there had seen it. Nor had the manager of the movie the-
ater. Nor had the own er of the art gallery. e man searched for it in every
shop along the square, but without success. at eve ning, as he unlocked the
door of his house, he knew that the coat had fallen out of his hands for good.
It was already plain to him how much he was going to miss it. It had brought
him little ease — that was true — but it had made his life incomparably richer,
and he was not sure what he was going to do without it.
We are none of us so delicate as we think, though, and over the next few
days, as a dozen new accounts came across his desk at work, the sharpness of
his loss faded. He no longer experienced the compulsion to hunt through his
pockets all the time. He stopped feeling as though he had made some terrible
mistake. Eventually he was left with only a small ache in the back of his mind,
no larger than a pebble, and a lingering sensitivity to the currents of hope and
longing that flowed through the air.
And at Pang Lin’s Chinese Restaurant a new sign soon appeared in the
window:         -
. e diners at the restaurant found the fortune cookies brittle and tasteless,
but the messages inside were unlike any they had ever seen, and before long they
developed a reputation for their peculiarity and their singular wisdom. Crack
open one of the cookies at Pang Lin’s, it was said, and you never knew what
fortune you might find inside.
Please let the test be canceled.
y will be done, but I could really use a woman right about now.
Why would you do something like this to me? Why?
Oh make me happy.
⁓ 
brockmeier: a fable with slips of white paper spilling from the pockets | 217
218
“I learn a lot writing. And with every
book I learn more about how little I
know. So by now at the end of fifteen
books I know a lot less than almost
anybody.”
⁓ from Identity eory, May , 
Percival Everett
u e Appropriation of Cultures
Poet, novelist, and short- fiction
writer Percival Everett was
born in 1956 and grew up in
South Carolina. He attended
undergraduate programs at
the University of Miami and
the University of Oregon and
received an M.F.A. in creative
writing from Brown University.
Author of numerous books of
fiction and poetry, Everett has
received awards including the PEN Center USA Award for Fiction, the Academy
Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the
Believer Book Award, and the New American Writing Award. His work has
been selected for The Pushcart Prize Anthology and Best American Short Sto-
ries. Everett is currently Distinguished Professor of En glish at the University
of Southern California.
Daniel Barkley had money left to him by his mother. He had a house that
had been left to him by his mother. He had a degree in American Stud-
ies from Brown University that he had in some way earned, but that had not
yet earned anything for him. He played a  Martin guitar with a Barkus-
Berry pickup and drove a  Jensen Interceptor, which he had purchased
after his mother’s sister had died and left him her money because she had no
children of her own. Daniel Barkley didn’t work and didn’t pretend to need
to, spending most of his time reading. Some nights he went to a joint near the
campus of the University of South Carolina and played jazz with some old guys
who all worked very hard during the day, but didn’t hold Daniel’s condition
against him.
Daniel played standards with the old guys, but what he loved to play were
old- time slide tunes. One night, some white boys from a fraternity yelled for-
ward to the stage at the black man holding the acoustic guitar and began to
shout, “Play ‘Dixie’ for us! Play ‘Dixie’ for us!”
Daniel gave them a long look, studied their big- toothed grins and the
beer- shiny eyes stuck into puffy, pale faces, hovering over golf shirts and chi-
nos. He looked from them to the uncomfortable expressions on the faces of
the old guys with whom he was playing and then to the embarrassed faces
of the other college kids in the club.
And then he started to play. He felt his way slowly through the chords
of the song once and listened to the deadened hush as it fell over the room.
He used the slide to squeeze out the melody of the song he had grown up
hating, the song the whites had always pulled out to remind themselves and
those other people just where they were. Daniel sang the song. He sang it
slowly. He sang it, feeling the lyrics, deciding that the lyrics were his, decid-
ing that the song was his. Old times there are not forgotten . . . He sang the
song and listened to the silence around him. He resisted the urge to let satire
ring through his voice. He meant what he sang. Look away, look away, look
away, Dixieland.
When he was finished, he looked up to see the roomful of eyes on him. One
person clapped. en another. And soon the tavern was filled with applause and
hoots. He found the frat boys in the back and watched as they stormed out, a
couple of people near the door chuckling at them as they passed.
Roger, the old guy who played tenor sax, slapped Daniel on the back and
said something like, “Right on” or “Cool.” Roger then played the first few
notes of “Take the A Train” and they were off. When the set was done, all the
college kids slapped Daniel on the back as he walked toward the bar where he
found a beer waiting.
Daniel didn’t much care for the slaps on the back, but he didn’t focus too
much energy on that. He was busy trying to sort out his feelings about what
he had just played. e irony of his playing the song straight and from the
heart was made more ironic by the fact that as he played it, it came straight
and from his heart, as he was claiming Southern soil, or at least recognizing
his blood in it. His was the land of cotton and hell no, it was not forgotten. At
everett: the appropriation of cultures | 219
220 | chapter 12 a mini- anthology: 15 stories
twenty- three, his anger was fresh and typical, and so was his ease with it, the
way it could be forgotten for chunks of time, until something like that night
with the white frat boys or simply a flashing blue light in the rearview mirror
brought it all back. He liked the song, wanted to play it again, knew that he
would.
He drove home from the bar on Green Street and back to his house where
he made tea and read about Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg while he sat in the
big leather chair that had been his father’s. He fell asleep and had a dream in
which he stopped Pickett’s men on the Emmitsburg Road on their way to the
field and said, “Give me back my flag.”
Daniel’s friend Sarah was a very large woman with a very large Afro hairdo.
ey were sitting on the porch of Daniel’s house having tea. e late fall after-
noon was mild and slightly overcast. Daniel sat in the wicker rocker while
Sarah curled her feet under her on the glider.
“I wish I could have heard it,” Sarah said.
“Yeah, me too.”
“Personally, I can’t even stand to go in that place. All that drinking. ose
white kids love to drink.” Sarah studied her fingernails.
“I guess. e place is harmless. ey seem to like the music.”
“Do you think I should paint my nails?”
Daniel frowned at her. “If you want to.”
“I mean really paint them. You know, black, or with red, white, and blue
stripes. Something like that.” She held her hand out, appearing to imagine the
colors. “I’d have to grow them long.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Just bullshitting.”
Daniel and Sarah went to a grocery market to buy food for lunch and
Daniel’s dinner. Daniel pushed the cart through the Piggly Wiggly while
Sarah walked ahead of him. He watched her large movements and her confi-
dent stride. At the checkout, he added a bulletin full of pictures of local cars
and trucks for sale to his items on the conveyer.
“What’s that for?” Sarah asked.
“I think I want to buy a truck.”
“Buy a truck?”
“So I can drive you around when you paint your nails.”
Later, after lunch and after Sarah had left him alone, Daniel sat in his living
room and picked up the car- sale magazine. As he suspected, there were several
trucks he liked and one in par tic u lar, a  Ford three- quarter ton with the
one thing it shared with the other possibilities, a full rear cab window decal of
the Confederate flag. He called the number the following morning and ar-
ranged with Barb, Travis’s wife, to stop by and see the truck.
Travis and Barb lived across the river in the town of Irmo, a name that Daniel
had always thought suited a disease for cattle. He drove around the maze of
tract homes until he found the right street and number. A woman in a house-
coat across the street watched from her porch, safe inside the chain- link fence
around her yard. From down the street a man and a teenager, who were covered
with grease and apparently engaged in work on a torn- apart Dodge Charger,
mindlessly wiped their hands and studied him.
Daniel walked across the front yard, through a maze of plastic toys, and
knocked on the front door. Travis opened the door and asked in a surly voice,
“What is it?”
“I called about the truck,” Daniel said.
“Oh, you’re Dan?”
Daniel nodded.
“e truck’s in the backyard. Let me get the keys.” He pushed the door
to, but it didn’t catch. Daniel heard the quality of the exchange between Travis
and Barb, but not the words. He did hear Barb say, as Travis pulled open the
door. “I couldn’t tell over the phone.”
“Got ’em.” Travis said. “Come on with me.” He looked at Daniel’s Jensen
as they walked through the yard. “What kind of car is that?”
“It’s a Jensen.”
“Nice looking. Is it fast?”
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“I guess.”
e truck looked a little rough, a pale blue with a bleached- out hood and
a crack across the top of the windshield. Travis opened the driver’s side door
and pushed the key into the ignition. “It’s a strong runner,” he said. Daniel
put his hand on the faded hood and felt the warmth, knew that Travis had
already warmed up the motor. Travis turned the key and the engine kicked
over. He nodded to Daniel. Daniel nodded back. He looked up to see a blond
woman looking on from behind the screen door of the back porch.
“e clutch and the alternator are new this year.” Travis stepped back-
ward to the wall of the bed and looked in. “ere’s some rust back here, but
the bottom’s pretty solid.”
Daniel attended to the sound of the engine. “Misses just a little,” he said.
“A tune- up will fix that.”
Daniel regarded the rebel- flag decal covering the rear window of the cab,
touched it with his finger.
“at thing will peel right off,” Travis said.
“No, I like it.” Daniel sat down in the truck behind the steering wheel.
“Mind if I take it for a spin?”
“Sure thing.” Travis looked toward the house, then back to Daniel. “e
brakes are good, but you got to press hard.”
Daniel nodded.
Travis shut the door, his long fingers wrapped over the edge of the half-
lowered glass. Daniel noticed that one of the man’s fingernails was blackened.
“I’ll just take it around a block or two.”
e blond woman was now standing outside the door on the concrete
steps. Daniel put the truck in gear and drove out of the yard, past his car and
down the street by the man and teenager who were still at work on the Charger.
ey stared at him, were still watching him as he turned right at the corner.
e truck handled decently, but that really wasn’t important.
Back at Travis’s house Daniel left the keys in the truck and got out to
observe the bald tires while Travis looked on. “e ad in the magazine said
two thousand.”
“Yeah, but I’m willing to work with you.”
“Tell you what, I’ll give you twenty- two hundred if you deliver it to my
house.”
Travis was lost, scratching his head and looking back at the house for his
wife, who was no longer standing there. “Whereabouts do you live?”
“I live over near the university. Near Five Points.”
“Twenty- two hundred?” Travis said more to himself than to Daniel.
“Sure I can get it to your house.”
“Here’s two hundred.” Daniel counted out the money and handed it to
the man. “I’ll have the rest for you in cash when you deliver the truck.” He
watched Travis feel the bills with his skinny fingers. “Can you have it there at
about four?”
“I can do that.”
“What in the world do you need a truck for?” Sarah asked. She stepped over
to the counter and poured herself another cup of coffee, then sat back down at
the table with Daniel.
“I’m not buying the truck. Well, I am buying a truck, but only because I
need the truck for the decal. I’m buying the decal.”
“Decal?”
“Yes. is truck has a Confederate flag in the back window.”
“What?”
“I’ve decided that the rebel flag is my flag. My blood is Southern blood,
right? Well, it’s my flag.”
Sarah put down her cup and saucer and picked up a cookie from the plate
in the middle of the table. “You’ve flipped. I knew this would happen to you
if you didn’t work. A person needs to work.”
“I don’t need money.”
“at’s not the point. You don’t have to work for money.” She stood and
walked to the edge of the porch and looked up and down the street.
“I’ve got my books and my music.”
“You need a job so you can be around people you don’t care about, doing
stuff you don’t care about. You need a job to occupy that part of your brain. I
suppose it’s too late now, though.”
“Nonetheless,” Daniel said. “You should have seen those redneck boys when
I took ‘Dixie’ from them. ey didn’t know what to do. So, the goddamn flag is
flying over the State Capitol. Don’t take it down, just take it. at’s what I say.”
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“at’s all you have to do? at’s all there is to it?”
“Yep.” Daniel leaned back in his rocker. “You watch ol’ Travis when he
gets here.”
Travis arrived with the pickup a little before four, his wife pulling up behind
him in a yellow TransAm. Barb got out of the car and walked up to the porch
with Travis. She gave the house a careful look.
“Hey, Travis,” Daniel said. “is is my friend, Sarah.”
Travis nodded hello.
“You must be Barb,” Daniel said.
Barb smiled weakly.
Travis looked at Sarah, then back at the truck, and then to Daniel. “You
sure you don’t want me to peel that thing off the window?”
“I’m positive.”
“Okay.”
Daniel gave Sarah a glance, to be sure she was watching Travis’s face.
“Here’s the balance,” he said, handing over the money. He took the truck keys
from the skinny fingers.
Barb sighed and asked, as if the question were burning right through her.
“Why do you want that flag on the truck?”
“Why shouldn’t I want it?” Daniel asked.
Barb didn’t know what to say. She studied her feet for a second, then re-
garded the house again. “I mean, you live in a nice house and drive that sports
car. What do you need a truck like that for?”
“You don’t want the money?”
“Yes, we want the money,” Travis said, trying to silence Barb with a
look.
“I need the truck for hauling stuff,” Daniel said. “You know like groceries
and—” he looked to Sarah for help.
“Books,” Sarah said.
“Books. ings like that.” Daniel held Barb’s eyes until she looked away.
He watched Travis sign his name to the the back of the title and hand it to
him and as he took it, he said. “I was just lucky enough to find a truck with
the black- power flag already on it.”
“What?” Travis screwed up his face, trying to understand.
“e black- power flag on the window. You mean, you didn’t know?”
Travis and Barb looked at each other.
“Well, anyway,” Daniel said, “I’m glad we could do business.” He turned
to Sarah. “Let me take you for a ride in my new truck.” He and Sarah walked
across the yard, got into the pickup, and waved to Travis and Barb who were
still standing in Daniel’s yard as they drove away.
Sarah was on the verge of hysterics by the time they were out of sight.
“at was beautiful,” she said.
“No,” Daniel said, softly. “at was true.”
Over the next weeks, sightings of Daniel and his truck proved problematic for
some. He was accosted by two big white men in a ’ Monte Carlo in the
parking lot of a - Eleven on Two Notch Road.
“What are you doing with that on your truck, boy?” the bigger of the two
asked.
“Flying it proudly,” Daniel said, noticing the rebel front plate on the
Chevrolet. “Just like you, brothers.”
e confused second man took a step toward Daniel. “What did you
call us?”
“Brothers.”
e second man pushed Daniel in the chest with two extended fists, but
not terribly hard.
“I don’t want any trouble,” Daniel told them.
en a Volkswagen with four black teenagers parked in the slot beside
Daniel’s truck and they jumped out, staring and looking serious. “What’s going
on?” the driver and largest of the teenagers asked.
“ey were admiring our flag,” Daniel said, pointing to his truck.
e teenagers were confused.
“We fly the flag proudly, don’t we, young brothers?” Daniel gave a bent-
arm, black- power, closed- fist salute. “Don’t we?” he repeated. “Don’t we?”
“Yeah,” the young men said.
e white men had backed away to their car. ey slipped into it and
drove away.
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Daniel looked at the teenagers and, with as serious a face as he could
manage, he said, “Get a flag and fly it proudly.”
At a gas station, a lawyer named Ahmad Wilson stood filling the tank of his
BMW and staring at the back window of Daniel’s truck. He then looked at
Daniel. “Your truck?” he asked.
Daniel stopped cleaning the windshield and nodded.
Wilson didn’t ask a question, just pointed at the rear window of Daniel’s
pickup.
“Power to the people,” Daniel said and laughed.
Daniel played “Dixie” in another bar in town, this time with a R&B dance band
at a banquet of the black medical association. e strange looks and expres-
sions of outrage changed to bemused laughter and finally to open joking and
ac cep tance as the song was played fast enough for dancing. en the song was
sung, slowly, to the profound surprise of those singing the song. I wish I was
in the land of cotton, old times there are not forgotten . . . Look away, look away,
look away . . .
Soon, there were several, then many cars and trucks in Columbia, South Caro-
lina, sporting Confederate flags and being driven by black people. Black busi-
nessmen and ministers wore rebel- flag buttons on their lapels and clips on their
ties. e marching band of South Carolina State College, a predominantly
black land- grant institution in Orangeburg, paraded with the flag during home-
coming. Black people all over the state flew the Confederate flag. e symbol
began to disappear from the fronts of big rigs and the back windows of jacked-
up four- wheelers. And after the emblem was used to dress the yards and mark
picnic sites of black family reunions the following Fourth of July, the piece of
cloth was quietly dismissed from its station with the U.S. and State flags atop
the State Capitol. ere was no ceremony, no notice. One day, it was not there.
Look away, look away, look away . . .
⁓ 
227
“I think it’s really important not to be
discouraged when your stories aren’t
working — or when they outright fail.
I have written so many failed stories
that will never be published (and never
should be), but they were all necessary
in some way.”
⁓ from an interview with
Michael Kardos, May 
Becky Hagenston
u Midnight, Licorice, Shadow
Born in 1967, Becky Hagenston
grew up in Mary land and re-
ceived graduate degrees from
New Mexico State University
and the University of Arizona.
She is the author of two story
collections, A Gram of Mars
(1998) and Strange Weather
(2010). Her stories have ap-
peared in periodicals includ-
ing The Gettysburg Review,
The Southern Review, and The
Mid- American Review, and her
awards include the Mary
McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, the Spokane Prize for Short Fiction, and an O.
Henry award. Her story “Midnight, Licorice, Shadow,” first published in the
fall 2008 issue of C r a z y h o r s e , was later selected for that journal’s fiftieth anni-
versary issue. Hagenston is currently an associate professor of En glish at
Mississippi State University.
“Midnight, Licorice, Shadow,” she says. “Cocoa, Casper, Dr. Livingston.”
“Alfred Hitchcock,” he says. “Dracula. Vincent Price.”
ey have had the cat for nearly three days.
“Cinderblock?” she tries. “Ice bucket?”
It’s useless. e harder they try to think of a name, the more elusive it
becomes.
“Tomorrow, then,” Jeremy says. “If we don’t have a name by tomorrow
morning, it’s bye- bye, Mr. Kitty. No offense, Cupcake,” he tells the cat, and
gives it a quick rub on the head.
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Donna looks at the animal, sprawled on the orange motel carpet like a
black bearskin rug. One of his fangs is showing. His monkey paws are knead-
ing at the air.
“Monkey Paw!” she says, but Jeremy is already headed out the door, car
keys jangling. He’d invited her to go along — there’s some house in Redlands
he wants to check out — but she wants to stay with the cat, who now has his
eyes closed in feline ecstasy and is purring louder than the air conditioner. She
doesn’t want to leave him (Merlin? Jasper?) all alone in a strange motel. In an
hour or so she’ll walk across the parking lot to the Carrows and get a chef’s
salad for her and a cheeseburger for Jeremy (he always comes back hungry)
and maybe she’ll give some of her dinner to the cat. ey’ve been feeding him
dry food because, as Jeremy says, wet food makes a cat’s shits stinkier. Donna
thinks the cat’s shits are stinky enough as it is. Still, she likes him. She wants
the three of them to drive off together tomorrow morning, like a family on va-
cation. So far, they’ve traveled over five hundred miles together, the cat curled
up on Donna’s lap while Jeremy drives.
If she can just come up with his name, the way she came up with her own.
She was born Lacey Love and changed her name to Donna when she left home
at sixteen. She liked the wholesome, s sound of it, the name of a girl in a
song. Sometimes she thinks about changing it again, to something more serious:
Joan, perhaps, or Agnes. More and more, she feels like a Joan or an Agnes.
“Tango,” she says to the cat. “Flower. Bambi. Mr. Jarvis.”
e cat jerks his head up and fixes his yellow eyes on hers in what seems
like an accusatory way, but she tells herself he must have heard something
outside that startled him, something too faint for human ears.
When they first met, she had almost told Jeremy that her name was Sunshine —
partly as a joke but partly because she felt like a Sunshine right then, surrounded
by wildflowers by the side of I-, halfway between Tucson and Phoenix.
“I would have believed you,” he told her later. “Because you are my sun-
shine. My only sunshine,” he added, in a low growl. He was prone to saying
cheesy things, but he said them in a way that seemed mean and dangerous,
and therefore struck her as truthful. For instance, the first time he called her
his soul mate, he had his right hand around her neck, and he squeezed just
enough to let her know he meant business. “I know things about you,” he said
to her, staring her in the eyes, and she knew those things had nothing to do
with any part of her past — certainly not the Lacey Love part of her past — but
with who she was at that moment, Donna with Jeremy’s hand on her neck.
e things Jeremy knows about her are more mysterious and important
than the things he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know, for instance, that she’d
been married and divorced at eigh teen, though she would certainly have told
him if he asked. He’s never asked about her family or her childhood, which
she finds refreshing. Why did men always pretend they cared about that? If
they could get you to spill one childhood memory, they figured they could get
you into bed.
And she always lied about the childhood memory anyway, making some-
thing up about her dog being smashed by her father’s Oldsmobile when she
was seven, right before her eyes. She’d told a man she met at a skanky bar
outside of Alamagordo that her uncle had diddled her for three years, from
the time she was seven (a lie), and the man had taken her back to his foul-
smelling motel room and laid her down on the bed and said, “Now tell old
Terry how your uncle did you.”
Sometimes it makes her smile, thinking about old Terry waking up the
next morning with a concussion and his car and wallet stolen.
She told Jeremy she was twenty- three, which was the truth, and he told
her he was twenty- four, though he seems much older. Still, she has no reason
not to believe him. And what do ages matter anyway?
If Jeremy had asked her what she was doing there on the side of I- in the
middle of a field of yellow wildflowers, she would have told him the truth:
she’d been driving for seven hours and needed to pee so badly her vision was
blurring. But he didn’t ask. He pulled over and jogged toward her and then
stopped and said, “ere you are.”
“Here I am,” she said. It didn’t hurt that he was handsome, and that the
sun was going down in a particularly spectacular way, and that she wasn’t
headed anyplace in par tic u lar, and that she hadn’t eaten in almost twenty-
four hours. e mountains in the distance were prehistoric creatures that
could rise up and stomp them both. She had no problem leaving old Terry’s
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crappy Datsun on the side of the road and getting into Jeremy’s white pickup
truck. He took her to a truck stop and bought her a BLT and then to K-Mart
for shoes and underwear and a bathing suit.
at was three weeks ago.
“Sink Drip,” she says to the cat, which is still sprawled on the floor, eyes
closed. She wishes he would be a little bit more attentive. “Moldy Shower,” she
says, and sighs. It’s getting old, living in crappy motel rooms. Soon, they’ll
have enough money to buy someplace nice, maybe in the mountains. “Which
mountains?” she’d asked, and Jeremy said, “Any of them. All of them.”
She turns on the tele vi sion. “Stone Phillips,” she says. e cat’s toes and
whis kers twitch, in some kind of cat- dream. She leans down next to his ear.
“Get it,” she whispers. “Catch that mouse. Good boy.”
e first car she’d ever stolen, when she was eigh teen, belonged to her landlord —
hers and Tim’s. Tim was her husband, a thirty- eight- year- old slightly retarded
janitor she’d met at the Catty Shack Catfish House in Tupelo, Mississippi.
He was so charming that at first you didn’t realize he was retarded. She’d
married him because she was tired of living in a trailer with Ilene, a commu-
nity college student who shot up heroin with her Western Civ book propped
on her knees.
But after a couple of months of married life, she realized she’d had enough;
she’d gotten fired at Catty Shack for slapping Tim’s face in front of customers
and calling him a fucking retard. e worst part of all that was that then Tim
had started to cry. He threw his mop on the floor and ran out the door, got in
his truck, and a day later he still hadn’t come back.
She was standing at the kitchen window, eating a peanut butter and butter
sandwich and staring across the yard at Mr. Harvey, the landlord, when she
got the idea. Mr. Harvey kept trying to save her and Tim, coming to the door
with pamphlets and tiny green New Testaments. His car, a Chevy Malibu,
was parked as usual in the driveway, coated yellow with the pollen that blew
all through northern Mississippi that time of year. He was out on his front
porch, setting for a spell (as he called it; he was always trying to get Donna to
set for a spell with him) with an old black lady who was nearly as crazy as he
was. Donna had taken him for a racist, an ex- Klan member perhaps (he re-
minded her of her daddy), and so this friendship surprised and confused her.
She liked to have people figured out.
en Mr. Harvey and the old black lady stood up and started heading
down the street, chatting intently. Even he had a friend. And there she was,
eigh teen years old, married to a retard, fired from a catfish restaurant, and
there didn’t seem to be a good reason not to walk up onto Mr. Harvey’s back
porch — it smelled like boiled vegetables and grease and tobacco — and take
the car keys from his kitchen table.
She left a note: I need this to do the Lord’s work, will return it to you in 2
days, please do not call the police. GOD BLESS YOU.
en she found some money, too — in a sock in his underwear drawer ( just
like her daddy, after all) — and took off for the West, where anything could
happen.
It was a hundred and six degrees today, according to the Weather Channel, and
even at seven in the eve ning the heat comes off the asphalt in waves. “Why is
it so smoggy and suffocating here?” she’d asked Jeremy. “I thought California
was supposed to be sunny and beachy and fun, with celebrities all over the
place.”
“is here’s the Inland Empire,” he said. What ever that meant; it sounded
like something out of Star Wars. ey’d driven past charred hillsides, palm
trees burnt up like match heads. And yet people live here; they even come here
on vacation. e Carrows across the parking lot is full of families: weary-
looking mothers; stern, sunburned fathers; cranky children. ey take up all
the benches and fill up the vestibule.
Her pickup order isn’t ready yet, so she stands at the brochure stand and
flips through the Area Attractions: Joshua Tree National Park, Death Valley,
the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Disneyland. Donna didn’t tell Jeremy this, but
she actually wouldn’t mind going to Disneyland; she might actually enjoy it.
But Jeremy has a low tolerance for people — except for her, of course. Yesterday,
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when they first arrived and checked in, they’d come here for lunch and Jeremy
had been so annoyed that he’d handed her a twenty and told her to get some-
thing to bring back to the room.
“Excuse me,” says someone. “Ma’am?” A large man in khaki shorts and a
Van Halen tour T-shirt is standing up, pointing to a place on a bench. “Why
don’t you have a seat?”
“ank you!” she says. “I appreciate that.”
People could be so kind; that’s one thing she’s just beginning to under-
stand about the world since she met Jeremy. Even the sweaty, tired- looking
families around her seem like they get along; nobody’s crying or smacking
anyone; no one’s kneeled down whispering threats in anybody’s ear.
When she picks up her order finally, she looks back at the khaki- pants man
on the way out the door; he’s telling a little girl something that’s making her
laugh. Yes, people aren’t so bad after all, and they don’t expect you to be bad,
either.
at’s the thing. ey don’t expect you to be bad. It’s amazing, she thinks —
walking across the parking lot, pocketknife clutched between her knuckles —
that in this day and age, people will just let you into their houses, that they will
look out their peepholes and see two complete strangers standing there, and
then pull the door open.
at’s what Mrs. Jarvis had done. She had greeted them with an expression
of confusion and expectation, as if they had been standing there holding gift-
wrapped boxes. “Yes?” she had said, and that’s when Jeremy (who had gotten
her name from the mailbox) said, “I’m sorry to bother you, but is Mr. Jarvis
home?”
“No?” the woman answered, as if this were a quiz show and she wasn’t
certain what she’d won but knew — knew — that she’d won something. “Is this
about the boat?” she said then (and Donna nearly laughed out loud — a boat!),
and Jeremy said, without missing a beat, “Yes, it is.”
“I’m sorry, but we already sold that,” Mrs. Jarvis said, smiling. “anks
for coming by, though.”
e plan wasn’t to go inside; the plan was to get a sense of the place, see
if there was anything worth stealing and come back for it later.
“Can I use your bathroom?” Donna said then. She could practically feel
Jeremy’s heart beating harder; the heat radiating from him almost made her
dizzy.
e truth was, she had briefly forgotten about the plan. She suddenly
wanted to see inside the house; she wanted to know if it was full of votive can-
dles and Hummels, and if there was a room where everything — the furniture,
the carpet — was covered in clear plastic like there was in her grandmother’s
home — the entire living room forbidden entry by anyone other than “com-
pany,” whom she never saw.
She wanted to see if there was a bathroom cabinet full of pill bottles and
if there were razor blades under the sink, and if the whole house smelled of
disinfectant and Bengay.
And Mrs. Jarvis had just kept smiling. “Please,” she said, “won’t you
come in?”
Jeremy’s truck isn’t there yet, but that’s fine. “Here I am, Kitty- Kitty,” she an-
nounces, opening the door. “Did you miss me?”
And the cat did miss her, because he comes leaping up on the bed like a
dog to meow at her, welcoming her back.
She’d left the tele vi sion on to keep him company. Donna loves cable TV,
but Jeremy thinks it’s dangerous. Last night, they had fallen asleep watching
Law and Order, the cat curled up at the foot of their bed, and had woken up
to some espionage movie.
Jeremy had jumped out of bed, saying, “Shit! Shit! We shouldn’t have done
that!”
“Done what?”
“Left the TV on all night. Fuck.” en he told her that all the stuff that
had been on all night long had seeped into their subconscious, and they
had no idea what it might have done to them, what kind of bad ideas and
thoughts might have gotten into their brains. He grabbed the TV guide and
they saw it had been a Law and Order marathon and he was even more
pissed off.
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“Better than Golden Girls,” she’d said. “We might’ve woken up thinking
we were horny old ladies.” He didn’t think that was funny.
Jeremy likes watching nature programs and documentaries about haunted
houses. He told her that when he was a little boy, he’d seen a ghost appear to
him in his bedroom mirror and tell him that his grandfather was about to die.
“And three days later, he did. He wasn’t even sick!”
And after that he’d had “the gift” — he didn’t specify exactly what the
gift was, just that it made him realize when something was right (like when he
saw her by the side of the road with the wildflowers) or wrong (like not having
a name for the cat).
She knows Jeremy wants to keep the cat, because on the way home after
they found him, Jeremy had stopped at Wal- Mart — leaving her and the
kitty (Biscuit? Muffin?) in the car with the air conditioner running — and
came back with a litter box, litter, a ball full of catnip, and a bag of expensive,
veterinarian- recommended chow made with salmon and spinach. “Nothing
but the best for Whoosits,” he said.
“Maybe we should call him Bluebell,” she suggested. “Because of the blue
bell around his neck. It’s kind of obvious, but it’s cute.”
en Jeremy frowned and didn’t say anything until they got back to their
motel room. ey set the cat on the floor and he immediately lay down and
began purring.
“Bluebell likes us,” she said.
“His name isn’t Bluebell,” Jeremy said. “I think you know that. It doesn’t
fit.”
And he was right; it didn’t. is cat was stronger and bigger than a Blue-
bell. He was more of a . . . what?
“I don’t like not knowing his name,” Jeremy said, later that eve ning when
they were eating Chinese takeout and watching a special on the Roman ghosts
of Yorkshire. “It’s bad luck. Not knowing something’s name is like having a
bad spirit floating around. Until we know what to call him, we won’t be safe.”
He took a bite of egg roll. “ree days, and if we don’t have a name for him, he’s
history.”
en he closed his eyes and sniffed the air, which he did sometimes, as if
he could sense things coming from miles, days, even weeks away. Once he’d
done this — after a job in Sedona — and said, “Trouble. We’ve gotta get the
hell out of here.” ey’d packed up that night and driven up to Utah, and they
hadn’t had any trouble at all.
“ree days,” Jeremy repeated. “And that’s pushing it.”
At nine- thirty, when Jeremy hasn’t come back yet, Donna eats her chef’s salad
and gives all the ham to the cat, who rubs his head against her hand again and
again even when there’s nothing left. He knows that if she had more, she would
give it to him. “You’re a smart cat,” she tells him. (Einstein?) en she thinks:
Maybe he doesn’t want anything. Maybe he’s just being nice.
Outside her window, there’s the sound of a family walking down the pave-
ment toward their room, a little boy whining about his sunburn, a mother tell-
ing him she warned him, didn’t she? e voices get fainter, then a door opens
and slams shut.
Before her daddy ran off and her mother went crazy and Donna (Lacey
Love) went to live with her grandmother in Jackson — in the house with all
the plastic on the furniture — they had all gone on a family trip to Vicksburg.
“is field was running with blood,” her daddy said. “Right where we’re
standing.” Her mother had sighed and trembled. Her grandmother had re-
fused to get out of the car. She had wanted to go to Dollywood.
Donna peeks out the window. e parking lot is nearly half empty;
the fortunate families are staying down the street at the Holiday Inn or the
Ramada. She steps out into the hot desert air, the pavement warm beneath
her bare feet.
“You have a real knack for this kind of thing,” Jeremy had told her — the
way she’s able to scan an entire parking lot and know which car is unlocked,
or which trunk is not latched. “I’m good at guessing,” she told him. “I’m lucky.”
And she’s lucky again to night, locating a red Honda Civic with a piece
of fabric — a beach blanket — sticking out of the trunk. e laptop is right
on top — asking to be stolen, really — and she digs around a little more and
finds some backpacks that don’t interest her, and some AAA tour books,
and some sun visors. She closes the trunk carefully and quietly. Before she met
Jeremy, she would have taken the car and driven away, just because she could,
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but she hasn’t wanted to do that in weeks. She’s not sure she even could
anymore.
“We’re not bad people,” Jeremy had told her. “We’re just getting by in a
world that’s fucked us over.”
When she asked him how the world had fucked him over, he’d sighed
and his eyes had gotten damp, and he’d held her and stroked her hair — as if
to say all that didn’t matter, now that he’d found her.
She takes the laptop inside and places it on the nightstand. Inside the
nightstand, she knows, is the ubiquitous Bible; it’s as if it’s the same one, fol-
lowing them from town to town, wanting something. She thinks of Mr. Har-
vey, can almost imagine him sneaking into the rooms and placing them fur-
tively in drawers, convinced that he’s saving the world. But she knows it’s
more complicated than that. Her mother thought she was saved, even when
she was taking her clothes off in the middle of Wal- Mart, even when the doctor
was giving her a shot in the arm to keep her from pulling out all her hair.
Donna has Jeremy, and that’s better than salvation.
“Good old Mrs. Jarvis,” Jeremy had said, in a playful, affectionate way, when
they were standing in her living room. He was tapping his gun against his
palm, thoughtfully, though there was nothing really to think about.
“I’m not old,” Mrs. Jarvis said. “I’m only forty- seven. I have a daughter at
Bryn Mawr. My husband is dead. I’m the only person she has left.”
Donna had drifted through the house, which was bright and sunny and
smelled nothing at all like disinfectant. It smelled like flowers. ere was no
fancy “company” room. e bathroom was green and pink, with a shower cur-
tain of plastic pink flowers. e tub was empty, of course — no old lady lying
there with a razor blade beside her, her eyes closed under the red water.
ere was a lime tree growing in black dirt. e limes were hard and
small but she took two of them anyway and put them in her pocket. She won-
dered if the daughter at Bryn Mawr had played in this garden as a little girl,
if she’d had tea parties and cut up little limes for her dolls. Donna — back
when she was Lacey Love — had made dolls out of her mother’s stockings, had
set them around the card table and given them Dixie cups of cold Sanka.
Later, when her grandmother took her to the hospital for a visit, her
mother would hold her on her lap — even though she was getting too big for
that — and sing a song from her own childhood: Donna, Donna, where have
you gone? Where have you gone?
e gunshot came as if from far away — a distant pop, like a toy, and she
wondered vaguely if the Bryn Mawr girl would come back here and pack up
her own toys, and where she would go, and if she had someone who loved her
the way Jeremy loved Donna.
Jeremy stuck his head out the screen door. “Let’s hit the road,” he said.
“Maybe get some Wendy’s on the way.”
at’s when the black cat dashed out the door, blue collar jingling. One
of his paws had blood on it.
“ere you are,” Jeremy said, and scooped him up.
“Cutie,” said Donna. “Let’s take him with us.”
“He’s ours,” said Jeremy.
She must have fallen asleep. When she hears the door open, the cat (Rex?
Blossom?) is curled up next to her, on Jeremy’s pillow.
“Aww,” says Jeremy. “So, what’d you come up with?”
“Where were you?”
“I had a hard time finding a place. Damn guard dogs everywhere, and
alarms and shit like that. I couldn’t get a break. It was like an omen or some-
thing. Bad luck.” He looks at the cat. “at’s how I know you didn’t come up
with a name for him.”
“Noodle,” she tells him, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. Jeremy gives her
a long look.
“I think you know that his name isn’t Noodle.”
“He looks like a noodle! Sort of. Doesn’t he?”
But Jeremy is right. Noodle is wrong.
“Maybe the name of a famous person,” she suggests. “Or a movie charac-
ter. Like Clyde, of Bonnie and Clyde. Or maybe Billy the Kid. Or Sundance.”
Jeremy is shaking his head. Daylight is leaking under the thick orange
curtains, staining the carpet with smears of brightness.
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“Potsie!” she says, and laughs. “Or maybe Cousin Oliver.”
“Nope,” says Jeremy, and moves closer to the bed, where the cat is sprawled
blissfully on the pillow, one yellow eye barely visible. He rubs the cat on its
stomach, and the cat stretches even further, his back legs twitching.
“Let’s just keep him,” Donna whispers, but Jeremy already has the cat by
the neck, is squeezing with both hands while the cat (Inky! Frodo!) flails and
twists and opens his poor little mouth and waves his paws in the air, his back
legs frantically clawing at Jeremy’s hands, until finally Donna looks away,
sobbing, and there’s a crack, and when she looks again, Jeremy is holding the
limp cat on his lap, petting it. e tops of his hands are bleeding.
She watches as Jeremy picks up the animal and carries it outside; she
hears something thud into the dumpster outside their room, and then Jeremy
reappears and heads into the bathroom to wash his hands.
“Are you going to get ready?” he asks her.
She doesn’t answer.
“Donna?”
“I don’t feel like a Donna anymore,” she admits, and something in Jere-
my’s eyes goes dark and bright and dark again. “I think I feel like a Joan,” she
tells him quickly, but as soon as she says it she knows it’s wrong; she’s not a
Joan, any more than she’s a Lacey Love or a Sunshine or a Donna.
Donna, where did you go?
“Agnes?” she says, but that’s not right, either.
“Linda,” Jeremy says, coming toward her, and she can see it in his eyes,
how badly he wants that to fit, but it doesn’t. “Betty,” he says, holding one of
her hands in both of his own. “Amber. Millicent. Penny.”
“Helen,” she whispers back. “Cynthia, Regina, Anne.”
⁓
239
Barry Hannah
u Water Liars
Barry Hannah was born in Me-
ridian, Mississippi, in 1942 and
earned his bachelor’s degree
at the University of Mississippi.
He received an M.A. and M.F.A.
from the University of Arkan-
sas. Over the course of his ca-
reer, Hannah published eight
novels and five story collec-
tions. His many awards include
the William Faulkner Prize, a
Guggenheim Fellowship, the
Arnold Gingrich Short Fiction Award, the Award for Literature from the Ameri-
can Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and a PEN/Malamud Award for
Excellence in the Short Story. Hannah died in 2010 at the age of sixty- seven.
When I am run down and flocked around by the world, I go down to
Farte Cove off the Yazoo River and take my beer to the end of the pier
where the old liars are still snapping and wheezing at one another. e line- up
is always different, because they’re always dying out or succumbing to consti-
pation, etc., whereupon they go back to the cabins and wait for a good day when
they can come out and lie again, leaning on the rail with coats full of bran
cookies. e son of the man the cove was named for is often out there. He pro-
nounces his name Fartay, with a great French stress on the last syllable. Other-
wise you might laugh at his history or ignore it in favor of the name as it’s
spelled on the sign.
I’m glad it’s not my name.
is poor dignified man has had to explain his nobility to the semiliterate
of half of America before he could even begin a decent conversation with
“I only heard by secondhand that my
sister said that my mother was very
disturbed by my first novel. But on the
other hand, she went and gave a book
report about that novel to her study
club, bless her heart.”
⁓ from Oxford American,
March , 
240 | chapter 12 a mini- anthology: 15 stories
them. On the other hand, Farte, Jr., is a great liar himself. He tells about see-
ing ghost people around the lake and tells big loose ones about the size of the
fish those ghosts took out of Farte Cove in years past.
Last year I turned thirty- three years old and, raised a Baptist, I had a sense of
being Jesus and coming to something decided in my life — because we all
know Jesus was crucified at thirty- three. It had all seemed especially impor-
tant, what you do in this year, and holy with meaning.
On the morning after my birthday party, during which I and my wife
almost drowned in vodka cocktails, we both woke up to the making of a truth
session about the lovers we’d had before we met each other. I had a mildly
exciting and usual history, and she had about the same, which surprised me.
For ten years she’d sworn I was the first. I could not believe her history was
exactly equal with mine. It hurt me to think that in the era when there were
supposed to be virgins she had allowed anyone but me, and so on.
I was dazed and exhilarated by this information for several weeks. Fi-
nally, it drove me crazy, and I came out to Farte Cove to rest, under the pre-
tense of a fishing week with my chum Wyatt.
I’m still figuring out why I couldn’t handle it.
My sense of the past is vivid and slow. I hear every sign and see every shadow.
e movement of every limb in every passionate event occupies my mind. I
have a prurience on the grand scale. It makes no sense that I should be angry
about happenings before she and I ever saw each other. Yet I feel an impotent
homicidal urge in the matter of her lovers. She has excused my episodes as the
course of things, though she has a vivid memory too. But there is a blurred
nostalgia women have that men don’t.
You could not believe how handsome and delicate my wife is naked.
I was driven wild by the bodies that had trespassed her twelve and thir-
teen years ago.
My vacation at Farte Cove wasn’t like that easy little bit you get as a rich New
Yorker. My finances weren’t in great shape; to be true, they were about in
ruin, and I left the house knowing my wife would have to answer the phone
to hold off, for instance, the phone company itself. Everybody wanted money
and I didn’t have any.
I was going to take the next week in the house while she went away, watch
our three kids and all the rest. When you both teach part- time in the high
schools, the income can be slow in summer.
No poor- mouthing here. I don’t want anybody’s pity. I just want to ex-
plain. I’ve got good hopes of a job over at Alabama next year. en I’ll get
myself among higher- paid liars, that’s all.
Sidney Farte was out there prevaricating away at the end of the pier when
Wyatt and I got there Friday eve ning. e old faces I recognized; a few new
harkening idlers I didn’t.
“Now, Doctor Mooney, he not only saw the ghost of Lily, he says he had
intercourse with her. Said it was involuntary. Before he knew what he was do-
ing, he was on her making cadence and all their clothes blown away off in the
trees around the shore. She turned into a wax candle right under him.”
“Intercourse,” said an old- timer, breathing heavy. He sat up on the rail. It
was a word of high danger to his old mind. He said it with a long disgust,
glad, I guess, he was not involved.
“MacIntire, a Presbyterian preacher, I seen him come out here with his
son- and- law, anchor near the bridge, and pull up fifty or more white perch big
as small pumpkins. You know what they was using for bait?”
“What?” asked another geezer.
“Nuthin. Caught on the bare hook. It was Gawd made them fish bite,”
said Sidney Farte, going at it good.
“Naw. ere be a season they bite a bare hook. Gawd didn’t have to’ve
done that,” said another old guy, with a fringe of red hair and a racy Florida
shirt.
“Nother night,” said Sidney Farte, “I saw the ghost of Yazoo hisself with
my pa, who’s dead. A Indian king with four deer around him.”
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242 | chapter 12 a mini- anthology: 15 stories
e old boys seemed to be used to this one. Nobody said anything. ey
ignored Sidney.
“Tell you what,” said a well- built small old boy. “at was somethin when
we come down here and had to chase that whole high- school party off the end
of this pier, them drunken children. ey was smokin dope and two- thirds a
them nekid swimmin in the water. Good hunnerd of em. From your so- called
good high school. What you think’s happnin at the bad ones?”
I dropped my beer and grew suddenly sick. Wyatt asked me what was wrong.
I could see my wife in  in the group of high- schoolers she must have
had. My jealousy went out into the stars of the night above me. I could not
bear the roving carelessness of teen- agers, their judgeless tangling of want-
ing and bodies. But I was the worst back then. In the mad days back then, I
dragged the pan ties off girls I hated and talked badly about them once the
sun came up.
“Worst time in my life,” said a new, younger man, maybe sixty but with the
face of a man who had surrendered, “me and Woody was fishing. Had a lan-
tern. It was about eleven. We was catching a few fish but rowed on into that
little cove over there near town. We heard all these sounds, like they was
ghosts. We was scared. We thought it might be the Yazoo hisself. We known
of some fellows the Yazoo had killed to death just from fright. It was the over
the sounds of what was normal human sighin and amoanin. It was big unhu-
man sounds. We just stood still in the boat. Ain’t nuthin else us to do. For
thirty minutes.”
“An what was it?” said the old geezer, letting himself off the rail.
“We had a big flashlight. ere came up this rustlin in the brush and I
beamed it over there. e two of em makin the sounds get up with half they
clothes on. It was my own daughter Charlotte and an older guy I didn’t even
know with a mustache. My own daughter, and them sounds over the water
scarin us like ghosts.”
“My Gawd, that’s awful,” said the old geezer by the rail. “Is that the truth?
I wouldn’t’ve told that. at’s terrible.”
Sidney Farte was really upset.
“is ain’t the place!” he said. “Tell your kind of story somewhere else.”
e old man who’d told his story was calm and fixed to his place. He’d told
the truth. e crowd on the pier was outraged and discomfited. He wasn’t one
of them. But he stood his place. He had a distressed pride. You could see he
had never recovered from the thing he’d told about.
I told Wyatt to bring the old man back to the cabin. He was out here away
from his wife the same as me and Wyatt. Just an older guy with a big hurting
bosom. He wore a suit and the only way you’d know he was on vacation was
he’d removed his tie. He didn’t know where the bait house was. He didn’t
know what to do on vacation at all. But he got drunk with us and I can tell you
he and I went out the next morning with our poles, Wyatt driving the motor-
boat, fishing for white perch in the cove near the town. And we were kindred.
We were both crucified by the truth.
⁓ 
hannah: water liars | 243
244
Jhumpa Lahiri
u is Blessed House
Born in London to Bengali im-
migrants, Jhumpa Lahiri came
to the United States in 1970
at the age of three. She was
raised in Rhode Island and
attended Barnard College,
where she received a B.A. in
En glish literature. She contin-
ued her education at Boston
University, earning an M.A. in
En glish and an M.F.A in creative
writing, as well as an M.A. in
comparative literature and a
Ph.D. in Re nais sance studies.
Lahiri’s debut collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies (1999), won the Pu-
litzer Prize for Fiction in 2000 as well as the PEN/Hemingway Award, and it
was chosen as the New Yorker Debut of the Year. She has published a novel,
The Namesake (2003), and a second story collection, Unaccustomed Earth
(2008). Lahiri is currently a vice president of the PEN American Center and a
member of the Committee on the Arts and Humanities.
They discovered the first one in a cupboard above the stove, beside an un-
opened bottle of malt vinegar. “Guess what I found.” Twinkle walked into
the living room, lined from end to end with taped- up packing boxes, waving
the vinegar in one hand and a white porcelain effigy of Christ, roughly the same
size as the vinegar bottle, in the other.
Sanjeev looked up. He was kneeling on the floor, marking, with ripped bits
of a Post- it, patches on the baseboard that needed to be retouched with paint.
“row it away.”
“ere’s form and there’s function and
I have never been a fan of just form.
My husband and I always have this
argument because we go shopping for
furniture and he always looks at chairs
that are spectacular and beautiful and
unusual, and I never want to get a
chair if it isn’t comfortable.”
⁓ from e Atlantic, March 
“Which?”
“Both.”
“But I can cook something with the vinegar. It’s brand- new.”
“You’ve never cooked anything with vinegar.”
“I’ll look something up. In one of those books we got for our wed-
ding.”
Sanjeev turned back to the baseboard, to replace a Post- it scrap that had
fallen to the floor. “Check the expiration. And at the very least get rid of that
idiotic statue.”
“But it could be worth something. Who knows?” She turned it upside
down, then stroked, with her index finger, the minuscule frozen folds of its
robes. “It’s pretty.”
“We’re not Christian,” Sanjeev said. Lately he had begun noticing the
need to state the obvious to Twinkle. e day before he had to tell her that if
she dragged her end of the bureau instead of lifting it, the parquet floor would
scratch.
She shrugged. “No, we’re not Christian. We’re good little Hindus.” She
planted a kiss on top of Christ’s head, then placed the statue on top of the
fireplace mantel, which needed, Sanjeev observed, to be dusted.
By the end of the week the mantel had still not been dusted; it had, however,
come to serve as the display shelf for a sizable collection of Christian parapher-
nalia. ere was a - D postcard of Saint Francis done in four colors, which
Twinkle had found taped to the back of the medicine cabinet, and a wooden
cross key chain, which Sanjeev had stepped on with bare feet as he was install-
ing extra shelving in Twinkle’s study. ere was a framed paint- by- number
of the three wise men, against a black velvet background, tucked in the linen
closet. ere was also a tile trivet depicting a blond, unbearded Jesus, deliver-
ing a sermon on a mountaintop, left in one of the drawers of the built- in china
cabinet in the dining room.
“Do you think the previous own ers were born- agains?” asked Twinkle,
making room the next day for a small plastic snow- filled dome containing a
miniature Nativity scene, found behind the pipes of the kitchen sink.
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Sanjeev was or ga niz ing his engineering texts from MIT in alphabetical
order on a bookshelf, though it had been several years since he had needed to
consult any of them. After graduating, he moved from Boston to Connecti-
cut, to work for a firm near Hartford, and he had recently learned that he was
being considered for the position of vice president. At thirty- three he had a
secretary of his own and a dozen people working under his supervision who
gladly supplied him with any information he needed. Still, the presence of his
college books in the room reminded him of a time in his life he recalled with
fondness, when he would walk each eve ning across the Mass. Avenue bridge
to order Mughlai chicken with spinach from his favorite Indian restaurant on
the other side of the Charles, and return to his dorm to write out clean copies
of his problem sets.
“Or perhaps it’s an attempt to convert people,” Twinkle mused.
“Clearly the scheme has succeeded in your case.”
She disregarded him, shaking the little plastic dome so that the snow
swirled over the manger.
He studied the items on the mantel. It puzzled him that each was in its
own way so silly. Clearly they lacked a sense of sacredness. He was further
puzzled that Twinkle, who normally displayed good taste, was so charmed.
ese objects meant something to Twinkle, but they meant nothing to him.
ey irritated him. “We should call the Realtor. Tell him there’s all this non-
sense left behind. Tell him to take it away.”
“Oh, Sanj.” Twinkle groaned. “Please. I would feel terrible throwing them
away. Obviously they were important to the people who used to live here. It
would feel, I don’t know, sacrilegious or something.”
“If they’re so precious, then why are they hidden all over the house? Why
didn’t they take them with them?
“ere must be others,” Twinkle said. Her eyes roamed the bare off- white
walls of the room, as if there were other things concealed behind the plaster.
“What else do you think we’ll find?”
But as they unpacked their boxes and hung up their winter clothes and
the silk paintings of elephant pro cessions bought on their honeymoon in Jaipur,
Twinkle, much to her dismay, could not find a thing. Nearly a week had passed
before they discovered, one Saturday afternoon, a larger- than- life- sized water-
color poster of Christ, weeping translucent tears the size of peanut shells and
sporting a crown of thorns, rolled up behind a radiator in the guest bedroom.
Sanjeev had mistaken it for a window shade.
“Oh, we must, we simply must put it up. It’s too spectacular.” Twinkle lit
a cigarette and began to smoke it with relish, waving it around Sanjeev’s head
as if it were a conductor’s baton as Mahler’s Fifth Symphony roared from the
stereo downstairs.
“Now, look. I will tolerate, for now, your little biblical menagerie in the
living room. But I refuse to have this,” he said, flicking at one of the painted
peanut- tears, “displayed in our home.”
Twinkle stared at him, placidly exhaling, the smoke emerging in two
thin blue streams from her nostrils. She rolled up the poster slowly, securing it
with one of the elastic bands she always wore around her wrist for tying back
her thick, unruly hair, streaked here and there with henna. “I’m going to put
it in my study,” she informed him. “at way you don’t have to look at it.”
“What about the house warming? ey’ll want to see all the rooms. I’ve
invited people from the office.”
She rolled her eyes. Sanjeev noted that the symphony, now in its third
movement, had reached a crescendo, for it pulsed with the telltale clashing of
cymbals.
“I’ll put it behind the door,” she offered. “at way, when they peek in,
they won’t see. Happy?”
He stood watching her as she left the room, with her poster and her ciga-
rette; a few ashes had fallen to the floor where she’d been standing. He bent
down, pinched them between his fingers, and deposited them in his cupped
palm. e tender fourth movement, the adagietto, began. During breakfast,
Sanjeev had read in the liner notes that Mahler had proposed to his wife by
sending her the manuscript of this portion of the score. Although there were
elements of tragedy and struggle in the Fifth Symphony, he had read, it was
principally music of love and happiness.
He heard the toilet flush. “By the way,” Twinkle hollered, “if you want to
impress people, I wouldn’t play this music. It’s putting me to sleep.”
Sanjeev went to the bathroom to throw away the ashes. e cigarette butt
still bobbed in the toilet bowl, but the tank was refilling, so he had to wait a
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248 | chapter 12 a mini- anthology: 15 stories
moment before he could flush it again. In the mirror of the medicine cabinet
he inspected his long eyelashes — like a girl’s, Twinkle liked to tease. ough
he was of average build, his cheeks had a plumpness to them; this, along with
the eyelashes, detracted, he feared, from what he hoped was a distinguished
profile. He was of average height as well, and had wished ever since he had
stopped growing that he were just one inch taller. For this reason it irritated
him when Twinkle insisted on wearing high heels, as she had done the other
night when they ate dinner in Manhattan. is was the first weekend after
they’d moved into the house; by then the mantel had already filled up consid-
erably, and they had bickered about it in the car on the way down. But then
Twinkle had drunk four glasses of whiskey in a nameless bar in Alphabet City,
and forgot all about it. She dragged him to a tiny bookshop on St. Mark’s
Place, where she browsed for nearly an hour, and when they left she insisted
that they dance a tango on the sidewalk in front of strangers.
Afterward, she tottered on his arm, rising faintly over his line of vision, in a
pair of suede three- inch leopard- print pumps. In this manner they walked the
endless blocks back to a parking garage on Washington Square, for Sanjeev had
heard far too many stories about the terrible things that happened to cars in
Manhattan. “But I do nothing all day except sit at my desk,” she fretted when
they were driving home, after he had mentioned that her shoes looked uncom-
fortable and suggested that perhaps she should not wear them. “I can’t exactly
wear heels when I’m typing.” ough he abandoned the argument, he knew for
a fact that she didn’t spend all day at her desk; just that afternoon, when he got
back from a run, he found her inexplicably in bed, reading. When he asked why
she was in bed in the middle of the day she told him she was bored. He had
wanted to say to her then, You could unpack some boxes. You could sweep the
attic. You could retouch the paint on the bathroom windowsill, and after you
do it you could warn me so that I don’t put my watch on it. ey didn’t bother
her, these scattered, unsettled matters. She seemed content with what ever
clothes she found at the front of the closet, with what ever magazine was lying
around, with what ever song was on the radio — content yet curious. And now
all of her curiosity centered around discovering the next trea sure.
A few days later when Sanjeev returned from the office, he found Twinkle
on the telephone, smoking and talking to one of her girlfriends in California
even though it was before five o’clock and the long- distance rates were at their
peak. “Highly devout people,” she was saying, pausing every now and then to
exhale. “Each day is like a trea sure hunt. I’m serious. is you won’t believe. e
switch plates in the bedrooms were decorated with scenes from the Bible. You
know, Noah’s Ark and all that. ree bedrooms, but one is my study. Sanjeev
went to the hardware store right away and replaced them, can you imagine, he
replaced every single one.”
Now it was the friend’s turn to talk. Twinkle nodded, slouched on the
floor in front of the fridge, wearing black stirrup pants and a yellow chenille
sweater, groping for her lighter. Sanjeev could smell something aromatic on
the stove, and he picked his way carefully across the extra- long phone cord
tangled on the Mexican terra- cotta tiles. He opened the lid of a pot with some
sort of reddish brown sauce dripping over the sides, boiling furiously.
“It’s a stew made with fish. I put the vinegar in it,” she said to him, inter-
rupting her friend, crossing her fingers. “Sorry, you were saying?” She was like
that, excited and delighted by little things, crossing her fingers before any re-
motely unpredictable event, like tasting a new flavor of ice cream, or dropping
a letter in a mailbox. It was a quality he did not understand. It made him feel
stupid, as if the world contained hidden wonders he could not anticipate, or
see. He looked at her face, which, it occurred to him, had not grown out of its
girlhood, the eyes untroubled, the pleasing features unfirm, as if they still had
to settle into some sort of permanent expression. Nicknamed after a nursery
rhyme, she had yet to shed a childhood endearment. Now, in the second month
of their marriage, certain things nettled him — the way she sometimes spat a
little when she spoke, or left her undergarments after removing them at night
at the foot of their bed rather than depositing them in the laundry hamper.
ey had met only four months before. Her parents, who lived in Cali-
fornia, and his, who still lived in Calcutta, were old friends, and across conti-
nents they had arranged the occasion at which Twinkle and Sanjeev were
introduced — a sixteenth birthday party for a daughter in their circle — when
Sanjeev was in Palo Alto on business. At the restaurant they were seated side
by side at a round table with a revolving platter of spareribs and egg rolls and
chicken wings, which, they concurred, all tasted the same. ey had concurred
too on their adolescent but still per sis tent fondness for Wode house novels,
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and their dislike for the sitar, and later Twinkle confessed that she was charmed
by the way Sanjeev had dutifully refilled her teacup during their conversation.
And so the phone calls began, and grew longer, and then the visits, first
he to Stanford, then she to Connecticut, after which Sanjeev would save in an
ashtray left on the balcony the crushed cigarettes she had smoked during the
weekend — saved them, that is, until the next time she came to visit him, and
then he vacuumed the apartment, washed the sheets, even dusted the plant
leaves in her honor. She was twenty- seven and recently abandoned, he had
gathered, by an American who had tried and failed to be an actor; Sanjeev was
lonely, with an excessively generous income for a single man, and had never
been in love. At the urging of their matchmakers, they married in India, amid
hundreds of well- wishers whom he barely remembered from his childhood, in
incessant August rains, under a red and orange tent strung with Christmas
tree lights on Mandev ille Road.
“Did you sweep the attic?” he asked Twinkle later as she was folding paper nap-
kins and wedging them by their plates. e attic was the only part of the house
they had not yet given an initial cleaning.
“Not yet. I will, I promise. I hope this tastes good,” she said, planting the
steaming pot on top of the Jesus trivet. ere was a loaf of Italian bread in a
little basket, and iceberg lettuce and grated carrots tossed with bottled dress-
ing and croutons, and glasses of red wine. She was not terribly ambitious in
the kitchen. She bought preroasted chickens from the supermarket and served
them with potato salad prepared who knew when, sold in little plastic con-
tainers. Indian food, she complained, was a bother; she detested chopping
garlic, and peeling ginger, and could not operate a blender, and so it was San-
jeev who, on weekends, seasoned mustard oil with cinnamon sticks and cloves
in order to produce a proper curry.
He had to admit, though, that what ever it was that she had cooked today,
it was unusually tasty, attractive even, with bright white cubes of fish, and
flecks of parsley, and fresh tomatoes gleaming in the dark brown- red broth.
“How did you make it?”
“I made it up.”
“What did you do?”
“I just put some things into the pot and added the malt vinegar at the end.”
“How much vinegar?”
She shrugged, ripping off some bread and plunging it into her bowl.
“What do you mean you don’t know? You should write it down. What if
you need to make it again, for a party or something?”
“I’ll remember,” she said. She covered the bread basket with a dishtowel
that had, he suddenly noticed, the Ten Commandments printed on it. She
flashed him a smile, giving his knee a little squeeze under the table. “Face it.
is house is blessed.”
e house warming party was scheduled for the last Saturday in October, and
they had invited about thirty people. All were Sanjeev’s acquaintances, people
from the office, and a number of Indian couples in the Connecticut area, many
of whom he barely knew, but who had regularly invited him, in his bachelor
days, to supper on Saturdays. He often wondered why they included him in
their circle. He had little in common with any of them, but he always attended
their gatherings, to eat spiced chickpeas and shrimp cutlets, and gossip and
discuss politics, for he seldom had other plans. So far, no one had met Twinkle;
back when they were still dating, Sanjeev didn’t want to waste their brief
weekends together with people he associated with being alone. Other than
Sanjeev and an ex- boyfriend who she believed worked in a pottery studio in
Brookfield, she knew no one in the state of Connecticut. She was completing
her master’s thesis at Stanford, a study of an Irish poet whom Sanjeev had never
heard of.
Sanjeev had found the house on his own before leaving for the wedding,
for a good price, in a neighborhood with a fine school system. He was impressed
by the elegant curved staircase with its wrought- iron banister, and the dark
wooden wainscoting, and the solarium overlooking rhododendron bushes,
and the solid brass , which also happened to be the date of his birth, nailed
impressively to the vaguely Tudor facade. ere were two working fireplaces,
a two- car garage, and an attic suitable for converting into extra bedrooms if,
the Realtor mentioned, the need should arise. By then Sanjeev had already
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made up his mind, was determined that he and Twinkle should live there to-
gether, forever, and so he had not bothered to notice the switch plates covered
with biblical stickers, or the transparent decal of the Virgin on the half shell, as
Twinkle liked to call it, adhered to the window in the master bedroom. When,
after moving in, he tried to scrape it off, he scratched the glass.
e weekend before the party they were raking the lawn when he heard
Twinkle shriek. He ran to her, clutching his rake, worried that she had discov-
ered a dead animal, or a snake. A brisk October breeze stung the tops of his
ears as his sneakers crunched over brown and yellow leaves. When he reached
her, she had collapsed on the grass, dissolved in nearly silent laughter. Behind
an overgrown forsythia bush was a plaster Virgin Mary as tall as their waists,
with a blue painted hood draped over her head in the manner of an Indian
bride. Twinkle grabbed the hem of her T-shirt and began wiping away the
dirt staining the statue’s brow.
“I suppose you want to put her by the foot of our bed,” Sanjeev said.
She looked at him, astonished. Her belly was exposed, and he saw that
there were goose bumps around her navel. “What do you think? Of course we
can’t put this in our bedroom.”
“We can’t?”
“No, silly Sanj. is is meant for outside. For the lawn.”
“Oh God, no. Twinkle, no.”
“But we must. It would be bad luck not to.”
“All the neighbors will see. ey’ll think we’re insane.”
“Why, for having a statue of the Virgin Mary on our lawn? Every other
person in this neighborhood has a statue of Mary on the lawn. We’ll fit right in.”
“We’re not Christian.”
“So you keep reminding me.” She spat onto the tip of her finger and started
to rub intently at a particularly stubborn stain on Mary’s chin. “Do you think
this is dirt, or some kind of fungus?”
He was getting nowhere with her, with this woman whom he had known
for only four months and whom he had married, this woman with whom he
now shared his life. He thought with a flicker of regret of the snapshots his
mother used to send him from Calcutta, of prospective brides who could sing
and sew and season lentils without consulting a cookbook. Sanjeev had consid-
ered these women, had even ranked them in order of preference, but then he
had met Twinkle. “Twinkle, I can’t have the people I work with see this statue
on my lawn.”
“ey can’t fire you for being a believer. It would be discrimination.”
“at’s not the point.”
“Why does it matter to you so much what other people think?”
“Twinkle, please.” He was tired. He let his weight rest against his rake as
she began dragging the statue toward an oval bed of myrtle, beside the lamp-
post that flanked the brick pathway. “Look, Sanj. She’s so lovely.”
He returned to his pile of leaves and began to deposit them by handfuls
into a plastic garbage bag. Over his head the blue sky was cloudless. One tree
on the lawn was still full of leaves, red and orange, like the tent in which he
had married Twinkle.
He did not know if he loved her. He said he did when she had first asked
him, one afternoon in Palo Alto as they sat side by side in a darkened, nearly
empty movie theater. Before the film, one of her favorites, something in Ger-
man that he found extremely depressing, she had pressed the tip of her nose to
his so that he could feel the flutter of her mascara- coated eyelashes. at after-
noon he had replied, yes, he loved her, and she was delighted, and fed him a
piece of popcorn, letting her finger linger an instant between his lips, as if it
were his reward for coming up with the right answer.
ough she did not say it herself, he assumed then that she loved him too,
but now he was no longer sure. In truth, Sanjeev did not know what love was,
only what he thought it was not. It was not, he had decided, returning to an
empty carpeted condominium each night, and using only the top fork in his
cutlery drawer, and turning away politely at those weekend dinner parties
when the other men eventually put their arms around the waists of their wives
and girlfriends, leaning over every now and again to kiss their shoulders or
necks. It was not sending away for classical music CDs by mail, working his way
methodically through the major composers that the cata logue recommended,
and always sending his payments in on time. In the months before meeting
Twinkle, Sanjeev had begun to realize this. “You have enough money in the
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bank to raise three families,” his mother reminded him when they spoke at the
start of each month on the phone. “You need a wife to look after and love.” Now
he had one, a pretty one, from a suitably high caste, who would soon have a
master’s degree. What was there not to love?
at eve ning Sanjeev poured himself a gin and tonic, drank it and most of
another during one segment of the news, and then approached Twinkle, who
was taking a bubble bath, for she announced that her limbs ached from rak-
ing the lawn, something she had never done before. He didn’t knock. She had
applied a bright blue mask to her face, was smoking and sipping some bour-
bon with ice and leafing through a fat paperback book whose pages had buck-
led and turned gray from the water. He glanced at the cover; the only thing
written on it was the word “Sonnets” in dark red letters. He took a breath, and
then he informed her very calmly that after finishing his drink he was going
to put on his shoes and go outside and remove the Virgin from the front lawn.
“Where are you going to put it?” she asked him dreamily, her eyes closed.
One of her legs emerged, unfolding gracefully, from the layer of suds. She flexed
and pointed her toes.
“For now I am going to put it in the garage. en tomorrow morning on
my way to work I am going to take it to the dump.”
“Don’t you dare.” She stood up, letting the book fall into the water, bubbles
dripping down her thighs. “I hate you,” she informed him, her eyes narrowing
at the word “hate.” She reached for her bathrobe, tied it tightly about her waist,
and padded down the winding staircase, leaving sloppy wet footprints along the
parquet floor. When she reached the foyer, Sanjeev said, “Are you planning on
leaving the house that way?” He felt a throbbing in his temples, and his voice
revealed an unfamiliar snarl when he spoke.
“Who cares? Who cares what way I leave this house?”
“Where are you planning on going at this hour?”
“You can’t throw away that statue. I won’t let you.” Her mask, now dry, had
assumed an ashen quality, and water from her hair dripped onto the caked
contours of her face.
“Yes I can. I will.”
“No,” Twinkle said, her voice suddenly small. “is is our house. We own
it together. e statue is a part of our property.” She had begun to shiver. A
small pool of bathwater had collected around her ankles. He went to shut a
window, fearing that she would catch cold. en he noticed that some of the
water dripping down her hard blue face was tears.
“Oh God, Twinkle, please, I didn’t mean it.” He had never seen her cry
before, had never seen such sadness in her eyes. She didn’t turn away or try to
stop the tears; instead she looked strangely at peace. For a moment she closed
her lids, pale and unprotected compared to the blue that caked the rest of her
face. Sanjeev felt ill, as if he had eaten either too much or too little.
She went to him, placing her damp toweled arms about his neck, sobbing
into his chest, soaking his shirt. e mask flaked onto his shoulders.
In the end they settled on a compromise: the statue would be placed in a
recess at the side of the house, so that it wasn’t obvious to passersby, but was
still clearly visible to all who came.
e menu for the party was fairly simple: there would be a case of champagne,
and samosas from an Indian restaurant in Hartford, and big trays of rice with
chicken and almonds and orange peels, which Sanjeev had spent the greater
part of the morning and afternoon preparing. He had never entertained on
such a large scale before and, worried that there would not be enough to drink,
ran out at one point to buy another case of champagne just in case. For this
reason he burned one of the rice trays and had to start it over again. Twinkle
swept the floors and volunteered to pick up the samosas; she had an appoint-
ment for a manicure and a pedicure in that direction, anyway. Sanjeev had
planned to ask if she would consider clearing the menagerie off the mantel, if
only for the party, but she left while he was in the shower. She was gone for a
good three hours, and so it was Sanjeev who did the rest of the cleaning. By
five- thirty the entire house sparkled, with scented candles that Twinkle had
picked up in Hartford illuminating the items on the mantel, and slender stalks
of burning incense planted into the soil of potted plants. Each time he passed
the mantel he winced, dreading the raised eyebrows of his guests as they viewed
the flickering ceramic saints, the salt and pepper shakers designed to resemble
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Mary and Joseph. Still, they would be impressed, he hoped, by the lovely bay
windows, the shining parquet floors, the impressive winding staircase, the
wooden wainscoting, as they sipped champagne and dipped samosas in chutney.
Douglas, one of the new con sul tants at the firm, and his girlfriend Nora
were the first to arrive. Both were tall and blond, wearing matching wire-
rimmed glasses and long black overcoats. Nora wore a black hat full of sharp
thin feathers that corresponded to the sharp thin angles of her face. Her left
hand was joined with Douglas’s. In her right hand was a bottle of cognac with
a red ribbon wrapped around its neck, which she gave to Twinkle.
“Great lawn, Sanjeev,” Douglas remarked. “We’ve got to get that rake out
ourselves, sweetie. And this must be . . .”
“My wife. Tanima.”
“Call me Twinkle.”
“What an unusual name,” Nora remarked.
Twinkle shrugged. “Not really. ere’s an actress in Bombay named Dimple
Kapadia. She even has a sister named Simple.”
Douglas and Nora raised their eyebrows simultaneously, nodding slowly,
as if to let the absurdity of the names settle in. “Pleased to meet you, Twinkle.”
“Help yourself to champagne. ere’s gallons.”
“I hope you don’t mind my asking,” Douglas said, “but I noticed the statue
outside, and are you guys Christian? I thought you were Indian.”
“ere are Christians in India,” Sanjeev replied, “but we’re not.”
“I love your outfit,” Nora told Twinkle.
“And I adore your hat. Would you like the grand tour?”
e bell rang again, and again and again. Within minutes, it seemed, the
house had filled with bodies and conversations and unfamiliar fragrances. e
women wore heels and sheer stockings, and short black dresses made of crepe
and chiffon. ey handed their wraps and coats to Sanjeev, who draped them
carefully on hangers in the spacious coat closet, though Twinkle told people to
throw their things on the ottomans in the solarium. Some of the Indian women
wore their finest saris, made with gold filigree that draped in elegant pleats over
their shoulders. e men wore jackets and ties and citrus- scented aftershaves.
As people filtered from one room to the next, presents piled onto the long
cherry- wood table that ran from one end of the downstairs hall to the other.
It bewildered Sanjeev that it was for him, and his house, and his wife, that
they had all gone to so much care. e only other time in his life that something
similar had happened was his wedding day, but somehow this was different, for
these were not his family, but people who knew him only casually, and in a sense
owed him nothing. Everyone congratulated him. Lester, another coworker, pre-
dicted that Sanjeev would be promoted to vice president in two months maxi-
mum. People devoured the samosas, and dutifully admired the freshly painted
ceilings and walls, the hanging plants, the bay windows, the silk paintings from
Jaipur. But most of all they admired Twinkle, and her brocaded salwar‑ kameez,
which was the shade of a persimmon with a low scoop in the back, and the little
string of white rose petals she had coiled cleverly around her head, and the pearl
choker with a sapphire at its center that adorned her throat. Over hectic jazz
rec ords, played under Twinkle’s supervision, they laughed at her anecdotes and
observations, forming a widening circle around her, while Sanjeev replenished
the samosas that he kept warming evenly in the oven, and getting ice for peo-
ple’s drinks, and opening more bottles of champagne with some difficulty, and
explaining for the fortieth time that he wasn’t Christian. It was Twinkle who led
them in separate groups up and down the winding stairs, to gaze at the back
lawn, to peer down the cellar steps. “Your friends adore the poster in my study,”
she mentioned to him triumphantly, placing her hand on the small of his back
as they, at one point, brushed past each other.
Sanjeev went to the kitchen, which was empty, and ate a piece of chicken
out of the tray on the counter with his fingers because he thought no one was
looking. He ate a second piece, then washed it down with a gulp of gin straight
from the bottle.
“Great house. Great rice.” Sunil, an anesthesiologist, walked in, spooning
food from his paper plate into his mouth. “Do you have more champagne?”
“Your wife’s wow,” added Prabal, following behind. He was an unmar-
ried professor of physics at Yale. For a moment Sanjeev stared at him blankly,
then blushed; once at a dinner party Prabal had pronounced that Sophia Lo-
ren was wow, as was Audrey Hepburn. “Does she have a sister?”
Sunil picked a raisin out of the rice tray. “Is her last name Little Star?”
e two men laughed and started eating more rice from the tray, plowing
through it with their plastic spoons. Sanjeev went down to the cellar for more
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liquor. For a few minutes he paused on the steps, in the damp, cool silence,
hugging the second crate of champagne to his chest as the party drifted above
the raf ters. en he set the reinforcements on the dining table.
“Yes, everything, we found them all in the house, in the most unusual
places,” he heard Twinkle saying in the living room, “In fact we keep finding
them.”
“No!”
“Yes! Every day is like a trea sure hunt. It’s too good. God only knows
what else we’ll find, no pun intended.”
at was what started it. As if by some unspoken pact, the whole party
joined forces and began combing through each of the rooms, opening closets
on their own, peering under chairs and cushions, feeling behind curtains, re-
moving books from bookcases. Groups scampered, giggling and swaying, up
and down the winding staircase.
“We’ve never explored the attic,” Twinkle announced suddenly, and so
everybody followed.
“How do we get up there?”
“ere’s a ladder in the hallway, somewhere in the ceiling.”
Wearily Sanjeev followed at the back of the crowd, to point out the loca-
tion of the ladder, but Twinkle had already found it on her own. “Eureka!” she
hollered.
Douglas pulled the chain that released the steps. His face was flushed and
he was wearing Nora’s feather hat on his head. One by one the guests disap-
peared, men helping women as they placed their strappy high heels on the
narrow slats of the ladder, the Indian women wrapping the free ends of their
expensive saris into their waistbands. e men followed behind, all quickly
disappearing, until Sanjeev alone remained at the top of the winding stair-
case. Footsteps thundered over his head. He had no desire to join them. He
wondered if the ceiling would collapse, imagined, for a split second, the sight
of all the tumbling drunk perfumed bodies crashing, tangled, around him.
He heard a shriek, and then rising, spreading waves of laughter in discordant
tones. Something fell, something else shattered. He could hear them babbling
about a trunk. ey seemed to be struggling to get it open, banging feverishly
on its surface.
He thought perhaps Twinkle would call for his assistance, but he was not
summoned. He looked about the hallway and to the landing below, at the
champagne glasses and half- eaten samosas and napkins smeared with lipstick
abandoned in every corner, on every available surface. en he noticed that
Twinkle, in her haste, had discarded her shoes altogether, for they lay by the
foot of the ladder, black patent- leather mules with heels like golf tees, open
toes, and slightly soiled silk labels on the instep where her soles had rested. He
placed them in the doorway of the master bedroom so that no one would trip
when they descended.
He heard something creaking open slowly. e strident voices had sub-
sided to an even murmur. It occurred to Sanjeev that he had the house all to
himself. e music had ended and he could hear, if he concentrated, the hum
of the refrigerator, and the rustle of the last leaves on the trees outside, and the
tapping of their branches against the windowpanes. With one flick of his
hand he could snap the ladder back on its spring into the ceiling, and they
would have no way of getting down unless he were to pull the chain and let
them. He thought of all the things he could do, undisturbed. He could sweep
Twinkle’s menagerie into a garbage bag and get in the car and drive it all to the
dump, and tear down the poster of weeping Jesus, and take a hammer to
the Virgin Mary while he was at it. en he would return to the empty house;
he could easily clear up the cups and plates in an hour’s time, and pour himself
a gin and tonic, and eat a plate of warmed rice and listen to his new Bach CD
while reading the liner notes so as to understand it properly. He nudged the
ladder slightly, but it was sturdily planted against the floor. Budging it would
require some effort.
“My God, I need a cigarette,” Twinkle exclaimed from above.
Sanjeev felt knots forming at the back of his neck. He felt dizzy. He needed
to lie down. He walked toward the bedroom, but stopped short when he saw
Twinkle’s shoes facing him in the doorway. He thought of her slipping them
on her feet. But instead of feeling irritated, as he had ever since they’d moved
into the house together, he felt a pang of anticipation at the thought of her
rushing unsteadily down the winding staircase in them, scratching the floor a
bit in her path. e pang intensified as he thought of her rushing to the bath-
room to brighten her lipstick, and eventually rushing to get people their coats,
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and finally rushing to the cherry- wood table when the last guest had left, to
begin opening their house warming presents. It was the same pang he used to
feel before they were married, when he would hang up the phone after one of
their conversations, or when he would drive back from the airport, wondering
which ascending plane in the sky was hers.
“Sanj, you won’t believe this.”
She emerged with her back to him, her hands over her head, the tops of
her bare shoulder blades perspiring, supporting something still hidden from
view.
“You got it, Twinkle?” someone asked.
“Yes, you can let go.”
Now he saw that her hands were wrapped around it: a solid silver bust of
Christ, the head easily three times the size of his own. It had a patrician bump
on its nose, magnificent curly hair that rested atop a pronounced collarbone,
and a broad forehead that reflected in miniature the walls and doors and lamp-
shades around them. Its expression was confident, as if assured of its devotees,
the unyielding lips sensuous and full. It was also sporting Nora’s feather hat. As
Twinkle descended, Sanjeev put his hands around her waist to balance her, and
he relieved her of the bust when she had reached the ground. It weighed a good
thirty pounds. e others began lowering themselves slowly, exhausted from
the hunt. Some trickled downstairs in search of a fresh drink.
She took a breath, raised her eyebrows, crossed her fingers. “Would you
mind terribly if we displayed it on the mantel? Just for to night? I know you
hate it.”
He did hate it. He hated its immensity, and its flawless, polished surface,
and its undeniable value. He hated that it was in his house, and that he owned
it. Unlike the other things they’d found, this contained dignity, solemnity,
beauty even. But to his surprise these qualities made him hate it all the more.
Most of all he hated it because he knew that Twinkle loved it.
“I’ll keep it in my study from tomorrow,” Twinkle added. “I promise.”
She would never put it in her study, he knew. For the rest of their days
together she would keep it on the center of the mantel, flanked on either side by
the rest of the menagerie. Each time they had guests Twinkle would explain
how she had found it, and they would admire her as they listened. He gazed
at the crushed rose petals in her hair, at the pearl and sapphire choker at her
throat, at the sparkly crimson polish on her toes. He decided these were among
the things that made Prabal think she was wow. His head ached from gin and
his arms ached from the weight of the statue. He said, “I put your shoes in the
bedroom.”
“anks. But my feet are killing me.” Twinkle gave his elbow a little
squeeze and headed for the living room.
Sanjeev pressed the massive silver face to his ribs, careful not to let the
feather hat slip, and followed her.
⁓
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262
“I would say that the first draft for me,
especially with stories, is like a skeleton
and then each run of revision is like
transparencies in an anatomy book,
you’re adding the muscles and the tissues
and the organs, and you begin to see how
they all connect and work together.”
⁓ from Agni Online, 
Jill McCorkle
u Magic Words
A North Carolina native, Jill
McCorkle saw her first two
novels published on the same
day in 1984, when she was
twenty- six. Since then, she has
published three more novels
and four collections of stories.
Her stories have appeared in
The Atlantic, Ploughshares, and
Oxford American and have
been selected for Best Ameri-
can Short Stories and New Sto-
ries from the South. McCorkle
is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, and her awards include
the New En gland Book Award, the John Dos Passos Prize for Excellence in
Literature, and the North Carolina Award for Literature. She is currently a pro-
fessor in the M.F.A. program at North Carolina State University.
Because Paula Blake is planning something secret, she feels she must account
for her every move and action, overcompensating in her daily chores and
agreeing to what ever her husband and children demand. Of course I’ll pick up
the dry cleaning, drive the kids, swing by the drugstore.is is where the murderer
always screws up in a movie, way too accommodating, too much information.
e guilty one always has trouble maintaining direct eye contact.
“Of course I will take you and your friends to the movies,” she tells Erin
late one afternoon. “But do you think her mom can drive you home? I’m taking
your brother to a sleepover too.” She is doing it again, talking too much.
“Where are you going?” Erin asks, mouth sullen and sarcastic as it has been
since her thirteenth birthday two years ago.
“Out with a friend,” Paula says, forcing herself to make eye contact, the
rest of the story she has practiced for days ready to roll. She’s someone I work
with, someone going through a really hard time, someone brand- new to the
area, knows no one, really needs a friend.
But her daughter never looks up from the glossy magazine spread before
her, engrossed in yet another drama about a teen star lost to drugs and wild
nights. Her husband doesn’t even ask her new friend’s name or where she moved
from, yet the answer is poised and waiting on her tongue. Tonya Matthews from
Phoenix, Arizona. He is glued to the latest issue of Our Domestic Wildlife —
his own newsletter to the neighborhood about various sightings of wild and
possibly dangerous creatures, coyotes, raccoons, bats. eir message box is regu-
larly filled with detailed sightings of raccoons acting funny in daylight or re-
ports of missing cats. en there’s the occasional giggling kid faking a deep
voice to report a kangaroo or rhino. She married a reserved and responsible
banker who now fancies himself a kind of watchdog Crocodile Dundee. ey
are both seeking interests outside their lackluster marriage. His are all about
threat and encroachment, being on the defense, and hers are about human con-
tact, a craving for warmth like one of the bats her husband fears might find its
way into their attic.
Her silky legs burn as if shamed where she has slathered lavender body
lotion whipped as light as something you might eat. And the new silk pan ties,
bought earlier in the day, feel heavy around her hips. But it is not enough to
thwart the thought of what lies ahead, the consummation of all those notes and
looks exchanged with the sales rep on the second floor during weeks at work,
that one time in the stairwell — hard thrust of a kiss interrupted by the heavy
door and footsteps two floors up — when the fantasy became enough of a real-
ity to lead to this date. ey have been careful, and the paper trail is slight —
unsigned suggestive notes with penciled times and places — all neatly rolled
like tiny scrolls and saved in the toe of the heavy wool ski socks in the far
corner of her underwear drawer, where heavier, far more substantial pairs of
underwear than what she is wearing cover the surface. It all feels as safe as it
can be because he has a family too. He has just as much to lose as she does.
And now she looks around to see the table filled with cartons of Chinese
food from last night and cereal boxes from the morning, and the tele vi sion
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blares from the other room. Her son is anxious to get to his sleepover; her
daughter has painted her toenails, and the fumes of the purple enamel fill the
air. Her husband is studying a map showing the progression of killer bees up
the coast. He speaks of them like hated relatives who are determined to drop
in, whether you want them to or not. eir arrival is as inevitable as all the
other predicted disasters that will wreak havoc on human life.
“Where did you say you’ve got to go?” her husband asks, and she imme-
diately jumps to her creation. Tonya Matthews, Phoenix, Arizona, new to the
area, just divorced. Her palms are sweating, and she is glad she is wearing a
turtleneck to hide the ner vous splotches on her chest. She won’t be wearing it
later. She will slip it off in the darkness of the car after she takes Gregory to
the sleepover and Erin and her friend to the cinema. Under the turtleneck she
is wearing a thin silk camisole, also purchased that afternoon at a pricey bou-
tique she had never been in before, a place the size of a closet where individual
lingerie items hang separately on the wall like art. A young girl, sleek, pierced,
and polished, gave a cool nod of approval when she leaned in to look at the
camisole. Paula finally chose the black one after debating between it and the
peacock blue. Maybe she will get the blue next time, already hoping that this
new part of her life will remain. Instead of the turtleneck, she will wear a loose
cashmere cardigan that slides from one shoulder when she inclines her head
inquisitively. It will come off easily, leaving only the camisole between them in
those first awkward seconds. She tilts her head as she has practiced, and with
that thought all others disappear, and now she doesn’t know what has even
been asked of her. Her heart beats a little too fast. She once failed a polygraph
test for this reason. She had never — would never — shoot heroin, but her pulse
had raced with the memory of someone she knew who had. Did she do drugs?
Her answer was no, but her mind had taken her elsewhere, panicked when she
remembered the boy who gave her a ride home from a high school party with
his head thrown back and teeth gritted, arm tied off with a large rubber band
while a friend loomed overhead to inject him, one bloody needle already on
the littered floor.
You can’t afford to let your mind wander in a polygraph test — or in life,
as now, when once again she finds herself looking at her husband with no idea
of what he has just said. Her ability to hold eye contact is waning, the light out
the window waning, but the desire that has built all these weeks is determined
to linger, flickering like a candle under labored breath. Somewhere, her hus-
band says, between their house and the interstate, are several packs of coyotes,
their little dens tucked away in brush and fallen trees. e coyote is a creature
that often remains monogamous. e big bumbling mouthful of a word lin-
gers there, a pause that lasts too long before he continues with his report. He
heard the coyotes last night, so this is a good time to get the newsletter out, a
good time to remind people to bring their pets indoors. Dusk is when they
come out, same as the bats, most likely rabid.
e kids are doing what they call creepy crawling. eir leader picked the term
up from the book Helter Skelter. ey slip in and out behind trees and bushes,
surveying houses, peeping in windows, finding windows and doors ajar or
unlocked. eir leader is a badly wounded boy in need of wounding others,
and so he frightens them, holds them enthralled with his stories of violence or
murder. ey might not believe all he says, but they believe enough to know
he is capable of bad things. As frightening as it is to be with him, it is more
frightening not to be — to be on the outside and thus a potential victim.
To the kids he looks tough with his tongue ring and tattoos, his mouth
tight and drawn by a bitterness rarely seen on such a young face, some vicious
word always coiled on his tongue and ready to strike those who least expect
it — though he has to be careful when bagging groceries at Food Lion; he has
been reprimanded twice for making sarcastic remarks to el der ly shoppers,
things like You sure you need these cookies, fat granny? He has been told he will
be fired the next time he is disrespectful, which is fine with him. He doesn’t
give a shit what any of them says. Dirt cakes the soles of his feet, like calloused
hooves, as he stands on the asphalt in front of the bowling alley, smoking,
guzzling, or ingesting what ever gifts his flock of disciples brings to him. He
likes to make and hold eye contact until people grow ner vous.
When Agnes Hayes sees the boy bagging groceries in the market, her heart
surges with pity, his complexion blotched and infected, hair long and oily.
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“Don’t I know you?” she asks, but he doesn’t even look up, his arms all inked
with reptiles and knives and what looks like a religious symbol. Now she has
spent the day trying to place him. She taught so many of them, but their names
and faces run together. In the three years since retirement, she has missed them
more than she ever dreamed. Some days she even drives her car and parks near
the high school to watch them, to catch a glimpse of all that energy and to once
again feel it in her own pulse. She still drives Edwin’s copper- colored Electra
and has since he died almost two years ago. She would never have retired had
she seen his death coming, and with it an end to all their plans about where
they would go and what they would do. One day she was complaining about
plastic golf balls strewn all over the living room, and the next she was calling
, knowing even as she dialed and begged for someone to please help that it
was too late.
e school is built on the same land where she went to school. She once
practiced there, her clarinet held in young hands while she stepped high with
the marching band. Edwin’s cigar is there in the ashtray, stinking as always,
only now she loves the stink, can’t get enough of it, wishes that she had never
complained and made him go out to the garage or down to the basement to
smoke. She wishes he were sitting there beside her, ringed in smoke. eir son,
Preston, is clear across the country, barely in touch.
Sometimes creepy crawling involves only the car, cruising slowly through a
driveway, headlights turned off, gravel crunching. ere are lots of dogs. Lots
of sensor lights. Lots of security systems, or at least signs saying there are sys-
tems. e boy trusts nothing and no one. He believes in jiggling knobs and
trying windows. When asked one time, by a guidance counselor feigning com-
passion and concern, what he believed in, he said, “Not a goddamn thing,”
but of course he did. Anyone drawing breath believes in something, even if it
is only that life sucks and there’s no reason to live. To night he has announced
that it is Lauren’s turn to prove herself. She is a pretty girl behind the wall of
heavy black makeup and black studded clothing. She wants out of the car, but
she owes him fifty dollars. He makes it sound like if she doesn’t pay it back
soon he’ll take it out in sex. She is only here to get back at the boy she loved
enough to do everything he asked. She wants him to worry about her, to want
her, to think about that night at the campground the way she does.
e leader reminds her often that he was there for her when no one else
was. He listened to her story about the squeaky- clean asshole boyfriend, feed-
ing her sips of cheap wine and stroking her dyed black hair the whole time she
cried and talked and later reeled and heaved on all fours in a roadside ditch.
“He’s an asswipe,” the boy had said. “He used you.” And then later when
she woke just before dawn with her head pounding and her body filled with
the sick knowledge that she had to go home and face her parents, he reminded
her again how much she needed him, couldn’t survive without him. “I didn’t
leave you,” he said. “Could’ve easily fucked you and didn’t.”
And now she is here, and the boy who broke her heart is out with someone
else or maybe just eating dinner with his parents and talking about where he
might choose to go to school. He is a boy who always smells clean, even right
off the track where he runs long- distance, his thigh muscles like hard ropes, his
lungs healthy and strong. He might be at the movies, and she wishes she were
there too — the darkness, the popcorn. She wishes she were anywhere else. She
had wanted her parents to restrict her after that night, to say she couldn’t go
anywhere for weeks and weeks, but they did something so much worse; they
said how disappointed they were, that they had given up, how she would have
to work really hard to regain their trust, and by trust it seems they meant love.
e leader is talking about how he hates their old math teacher. “And I
know where she lives too.” He circles the block, drives slowly past a neat gray
colonial with a bright red door, the big Electra parked in the drive. “What’s
the magic word?” he mimics in a high Southern voice and reaches over to grab
Lauren’s thigh, then inches up, gripping harder as if daring her to move. He
motions for her to unzip her jeans, wanting her to just sit there that way, silver
chain from her navel grazing the thin strip of nylon that covers her. Lower, he
says, even though there is a boy in the backseat hearing every word. She feels
cold but doesn’t say a word. Her shoes and jacket and purse are locked in the
trunk of his car. “For safekeeping,” he said. She is about to readjust the V of
denim when he swings the car off the side of the road behind a tall hedge of
lagustrum, where they are partially hidden but can still see the house. “Like
this,” he says and tugs, a seam ripping, and then he slides across the seat toward
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her, his mouth hard on hers as he forces her hand to his own zipper. e boy in
the backseat lights a cigarette, and she focuses on that, the sound, the smell;
she can hear the paper burn.
Erin and her friend, Tina, sit in the backseat, and Gregory is in front with his
Power Ranger sleeping bag rolled up at his feet. Paula will drop him off at the
party and then go to the cinema, and then she will still have time to sit and
collect herself before driving seven miles down the interstate to the Days Inn,
where he will be waiting. e children have said that this car — their dad’s —
smells like old farts and jelly beans. ey say he saves up all day at the bank
and then rips all the way home. Gregory acts this out, and with each “E www”
and laugh from the girls, he gets a little more confident and louder. He says
their grandmother smells like diarrhea dipped in peppermint and their grand-
father is chocolate vomick. ey are having a wonderful time, mainly because
it’s daring, the way he is testing Paula, the way they all are waiting for her to
intervene and reprimand, but she is so distracted she forgets to be a good
mother. When he turns and scrutinizes her with a mischievous look, she snaps
back.
“Not acceptable, young man, and you know it,” she says, but really she is
worried that they are right and that she will smell like old farts and jelly beans
when she arrives at the motel. Her cell phone buzzes against her hip, and she
knows that he is calling to see if they are on schedule, calling to make sure
that she doesn’t stand him up again.
“Aren’t you going to answer that?” Erin says. “Who is it, Dad looking for
underwear? Some lame friend in need of a heart- to- heart?” e laughing contin-
ues as Paula turns onto the street where a crowd of eight- year- olds and sleeping
bags is gathered in the front yard of a small brick ranch.
“One of my lame friends, I’m sure,” she answers but with the words pic-
tures him there in the room, maybe already undressed, a glass of wine poured.
ey have already said so much in their little notes that it feels not only like they
have already made love but like they have done so for so long that they are
already needing to think up new things to do. Her pulse races, and she slams
on the brakes when Gregory screams, “Stop!”
“Pay attention, Mom,” Gregory says. “See, they’re everywhere,” and she
thinks he means her lame friends, or kids at the party, but he picks up one of
those little gourmet jelly beans, tosses it at his sister, and then jumps from the
car. “anks, Mom,” he says, and Paula waves to the already frazzled- looking
mother who has taken this on. ank you, Ronald Reagan. at’s when the
jelly bean frenzy started, and then after her husband said something cute and
trite about sharing the desires of the president since he was now a vice presi-
dent at the bank, all his workers gave him jelly beans because what else can
you give someone you don’t know at all who has power and authority over
you? He got all kinds of jelly beans. And now if people hear about the neigh-
borhood wildlife, it means many more years of useless presents — coyote and
raccoon and bat figurines and mugs and mugs and more mugs. She will write
and send all those thank- you notes. She will take all the crap to Goodwill.
Sometimes Agnes watches tele vi sion in the dark. She likes a lot of these new
shows that are all about humiliating people until they confess that they are fat
and need to lose weight or that they are inept workers who need to be fired or
bad members of a team who need to be rejected and banished from the island.
Her pug, Oliver, died not long after Edwin did, and she misses the way he used
to paw and tug and make a little nest at the foot of her bed. She misses the
sounds of his little snorts in the night. How could there have been a moment
in life when she wished for this — the quiet, the lack of activity and noise? e
clock ticks, the refrigerator hums. She could call Preston. She could give him
an apology, whether or not she owes it. What she could say is that she is so sorry
they misunderstood each other. Or she could call him and pretend nothing
ever happened. She keeps thinking of the boy at the grocery, trying to place
what year she taught him. Who were his parents? What is his name? Some chil-
dren she gave things to over the years — her son’s outgrown clothes and shoes —
but then she stopped, dumping it all at the church instead, because the chil-
dren never acted the same afterward, and that bothered her. ey never said
thank you, and they never looked her in the eye, as if she had never made a
difference in their lives, and that was what hurt so much when she thought of
Preston, how easily he had let a few things make him forget all that she had
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done for him in his life. She stated the truth, is all. When Preston planned to
marry Amy, she told him how people might talk about them, might call their
children names.
Right after Edwin’s funeral, he called her Miss Christian Ethics, Miss
Righ teous Soul. He told her he wished he could stay and dig into all that ham
and Jell- O but that Amy was at the Holiday Inn waiting for him. “ey let dogs
stay there too,” he said and lingered over the prize rod and reel of his father’s
she had handed to him, only to put it back and leave. She hasn’t seen him since.
Now her chest is heavy with the memory, and her head and arm and side ache.
e parking lot stretches for miles, it seems, kids everywhere in packs, snuggly
couples, the occasional middle- aged, settled- looking couple Paula envies more
than all the others. e Cinema Fourteen Plex looms up ahead like Oz, like a
big bright fake city offering anything and everything, a smorgasbord of action
and emotion as varied as the jelly bean connoisseur basket her husband’s sec-
retary sent at Christmas, a woman Paula has so often wished would become
something more. Wouldn’t that be easier?
“He’s here,” Tina says and points to where a tall skinny kid in a letter jacket
is pacing along the curb. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”
“Puhleeze,” Erin says, sounding way too old. “Chill out. He’s just a boy.”
And then they collapse in another round of laughter and are out of the car and
gone. Paula’s hip is buzzing again. Buzzing and buzzing. What if it’s Gregory
and the sleepover is canceled? Or he fell on the skate ramp and broke some-
thing or needs stitches and her husband can’t be found because he’s out in the
woods with a flashlight looking for wildlife? Or maybe her husband really
does need her. He just got a call that his mother died. Does she know where
he put the Havahart trap? And when is the last time she saw their cat?
Lauren is feeling frightened. e other boy, the one from the backseat who is
always quiet and refuses to talk about the bruises on his face and arms, has
announced he’s leaving. He can’t do this anymore. e leader slams on the
brakes and calls him a pussy. e leader says that if he leaves that’s it, no more
rides, no more pot, no more anything except he’ll catch him some dark night
and beat the shit out of him. “I’ll beat you worse than what ever goes on in that
trash house of yours,” he says, but the boy keeps walking, and Lauren feels
herself wanting to yell out for him to wait for her. She has always found him
scary and disgusting, but now she admires his ability to put one foot in front
of the other. He says he’s bored with it all — lame amateur shit — but she sees a
fear in him as recognizable as her own. “Let him go,” she whispers. She is
watching the flicker of tele vi sion light in the teacher’s upstairs window. “Please.
Can’t we just ride around or something?”
“Afraid you won’t get any more to night?” he asks and leans in so close she
can smell his breath, oddly sweet with Dentyne. e lost possibility of his
features makes her sad, eyes you might otherwise think a beautiful shade of
blue, dimple in the left cheek. He pulls a coiled rope from under the seat. “You
gonna stay put, or do I need to tie you up?” She forces herself to laugh, assure
him that she will stay put, but she makes the mistake of glancing at the key in
the ignition, and he reaches and takes it.
She cautions herself to keep breathing, to act like she’s with him. “Next
one,” she says. “I need to collect myself.”
“Well, you just collect,” he says. “I’ll be back to deal with you in a minute.”
She doesn’t ask what he plans to do. His outlines of all the ways such an event
might go are lengthy and varied, some of them tame and pointless and others
not pretty at all. He has already said he wants to scare the hell out of the old
woman, let her know what it feels like to have someone make you say please
and thank you every goddamn day. e girl watches him move into the dark-
ness, numb fingers struggling to finally zip her pants back up, to pretend that
his rough fingertips never touched her there. She will get out and run. She will
leave the door open and crawl through the hedge until she reaches the main
road. She will call her parents, beg for their forgiveness. ere is no way now to
get her shoes or phone, but she moves and keeps moving. She thinks of her bed
and how good it will feel to crawl between clean sheets, to stare at the faces of
all the dolls collected before everything in her life seemed to go so bad. Now all
the things she has been so upset about mean nothing. So what if she let the
handsome, clean- smelling track star do everything he wanted to do? She liked
it too, didn’t she? Not making the soccer team last year, being told on college
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day that she had no prayer of getting into any of the schools she had listed,
most of them ones he was considering if he could run track. But losing or get-
ting rejected — that happens to a lot of people, doesn’t it? She can still find
something she’s good at, go somewhere. Right now she just wants to get home,
to shower herself clean with the hottest water she can stand, to soap and scrub
and wrap up in a flannel robe. She once watched her uncle skin a catfish, tear-
ing the tight skin from the meat like an elastic suit, and she keeps thinking of
the sound it made, a sound that made her want to pull her jacket close, to hide
and protect her own skin. She feels that way now, only there’s nothing to pull
around her, the night air much cooler than she’d thought — and she keeps
thinking she hears him behind her, so she moves faster. She is almost to the
main road, the busy intersection, the rows of cars heading toward the cinema.
Her foot is bleeding, a sliver of glass, and she is pinned at a corner, lines upon
lines of cars waiting for the light to change.
Paula’s cell phone buzzes again, and she takes a deep breath and answers. “Where
are you?” he asks. She can hear the impatience, perhaps a twinge of anger, and
his voice does not match the way she remembers him sounding in the stairwell.
When she pictures his face or reads his tiny penciled scrawl, it’s a different
voice, like it’s been dubbed.
“Almost there,” she says and tries to sound flirtatious, leaving him a prom-
ise of making up for lost time. en she glances out her window and sees a girl
she thinks she recognizes. Shirt torn and barefooted. ey certainly won’t let
her in the theater that way. e girl is so familiar, and then she remembers —
her daughter’s school, story time in the library. But that was years ago when
the girl’s hair was light brown and pulled up in a high ponytail. She knows
exactly who she is. is is a girl parents caution their good girls against. She is
rumored to be bulimic. She locks herself in the school bathroom and cuts her
arms. She once tried to overdose on vodka and aspirin and had to have her
stomach pumped. She gives blow jobs in the stairwell of the high school in
exchange for drugs. She has blackened ghoulish eyes and jet black hair, silver
safety pins through her eyebrows and lip. Paula has heard parents whispering
about her at various school functions. ey say, “Last year she was perfectly
normal, and now this. She was a B student with some artistic talent and a pretty
face, and now this.” She is the “Don’t” poster child of this town, the local object
lesson in how quickly a child can go bad.
Agnes is trying to remember what exactly it was she said to anger Preston so.
She had tried to make it complimentary, something about skin like café au lait.
She had often seen black people described that way in stories, coffee and choco-
lates, conjuring delicious smells instead of those like the bus station or fish
market across the river, which is what a lot of people might associate with black
people. Her maid once used a pomade so powerful smelling Agnes had to ask
that she please stop wearing it, but certainly Agnes never held that against the
woman; she couldn’t help being born into a culture that thought that was
the thing to do.
“Sometimes it’s not even what stupid thing you say,” Preston shouted, the
vein in his forehead throbbing like it might burst. “It’s how you say it. So, so
goddamned godlike.” He spit the word and shook all over, hands clenched into
fists. But now she wants him to come back and be with her. She didn’t know
coffee would be insulting. She is going through her phone numbers, she has it
somewhere. at same day she reminded him that even the president of the
United States said things like that. e president had once referred to his grand-
children as “the little brown ones,” and why is that okay and chocolate and
coffee are not?
It’s your mom, she practices now. Please talk to me, Preston. She is dialing
when she hears something down on her front porch. e wind? Her cat? ere
was a flyer in her mailbox just this eve ning saying how she should not leave the
cat outside.
Lauren shivers as she stands there on the corner. She expects to hear his car
roar up any second and wonders what she will do when that happens. She will
have to tell her parents that she lost her purse, that it got stolen, and her shoes
and jacket. She shudders with the thought of the boy pawing through her per-
sonal things, a picture of the track star cut from the school newspaper, a poem
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she was writing about the ocean, a pale pink rabbit’s foot she has carried since
sixth grade when she won the school math bee with it in her pocket. e light
is about to change, and she concentrates on that instead of imagining her par-
ents’ reaction. Just once she wishes one of them would pull her close and say,
“Please, tell me what’s wrong,” and then she would. She would start talking
and not stop, like a dam breaking; she would tell them so many things if there
were really such a thing as unconditional love. But instead they will say, “What
is wrong with you? Why are you doing this to us? Do you know what people
are saying about you?”
“Do you need a ride?” A woman in an old black Audi leans out the win-
dow and motions her to hurry. “I know you from school.”
She does know the woman, the mother of a girl in her class, a girl who
makes good grades and doesn’t get into trouble. Not a pop u lar girl, just a nor-
mal girl. A nice girl who smiles shyly and will let you copy her notes if you get
behind. Erin from Algebra I freshman year. is is Erin’s mother.
She hears a car slowing in the lane beside her and runs to get in with the
woman just as the light changes. “ank you.”
“My daughter goes to your school,” the woman says. She is wearing a low-
cut camisole with a pretty silver necklace. Her black sweater is soft and loose
around her shoulders. e car smells like crayons and the woman’s cologne.
“I’m sorry my car is so messy. My husband’s car, that is.” Her cell phone buzzes
in the cup holder, but she ignores it. “Where are you going, sweetheart?” she
asks. “It’s too chilly to be out without shoes and long sleeves.” Something in
her voice brings tears to the girl’s eyes, and then her crying is uncontrollable.
e woman just keeps driving, circling first the cinema and then many of the
neighborhoods around the area. e girl sinks low in her seat when they pass
the teacher’s house, that old Pontiac still parked behind the hedge. She can’t
allow herself to imagine what he is doing, what he will do when he finds her
gone. ey drive out to the interstate and make a big loop, the woman patting
her shoulder from time to time, telling her it’s okay, that nothing can be that
bad. Every third or fourth time the woman asks for her address, but for now
the girl just wants to be here in this car riding. e woman’s cell phone keeps
buzzing and buzzing. Once she answers it to the loud voice of her daughter
from the movie lobby saying she will need a ride home after all. “Are you mad,
Mom?” the girl screams. “Is that okay?” And the woman assures her that it is
okay. It is fine. She will be there. en she answers to say she saw their cat early
this morning. And then, apologizing when it rings again, she answers and says
little at all, except that so much has happened, she just might not get there at
all. “In fact,” she whispers, “I know I can’t get there.” And Lauren knows there
is a good chance that she is part of what has happened, but the heat is blowing
on her cold feet and the woman has the radio turned down low with classical
music, and her eyelids are so heavy she can barely keep them open. When she
was little and couldn’t sleep, her parents would sometimes put her in a warm
car and drive her around. Her dad called it a “get lost” drive, and he let her
make all the choices, turn here, turn there, turn there again, and then she would
relax while he untangled the route and led them back home, by which time
she would be nearly or already asleep. ere was never any doubt that he could
find the way home and that she would wake to find herself already tucked in
her bed or in his arms being taken there.
Preston’s answering machine comes on, and Agnes is about to speak, but then
she hears the noise again and puts down the phone. She wishes she would find
Preston there — Preston and Amy, waiting to embrace her and start all over
again. Preston in his letter jacket like he was all those nights she waited up for
him and said, “Where have you been, young man?” And Edwin would be in
the basement smoking, and Oliver would be rooting around at the foot of
her bed.
Her chest is tight with the worry of it all. She swallows and opens the
door. Nothing.
“Here, kitty,” she calls in a faint voice. She steps out on the stoop into the
chilly air. e sky is clear overhead, a sliver of a moon. ere is a car parked
way down at the end of her drive, just the front bumper showing beyond the
hedge. It wasn’t there when she came home. Perhaps someone had a flat or ran
out of gas. She calls the cat again and hears leaves crunching around the side
of the house. She waits, expecting to see it slink around the corner, but then
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nothing. ere is more noise beyond the darkness, where she can’t see. And it
is coming closer, short quick sounds, footsteps in the leaves. She is backing into
the house when she thinks she sees something much larger than the cat slip
around the corner near her kitchen door. She pulls her sweater close and pushes
the door to, turns the dead bolt. e flyer talked about coyotes and how they
have been spotted all over town.
e girl finally tells Paula where she lives, a neighborhood out of town and in
the opposite direction from the motel. Paula’s cell phone beeps with yet another
message, but now she ignores it. She doesn’t want to hear what he has to say now
that he has had time to shape an answer to her standing him up yet again. She
parks in front of a small brick ranch. e front porch is lit with a yellow bulb, all
the drapes pulled closed.
“I’m happy to walk you up,” Paula says, but the girl shakes her head. She
says thank you without making eye contact and then gets out, making her
way across the yard in slow, careful steps. Paula waits to see if a parent comes
out, but the girl slips in and recloses the door without a trace.
Paula sits there in the dark as if expecting something to happen. And then
she slips off the cardigan and pulls her turtleneck over her head. e message
is waiting. He might be saying this is the last time he will do this, he has wasted
too much time on her already. “Why are you fucking with me?” he might ask.
Or, “Who do you think you are?” e chances of him saying he understands
completely and they will try again some other, better time are slim. She imag-
ines him there in the room, bare chested and waiting, already thinking about
his other options, his better options. And she imagines her own house and her
return, sink full of dirty dishes, purple nail polish and Power Ranger figures
everywhere. A litter box that needs scooping and clothes that need washing and
an empty pantry that would have been filled had she not been out buying lin-
gerie all day.
She saw a coyote just last week, but she didn’t report it. She was standing
at the kitchen window and glanced out to see a tall, skinny shepherd mix —
except just as her mind was shaping the thought about someone letting a dog
run loose in the neighborhood, it came to her that this was not a dog. It was
wild and fearful looking, thin and hungry, and she felt a kinship as they stood
frozen, staring at each other. Everyone wants something.
e leader can see her in there, old bat, holding her chest and shaking. She looks
like a puppet, her old bitch of a body jerking in time with his jiggling the
knob. “I wore your fucking boy’s shirt,” he will say. “ank you so much. at
little polo fucker really helped turn my life around.” She lifts the phone and
pulls the cord around the corner where he can’t see her, so he jiggles harder,
leans the weight of his body against the door. “Loafers! Neckties! F in fucking
math.” He creeps around and climbs high enough on a trellis to see that she is
slumped down in a chair with the receiver clutched against her chest. “Say the
magic word,” he says and covers his fist with his shirt before punching out the
window. “Say it.”
When Paula pulls up to the theater, Erin and Tina are waiting. A tall, thin
boy in a letter jacket trails alongside Tina, his hand in her hip pocket in a famil-
iar way, and then they kiss before the girls get in the car. Paula is about to men-
tion the girl she picked up but then thinks better of it. She wants to say things
like, “Don’t you ever . . .” but the sound of her daughter’s laughter makes her
think better of it.
“I can’t believe you, like, ate face in front of my mom,” Erin says, and Tina
blushes and grins. She is a girl with cleavage and braces, betwixt and between.
“Jesus, Mom, let some air in this stinkhole car,” Erin laughs, and then the
two girls talk over the movie and everyone they saw there as if Paula were not
even present. Paula can’t stop thinking about the girl and how she came to be
on that busy corner with no shoes, how she looks so different from that clean-
faced little girl in a library chair, and yet she is one and the same. And what
will she write and slip to her co- worker on Monday, or will she avoid him
altogether and pretend nothing ever happened, that she never ventured from
her own darkened den in search of excitement? She imagines the coyotes living
as her husband has described, little nests under piles of brush, helpless cubs
curled there waiting for the return of their mother.
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“I’m sorry if I messed up your time with your lame friend,” Erin says sar-
castically and then leans in close. “Really, Momsy, I am.” She air- kisses Paula
and smiles a sincere thanks before turning back to her friend with a shriek of
something she can’t believe she forgot to tell, something about cheating, some-
one getting caught with a teacher’s grade book. She has licorice twists braided
and tied around her throat like a necklace, and her breath is sweet with Milk
Duds.
e old woman is dead or acting dead, the recorded voice from the receiver on
her chest telling her to please hang up and try her call again. It’s one of those
houses where everything is in place, little useless bullshit glass things nobody
wants. She looks as miserable dead as she did alive. It makes him want to trash
the place, but why bother now? He didn’t kill her. He didn’t do a thing but
pop out a pane of glass. He searches around and then carefully, using his shirt
so as not to leave a print, takes a golf ball from the basket beside the fireplace
and places it down in the broken glass. Tele vi sion is too big to lift, no purse in
sight, not even a liquor cabinet. She gives him the creeps, and so do all the
people looking out from portraits and photographs. He’ll tell the girl that he
just scared the old bitch, threatened to tie her up and put a bullet in her head
until she cried and begged for his mercy and forgiveness. He’ll say he left her
alive and grateful.
e moon is high in the bright clear sky when Paula ventures outside to
look for their cat. She pulls her sweater close and steps away from the light
of the house, the woods around her spreading into darkness. Her husband is
sleeping, and Erin is on the phone. ere were no messages other than the
one on her cell phone, still trapped there and waiting. She hears a distant
siren, the wind in the trees, the bass beat from a passing car. Please, she thinks.
Please. She is about to go inside for a flashlight when she hears the familiar
bell and then sees the cat slinking up from the dark woods, her manner cool
and unaffected.
⁓ 
279
“I’m a little harsh. When people say,
‘I have writer’s block. What do you
suggest?’ I say, ‘If you can’t write, don’t
write. No one needs your writing.
Don’t torture yourself.’ ”
⁓ from e Telegraph, October , 
Lorrie Moore
u How to Become a Writer
Lorrie Moore was born in 1957
and raised in eastern New York
State. After graduating from
St. Lawrence University, Moore
enrolled in Cornell’s M.F.A pro-
gram and published her first
collection of short stories, Self-
Help (1985), shortly after grad-
uating. She has published three
other story collections and
three novels, as well as a children’s novel. Her work has been selected for The
O. Henry Prize Stories and Best American Short Stories, and her awards include a
National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the
Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and the Rea Award for the Short Story.
She is currently the Delmore Schwartz Professor in the Humanities at the Uni-
versity of Wisconsin– Madison.
First, try to be something, anything, else. A movie star/astronaut. A movie
star/missionary. A movie star/kindergarten teacher. President of the World.
Fail miserably. It is best if you fail at an early age — say, fourteen. Early, critical
disillusionment is necessary so that at fifteen you can write long haiku sequences
about thwarted desire. It is a pond, a cherry blossom, a wind brushing against
sparrow wing leaving for mountain. Count the syllables. Show it to your mom.
She is tough and practical. She has a son in Vietnam and a husband who may
be having an affair. She believes in wearing brown because it hides spots. She’ll
look briefly at your writing, then back up at you with a face blank as a donut.
She’ll say: “How about emptying the dishwasher?” Look away. Shove the forks
in the fork drawer. Accidentally break one of the freebie gas station glasses. is
is the required pain and suffering. is is only for starters.
280 | chapter 12 a mini- anthology: 15 stories
In your high school En glish class look only at Mr. Killian’s face. Decide
faces are important. Write a villanelle about pores. Struggle. Write a sonnet.
Count the syllables: nine, ten, eleven, thirteen. Decide to experiment with
fiction. Here you don’t have to count syllables. Write a short story about an
el der ly man and woman who accidentally shoot each other in the head, the
result of an inexplicable malfunction of a shotgun which appears mysteriously
in their living room one night. Give it to Mr. Killian as your final project.
When you get it back, he has written on it: “Some of your images are quite nice,
but you have no sense of plot.” When you are home, in the privacy of your own
room, faintly scrawl in pencil beneath his black- inked comments: “Plots are
for dead people, pore- face.”
Take all the babysitting jobs you can get. You are great with kids. ey love you.
You tell them stories about old people who die idiot deaths. You sing them
songs like “Blue Bells of Scotland,” which is their favorite. And when they are
in their pajamas and have finally stopped pinching each other, when they are
fast asleep, you read every sex manual in the house, and wonder how on earth
anyone could ever do those things with someone they truly loved. Fall asleep
in a chair reading Mr. McMurphy’s Playboy. When the McMurphys come
home, they will tap you on the shoulder, look at the magazine in your lap, and
grin. You will want to die. ey will ask you if Tracey took her medicine all
right. Explain, yes, she did, that you promised her a story if she would take it
like a big girl and that seemed to work out just fine. “Oh, marvelous,” they will
exclaim.
Try to smile proudly.
Apply to college as a child psychology major.
As a child psychology major, you have some electives. You’ve always liked birds.
Sign up for something called “e Ornithological Field Trip.” It meets Tues-
days and ursdays at two. When you arrive at Room  on the first day of
class, everyone is sitting around a seminar table talking about meta phors. You’ve
heard of these. After a short, excruciating while, raise your hand and say
diffidently, “Excuse me, isn’t this Birdwatching One- oh- one?” e class stops
and turns to look at you. ey seem to all have one face — giant and blank as
a vandalized clock. Someone with a beard booms out, “No, this is Creative
Writing.” Say: “Oh — right,” as if perhaps you knew all along. Look down at
your schedule. Wonder how the hell you ended up here. e computer, appar-
ently, has made an error. You start to get up to leave and then don’t. e lines
at the registrar this week are huge. Perhaps you should stick with this mistake.
Perhaps your creative writing isn’t all that bad. Perhaps it is fate. Perhaps this
is what your dad meant when he said, “It’s the age of computers, Francie, it’s
the age of computers.”
Decide that you like college life. In your dorm you meet many nice people.
Some are smarter than you. And some, you notice, are dumber than you. You
will continue, unfortunately, to view the world in exactly these terms for the
rest of your life.
e assignment this week in creative writing is to narrate a violent happening.
Turn in a story about driving with your Uncle Gordon and another one about
two old people who are accidentally electrocuted when they go to turn on a
badly wired desk lamp. e teacher will hand them back to you with com-
ments: “Much of your writing is smooth and energetic. You have, however, a
ludicrous notion of plot.” Write another story about a man and a woman who,
in the very first paragraph, have their lower torsos accidentally blitzed away by
dynamite. In the second paragraph, with the insurance money, they buy a fro-
zen yogurt stand together. ere are six more paragraphs. You read the whole
thing out loud in class. No one likes it. ey say your sense of plot is outrageous
and incompetent. After class someone asks you if you are crazy.
Decide that perhaps you should stick to comedies. Start dating someone who
is funny, someone who has what in high school you called a “really great sense
of humor” and what now your creative writing class calls “self- contempt giving
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rise to comic form.” Write down all of his jokes, but don’t tell him you are doing
this. Make up anagrams of his old girlfriend’s name and name all of your
socially handicapped characters with them. Tell him his old girlfriend is in all
of your stories and then watch how funny he can be, see what a really great
sense of humor he can have.
Your child psychology advisor tells you you are neglecting courses in your
major. What you spend the most time on should be what you’re majoring in.
Say yes, you understand.
In creative writing seminars over the next two years, everyone continues to
smoke cigarettes and ask the same things: “But does it work?” “Why should
we care about this character?” “Have you earned this cliché?” ese seem like
important questions.
On days when it is your turn, you look at the class hopefully as they scour
your mimeographs for a plot. ey look back up at you, drag deeply, and then
smile in a sweet sort of way.
You spend too much time slouched and demoralized. Your boyfriend suggests
bicycling. Your roommate suggests a new boyfriend. You are said to be self-
mutilating and losing weight, but you continue writing. e only happiness
you have is writing something new, in the middle of the night, armpits damp,
heart pounding, something no one has yet seen. You have only those brief,
fragile, untested moments of exhilaration when you know: you are a genius.
Understand what you must do. Switch majors. e kids in your nursery project
will be disappointed, but you have a calling, an urge, a delusion, an unfortunate
habit. You have, as your mother would say, fallen in with a bad crowd.
Why write? Where does writing come from? ese are questions to ask your-
self. ey are like: Where does dust come from? Or: Why is there war? Or: If
there’s a God, then why is my brother now a cripple?
ese are questions that you keep in your wallet, like calling cards. ese
are questions, your creative writing teacher says, that are good to address in
your journals but rarely in your fiction.
e writing professor this fall is stressing the Power of the Imagination.
Which means he doesn’t want long descriptive stories about your camping trip
last July. He wants you to start in a realistic context but then to alter it. Like
recombinant DNA. He wants you to let your imagination sail, to let it grow
big- bellied in the wind. is is a quote from Shakespeare.
Tell your roommate your great idea, your great exercise of imaginative power: a
transformation of Melville to contemporary life. It will be about monomania
and the fish- eat- fish world of life insurance in Rochester, New York. e first line
will be “Call me Fishmeal,” and it will feature a menopausal suburban husband
named Richard, who because he is so depressed all the time is called “Mopey
Dick” by his witty wife Elaine. Say to your roommate: “Mopey Dick, get it?”
Your roommate looks at you, her face blank as a large Kleenex. She comes up to
you, like a buddy, and puts an arm around your burdened shoulders. “Listen,
Francie,” she says, slow as speech therapy. “Let’s go out and get a big beer.”
e seminar doesn’t like this one either. You suspect they are beginning to feel
sorry for you. ey say: “You have to think about what is happening. Where is
the story here?”
e next semester the writing professor is obsessed with writing from personal
experience. You must write from what you know, from what has happened to
you. He wants death, he wants camping trips. ink about what has happened
to you. In three years there have been three things: you lost your virginity; your
parents got divorced; and your brother came home from a forest ten miles from
the Cambodian border with only half a thigh, a permanent smirk nestled into
one corner of his mouth.
About the first you write: “It created a new space, which hurt and cried in
a voice that wasn’t mine, ‘I’m not the same anymore, but I’ll be okay.’ ”
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About the second you write an elaborate story of an old married couple
who stumble upon an unknown land mine in their kitchen and accidentally
blow themselves up. You call it: “For Better or for Liverwurst.”
About the last you write nothing. ere are no words for this. Your type-
writer hums. You can find no words.
At undergraduate cocktail parties, people say, “Oh, you write? What do you
write about?” Your roommate, who has consumed too much wine, too little
cheese, and no crackers at all, blurts: “Oh, my god, she always writes about her
dumb boyfriend.”
Later on in life you will learn that writers are merely open, helpless texts
with no real understanding of what they have written and therefore must half-
believe anything and everything that is said of them. You, however, have not
yet reached this stage of literary criticism. You stiffen and say, “I do not,” the
same way you said it when someone in the fourth grade accused you of really
liking oboe lessons and your parents really weren’t just making you take them.
Insist you are not very interested in any one subject at all, that you are in-
terested in the music of language, that you are interested in — in — syllables,
because they are the atoms of poetry, the cells of the mind, the breath of the
soul. Begin to feel woozy. Stare into your plastic wine cup.
“Syllables?” you will hear someone ask, voice trailing off, as they glide
slowly toward the reassuring white of the dip.
Begin to wonder what you do write about. Or if you have anything to say. Or
if there even is such a thing as a thing to say. Limit these thoughts to no more
than ten minutes a day; like sit- ups, they can make you thin.
You will read somewhere that all writing has to do with one’s genitals.
Don’t dwell on this. It will make you ner vous.
Your mother will come visit you. She will look at the circles under your eyes
and hand you a brown book with a brown briefcase on the cover. It is entitled:
How to Become a Business Executive. She has also brought the Names for
Baby encyclopedia you asked for; one of your characters, the aging clown-
schoolteacher, needs a new name. Your mother will shake her head and say:
“Francie, Francie, remember when you were going to be a child psychology
major?”
Say: “Mom, I like to write.”
She’ll say: “Sure you like to write. Of course. Sure you like to write.”
Write a story about a confused music student and title it: “Schubert Was the
One with the Glasses, Right?” It’s not a big hit, although your roommate likes
the part where the two violinists accidentally blow themselves up in a recital
room. “I went out with a violinist once,” she says, snapping her gum.
ank god you are taking other courses. You can find sanctuary in nineteenth-
century ontological snags and invertebrate courting rituals. Certain globular
mollusks have what is called “Sex by the Arm.” e male octopus, for instance,
loses the end of one arm when placing it inside the female body during inter-
course. Marine biologists call it “Seven Heaven.” Be glad you know these
things. Be glad you are not just a writer. Apply to law school.
From here on in, many things can happen. But the main one will be this: you
decide not to go to law school after all, and, instead, you spend a good, big
chunk of your adult life telling people how you decided not to go to law school
after all. Somehow you end up writing again. Perhaps you go to graduate
school. Perhaps you work odd jobs and take writing courses at night. Perhaps
you are working on a novel and writing down all the clever remarks and inti-
mate personal confessions you hear during the day. Perhaps you are losing your
pals, your acquaintances, your balance.
You have broken up with your boyfriend. You now go out with men who,
instead of whispering “I love you,” shout: “Do it to me, baby.” is is good for
your writing.
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286 | chapter 12 a mini- anthology: 15 stories
Sooner or later you have a finished manuscript more or less. People look
at it in a vaguely troubled sort of way and say, “I’ll bet becoming a writer was
always a fantasy of yours, wasn’t it?” Your lips dry to salt. Say that of all the
fantasies possible in the world, you can’t imagine being a writer even making
the top twenty. Tell them you were going to be a child psychology major. “I
bet,” they always sigh, “you’d be great with kids.” Scowl fiercely. Tell them
you’re a walking blade.
Quit classes. Quit jobs. Cash in old savings bonds. Now you have time like
warts on your hands. Slowly copy all of your friends’ addresses into a new
address book.
Vacuum. Chew cough drops. Keep a folder full of fragments.
An eyelid darkening sideways.
World as conspiracy.
Possible plot? A woman gets on a bus.
Suppose you threw a love affair and nobody came?
At home drink a lot of coffee. At Howard Johnson’s order the cole slaw.
Consider how it looks like the soggy confetti of a map: where you’ve been,
where you’re going — “You Are Here,” says the red star on the back of the menu.
Occasionally a date with a face blank as a sheet of paper asks you whether
writers often become discouraged. Say that sometimes they do and sometimes
they do. Say it’s a lot like having polio.
“Interesting,” smiles your date, and then he looks down at his arm hairs
and starts to smooth them, all, always, in the same direction.
⁓ 
287
“To revisit tragedy in a way that’s
imaginative and challenging is not
the same as lying in bed picking at the
scabs of memory. It’s trying to salvage
something from memory and make
something beautiful out of it.”
⁓ from e New York Times,
January , 
Tim O’Brien
u On the Rainy River
Tim O’Brien is the author of
eight books, including story
collections, novels, and a mem-
oir. Born in 1946, he grew up in
Minnesota and studied po liti-
cal science at Macalester Uni-
versity. After graduation, he
was drafted into the Army and
served in Vietnam from 1969
to 1970. Upon his return, he
enrolled in graduate school in
government at Harvard Uni-
versity but left to work as a national affairs reporter for The Washington Post.
His first published book was a memoir of his time in Vietnam, If I Die in a Com-
bat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home (1973). His novel Going After Cacciato
(1978) won the National Book Award, and his collection The Things They Carried
(1990) won the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger and was a finalist for the
Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Additional awards
have come from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment
for the Arts. He is currently a visiting professor and holds an endowed chair at
Southwest Texas State University.
This is one story I’ve never told before. Not to anyone. Not to my parents,
not to my brother or sister, not even to my wife. To go into it, I’ve always
thought, would only cause embarrassment for all of us, a sudden need to be
elsewhere, which is the natural response to a confession. Even now, I’ll admit,
the story makes me squirm. For more than twenty years I’ve had to live with
it, feeling the shame, trying to push it away, and so by this act of remembrance,
by putting the facts down on paper, I’m hoping to relieve at least some of the
288 | chapter 12 a mini- anthology: 15 stories
pressure on my dreams. Still, it’s a hard story to tell. All of us, I suppose, like
to believe that in a moral emergency we will behave like the heroes of our youth,
bravely and forthrightly, without thought of personal loss or discredit. Certainly
that was my conviction back in the summer of . Tim O’Brien: a secret
hero. e Lone Ranger. If the stakes ever became high enough — if the evil
were evil enough, if the good were good enough — I would simply tap a secret
reservoir of courage that had been accumulating inside me over the years. Cour-
age, I seemed to think, comes to us in finite quantities, like an inheritance,
and by being frugal and stashing it away and letting it earn interest, we steadily
increase our moral capital in preparation for that day when the account must
be drawn down. It was a comforting theory. It dispensed with all those both-
ersome little acts of daily courage; it offered hope and grace to the repetitive
coward; it justified the past while amortizing the future.
In June of , a month after graduating from Macalester College, I was
drafted to fight a war I hated. I was twenty- one years old. Young, yes, and po-
liti cally naive, but even so the American war in Vietnam seemed to me wrong.
Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons. I saw no unity of pur-
pose, no consensus on matters of philosophy or history or law. e very facts
were shrouded in uncertainty: Was it a civil war? A war of national liberation
or simple aggression? Who started it, and when, and why? What really hap-
pened to the USS Maddox on that dark night in the Gulf of Tonkin? Was Ho
Chi Minh a Communist stooge, or a nationalist savior, or both, or neither?
What about the Geneva Accords? What about SEATO and the Cold War?
What about dominoes? America was divided on these and a thousand other
issues, and the debate had spilled out across the floor of the United States Sen-
ate and into the streets, and smart men in pinstripes could not agree on even
the most fundamental matters of public policy. e only certainty that sum-
mer was moral confusion. It was my view then, and still is, that you don’t make
war without knowing why. Knowledge, of course, is always imperfect, but it
seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence
in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can’t fix your mistakes. Once
people are dead, you can’t make them undead.
In any case those were my convictions, and back in college I had taken a
modest stand against the war. Nothing radical, no hothead stuff, just ringing
a few doorbells for Gene McCarthy, composing a few tedious, uninspired
editorials for the campus newspaper. Oddly, though, it was almost entirely an
intellectual activity. I brought some energy to it, of course, but it was the en-
ergy that accompanies almost any abstract endeavor; I felt no personal dan-
ger; I felt no sense of an impending crisis in my life. Stupidly, with a kind of
smug removal that I can’t begin to fathom, I assumed that the problems of
killing and dying did not fall within my special province.
e draft notice arrived on June , . It was a humid afternoon, I re-
member, cloudy and very quiet, and I’d just come in from a round of golf. My
mother and father were having lunch out in the kitchen. I remember opening
up the letter, scanning the first few lines, feeling the blood go thick behind my
eyes. I remember a sound in my head. It wasn’t thinking, it was just a silent
howl. A million things all at once — I was too good for this war. Too smart, too
compassionate, too everything. It couldn’t happen. I was above it. I had the
world dicked — Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude and president of the
student body and a full- ride scholarship for grad studies at Harvard. A mistake,
maybe — a foul- up in the paperwork. I was no soldier. I hated Boy Scouts. I
hated camping out. I hated dirt and tents and mosquitoes. e sight of blood
made me queasy, and I couldn’t tolerate authority, and I didn’t know a rifle from
a slingshot. I was a liberal, for Christ sake: If they needed fresh bodies, why not
draft some back- to- the- stone- age hawk? Or some dumb jingo in his hard hat
and Bomb Hanoi button? Or one of LBJ’s pretty daughters? Or Westmoreland’s
whole family — nephews and nieces and baby grandson? ere should be a law,
I thought. If you support a war, if you think it’s worth the price, that’s fine, but
you have to put your own life on the line. You have to head for the front and
hook up with an infantry unit and help spill the blood. And you have to bring
along your wife, or your kids, or your lover. A law, I thought.
I remember the rage in my stomach. Later it burned down to a smolder-
ing self- pity, then to numbness. At dinner that night my father asked what my
plans were.
“Nothing,” I said. “Wait.”
I spent the summer of  working in an Armour meatpacking plant in my
hometown of Worthington, Minnesota. e plant specialized in pork products,
and for eight hours a day I stood on a quarter- mile assembly line — more
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properly, a disassembly line — removing blood clots from the necks of dead
pigs. My job title, I believe, was Declotter. After slaughter, the hogs were de-
capitated, split down the length of the belly, pried open, eviscerated, and strung
up by the hind hocks on a high conveyer belt. en gravity took over. By the
time a carcass reached my spot on the line, the fluids had mostly drained out,
everything except for thick clots of blood in the neck and upper chest cavity.
To remove the stuff, I used a kind of water gun. e machine was heavy, maybe
eighty pounds, and was suspended from the ceiling by a heavy rubber cord.
ere was some bounce to it, an elastic up- and- down give, and the trick was
to maneuver the gun with your whole body, not lifting with the arms, just
letting the rubber cord do the work for you. At one end was a trigger; at the
muzzle end was a small nozzle and a steel roller brush. As a carcass passed by,
you’d lean forward and swing the gun up against the clots and squeeze the
trigger, all in one motion, and the brush would whirl and water would come
shooting out and you’d hear a quick splattering sound as the clots dissolved
into a fine red mist. It was not pleasant work. Goggles were a necessity, and a
rubber apron, but even so it was like standing for eight hours a day under a
lukewarm blood- shower. At night I’d go home smelling of pig. I couldn’t wash
it out. Even after a hot bath, scrubbing hard, the stink was always there — like
old bacon, or sausage, a dense greasy pig- stink that soaked deep into my skin
and hair. Among other things, I remember, it was tough getting dates that sum-
mer. I felt isolated; I spent a lot of time alone. And there was also that draft
notice tucked away in my wallet.
In the eve nings I’d sometimes borrow my father’s car and drive aimlessly
around town, feeling sorry for myself, thinking about the war and the pig fac-
tory and how my life seemed to be collapsing toward slaughter. I felt paralyzed.
All around me the options seemed to be narrowing, as if I were hurtling down
a huge black funnel, the whole world squeezing in tight. ere was no happy
way out. e government had ended most graduate school deferments; the
waiting lists for the National Guard and Reserves were impossibly long; my
health was solid; I didn’t qualify for CO status — no religious grounds, no his-
tory as a pacifist. Moreover, I could not claim to be opposed to war as a matter
of general principle. ere were occasions, I believed, when a nation was justi-
fied in using military force to achieve its ends, to stop a Hitler or some com-
parable evil, and I told myself that in such circumstances I would’ve willingly
marched off to the battle. e problem, though, was that a draft board did
not let you choose your war.
Beyond all this, or at the very center, was the raw fact of terror. I did not
want to die. Not ever. But certainly not then, not there, not in a wrong war.
Driving up Main Street, past the court house and the Ben Franklin store, I
sometimes felt the fear spreading inside me like weeds. I imagined myself dead.
I imagined myself doing things I could not do — charging an enemy position,
taking aim at another human being.
At some point in mid- July I began thinking seriously about Canada. e
border lay a few hundred miles north, an eight- hour drive. Both my conscience
and my instincts were telling me to make a break for it, just take off and run
like hell and never stop. In the beginning the idea seemed purely abstract, the
word Canada printing itself out in my head; but after a time I could see par tic-
u lar shapes and images, the sorry details of my own future — a hotel room in
Winnipeg, a battered old suitcase, my father’s eyes as I tried to explain myself
over the telephone. I could almost hear his voice, and my mother’s. Run, I’d
think. en I’d think, Impossible. en a second later I’d think, Run.
It was a kind of schizo phre nia. A moral split. I couldn’t make up my mind.
I feared the war, yes, but I also feared exile. I was afraid of walking away from
my own life, my friends and my family, my whole history, everything that mat-
tered to me. I feared losing the respect of my parents. I feared the law. I feared
ridicule and censure. My hometown was a conservative little spot on the prai-
rie, a place where tradition counted, and it was easy to imagine people sitting
around a table down at the old Gobbler Café on Main Street, coffee cups
poised, the conversation slowly zeroing in on the young O’Brien kid, how the
damned sissy had taken off for Canada. At night, when I couldn’t sleep, I’d
sometimes carry on fierce arguments with those people. I’d be screaming at
them, telling them how much I detested their blind, thoughtless, automatic
acquiescence to it all, their simpleminded patriotism, their prideful ignorance,
their love- it- or- leave- it platitudes, how they were sending me off to fight a war
they didn’t understand and didn’t want to understand. I held them responsible.
By God, yes, I did. All of them — I held them personally and individually
responsible — the polyestered Kiwanis boys, the merchants and farmers, the
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pious churchgoers, the chatty house wives, the PTA and the Lions club and
the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the fine upstanding gentry out at the coun-
try club. ey didn’t know Bao Dai from the man in the moon. ey didn’t
know history. ey didn’t know the first thing about Diem’s tyranny, or the
nature of Viet nam ese nationalism, or the long colonialism of the French — this
was all too damned complicated, it required some reading — but no matter, it
was a war to stop the Communists, plain and simple, which was how they
liked things, and you were a treasonous pussy if you had second thoughts about
killing or dying for plain and simple reasons.
I was bitter, sure. But it was so much more than that. e emotions went
from outrage to terror to bewilderment to guilt to sorrow and then back again
to outrage. I felt a sickness inside me. Real disease.
Most of this I’ve told before, or at least hinted at, but what I have never
told is the full truth. How I cracked. How at work one morning, standing on
the pig line, I felt something break open in my chest. I don’t know what it was.
I’ll never know. But it was real, I know that much, it was a physical rupture — a
cracking- leaking- popping feeling. I remember dropping my water gun. Quickly,
almost without thought, I took off my apron and walked out of the plant and
drove home. It was midmorning, I remember, and the house was empty.
Down in my chest there was still that leaking sensation, something very warm
and precious spilling out, and I was covered with blood and hog- stink, and for
a long while I just concentrated on holding myself together. I remember tak-
ing a hot shower. I remember packing a suitcase and carry ing it out to the
kitchen, standing very still for a few minutes, looking carefully at the familiar
objects all around me. e old chrome toaster, the telephone, the pink and
white Formica on the kitchen counters. e room was full of bright sunshine.
Everything sparkled. My house, I thought. My life. I’m not sure how long I
stood there, but later I scribbled out a short note to my parents.
What it said, exactly, I don’t recall now. Something vague. Taking off, will
call, love Tim.
I drove north.
It’s a blur now, as it was then, and all I remember is a sense of high velocity
and the feel of the steering wheel in my hands. I was riding on adrenaline. A
giddy feeling, in a way, except there was the dreamy edge of impossibility to
it — like running a dead- end maze — no way out — it couldn’t come to a happy
conclusion and yet I was doing it anyway because it was all I could think of to
do. It was pure flight, fast and mindless. I had no plan. Just hit the border at
high speed and crash through and keep on running. Near dusk I passed through
Bemidji, then turned northeast toward International Falls. I spent the night
in the car behind a closed- down gas station a half mile from the border. In the
morning, after gassing up, I headed straight west along the Rainy River, which
separates Minnesota from Canada, and which for me separated one life from
another. e land was mostly wilderness. Here and there I passed a motel or
bait shop, but otherwise the country unfolded in great sweeps of pine and birch
and sumac. ough it was still August, the air already had the smell of Octo-
ber, football season, piles of yellow- red leaves, everything crisp and clean. I
remember a huge blue sky. Off to my right was the Rainy River, wide as a lake
in places, and beyond the Rainy River was Canada.
For a while I just drove, not aiming at anything, then in the late morning
I began looking for a place to lie low for a day or two. I was exhausted, and
scared sick, and around noon I pulled into an old fishing resort called the Tip
Top Lodge. Actually it was not a lodge at all, just eight or nine tiny yellow
cabins clustered on a peninsula that jutted northward into the Rainy River.
e place was in sorry shape. ere was a dangerous wooden dock, an old
minnow tank, a flimsy tar paper boat house along the shore. e main build-
ing, which stood in a cluster of pines on high ground, seemed to lean heavily
to one side, like a cripple, the roof sagging toward Canada. Briefly, I thought
about turning around, just giving up, but then I got out of the car and walked
up to the front porch.
e man who opened the door that day is the hero of my life. How do I
say this without sounding sappy? Blurt it out — the man saved me. He offered
exactly what I needed, without questions, without any words at all. He took
me in. He was there at the critical time — a silent, watchful presence. Six days
later, when it ended, I was unable to find a proper way to thank him, and I
never have, and so, if nothing else, this story represents a small gesture of grati-
tude twenty years overdue.
Even after two de cades I can close my eyes and return to that porch at the
Tip Top Lodge. I can see the old guy staring at me. Elroy Berdahl: eighty- one
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years old, skinny and shrunken and mostly bald. He wore a flannel shirt and
brown work pants. In one hand, I remember, he carried a green apple, a small
paring knife in the other. His eyes had the bluish gray color of a razor blade,
the same polished shine, and as he peered up at me I felt a strange sharpness,
almost painful, a cutting sensation, as if his gaze were somehow slicing me
open. In part, no doubt, it was my own sense of guilt, but even so I’m abso-
lutely certain that the old man took one look and went right to the heart of
things — a kid in trouble. When I asked for a room, Elroy made a little click-
ing sound with his tongue. He nodded, led me out to one of the cabins, and
dropped a key in my hand. I remember smiling at him. I also remember wish-
ing I hadn’t. e old man shook his head as if to tell me it wasn’t worth the
bother.
“Dinner at five- thirty,” he said. “You eat fish?”
“Anything,” I said.
Elroy grunted and said, “I’ll bet.”
We spent six days together at the Tip Top Lodge. Just the two of us. Tourist
season was over, and there were no boats on the river, and the wilderness seemed
to withdraw into a great permanent stillness. Over those six days Elroy Berdahl
and I took most of our meals together. In the mornings we sometimes went
out on long hikes into the woods, and at night we played Scrabble or listened
to rec ords or sat reading in front of his big stone fireplace. At times I felt the
awkwardness of an intruder, but Elroy accepted me into his quiet routine
without fuss or ceremony. He took my presence for granted, the same way he
might’ve sheltered a stray cat — no wasted sighs or pity — and there was never
any talk about it. Just the opposite. What I remember more than anything is
the man’s willful, almost ferocious silence. In all that time together, all those
hours, he never asked the obvious questions: Why was I there? Why alone?
Why so preoccupied? If Elroy was curious about any of this, he was careful
never to put it into words.
My hunch, though, is that he already knew. At least the basics. After all,
it was , and guys were burning draft cards, and Canada was just a boat
ride away. Elroy Berdahl was no hick. His bedroom, I remember, was cluttered
with books and newspapers. He killed me at the Scrabble board, barely con-
centrating, and on those occasions when speech was necessary he had a way of
compressing large thoughts into small, cryptic packets of language. One eve-
ning, just at sunset, he pointed up at an owl circling over the violet- lighted
forest to the west.
“Hey, O’Brien,” he said. “ere’s Jesus.”
e man was sharp — he didn’t miss much. ose razor eyes. Now and
then he’d catch me staring out at the river, at the far shore, and I could almost
hear the tumblers clicking in his head. Maybe I’m wrong, but I doubt it.
One thing for certain, he knew I was in desperate trouble. And he knew
I couldn’t talk about it. e wrong word — or even the right word — and I
would’ve disappeared. I was wired and jittery. My skin felt too tight. After
supper one eve ning I vomited and went back to my cabin and lay down for a
few moments and then vomited again; another time, in the middle of the af-
ternoon, I began sweating and couldn’t shut it off. I went through whole days
feeling dizzy with sorrow. I couldn’t sleep; I couldn’t lie still. At night I’d toss
around in bed, half awake, half dreaming, imagining how I’d sneak down to
the beach and quietly push one of the old man’s boats out into the river and
start paddling my way toward Canada. ere were times when I thought I’d
gone off the psychic edge. I couldn’t tell up from down, I was just falling,
and late in the night I’d lie there watching weird pictures spin through my
head. Getting chased by the Border Patrol — helicopters and searchlights and
barking dogs — I’d be crashing through the woods, I’d be down on my hands
and knees — people shouting out my name — the law closing in on all sides —
my hometown draft board and the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police. It all seemed crazy and impossible. Twenty- one years old, an ordinary
kid with all the ordinary dreams and ambitions, and all I wanted was to live
the life I was born to — a mainstream life — I loved baseball and hamburgers
and cherry Cokes — and now I was off on the margins of exile, leaving my
country forever, and it seemed so impossible and terrible and sad.
I’m not sure how I made it through those six days. Most of it I can’t remem-
ber. On two or three afternoons, to pass some time, I helped Elroy get the place
ready for winter, sweeping down the cabins and hauling in the boats, little
chores that kept my body moving. e days were cool and bright. e nights
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were very dark. One morning the old man showed me how to split and stack
firewood, and for several hours we just worked in silence out behind his house.
At one point, I remember, Elroy put down his maul and looked at me for a
long time, his lips drawn as if framing a difficult question, but then he shook
his head and went back to work. e man’s self- control was amazing. He never
pried. He never put me in a position that required lies or denials. To an extent,
I suppose, his reticence was typical of that part of Minnesota, where pri-
vacy still held value, and even if I’d been walking around with some horrible
deformity — four arms and three heads — I’m sure the old man would’ve
talked about everything except those extra arms and heads. Simple politeness
was part of it. But even more than that, I think, the man understood that words
were insufficient. e problem had gone beyond discussion. During that long
summer I’d been over and over the various arguments, all the pros and cons,
and it was no longer a question that could be decided by an act of pure reason.
Intellect had come up against emotion. My conscience told me to run, but some
irrational and powerful force was resisting, like a weight pushing me toward
the war. What it came down to, stupidly, was a sense of shame. Hot, stupid
shame. I did not want people to think badly of me. Not my parents, not my
brother and sister, not even the folks down at the Gobbler Café. I was ashamed
to be there at the Tip Top Lodge. I was ashamed of my conscience, ashamed
to be doing the right thing.
Some of this Elroy must’ve understood. Not the details, of course, but the
plain fact of crisis.
Although the old man never confronted me about it, there was one occa-
sion when he came close to forcing the whole thing out into the open. It was
early eve ning, and we’d just finished supper, and over coffee and dessert I
asked him about my bill, how much I owed so far. For a long while the old
man squinted down at the tablecloth.
“Well, the basic rate,” he said, “is fifty bucks a night. Not counting meals.
is makes four nights, right?”
I nodded. I had three hundred and twelve dollars in my wallet.
Elroy kept his eyes on the tablecloth. “Now that’s an on- season price. To
be fair, I suppose we should knock it down a peg or two.” He leaned back in
his chair. “What’s a reasonable number, you figure?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Forty?”
“Forty’s good. Forty a night. en we tack on food — say another hun-
dred? Two hundred sixty total?”
“I guess.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Too much?”
“No, that’s fair. It’s fine. Tomorrow, though . . . I think I’d better take off
tomorrow.”
Elroy shrugged and began clearing the table. For a time he fussed with
the dishes, whistling to himself as if the subject had been settled. After a sec-
ond he slapped his hands together.
“You know what we forgot?” he said. “We forgot wages. ose odd jobs you
done. What we have to do, we have to figure out what your time’s worth. Your
last job — how much did you pull in an hour?”
“Not enough,” I said.
“A bad one?”
“Yes. Pretty bad.”
Slowly then, without intending any long sermon, I told him about my days
at the pig plant. It began as a straight recitation of the facts, but before I could
stop myself I was talking about the blood clots and the water gun and how the
smell had soaked into my skin and how I couldn’t wash it away. I went on for
a long time. I told him about wild hogs squealing in my dreams, the sounds of
butchery, slaughter house sounds, and how I’d sometimes wake up with that
greasy pig- stink in my throat.
When I was finished, Elroy nodded at me.
“Well, to be honest,” he said, “when you first showed up here, I wondered
about all that. e aroma, I mean. Smelled like you was awful damned fond
of pork chops.” e old man almost smiled. He made a snuffling sound, then
sat down with a pencil and a piece of paper. “So what’d this crud job pay? Ten
bucks an hour? Fifteen?”
“Less.”
Elroy shook his head. “Let’s make it fifteen. You put in twenty- five hours
here, easy. at’s three hundred seventy- five bucks total wages. We subtract the
two hundred sixty for food and lodging, I still owe you a hundred and fifteen.”
He took four fifties out of his shirt pocket and laid them on the table.
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“Call it even,” he said.
“No.”
“Pick it up. Get yourself a haircut.”
e money lay on the table for the rest of the eve ning. It was still there
when I went back to my cabin. In the morning, though, I found an envelope
tacked to my door. Inside were the four fifties and a two- word note that said
 .
e man knew.
Looking back after twenty years, I sometimes wonder if the events of that sum-
mer didn’t happen in some other dimension, a place where your life exists before
you’ve lived it, and where it goes afterward. None of it ever seemed real. During
my time at the Tip Top Lodge I had the feeling that I’d slipped out of my own
skin, hovering a few feet away while some poor yo- yo with my name and face
tried to make his way toward a future he didn’t understand and didn’t want.
Even now I can see myself as I was then. It’s like watching an old home movie:
I’m young and tan and fit. I’ve got hair — lots of it. I don’t smoke or drink. I’m
wearing faded blue jeans and a white polo shirt. I can see myself sitting on
Elroy Berdahl’s dock near dusk one eve ning, the sky a bright shimmering pink,
and I’m finishing up a letter to my parents that tells what I’m about to do and
why I’m doing it and how sorry I am that I’d never found the courage to talk
to them about it. I ask them not to be angry. I try to explain some of my feel-
ings, but there aren’t enough words, and so I just say that it’s a thing that has
to be done. At the end of the letter I talk about the vacations we used to take
up in this north country, at a place called Whitefish Lake, and how the scen-
ery here reminds me of those good times. I tell them I’m fine. I tell them I’ll
write again from Winnipeg or Montreal or wherever I end up.
On my last full day, the sixth day, the old man took me out fishing on the Rainy
River. e afternoon was sunny and cold. A stiff breeze came in from the north,
and I remember how the little fourteen- foot boat made sharp rocking motions
as we pushed off from the dock. e current was fast. All around us, I remember,
there was a vastness to the world, an unpeopled rawness, just the trees and the
sky and the water reaching out toward nowhere. e air had the brittle scent of
October.
For ten or fifteen minutes Elroy held a course upstream, the river choppy
and silver- gray, then he turned straight north and put the engine on full throt-
tle. I felt the bow lift beneath me. I remember the wind in my ears, the sound of
the old outboard Evinrude. For a time I didn’t pay attention to anything, just
feeling the cold spray against my face, but then it occurred to me that at some
point we must’ve passed into Canadian waters, across that dotted line between
two different worlds, and I remember a sudden tightness in my chest as I looked
up and watched the far shore come at me. is wasn’t a daydream. It was tan-
gible and real. As we came in toward land, Elroy cut the engine, letting the
boat fishtail lightly about twenty yards off shore. e old man didn’t look at
me or speak. Bending down, he opened up his tackle box and busied himself
with a bobber and a piece of wire leader, humming to himself, his eyes down.
It struck me then that he must’ve planned it. I’ll never be certain, of
course, but I think he meant to bring me up against the realities, to guide me
across the river and to take me to the edge and to stand a kind of vigil as I
chose a life for myself.
I remember staring at the old man, then at my hands, then at Canada. e
shoreline was dense with brush and timber. I could see tiny red berries on the
bushes. I could see a squirrel up in one of the birch trees, a big crow looking at
me from a boulder along the river. at close — twenty yards — and I could
see the delicate latticework of the leaves, the texture of the soil, the browned
needles beneath the pines, the configurations of geology and human history.
Twenty yards. I could’ve done it. I could’ve jumped and started swimming for
my life. Inside me, in my chest, I felt a terrible squeezing pressure. Even now, as
I write this, I can still feel that tightness. And I want you to feel it — the wind
coming off the river, the waves, the silence, the wooded frontier. You’re at the
bow of a boat on the Rainy River. You’re twenty- one years old, you’re scared,
and there’s a hard squeezing pressure in your chest.
What would you do?
Would you jump? Would you feel pity for yourself? Would you think
about your family and your childhood and your dreams and all you’re leaving
behind? Would it hurt? Would it feel like dying? Would you cry, as I did?
I tried to swallow it back. I tried to smile, except I was crying.
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Now, perhaps, you can understand why I’ve never told this story before.
It’s not just the embarrassment of tears. at’s part of it, no doubt, but what
embarrasses me much more, and always will, is the paralysis that took my
heart. A moral freeze: I couldn’t decide, I couldn’t act, I couldn’t comport
myself with even a pretense of modest human dignity.
All I could do was cry. Quietly, not bawling, just the chest- chokes.
At the rear of the boat Elroy Berdahl pretended not to notice. He held a
fishing rod in his hands, his head bowed to hide his eyes. He kept humming
a soft, monotonous little tune. Everywhere, it seemed, in the trees and water
and sky, a great worldwide sadness came pressing down on me, a crushing sor-
row, sorrow like I had never known it before. And what was so sad, I realized,
was that Canada had become a pitiful fantasy. Silly and hopeless. It was no
longer a possibility. Right then, with the shore so close, I understood that I
would not do what I should do. I would not swim away from my hometown
and my country and my life. I would not be brave. at old image of myself
as a hero, as a man of conscience and courage, all that was just a threadbare
pipe dream. Bobbing there on the Rainy River, looking back at the Minnesota
shore, I felt a sudden swell of helplessness come over me, a drowning sensa-
tion, as if I had toppled overboard and was being swept away by the silver
waves. Chunks of my own history flashed by. I saw a seven- year- old boy in a
white cowboy hat and a Lone Ranger mask and a pair of holstered six- shooters;
I saw a twelve- year- old Little League shortstop pivoting to turn a double play; I
saw a sixteen- year- old kid decked out for his first prom, looking spiffy in a
white tux and a black bow tie, his hair cut short and flat, his shoes freshly pol-
ished. My whole life seemed to spill out into the river, swirling away from me,
everything I had ever been or ever wanted to be. I couldn’t get my breath; I
couldn’t stay afloat; I couldn’t tell which way to swim. A hallucination, I sup-
pose, but it was as real as anything I would ever feel. I saw my parents calling to
me from the far shoreline. I saw my brother and sister, all the townsfolk, the
mayor and the entire Chamber of Commerce and all my old teachers and
girlfriends and high school buddies. Like some weird sporting event: every-
body screaming from the sidelines, rooting me on — a loud stadium roar. Hot-
dogs and popcorn — stadium smells, stadium heat. A squad of cheerleaders
did cartwheels along the banks of the Rainy River; they had megaphones and
pompoms and smooth brown thighs. e crowd swayed left and right. A
marching band played fight songs. All my aunts and uncles were there, and
Abraham Lincoln, and Saint George, and a nine- year- old girl named Linda
who had died of a brain tumor back in fifth grade, and several members of the
United States Senate, and a blind poet scribbling notes, and LBJ, and Huck
Finn, and Abbie Hoffman, and all the dead soldiers back from the grave, and
the many thousands who were later to die — villagers with terrible burns, little
kids without arms or legs — yes, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were there, and
a couple of popes, and a first lieutenant named Jimmy Cross, and the last
surviving veteran of the American Civil War, and Jane Fonda dressed up as
Barbarella, and an old man sprawled beside a pigpen, and my grandfather, and
Gary Cooper, and a kind- faced woman carry ing an umbrella and a copy of
Plato’s Republic, and a million ferocious citizens waving flags of all shapes and
colors — people in hard hats, people in headbands — they were all whooping
and chanting and urging me toward one shore or the other. I saw faces from
my distant past and distant future. My wife was there. My unborn daughter
waved at me, and my two sons hopped up and down, and a drill sergeant
named Blyton sneered and shot up a finger and shook his head. ere was a
choir in bright purple robes. ere was a cabbie from the Bronx. ere was a
slim young man I would one day kill with a hand grenade along a red clay trail
outside the village of My Khe.
e little aluminum boat rocked softly beneath me. ere was the wind
and the sky.
I tried to will myself overboard.
I gripped the edge of the boat and leaned forward and thought, Now.
I did try. It just wasn’t possible.
All those eyes on me — the town, the whole universe — and I couldn’t risk
the embarrassment. It was as if there were an audience to my life, that swirl of
faces along the river, and in my head I could hear people screaming at me.
Traitor! they yelled. Turncoat! Pussy! I felt myself blush. I couldn’t tolerate it.
I couldn’t endure the mockery, or the disgrace, or the patriotic ridicule. Even
in my imagination, the shore just twenty yards away, I couldn’t make myself
be brave. It had nothing to do with morality. Embarrassment, that’s all it was.
And right then I submitted.
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I would go to the war — I would kill and maybe die — because I was
embarrassed not to.
at was the sad thing. And so I sat in the bow of the boat and cried.
It was loud now. Loud, hard crying.
Elroy Berdahl remained quiet. He kept fishing. He worked his line with
the tips of his fingers, patiently, squinting out at his red and white bobber on the
Rainy River. His eyes were flat and impassive. He didn’t speak. He was simply
there, like the river and the late- summer sun. And yet by his presence, his
mute watchfulness, he made it real. He was the true audience. He was a witness,
like God, or like the gods, who look on in absolute silence as we live our lives,
as we make our choices or fail to make them.
“Ain’t biting,” he said.
en after a time the old man pulled in his line and turned the boat back
toward Minnesota.
I don’t remember saying goodbye. at last night we had dinner together, and
I went to bed early, and in the morning Elroy fixed breakfast for me. When I
told him I’d be leaving, the old man nodded as if he already knew. He looked
down at the table and smiled.
At some point later in the morning it’s possible that we shook hands — I
just don’t remember — but I do know that by the time I’d finished packing the
old man had disappeared. Around noon, when I took my suitcase out to the
car, I noticed that his old black pickup truck was no longer parked in front of
the house. I went inside and waited for a while, but I felt a bone certainty that
he wouldn’t be back. In a way, I thought, it was appropriate. I washed up the
breakfast dishes, left his two hundred dollars on the kitchen counter, got into
the car, and drove south toward home.
e day was cloudy. I passed through towns with familiar names, through
the pine forests and down to the prairie, and then to Vietnam, where I was a
soldier, and then home again. I survived, but it’s not a happy ending. I was a
coward. I went to the war.
⁓ 
303
“I assumed that becoming a professional
writer was out of my hands, but
writing every day (or nearly every day)
is something one does, rather than
something one becomes.”
⁓ from e New Yorker,
June , 
ZZ Packer
u Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
ZZ Packer was born in Chicago
in 1973 and grew up in Atlanta,
Georgia, and Louisville, Ken-
tucky. She received a B.A. from
Yale University, an M.A. from
Johns Hopkins University,
and an M.F.A. from the Iowa
Writers’ Workshop. She sub-
sequently attended Stanford
University, where she was
awarded a Wallace Stegner
Fellowship in creative writing. Her short story “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere”
first appeared in a Debut Fiction issue of The New Yorker and became the title
story of her first book, which was a New York Times Notable Book and a final-
ist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Packer’s stories have twice appeared in Best
American Short Stories, and she has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship
and was named one of Granta Magazine’s Best Young American Novelists.
Orientation games began the day I arrived at Yale from Baltimore. In my
group we played heady, frustrating games for smart people. One game
appeared to be charades reinterpreted by existentialists; another involved lis-
tening to rocks. en a freshman counsellor made everyone play Trust. e
idea was that if you had the faith to fall backward and wait for four scrawny
former high school geniuses to catch you, just before your head cracked on the
slate sidewalk, then you might learn to trust your fellow students. Rus sian rou-
lette sounded like a better way to go.
“No way,” I said. e white boys were waiting for me to fall, holding their
arms out for me, sincerely, gallantly. “No fucking way.”
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“It’s all cool, it’s all cool,” the counselor said. Her hair was a shade of
blond I’d seen only on Playboy covers, and she raised her hands as though back-
ing away from a growling dog. “Sister,” she said, in an I’m-down- with- the-
struggle voice, “you don’t have to play this game. As a person of color, you
shouldn’t have to fit into any white, patriarchal system.”
I said, “It’s a bit too late for that.”
In the next game, all I had to do was wait in a circle until it was my turn
to say what inanimate object I wanted to be. One guy said he’d like to be a
gadfly, like Socrates. “Stop me if I wax Platonic,” he said. I didn’t bother
mentioning that gadflies weren’t inanimate—it didn’t seem to make a dif-
ference. e girl next to him was eating a rice cake. She wanted to be the
Earth, she said. Earth with a capital E.
ere was one other black person in the circle. He wore an Exeter T-shirt
and his overly elastic expressions resembled a series of facial exercises. At the
end of each person’s turn, he smiled and bobbed his head with unfettered en-
thusiasm. “Oh, that was good,” he said, as if the game were an experiment he’d
set up and the results were turning out better than he’d expected. “Good, good,
good!”
When it was my turn I said, “My name is Dina, and if I had to be any
object, I guess I’d be a revolver.” e sunlight dulled as if on cue. Clouds passed
rapidly overhead, presaging rain. I don’t know why I said it. Until that moment
I’d been good in all the ways that were meant to matter. I was an honor roll
student — though I’d learned long ago not to mention it in the part of Balti-
more where I lived. Suddenly I was hard- bitten and recalcitrant, the kind of
kid who took plea sure in sticking pins into cats; the kind who chased down
smart kids to spray them with Mace.
“A revolver,” a counselor said, stroking his chin, as if it had grown a rab-
binical beard. “Could you please elaborate?”
e black guy cocked his head and frowned, as if the beakers and Erlen-
meyer flasks of his experiment had grown legs and scurried off.
“You were just kidding,” the dean said, “about wiping out all of mankind. at,
I suppose, was a joke.” She squinted at me. One of her hands curved atop the
other to form a pink, freckled molehill on her desk.
“Well,” I said, “maybe I meant it at the time.” I quickly saw that this was
not the answer she wanted. “I don’t know. I think it’s the architecture.”
rough the dimming light of the dean’s office window, I could see the
fortress of the old campus. On my ride from the bus station to the campus, I’d
barely glimpsed New Haven — a flash of crumpled building here, a trio of
straggly kids there. A lot like Baltimore. But everything had changed when
we reached those streets hooded by gothic buildings. I imagined how the col-
lege must have looked when it was founded, when most of the students owned
slaves. I pictured men wearing tights and knickers, smoking pipes.
“e architecture,” the dean repeated. She bit her lip and seemed to be mak-
ing a calculation of some sort. I noticed that she blinked less often than most
people. I sat there, intrigued, waiting to see how long it would be before she
blinked again.
My revolver comment won me a year’s worth of psychiatric counseling, weekly
meetings with Dean Guest, and — since the parents of the roommate I’d never
met weren’t too hip on the idea of their Amy sharing a bunk bed with a budding
homicidal loony — my very own room.
Shortly after getting my first C ever, I also received the first knock on my
door. e female counselors never knocked. e dean had spoken to them; I
was a priority. Every other day, right before dinnertime, they’d look in on me,
unannounced. “Just checking up,” a counselor would say. It was the voice of a
suburban mother in training. By the second week, I had made a point of sit-
ting in a chair in front of the door, just when I expected a counselor to pop
her head around. is was intended to startle them. I also made a point of being
naked. e unannounced visits ended.
e knocking persisted. rough the peephole I saw a white face, distorted
and balloonish.
“Let me in.” e person looked like a boy but sounded like a girl. “Let me
in,” the voice repeated.
“Not a chance,” I said. I had a suicide single, and I wanted to keep it that
way. No roommates, no visitors.
en the person began to sob, and I heard a back slump against the door.
If I hadn’t known the person was white from the peephole, I’d have known it
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from a display like this. Black people didn’t knock on strangers’ doors, crying.
Not that I understood the black people at Yale. Most of them were from New
York and tried hard to pretend that they hadn’t gone to prep schools. And
there was something pitiful in how cool they were. Occasionally one would
reach out to me with missionary zeal, but I’d rebuff the person with haughty
silence.
“I don’t have anyone to talk to!” the person on the other side of the door
cried.
“at is correct.”
“When I was a child,” the person said, “I played by myself in a corner of
the schoolyard all alone. I hated dolls and I hated games, animals were not
friendly and birds flew away. If anyone was looking for me I hid behind a tree
and cried out ‘I am an orphan—’ ”
I opened the door. It was a she.
“Plagiarist!” I yelled. She had just recited a Frank O’Hara poem as though
she’d thought it up herself. I knew the poem because it was one of the few
things I’d been forced to read that I wished I’d written myself.
e girl turned to face me, smiling weakly, as though her triumph was
not in getting me to open the door but in the fact that she was able to smile at
all when she was so accustomed to crying. She was large but not obese, and
crying had turned her face the color of raw chicken. She blew her nose into
the waist end of her T-shirt, revealing a pale belly.
“How do you know that poem?”
She sniffed. “I’m in your Contemporary Poetry class.”
She said she was Canadian and her name was Heidi, although she said
she wanted people to call her Henrik. “at’s a guy’s name,” I said. “What do
you want? A sex change?”
She looked at me with so little surprise that I suspected she hadn’t dis-
counted this as an option. en her story came out in teary, hiccup- like bursts.
She had sucked some “cute guy’s dick” and he’d told everybody and now people
thought she was “a slut.”
“Why’d you suck his dick? Aren’t you a lesbian?”
She fit the bill. Short hair, hard, roach- stomping shoes. Dressed like an
aspiring plumber. And then there was the name Henrik. e lesbians I’d seen
on TV were wiry, thin strips of muscle, but Heidi was round and soft and had
a moonlike face. Drab henna- colored hair. And lesbians had cats. “Do you
have a cat?” I asked.
Her eyes turned glossy with new tears. “No,” she said, her voice wavering,
“and I’m not a lesbian. Are you?”
“Do I look like one?” I said.
She didn’t answer.
“O.K.” I said. “I could suck a guy’s dick, too, if I wanted. But I don’t. e
human penis is one of the most germ- ridden objects there is.” Heidi looked at
me, unconvinced. “What I meant to say,” I began again, “is that I don’t like
anybody. Period. Guys or girls. I’m a misanthrope.”
“I am, too.”
“No,” I said, guiding her back through my door and out into the hallway.
“You’re not.”
“Have you had dinner?” she asked. “Let’s go to Commons.”
I pointed to a pyramid of ramen noodle packages on my windowsill. “See
that? at means I never have to go to Commons. Aside from class, I have con-
tact with no one.”
“I hate it here, too,” she said. “I should have gone to McGill, eh.”
“e way to feel better,” I said, “is to get some ramen and lock yourself in
your room. Everyone will forget about you and that guy’s dick and you won’t
have to see anyone ever again. If anyone looks for you—”
“I’ll hide behind a tree.”
“A revolver?” Dr. Raeburn said, flipping through a manila folder. He looked
up at me as if to ask another question, but he didn’t.
Dr. Raeburn was the psychiatrist. He had the gray hair and whis kers of a
Civil War general. He was also a chain smoker with beige teeth and a navy
wool jacket smeared with ash. He asked about the revolver at the beginning of
my first visit. When I was unable to explain myself, he smiled, as if this were
perfectly reasonable.
“Tell me about your parents.”
I wondered what he already had on file. e folder was thick, though I
hadn’t said a thing of significance since Day One.
“My father was a dick and my mother seemed to like him.”
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He patted his pockets for his cigarettes. “at’s some heavy stuff,” he
said. “How do you feel about Dad?” e man couldn’t say the word “father.”
“Is Dad someone you see often?”
“I hate my father almost as much as I hate the word ‘Dad.’ ”
He started tapping his cigarette.
“You can’t smoke in here.”
“at’s right,” he said, and slipped the cigarette back into the packet. He
smiled, widening his eyes brightly. “Don’t ever start.”
I thought that that first encounter would be the last of Heidi or Henrik, or
whatever, but then her head appeared in a window of Linsly- Chit during my
Chaucer class. A few days later, she swooped down a flight of stairs in Hark-
ness, following me. She hailed me from across Elm Street and found me in the
Sterling Library stacks. After one of my meetings with Dr. Raeburn, she was
waiting for me outside Health Ser vices, legs crossed, cleaning her fingernails.
“You know,” she said, as we walked through Old Campus, “you’ve got
to stop eating ramen. Not only does it lack a single nutrient but it’s full of
MSG.”
I wondered why she even bothered, and was vaguely flattered she cared,
but I said, “I like eating chemicals. It keeps the skin radiant.”
“ere’s also hepatitis.” She knew how to get my attention — mention a
disease.
“You get hepatitis from unwashed lettuce,” I said. “If there’s anything
safe from the perils of the food chain, it’s ramen.”
“But do you refrigerate what you don’t eat? Each time you reheat it, you’re
killing good bacteria, which then can’t keep the bad bacteria in check. A guy
got sick from reheating Chinese noodles, and his son died from it. I read it in
the Times.” With this, she put a jovial arm around my neck. I continued walk-
ing, a little stunned. en, just as quickly, she dropped her arm and stopped
walking. I stopped, too.
“Did you notice that I put my arm around you?”
“Yes,” I said. “Next time, I’ll have to chop it off.”
“I don’t want you to get sick,” she said. “Let’s eat at Commons.”
In the cold air, her arm had felt good.
e problem with Commons was that it was too big; its ceiling was as high
as a cathedral’s, but below it there were no awestruck worshippers, only
eighteen- year- olds at heavy wooden tables, chatting over veal patties and
Jell- O.
We got our food, tacos stuffed with meat substitute, and made our way
through the maze of tables. e Koreans had a table. Each singing group had
a table. e crew team sat at a long table of its own. We passed the black table.
Heidi was so plump and moonfaced that the sheer quantity of her flesh ac-
centuated just how white she was. e black students gave me a long, hard
stare.
“How you doing, sista?” a guy asked, his voice full of accusation, eyeballing
me as though I were clad in a Klansman’s sheet and hood. “I guess we won’t
see you till graduation.”
“If,” I said, “you graduate.”
e remark was not well received. As I walked past, I heard protests, an-
gry and loud, as if they’d discovered a cheat at their poker game. Heidi and I
found an unoccupied table along the periphery, which was isolated and dark.
We sat down. Heidi prayed over her tacos.
“I thought you didn’t believe in God,” I said.
“Not in the God depicted in the Judeo- Christian Bible, but I do believe
that nature’s essence is a spirit that—”
“All right,” I said. I had begun to eat, and cubes of diced tomato fell from
my mouth when I spoke. “Stop right there. Tacos and spirits don’t mix.”
“You’ve always got to be so flip,” she said. “I’m going to apply for another
friend.”
“ere’s always Mr. Dick,” I said. “Slurp, slurp.”
“You are so lame. So unbelievably lame. I’m going out with Mr. Dick.
ursday night at Atticus. His name is Keith.”
Heidi hadn’t mentioned Mr. Dick since the day I’d met her. at was
more than a month ago and we’d spent a lot of that time together. I checked
for signs that she was lying; her habit of smiling too much, her eyes bright and
cheeks full so that she looked like a chipmunk. But she looked normal. Pleased,
even, to see me so flustered.
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“You’re insane! What are you going to do this time?” I asked. “Sleep with
him? en when he makes fun of you, what? Come pound your head on my
door reciting the collected poems of Sylvia Plath?”
“He’s going to apologize for before. And don’t call me insane. You’re the
one going to the psychiatrist.”
“Well, I’m not going to suck his dick, that’s for sure.”
She put her arm around me in mock comfort, but I pushed it off, and ig-
nored her. She touched my shoulder again, and I turned, annoyed, but it wasn’t
Heidi after all; a sepia- toned boy dressed in khakis and a crisp plaid shirt was
standing behind me. He thrust a hot- pink square of paper toward me without
a word, then briskly made his way toward the other end of Commons, where
the crowds blossomed. Heidi leaned over and read it: “Wear Black Leather — the
Less, the Better.”
“It’s a gay party,” I said, crumpling the card. “He thinks we’re fucking
gay.”
Heidi and I signed on to work at the Saybrook dining hall as dishwashers. e
job consisted of dumping food from plates and trays into a vat of rushing wa-
ter. It seemed straightforward, but then I learned better. You wouldn’t believe
what people could do with food until you worked in a dish room. Lettuce and
crackers and soup would be bullied into a pulp in the bowl of some bored an-
orexic; ziti would be mixed with honey and granola; trays would appear heaped
with mashed potato snow women with melted chocolate ice cream for hair.
Frat boys arrived at the dish- room window, en masse. ey liked to fill glasses
with food, then seal them, airtight, onto their trays. If you tried to prize them
off, milk, Worcestershire sauce, peas, chunks of bread vomited onto your dish-
room uniform.
When this happened one day in the middle of the lunch rush, for what
seemed like the hundredth time, I tipped the tray toward one of the frat boys
as he turned to walk away, popping the glasses off so that the mess spurted
onto his Shetland sweater.
He looked down at his sweater. “Lesbo bitch!”
“No,” I said, “that would be your mother.”
Heidi, next to me, clenched my arm in support, but I remained motion-
less, waiting to see what the frat boy would do. He glared at me for a minute,
then walked away.
“Let’s take a smoke break,” Heidi said.
I didn’t smoke, but Heidi had begun to, because she thought it would help
her lose weight. As I hefted a stack of glasses through the steamer, she lit up.
“Soft packs remind me of you,” she said. “Just when you’ve smoked them
all and you think there’s none left, there’s always one more, hiding in that little
crushed corner.” Before I could respond she said, “Oh, God. Not another
mouse. You know whose job that is.”
By the end of the rush, the floor mats got full and slippery with food. is
was when mice tended to appear, scurrying over our shoes; more often than not,
a mouse got caught in the grating that covered the drains in the floor. Some-
times the mouse was already dead by the time we noticed it. is one was alive.
“No way,” I said. “is time you’re going to help. Get some gloves and a
trash bag.”
“at’s all I’m getting. I’m not getting that mouse out of there.”
“Put on the gloves,” I ordered. She winced, but put them on. “Reach
down,” I said. “At an angle, so you get at its middle. Otherwise, if you try to
get it by its tail, the tail will break off.”
“is is filthy, eh.”
“at’s why we’re here,” I said. “To clean up filth. Eh.”
She reached down, but would not touch the mouse. I put my hand around
her arm and pushed it till her hand made contact. e cries from the mouse
were soft, songlike. “Oh, my God,” she said. “Oh, my God, ohmigod.” She
wrestled it out of the grating and turned her head away.
“Don’t you let it go,” I said.
“Where’s the food bag? It’ll smother itself if I drop it in the food bag.
Quick,” she said, her head still turned away, her eyes closed. “Lead me to it.”
“No. We are not going to smother this mouse. We’ve got to break its neck.”
“You’re one heartless bitch.”
I wondered how to explain that if death is unavoidable it should be quick
and painless. My mother had died slowly. At the hospital, they’d said it was
kidney failure, but I knew that, in the end, it was my father. He made her so
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scared to live in her own home that she was finally driven away from it in an
ambulance.
“Breaking its neck will save it the pain of smothering,” I said. “Breaking
its neck is more humane. Take the trash bag and cover it so you won’t get any
blood on you, then crush.”
e loud jets of the steamer had shut off automatically and the dish room
grew quiet. Heidi breathed in deeply, then crushed the mouse. She shuddered,
disgusted. “Now what?”
“What do you mean, ‘now what?’ row the little bastard in the trash.”
At our third session, I told Dr. Raeburn I didn’t mind if he smoked. He sat on
the sill of his open window, smoking behind a jungle screen of office plants.
We spent the first ten minutes discussing the Iliad, and whether or not
the text actually states that Achilles had been dipped in the River Styx. He said
it did, and I said it didn’t. After we’d finished with the Iliad, and with my new
job in what he called “the scullery,” he asked questions about my parents. I told
him nothing. It was none of his business. Instead, I talked about Heidi. I told
him about that day in Commons, Heidi’s plan to go on a date with Mr. Dick,
and the invitation we’d been given to the gay party.
“You seem preoccupied by this soirée.” He arched his eyebrows at the
word “soirée.”
“Wouldn’t you be?”
“Dina,” he said slowly, in a way that made my name seem like a song title,
“have you ever had a romantic interest?”
“You want to know if I’ve ever had a boyfriend?” I said. “Just go ahead
and ask if I’ve ever fucked anybody.”
is appeared to surprise him. “I think that you are having a crisis of
identity,” he said.
“Oh, is that what this is?”
His profession had taught him not to roll his eyes. Instead, his exaspera-
tion revealed itself in a tiny pursing of his lips, as though he’d just tasted
something awful and was trying very hard not to offend the cook.
“It doesn’t have to be, as you say, someone you’ve fucked, it doesn’t have
to be a boyfriend,” he said.
“Well, what are you trying to say? If it’s not a boy, then you’re saying it’s a
girl—”
“Calm down. It could be a crush, Dina.” He lit one cigarette off another.
“A crush on a male teacher, a crush on a dog, for heaven’s sake. An interest.
Not necessarily a relationship.”
It was sacrifice time. If I could spend the next half hour talking about
some boy, then I’d have given him what he wanted.
So I told him about the boy with the nice shoes.
I was sixteen and had spent the last few coins in my pocket on bus fare to
buy groceries. I didn’t like going to the Super Fresh two blocks away from my
house, plunking government food stamps into the hands of the cashiers.
“ere she go reading,” one of them once said, even though I was only
carry ing a book. “Don’t your eyes get tired?”
On Greenmount Avenue you could read schoolbooks — that was under-
standable. e government and your teachers forced you to read them. But
anything else was antisocial. It meant you’d rather submit to the words of
some white dude than shoot the breeze with your neighbors.
I hated those cashiers, and I hated them seeing me with food stamps, so
I took the bus and shopped elsewhere. at day, I got off the bus at Govans,
and though the neighborhood was black like my own — hair salon after hair
salon of airbrushed signs promising arabesque hair styles and inch- long fin-
gernails — the houses were neat and orderly, nothing at all like Greenmount,
where every other house had at least one shattered window. e store was
well swept, and people quietly checked long grocery lists — no screaming
kids, no loud cashier- customer altercations. I got the groceries and left the
store.
I decided to walk back. It was a fall day, and I walked for blocks. en I
sensed someone following me. I walked more quickly, my arms around the
sack, the leafy lettuce tickling my nose. I didn’t want to hold the sack so close
that it would break the eggs or squash the hamburger buns, but it was slip-
ping, and as I looked behind a boy my age, maybe older, rushed toward me.
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“Let me help you,” he said.
“at’s all right.” I set the bag on the sidewalk. Maybe I saw his face,
maybe it was handsome enough, but what I noticed first, splayed on either side
of the bag, were his shoes. ey were nice shoes, real leather, a stitched design
like a widow’s peak on each one, or like birds’ wings, and for the first time in
my life I understood what people meant when they said “wing- tip shoes.”
“I watched you carry them groceries out that store, then you look around,
like you’re lost, but like you liked being lost, then you walk down the sidewalk
for blocks and blocks. Rearranging that bag, it almost gone to slip, then heft-
ing it back up again.”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“And then I passed my own house and was still following you. And then
your bag really look like it was gone crash and everything. So I just thought
I’d help.” He sucked in his bottom lip, as if to keep it from making a smile.
“What’s your name?” When I told him, he said, “Dina, my name is Cecil.”
en he said, “D comes right after C.”
“Yes,” I said, “it does, doesn’t it.”
en, half question, half statement, he said, “I could carry your groceries
for you? And walk you home?”
I stopped the story there. Dr. Raeburn kept looking at me. “en what
happened?”
I couldn’t tell him the rest: that I had not wanted the boy to walk me
home, that I didn’t want someone with such nice shoes to see where I lived.
Dr. Raeburn would only have pitied me if I’d told him that I ran down
the sidewalk after I told the boy no, that I fell, the bag slipped, and the eggs
cracked, their yolks running all over the lettuce. Clear amniotic fluid coated
the can of cinnamon rolls. I left the bag there on the sidewalk, the groceries
spilled out randomly like cards loosed from a deck. When I returned home, I
told my mother that I’d lost the food stamps.
“Lost?” she said. I’d expected her to get angry, I’d wanted her to get angry,
but she hadn’t. “Lost?” she repeated. Why had I been so clumsy and ner vous
around a harmless boy? I could have brought the groceries home and washed
off the egg yolk, but instead I’d just left them there. “Come on,” Mama said,
snuffing her tears, pulling my arm, trying to get me to join her and start yank-
ing cushions off the couch. “We’ll find enough change here. We got to get
something for dinner before your father gets back.”
We’d already searched the couch for money the previous week, and I
knew there’d be nothing now, but I began to push my fingers into the couch’s
boniest corners, pretending that it was only a matter of time before I’d find
some change or a lost watch or an earring. Something pawnable, perhaps.
“What happened next?” Dr. Raeburn asked again. “Did you let the boy
walk you home?”
“My house was far, so we went to his house instead.” ough I was sure
Dr. Raeburn knew that I was making this part up, I continued. “We made
out on his sofa. He kissed me.”
Dr. Raeburn lit his next cigarette like a detective. Cool, suspicious. “How
did it feel?”
“You know,” I said. “Like a kiss feels. It felt nice. e kiss felt very, very
nice.”
Raeburn smiled gently, though he seemed unconvinced. When he called
time on our session his cigarette had become one long pole of ash. I left his
office, walking quickly down the corridor, afraid to look back. It would be
like him to trot after me, his navy blazer flapping, just to get the truth out of
me. You never kissed anyone. e words slid from my brain, and knotted in my
stomach.
When I reached my dorm, I found an old record player blocking my door
and a Charles Mingus LP propped beside it. I carried them inside and then,
lying on the floor, I played the Mingus over and over again until I fell asleep.
I slept feeling as though Dr. Raeburn had attached electrodes to my head,
willing into my mind a dream about my mother. I saw the lemon meringue of
her skin, the long bone of her arm as she reached down to clip her toenails. I’d
come home from a school trip to an aquarium, and I was explaining the differ-
ences between baleen and sperm whales according to the size of their heads,
the range of their habitats, their feeding patterns.
I awoke remembering the expression on her face after I’d finished my
dizzying whale lecture. She looked like a tourist who’d asked for direc-
tions to a place she thought was simple enough to get to only to hear a se-
ries of hypothetical turns, alleys, one- way streets. Her response was to nod
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politely at the perilous elaborateness of it all; to nod and save herself
from the knowledge that she would never be able to get where she wanted
to go.
e dishwashers always closed down the dining hall. One night, after every-
one else had punched out, Heidi and I took a break, and though I wasn’t a
smoker, we set two milk crates upside down on the floor and smoked cigarettes.
e dishwashing machines were off, but steam still rose from them like a
jungle mist. Outside in the winter air, students were singing carols in their
groomed and tailored singing- group voices. e Whiffenpoofs were back in
New Haven after a tour around the world, and I guess their return was a huge
deal. Heidi and I craned our necks to watch the year’s first snow through an
open window.
“What are you going to do when you’re finished?” Heidi asked. Sexy
question marks of smoke drifted up to the windows before vanishing.
“Take a bath.”
She swatted me with her free hand. “No, silly. ree years from now. When
you leave Yale.”
“I don’t know. Open up a library. Somewhere where no one comes in for
books. A library in a desert.”
She looked at me as though she’d expected this sort of answer and didn’t
know why she’d asked in the first place.
“What are you going to do?” I asked her.
“Open up a psych clinic. In a desert. And my only patient will be some
wacko who runs a library.”
“Ha,” I said. “What ever you do, don’t work in a dish room ever again.
You’re no good.” I got up from the crate. “C’mon. Let’s hose the place down.”
We put out our cigarettes on the floor, since it was our job to clean it any-
way. We held squirt guns in one hand and used the other to douse the floors
with the standard- issue, eye- burning cleaning solution. We hosed the dish
room, the kitchen, the serving line, sending the water and crud and suds into
the drains. en we hosed them again so the solution wouldn’t eat holes in our
shoes as we left. en I had an idea. I unbuckled my belt.
“What the hell are you doing?” Heidi said.
“Listen, it’s too cold to go outside with our uniforms all wet. We could
just take a shower right here. ere’s nobody but us.”
“What the fuck, eh?”
I let my pants drop, then took off my shirt and pan ties. I didn’t wear a bra,
since I didn’t have much to fill one. I took off my shoes and hung my clothes
on the stepladder.
“You’ve flipped,” Heidi said. “I mean, really, psych- ward flipped.”
I soaped up with the liquid hand soap until I felt as glazed as a ham. “Stand
back and spray me.”
“Oh, my God,” she said. I didn’t know whether she was confused or de-
lighted, but she picked up the squirt gun and sprayed me. She was laughing.
en she got too close and the water started to sting.
“God damn it!” I said. “at hurt!”
“I was wondering what it would take to make you say that.”
When all the soap had been rinsed off, I put on my regular clothes and
said, “O.K. You’re up next.”
“No way,” she said.
“Yes way.”
She started to take off her uniform shirt, then stopped.
“What?”
“I’m too fat.”
“You goddam right.” She always said she was fat. One time, I’d told her
that she should shut up about it, that large black women wore their fat like
mink coats. “You’re big as a house,” I said now. “Frozen yogurt may be low in
calories but not if you eat five tubs of it. Take your clothes off. I want to get
out of here.”
She began taking off her uniform, then stood there, hands cupped over
her breasts, crouching at the pubic bone.
“Open up,” I said, “or we’ll never get done.”
Her hands remained where they were. I threw the bottle of liquid soap at
her, and she had to catch it, revealing herself as she did.
I turned on the squirt gun, and she stood there, stiff, arms at her sides, eyes
closed, as though awaiting mummification. I began with the water on low, and
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she turned around in a full circle, hesitantly, letting the droplets from the spray
fall on her as if she were submitting to a death by stoning.
When I increased the water pressure, she slipped and fell on the sudsy floor.
She stood up and then slipped again. is time she laughed and remained on
the floor, rolling around on it as I sprayed.
I think I began to love Heidi that night in the dish room, but who is to say
that I hadn’t begun to love her the first time I met her? I sprayed her and sprayed
her, and she turned over and over like a large beautiful dolphin, lolling about in
the sun.
Heidi started sleeping at my place. Sometimes she slept on the floor; sometimes
we slept sardinelike, my feet at her head, until she complained that my feet
were “taunting” her. When we finally slept head to head, she said, “Much better.”
She was so close I could smell her toothpaste. “I like your hair,” she told me,
touching it through the darkness. “You should wear it out more often.”
“White people always say that about black people’s hair. e worse it
looks, the more they say they like it.”
I’d expected her to disagree, but she kept touching my hair, her hands pass-
ing through it till my scalp tingled. When she began to touch the hair around
the edge of my face, I felt myself quake. Her fingertips stopped for a moment, as
if checking my pulse, then resumed.
“I like how it feels right here. See, mine just starts with the same old tex-
ture as the rest of my hair.” She found my hand under the blanket and brought
it to her hairline. “See,” she said.
It was dark. As I touched her hair, it seemed as though I could smell it,
too. Not a shampoo smell. Something richer, murkier. A bit dead, but sweet,
like the decaying wood of a ship. She guided my hand.
“I see,” I said. e record she’d given me was playing in my mind, and I
kept trying to shut it off. I could also hear my mother saying that this is what
happens when you’ve been around white people: things get weird. So weird I
could hear the stylus etching its way into the flat vinyl of the record. “Listen,”
I said finally, when the bass and saxes started up. I heard Heidi breathe deeply,
but she said nothing.
We spent the winter and some of the spring in my room — never
hers — missing tests, listening to music, looking out my window to comment
on people who wouldn’t have given us a second thought. We read books
related to none of our classes. I got riled up by e Autobiography of Malcolm
X and e Chomsky Reader; Heidi read aloud passages from e Anxiety of
Influence. We guiltily read mysteries and Clan of the Cave Bear, then imme-
diately threw them away. Once we looked up from our books at exactly the
same moment, as though trapped at a dinner table with nothing to say. A
pleasant trap of silence.
en one weekend I went back to Baltimore and stayed with my father. He
asked me how school was going, but besides that, we didn’t talk much. He
knew what I thought of him. I stopped by the Enoch Pratt Library, where my
favorite librarian, Mrs. Ardelia, cornered me into giving a little talk to the after-
school kids, telling them to stay in school. ey just looked at me like I was
crazy; they were only nine or ten, and it hadn’t even occurred to them to bail.
When I returned to Yale — to a sleepy, tree- scented spring — a group of
students were holding what was called “Coming Out Day.” I watched it from
my room.
e emcee was the sepia boy who’d given us the invitation months back.
His speech was strident but still smooth and peppered with jokes. ere was a
speech about AIDS, with lots of statistics: nothing that seemed to make “com-
ing out” worth it. en the women spoke. One girl pronounced herself “out” as
casually as if she’d announced the time. Another said nothing at all: she came to
the microphone with a woman who began cutting off her waist- length, bleached-
blond hair. e woman doing the cutting tossed the shorn hair in every direc-
tion as she cut. People were clapping and cheering and catching the locks of hair.
And then there was Heidi. She was proud that she liked girls, she said
when she reached the microphone. She loved them, wanted to sleep with them.
She was a dyke, she said repeatedly, stabbing her finger to her chest in case any-
one was unsure to whom she was referring. She could not have seen me. I was
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across the street, three stories up. And yet, when everyone clapped for her, she
seemed to be looking straight at me.
Heidi knocked. “Let me in.”
It was like the first time I met her. e tears, the raw pink of her face.
We hadn’t spoken in weeks. Outside, pink- and- white blossoms hung from
the Old Campus trees. Students played Hacky Sack in T-shirts and shorts.
ough I was the one who’d broken away after she went up to that podium, I
still half expected her to poke her head out a window in Linsly- Chit, or tap on
my back in Harkness, or even join me in the Commons dining hall, where I’d
asked for my dish- room shift to be transferred. She did none of these.
“Well,” I said, “what is it?”
She looked at me. “My mother,” she said.
She continued to cry, but seemed to have grown so silent in my room I
wondered if I could hear the numbers change on my digital clock.
“When my parents were getting divorced,” she said, “my mother bought
a car. A used one. An El Dorado. It was filthy. It looked like a huge crushed
can coming up the street. She kept trying to clean it out. I mean—”
I nodded and tried to think what to say in the pause she left behind. Fi-
nally I said, “We had one of those,” though I was sure ours was an Impala.
She looked at me, eyes steely from trying not to cry. “Anyway, she’d drive
me around in it and although she didn’t like me to eat in it, I always did. One
day, I was eating cantaloupe slices, spitting the seeds on the floor. Maybe a
month later, I saw this little sprout, growing right up from the car floor. I just
started laughing and she kept saying what, what? I was laughing and then I
saw she was so—”
She didn’t finish. So what? So sad? So awful? Heidi looked at me with what
seemed to be a renewed vigor. “We could have gotten a better car, eh?”
“It’s all right. It’s not a big deal,” I said.
Of course, that was the wrong thing to say. And I really didn’t mean it to
sound the way it had come out.
I told Dr. Raeburn about Heidi’s mother having cancer and how I’d said it
wasn’t a big deal, though I’d wanted to say the opposite. I told Dr. Raeburn
how I meant to tell Heidi that my mother had died, that I knew how one
eventually accustoms oneself to the physical world’s lack of sympathy: the
buses that are still running late, the kids who still play in the street, the clocks
that won’t stop ticking for the person who’s gone.
“You’re pretending,” Dr. Raeburn said, not sage or professional, but a little
shocked by the discovery, as if I’d been trying to hide a pack of his cigarettes
behind my back.
“I’m pretending?” I shook my head. “All those years of psych grad,” I said.
“And to tell me that?”
“What I mean is that you construct stories about yourself and dish them
out — one for you, one for you—” Here he reenacted this pro cess, showing
me handing out lies as if they were apples.
“Pretending. I believe the professional name for it might be denial,” I
said. “Are you calling me gay?”
He pursed his lips noncommittally, then finally said, “No, Dina. I don’t
think you’re gay.”
I checked his eyes. I couldn’t read them.
“No. Not at all,” he said, sounding as if he were telling a subtle joke. “But
maybe you’ll finally understand.”
“Understand what?”
“Oh, just that constantly saying what one doesn’t mean accustoms the
mouth to meaningless phrases.” His eyes narrowed. “Maybe you’ll understand
that when you finally need to express something truly significant your mouth
will revert to the insignificant nonsense it knows so well.” He looked at me, his
hands sputtering in the air in a gesture of defeat. “Who knows?” he asked with
a glib, psychiatric smile I’d never seen before. “Maybe it’s your survival mecha-
nism. Black living in a white world.”
I heard him, but only vaguely. I’d hooked on to that one word, pretend-
ing. Dr. Raeburn would never realize that “pretending” was what had got
me this far. I remembered the morning of my mother’s funeral. I’d been
given milk to settle my stomach; I’d pretended it was coffee. I imagined I
was drinking coffee elsewhere. Some Arabic- speaking country where the
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thick coffee served in little cups was so strong it could keep you awake for
days.
Heidi wanted me to go with her to the funeral. She’d sent this message through
the dean. “We’ll pay for your ticket to Vancouver,” the dean said.
ese people wanted you to owe them for everything. “What about my
return ticket?” I asked the dean. “Maybe the shrink will chip in for that.”
e dean looked at me as though I were an insect she’d like to squash.
“We’ll pay for the whole thing. We might even pay for some lessons in manners.”
So I packed my suitcase and walked from my suicide single dorm to
Heidi’s room. A thin wispy girl in ragged cutoffs and a shirt that read “LSBN!”
answered the door. A group of short- haired girls in thick black leather jackets,
bundled up despite the summer heat, encircled Heidi in a protective fairy ring.
ey looked at me critically, clearly wondering if Heidi was too fragile for my
company.
“You’ve got our numbers,” one said, holding onto Heidi’s shoulder. “And
Vancouver’s got a great gay community.”
“Oh, God,” I said. “She’s going to a funeral, not a Save the Dykes rally.”
One of the girls stepped in front of me.
“It’s O.K., Cynthia,” Heidi said. en she ushered me into her bedroom
and closed the door. A suitcase was on her bed, half packed.
“I could just uninvite you,” Heidi said. “How about that? You want that?”
She folded a polka- dotted T-shirt that was wrong for any occasion and put it
in her suitcase. “Why haven’t you talked to me?” she said, looking at the shirt
instead of me. “Why haven’t you talked to me in two months?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You don’t know,” she said, each syllable steeped in sarcasm. “You don’t
know. Well, I know. You thought I was going to try to sleep with you.”
“Try to? We slept together all winter!”
“If you call smelling your feet sleeping together, you’ve got a lot to learn.”
She seemed thinner and meaner; every line of her body held me at bay.
“So tell me,” I said. “What can you show me that I need to learn?” But as
soon as I said it I somehow knew that she still hadn’t slept with anyone. “Am
I supposed to come over there and sweep your enraged self into my arms?” I
said. “Like in the movies? Is this the part where we’re both so mad we kiss
each other?”
She shook her head and smiled weakly. “You don’t get it,” she said. “My
mother is dead.” She closed her suitcase, clicking shut the old- fashioned locks.
“My mother is dead,” she said again, this time reminding herself. She set her
suitcase upright on the floor and sat on it. She looked like someone waiting for
a train.
“Fine,” I said. “And she’s going to be dead for a long time.” ough it
sounded stupid, I felt good saying it. As though I had my own locks to click
shut.
Heidi went to Vancouver for her mother’s funeral. I didn’t go. Instead, I went
back to Baltimore and moved in with an aunt I barely knew. Every day was
the same: I read and smoked outside my aunt’s apartment, studying the row of
hair salons across the street, where girls in denim cutoffs and tank tops would
troop in and come out hours later, a flash of neon nails, coifs the color and sheen
of patent leather. And every day I imagined Heidi’s house in Vancouver. Her
place would not be large, but it would be clean. Flowery shrubs would line the
walks. e Canadian wind would whip us about like pennants. I’d be visiting
her in some vague time in the future, deliberately vague, for people like me,
who realign past events to suit themselves. In that future time, you always
have a chance to catch the groceries before they fall; your words can always be
rewound and erased, rewritten and revised.
en I’d imagine Heidi visiting me. ere are no psychiatrists or deans,
no boys with nice shoes or flip cashiers. Just me in my single room. She
knocks on the door and says, “Open up.”
⁓ 
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324
“One reason I think I like to write from
adolescent points of view is because of
that kid‑ elasticity — at that age you can
really straddle two worlds, a childhood
realm that’s colored by games and fairy
tales and an adult reality.”
⁓ from Granta, November , 
Karen Russell
u St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
Originally from Florida, Karen
Russell received a B.A. from
Northwestern University in
2003 and went on to earn
an M.F.A. from Columbia Uni-
versity. Her short fiction has
appeared in Granta, Zoetrope,
Oxford American, and The
New Yorker. Her short story
“St. Lucy’s Home for Girls
Raised by Wolves” was se-
lected for Best American Short
Stories and became the title story of her first collection. Russell has won the
Bard Fiction Prize and a National Magazine Award. She was named one of
Granta Magazine’s Best Young American Novelists, and her debut novel,
Swamplandia!, was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize.
Stage 1: e initial period is one in which everything is new, exciting, and
interesting for your students. It is fun for your students to explore their new
environment.
⁓ from e Jesuit Handbook on Lycanthropic Culture Shock
At first, our pack was all hair and snarl and floor- thumping joy. We forgot
the barked cautions of our mothers and fathers, all the promises we’d
made to be civilized and ladylike, couth and kempt. We tore through the
austere rooms, overturning dresser drawers, pawing through the neat piles of
the Stage  girls’ starched underwear, smashing light bulbs with our bare fists.
ings felt less foreign in the dark. e dim bedroom was windowless and
odorless. We remedied this by spraying exuberant yellow streams all over the
bunks. We jumped from bunk to bunk, spraying. We nosed each other midair,
our bodies buckling in kinetic laughter. e nuns watched us from the corner
of the bedroom, their tiny faces pinched with dis plea sure.
“Ay caramba,” Sister Maria de la Guardia sighed. “Que barbaridad!” She
made the Sign of the Cross. Sister Maria came to St. Lucy’s from a Halfway
House in Copacabana. In Copacabana, the girls are fat and languid and eat
pink slivers of guava right out of your hand. Even at Stage , their pelts are silky,
sun- bleached to near invisibility. Our pack was hirsute and sinewy and mostly
brunette. We had terrible posture. We went knuckling along the wooden floor
on the callused pads of our fists, baring row after row of tiny, wood- rotted teeth.
Sister Josephine sucked in her breath. She removed a yellow wheel of floss from
under her robes, looping it like a miniature lasso.
“e girls at our facility are backwoods,” Sister Josephine whispered to
Sister Maria de la Guardia with a beatific smile. “You must be patient with
them.” I clamped down on her ankle, straining to close my jaws around the
woolly XXL sock. Sister Josephine tasted like sweat and freckles. She smelled
easy to kill.
We’d arrived at St. Lucy’s that morning, part of a pack fifteen- strong. We
were accompanied by a mousy, nervous- smelling social worker; the baby- faced
deacon; Bartholomew the blue wolfhound; and four burly woodsmen. e
deacon handed out some stale cupcakes and said a quick prayer. en he led
us through the woods. We ran past the wild apiary, past the felled oaks, until
we could see the white steeple of St. Lucy’s rising out of the forest. We stopped
short at the edge of a muddy lake. en the deacon took our brothers. Bar-
tholomew helped him to herd the boys up the ramp of a small ferry. We girls ran
along the shore, tearing at our new jumpers in a plaid agitation. Our brothers
stood on the deck, looking small and confused.
Our mothers and fathers were werewolves. ey lived an outsider’s exis-
tence in caves at the edge of the forest, threatened by frost and pitchforks.
ey had been ostracized by the local farmers for eating their silled fruit pies
and terrorizing the heifers. ey had ostracized the local wolves by having
sometimes- thumbs, and regrets, and human children. (eir condition skips
a generation.) Our pack grew up in a green purgatory. We couldn’t keep up with
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the purebred wolves, but we never stopped crawling. We spoke a slab- tongued
pidgin in the cave, inflected with frequent howls. Our parents wanted some-
thing better for us; they wanted us to get braces, use towels, be fully bilingual.
When the nuns showed up, our parents couldn’t refuse their offer. e nuns,
they said, would make us naturalized citizens of human society. We would go to
St. Lucy’s to study a better culture. We didn’t know at the time that our parents
were sending us away for good. Neither did they.
at first afternoon, the nuns gave us free rein of the grounds. Everything
was new, exciting, and interesting. A low granite wall surrounded St. Lucy’s,
the blue woods humming for miles behind it. ere was a stone fountain full
of delectable birds. ere was a statue of St. Lucy. Her marble skin was colder
than our mother’s nose, her pupilless eyes rolled heavenward. Doomed squirrels
gamboled around her stony toes. Our diminished pack threw back our heads
in a celebratory howl — an exultant and terrible noise, even without a chorus
of wolf- brothers in the background. ere were holes everywhere!
We supplemented these holes by digging some of our own. We interred
sticks, and our itchy new jumpers, and the bones of the friendly, unfortunate
squirrels. Our noses ached beneath an invisible assault. Everything was smudged
with a human odor: baking bread, petrol, the nun’s faint woman- smell sweating
out beneath a dark perfume of tallow and incense. We smelled one another,
too, with the same astounded fascination. Our own scent had become foreign
in this strange place.
We had just sprawled out in the sun for an afternoon nap, yawning
into the warm dirt, when the nuns reappeared. ey conferred in the shadow
of the juniper tree, whispering and pointing. en they started toward us.
e oldest sister had spent the past hour twitching in her sleep, dreaming of
fatty and infirm elk. (e pack used to dream the same dreams back then,
as naturally as we drank the same water and slept on the same red scree.)
When our oldest sister saw the nuns approaching, she instinctively bristled.
It was an improvised bristle, given her new, human limitations. She took
clumps of her scraggly, nut- brown hair and held it straight out from her
head.
Sister Maria gave her a brave smile.
“And what is your name?” she asked.
e oldest sister howled something awful and inarticulate, a distillate of
hurt and panic, half- forgotten hunts and eclipsed moons. Sister Maria nodded
and scribbled on a yellow legal pad. She slapped on a nametag: , 
  _______! “Jeanette it is.”
e rest of the pack ran in a loose, uncertain circle, torn between our
instinct to help her and our new fear. We sensed some subtler danger afoot,
written in a language we didn’t understand.
Our littlest sister had the quickest reflexes. She used her hands to flatten
her ears to the side of her head. She backed toward the far corner of the garden,
snarling in the most menacing register that an eight- year- old wolf- girl can
muster. en she ran. It took them two hours to pin her down and tag her:
,    !
“Stage ,” Sister Maria sighed, taking careful aim with her tranquilizer dart.
“It can be a little overstimulating.”
Stage 2: After a time, your students realize that they must work to adjust to the
new culture. is work may be stressful and students may experience a strong
sense of dislocation. ey may miss certain foods. ey may spend a lot of time
daydreaming during this period. Many students feel isolated, irritated,
bewildered, depressed, or generally uncomfortable.
ose were the days when we dreamed of rivers and meat. e full- moon
nights were the worst! Worse than cold toilet seats and boiled tomatoes, worse
than trying to will our tongues to curl around our false new names. We would
snarl at one another for no reason. I remember how disorienting it was to look
down and see two square- toed shoes instead of my own four feet. Keep your
mouth shut, I repeated during our walking drills, staring straight ahead. Keep
your shoes on your feet. Mouth shut, shoes on feet. Do not chew on your new
penny loafers. Do not. I stumbled around in a daze, my mouth black with
shoe polish. e whole pack was irritated, bewildered, depressed. We were all
uncomfortable, and between languages. We had never wanted to run away so
badly in our lives; but who did we have to run back to? Only the curled black
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grimace of the mother. Only the father, holding his tawny head between his
paws. Could we betray our parents by going back to them? After they’d given
us the choicest part of the woodchuck, loved us at our hairless worst, nosed us
across the ice floes, and abandoned us at the Halfway House for our own bet-
terment?
Physically, we were all easily capable of clearing the low stone walls. Sister
Josephine left the wooden gates wide open. ey unslatted the windows at
night, so that long fingers of moonlight beckoned us from the woods. But
we knew we couldn’t return to the woods; not till we were civilized, not if we
didn’t want to break the mother’s heart. It all felt like a sly, human taunt.
It was impossible to make the blank, chilly bedroom feel like home. In
the beginning, we drank gallons of bathwater as part of a collaborative ef-
fort to mark our territory. We puddled up the yellow carpet of old newspa-
pers. But later, when we returned to the bedroom, we were dismayed to find
all trace of the pack musk had vanished. Someone was coming in and erasing
us. We sprayed and sprayed every morning; and every night, we returned to
the same ammonium eradication. We couldn’t make our scent stick here; it
made us feel invisible. Eventually we gave up. Still, the pack seemed to be
adjusting on the same timetable. e advanced girls could already alternate
between two speeds, “slouch” and “amble.” Almost everybody was fully bi-
pedal.
Almost.
e pack was worried about Mirabella.
Mirabella would rip foamy chunks out of the church pews and replace
them with ham bones and girl dander. She loved to roam the grounds wagging
her invisible tail. (We all had a hard time giving that up. When we got excited,
we would fall to the ground and start pumping our backsides. Back in those
days we could pump at rabbity velocities. Que horror! Sister Maria frowned,
looking more than a little jealous.) We’d give her scolding pinches. “Mirabella,”
we hissed, imitating the nuns. “No.” Mirabella cocked her ears at us, hurt and
confused.
Still, some things remained the same. e main commandment of wolf life
is Know Your Place, and that translated perfectly. Being around other humans
had awakened a slavish- dog affection in us. An abasing, belly- to- the- ground
desire to please. As soon as we realized that others higher up in the food chain
were watching us, we wanted only to be pleasing in their sight. Mouth shut, I
repeated, shoes on feet. But if Mirabella had this latent instinct, the nuns
couldn’t figure out how to activate it. She’d go bounding around, gleefully
spraying on their gilded statue of St. Lucy, mad- scratching at the virulent
fleas that survived all of their powders and baths. At Sister Maria’s tearful
insistence, she’d stand upright for roll call, her knobby, oddly muscled legs
quivering from the effort. en she’d collapse right back to the ground with
an ecstatic oomph! She was still loping around on all fours (which the nuns
had taught us to see looked unnatural and ridiculous — we could barely
believe it now, the shame of it, that we used to locomote like that!), her fists
blue- white from the strain. As if she were holding a secret tight to the ground.
Sister Maria de la Guardia would sigh every time she saw her. “Caramba!”
She’d sit down with Mirabella and pry her fingers apart. “You see?” she’d say
softly, again and again. “What are you holding on to? Nothing, little one.
Nothing.”
en she would sing out the standard chorus, “Why can’t you be more
like your sister Jeanette?”
e pack hated Jeanette. She was the most successful of us, the one fur-
thest removed from her origins. Her real name was GWARR! but she wouldn’t
respond to this anymore. Jeanette spiffed her penny loafers until her very shoes
seemed to gloat. (Linguists have since traced the colloquial origins of “goody
two- shoes” back to our facilities.) She could even growl out a demonic- sounding
precursor to “Pleased to meet you.” She’d delicately extend her former paws to
visitors, wearing white kid gloves.
“Our little wolf, disguised in sheep’s clothing!” Sister Ignatius liked to
joke with the visiting deacons, and Jeanette would surprise everyone by laugh-
ing along with them, a harsh, inhuman, barking sound. Her hearing was still
twig- snap sharp. Jeanette was the first among us to apologize; to drink apple
juice out of a sippy cup; to quit eyeballing the cleric’s jugular in a disconcert-
ing fashion. She curled her lips back into a cousin of a smile as the traveling
barber cut her pelt into bangs. en she swept her coarse black curls under the
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rug. When we entered a room, our nostrils flared beneath the new odors: onion
and bleach, candle wax, the turnipy smell of unwashed bodies. Not Jeanette.
Jeanette smiled and pretended she couldn’t smell a thing.
I was one of the good girls. Not great and not terrible, solidly middle- of-
the- pack. But I had an ear for languages, and I could read before I could ad-
equately wash myself. I probably could have vied with Jeanette for the number
one spot; but I’d seen what happened if you gave in to your natural aptitudes.
is wasn’t like the woods, where you had to be your fastest and your strongest
and your bravest self. Different sorts of calculations were required to survive
at the Home.
e pack hated Jeanette, but we hated Mirabella more. We began to avoid
her, but sometimes she’d surprise us, curled up beneath the beds or gnawing
on a scapula in the garden. It was scary to be ambushed by your sister. I’d
bristle and growl, the way that I’d begun to snarl at my own reflection as if it
were a stranger.
“What ever will become of Mirabella?” we asked, gulping back our own
fear. We’d heard rumors about former wolf- girls who never adapted to their
new culture. It was assumed that they were returned to our native country,
the vanishing woods. We liked to speculate about this before bedtime, scaring
ourselves with stories of catastrophic bliss. It was the disgrace, the failure that
we all guiltily hoped for in our hard beds. Twitching with the shadow ques-
tion: What ever will become of me?
We spent a lot of time daydreaming during this period. Even Jeanette.
Sometimes I’d see her looking out at the woods in a vacant way. If you inter-
rupted her in the midst of one of these reveries, she would lunge at you with
an elder- sister ferocity, momentarily forgetting her human catechism. We liked
her better then, startled back into being foamy old Jeanette.
In school, they showed us the St. Francis of Assisi slide show, again and
again. en the nuns would give us bags of bread. ey never announced these
things as a test; it was only much later that I realized that we were under con-
stant examination. “Go feed the ducks,” they urged us. “Go practice compas-
sion for all God’s creatures.” Don’t pair me with Mirabella, I prayed, anybody but
Mirabella. “Claudette,” Sister Josephine beamed, “why don’t you and Mirabella
take some pumpernickel down to the ducks?”
“Ohhkaaythankyou,” I said. (It took me a long time to say anything; first
I had to translate it in my head from the Wolf.) It wasn’t fair. ey knew Mi-
rabella couldn’t make bread balls yet. She couldn’t even undo the twist tie of
the bag. She was sure to eat the birds; Mirabella didn’t even try to curb her
desire to kill things — and then who would get blamed for the dark spots of
duck blood on our Peter Pan collars? Who would get penalized with negative
Skill Points? Exactly.
As soon as we were beyond the wooden gates, I snatched the bread away
from Mirabella and ran off to the duck pond on my own. Mirabella gave chase,
nipping at my heels. She thought it was a game. “Stop it,” I growled. I ran faster,
but it was Stage  and I was still unsteady on my two feet. I fell sideways into
a leaf pile, and then all I could see was my sister’s blurry form, bounding to-
ward me. In a moment, she was on top of me, barking the old word for tug- of-
war. When she tried to steal the bread out of my hands, I whirled around and
snarled at her, pushing my ears back from my head. I bit her shoulder, once,
twice, the only language she would respond to, I used my new motor skills. I
threw dirt, I threw stones. “Get away!” I screamed, long after she had made a
cringing retreat into the shadows of the purple saplings. “Get away, get away!”
Much later, they found Mirabella wading in the shallows of a distant river,
trying to strangle a mallard with her rosary beads. I was at the lake; I’d been
sitting there for hours. Hunched in the long cattails, my yellow eyes flashing,
shoving ragged hunks of bread into my mouth.
I don’t know what they did to Mirabella. Me they separated from my
sisters. ey made me watch another slide show. is one showed images of
former wolf- girls, the ones who had failed to be rehabilitated. Longhaired,
sad- eyed women, limping after their former wolf packs in white tennis shoes
and pleated culottes. A wolf- girl bank teller, her makeup smeared in oily rain-
bows, eating a raw steak on the deposit slips while her colleagues looked on in
disgust. Our parents. e final slide was a bolded sentence in St. Lucy’s prim
script:
         ?
After that, I spent less time with Mirabella. One night she came to me,
holding her hand out. She was covered with splinters, keening a high, whining
noise through her nostrils. Of course I understood what she wanted; I wasn’t
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that far removed from our language (even though I was reading at a fifth- grade
level, halfway into Jack London’s e Son of the Wolf ).
“Lick your own wounds,” I said, not unkindly. It was what the nuns had
instructed us to say; wound licking was not something you did in polite company.
Etiquette was so confounding in this country. Still, looking at Mirabella — her
fists balled together like small white porcupines, her brows knitted in animal
confusion — I felt a throb of compassion. How can people live like they do? I
wondered. en I congratulated myself. is was a Stage  thought.
Stage 3: It is common that students who start living in a new and different culture
come to a point where they reject the host culture and withdraw into themselves.
During this period, they make generalizations about the host culture and wonder
how the people can live like they do. Your students may feel that their own
culture’s lifestyle and customs are far superior to those of the host country.
e nuns were worried about Mirabella too. To correct a failing, you must first
be aware of it as a failing. And there was Mirabella, shucking her plaid jumper
in full view of the visiting cardinal. Mirabella, battling a raccoon under the din-
ner table while the rest of us took dainty bites of peas and borscht. Mirabella,
doing belly flops into compost.
“You have to pull your weight around here,” we overheard Sister Josephine
saying one night. We paused below the vestry window and peered inside.
“Does Mirabella try to earn Skill Points by shelling walnuts and polish-
ing Saint- in- the- Box? No. Does Mirabella even know how to say the word
walnut? Has she learned how to say anything besides a sinful ‘HraaaHA!’ as
she commits frottage against the organ pipes? No.”
ere was a long silence.
“Something must be done,” Sister Ignatius said firmly. e other nuns
nodded, a sea of thin, colorless lips and kettle- black brows. “Something must
be done,” they intoned. at ominously passive construction; a something so
awful that nobody wanted to assume responsibility for it.
I could have warned her. If we were back home, and Mirabella had come
under attack by territorial beavers or snow- blind bears, I would have warned
her. But the truth is that by Stage  I wanted her gone. Mirabella’s inability to
adapt was taking a visible toll. Her teeth were ground down to nubbins; her
hair was falling out. She hated the spongy, long- dead foods we were served,
and it showed — her ribs were poking through her uniform. Her bright eyes had
dulled to a sour whiskey color. But you couldn’t show Mirabella the slightest
kindness anymore — she’d never leave you alone! You’d have to sit across from
her at meals, shoving her away as she begged for your scraps. I slept fitfully
during that period, unable to forget that Mirabella was living under my bed,
gnawing on my loafers.
It was during Stage  that we met our first purebred girls. ese were girls
raised in captivity, volunteers from St. Lucy’s School for Girls. e apple-
cheeked fourth- grade class came to tutor us in playing. ey had long golden
braids or short, severe bobs. ey had frilly- duvet names like Felicity and
Beulah; and pert, bunny noses; and terrified smiles. We grinned back at them
with genuine ferocity. It made us ner vous to meet new humans. ere were so
many things that we could do wrong! And the rules here were different depend-
ing on which humans we were with: dancing or no dancing, checkers playing
or no checkers playing, pumping or no pumping.
e purebred girls played checkers with us.
“ese girl- girls sure is dumb,” my sister Lavash panted to me between
games. “I win it again! Five to none.”
She was right. e purebred girls were making mistakes on purpose, in
order to give us an advantage. “King me,” I growled, out of turn. “I SAY KING
ME!” and Felicity meekly complied. Beulah pretended not to mind when we
got frustrated with the oblique, fussy movement from square to square and
shredded the board to ribbons. I felt sorry for them. I wondered what it would
be like to be bred in captivity and always homesick for a dimly sensed forest,
the trees you’ve never seen.
Jeanette was learning how to dance. On Holy ursday, she mastered a
rudimentary form of the Charleston. “Brava!” the nuns clapped. “Brava!”
Every Friday, the girls who had learned how to ride a bicycle celebrated by
going on chaperoned trips into town. e purebred girls sold seven hundred
rolls of gift- wrap paper and used the proceeds to buy us a yellow fleet of bi-
cycles built for two. We’d ride the bicycles uphill, a sanctioned pumping, a
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grim- faced nun pedaling behind each one of us. “Congratulations!” the nuns
would huff. “Being human is like riding this bicycle. Once you’ve learned
how, you’ll never forget.” Mirabella would run after the bicycles, growling out
our old names. “Hwraa! Gwarr! Trrrrrrr!” We pedaled faster.
At this point, we’d had six weeks of lessons, and still nobody could do the
Sausalito but Jeanette. e nuns decided we needed an inducement to dance.
ey announced that we would celebrate our successful rehabilitations with
a Debutante Ball. ere would be brothers, ferried over from the Home for
Man- Boys Raised by Wolves. ere would be a photographer from the Gazette
Sophisticate. ere would be a three- piece jazz band from West Toowoomba,
and root beer in tiny plastic cups. e brothers! We’d almost forgotten about
them. Our invisible tails went limp. I should have been excited; instead I felt
a low mad anger at the nuns. ey knew we weren’t ready to dance with the
brothers; we weren’t even ready to talk to them. ings had been so much
simpler in the woods. at night I waited until my sisters were asleep. en I
slunk into the closet and practiced the Sausalito two- step in secret, a private
mass of twitch and foam. Mouth shut — shoes on feet! Mouth shut — shoes
on feet! Mouthshutmouthshut . . .
One night I came back early from the closet and stumbled on Jeanette.
She was sitting in a patch of moonlight on the windowsill, reading from one
of her library books. (She was the first of us to sign for her library card too.)
Her cheeks looked dewy.
“Why you cry?” I asked her, instinctively reaching over to lick Jeanette’s
cheek and catching myself in the nick of time.
Jeanette blew her nose into a nearby curtain. (Even her mistakes annoyed
us — they were always so well intentioned.) She sniffled and pointed to a line
in her book: “e lake water was reinventing the forest and the white moon
above it, and wolves lapped up the cold reflection of the sky.” But none of the
pack besides me could read yet; and I wasn’t ready to claim a common language
with Jeanette.
e following day, Jeanette golfed. e nuns set up a miniature put- put
course in the garden. Sister Maria dug four sand traps and got Clyde the grounds-
keeper to make a windmill out of a lawnmower engine. e eigh teenth hole
was what they called a “doozy,” a minuscule crack in St. Lucy’s marble dress.
Jeanette got a hole in one.
On Sundays, the pretending felt almost as natural as nature. e chapel
was our favorite place. Long before we could understand what the priest was
saying, the music instructed us in how to feel. e choir director — aggressively
perfumed Mrs. Valuchi, gold necklaces like pineapple rings around her neck —
taught us more than the nuns ever did. She showed us how to pattern the old
hunger into arias. Clouds moved behind the frosted oculus of the nave, glass
shadows that reminded me of my mother. e mother, I’d think, struggling
to conjure up a picture. A black shadow, running behind the watery screen of
pines.
We sang at the chapel annexed to the Halfway House every morning. We
understood that this was the human’s moon, the place for howling beyond
purpose. Not for mating, not for hunting, not for fighting, not for anything
but the sound itself. And we’d howl along with the choir, hurling every pitted
thing within us at the stained glass. “Sotto voce.” e nuns would frown. But
you could tell that they were pleased.
Stage 4: As a more thorough understanding of the host culture is acquired, your
students will begin to feel more comfortable in their new environment. Your
students feel more at home and their self‑ confidence grows. Everything begins
to make sense.
“Hey, Claudette,” Jeanette growled to me on the day before the ball. “Have
you noticed that everything’s beginning to make sense?”
Before I could answer, Mirabella sprang out of the hall closet and snapped
through Jeanette’s homework binder. Pages and pages of words swirled around
the stone corridor, like dead leaves off trees.
“What about you, Mirabella?” Jeanette asked politely, stooping to pick
up her erasers. She was the only one of us who would still talk to Mirabella;
she was high enough in the rankings that she could afford to talk to the scrug-
gliest wolf- girl. “Has everything begun to make more sense, Mirabella?”
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Mirabella let out a whimper. She scratched at us and scratched at us, raking
her nails along our shins, so hard that she drew blood. en she rolled belly- up
on the cold stone floor, squirming on a bed of spelling- bee worksheets. Above
us, small pearls of light dotted the high tinted window.
Jeanette frowned. “You are a late bloomer, Mirabella! Usually, everything’s
begun to make more sense by Month Twelve at the latest.” I noticed that she
stumbled on the word bloomer. HraaaHA! Jeanette could never fully shake
our accent. She’d talk like that her whole life, I thought with a gloomy satisfac-
tion, each word winced out like an apology for itself.
“Claudette, help me,” she yelped. Mirabella had closed her jaws around
Jeanette’s bald ankle and was dragging her toward the closet. “Please. Help
me to mop up Mirabella’s mess.”
I ignored her and continued down the hall. I only had four more hours to
perfect the Sausalito. I was worried only about myself. By that stage, I was no
longer certain of how the pack felt about anything.
At seven o’clock on the dot, Sister Ignatius blew her whistle and frog-
marched us into the ball. e nuns had transformed the rectory into a very
scary place. Purple and silver balloons started popping all around us. Black
streamers swooped down from the eaves and got stuck in our hair like bats. A
full yellow moon smirked outside the window. We were greeted by blasts of a
saxophone, and fizzy pink drinks, and the brothers.
e brothers didn’t smell like our brothers anymore. ey smelled like
pomade and cold, sterile sweat. ey looked like little boys. Someone had
washed behind their ears and made them wear suspendered dungarees. Kyle
used to be the blustery alpha male BT WWWR!, chewing through rattle-
snakes, spooking badgers, snatching a live trout out of a grizzly’s mouth. He
stood by the punch bowl, looking pained and out of place.
“My stars!” I growled. “What lovely weather we’ve been having!”
“Yeees,” Kyle growled back, “It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas.”
All around the room, boys and girls raised by wolves were having the same
conversation. Actually, it had been an unseasonably warm and brown winter,
and just that morning a freak hailstorm had sent Sister Josephine to an early
grave. But we had only gotten up to Unit : Party Dialogue; we hadn’t yet
learned the vocabulary for Unit : How to Tactfully Acknowledge Disaster.
Instead, we wore pink party hats and sucked olives on little sticks, inured to
our own strangeness.
e sisters swept our hair back into high, bouffant hairstyles. is made
us look more girlish and less inclined to eat people, the way that squirrels are
saved from looking like rodents by their poofy tails. I was wearing a white
organdy dress with orange polka dots. Jeanette was wearing a mauve organdy
dress with blue polka dots. Linette was wearing a red organdy dress with white
polka dots. Mirabella was in a dark corner, wearing a muzzle. Her party cu-
lottes were duct- taped to her knees. e nuns had tied little bows on the muzzle
to make it more festive. Even so, the jazz band from West Toowoomba kept
glancing ner vous ly her way.
“You smell astoooounding!” Kyle was saying, accidentally stretching the
diphthong into a howl and then blushing. “I mean . . .”
“Yes, I know what it is that you mean,” I snapped. (at’s probably a little
narrative embellishment on my part; it must have been months before I could
really “snap” out words.) I didn’t smell astounding. I had rubbed a pumpkin
muffin all over my body earlier that morning to mask my natural, feral scent.
Now I smelled like a purebred girl, easy to kill. I narrowed my eyes at Kyle
and flattened my ears, something I hadn’t done for months. Kyle looked pan-
icked, trying to remember the words that would make me act like a girl again.
I felt hot, oily tears squeezing out of the red corners of my eyes. Shoesonfeet! I
barked at myself. I tried again. “My! What lovely weather . . .”
e jazz band struck up a tune.
“e time has come to do the Sausalito,” Sister Maria announced, beaming
into the microphone. “Every sister grab a brother!” She switched on Clyde’s
industrial flashlight, struggling beneath its weight, and aimed the beam in the
center of the room.
Uh- oh. I tried to skulk off into Mirabella’s corner, but Kyle pushed me
into the spotlight. “No,” I moaned through my teeth, “noooooo.” All of a sud-
den the only thing my body could remember how to do was pump and pump.
In a flash of white- hot light, my months at St. Lucy’s had vanished, and I was
just a terrified animal again. As if of their own accord, my feet started to
wiggle out of my shoes. Mouth shut, I gasped, staring down at my naked toes,
mouthshutmouthshut.
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“Ahem. e time has come,” Sister Maria coughed, “to do the Sausalito.”
She paused. “e Sausalito,” she added helpfully, “does not in any way resem-
ble the thing that you are doing.”
Beads of sweat stood out on my forehead. I could feel my jaws gaping open,
my tongue lolling out of the left side of my mouth. What were the steps? I
looked frantically for Jeanette; she would help me, she would tell me what
to do.
Jeanette was sitting in the corner, sipping punch through a long straw and
watching me with uninterest. I locked eyes with her, pleading with the mute
intensity that I had used to beg her for weasel bones in the forest. “What are
the steps?” I mouthed. “e steps!”
“e steps?” en Jeanette gave me a wide, true wolf smile. For an instant,
she looked just like our mother. “Not for you,” she mouthed back.
I threw my head back, a howl clawing its way up my throat. I was about
to lose all my Skill Points, I was about to fail my Adaptive Dancing test. But
before the air could burst from my lungs, the wind got knocked out of me.
Oomph! I fell to the ground, my skirt falling softly over my head. Mirabella
had intercepted my eye- cry for help. She’d chewed through her restraints and
tackled me from behind, barking at unseen cougars, trying to shield me with
her tiny body. “Caramba!” Sister Maria squealed, dropping the flashlight. e
music ground to a halt. And I have never loved someone so much, before or
since, as I loved my littlest sister at that moment. I wanted to roll over and lick
her ears; I wanted to kill a dozen spotted fawns and let her eat first.
But everybody was watching; everybody was waiting to see what I would
do. “I wasn’t talking to you,” I grunted from underneath her. “I didn’t want
your help. Now you have ruined the Sausalito! You have ruined the ball!” I
said more loudly, hoping the nuns would hear how much my enunciation had
improved.
“You have ruined it!” my sisters panted, circling around us, eager to close
ranks. “Mirabella has ruined it!” Every girl was wild- eyed and itching under
her polka dots, punch froth dribbling down her chin. e pack had been wait-
ing for this moment for some time. “Mirabella cannot adapt! Back to the
woods, back to the woods!”
e band from West Toowoomba had quietly packed their instruments
into black suitcases and were sneaking out the back. e boys had fled back
toward the lake, bow ties spinning, suspenders snapping in their haste. Mira-
bella was still snarling in the center of it all, trying to figure out where the dan-
ger was so that she could defend me against it. e nuns exchanged glances.
In the morning, Mirabella was gone. We checked under all the beds. I
pretended to be surprised. I’d known she would have to be expelled the min-
ute I felt her weight on my back. Clyde had come and told me this in secret
after the ball, “So you can say yer goodbyes.” I didn’t want to face Mirabella.
Instead, I packed a tin lunch pail for her: two jelly sandwiches on saltine crack-
ers, a chloroformed squirrel, a gilt- edged placard of St. Bolio. I left it for her
with Sister Ignatius, with a little note: Best wishes! I told myself I’d done every-
thing I could.
“Hooray!” the pack crowed. “Something has been done!”
We raced outside into the bright sunlight, knowing full well that our sister
had been turned loose, that we’d never find her. A low roar rippled through us
and surged up and up, disappearing into the trees. I listened for an answering
howl from Mirabella, heart thumping — what if she heard us and came back?
But there was nothing.
We graduated from St. Lucy’s shortly thereafter. As far as I can recollect,
that was our last communal howl.
Stage 5: At this point your students are able to interact effectively in the new
cultural environment. ey find it easy to move between the two cultures.
One Sunday, near the end of my time at St. Lucy’s, the sisters gave me a
special pass to go visit the parents. e woodsman had to accompany me;
I couldn’t remember how to find the way back on my own. I wore my best
dress and brought along some prosciutto and dill pickles in a picnic basket.
We crunched through the fall leaves in silence, and every step made me sadder.
“I’ll wait out here,” the woodsman said, leaning on a blue elm and lighting
a cigarette.
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e cave looked so much smaller than I remembered it. I had to duck my
head to enter. Everybody was eating when I walked in. ey all looked up from
the bull moose at the same time, my aunts and uncles, my sloe- eyed, lolling
cousins, the parents. My uncle dropped a thighbone from his mouth. My lit-
tlest brother, a cross- eyed wolf- boy who has since been successfully rehabili-
tated and is now a dour, balding children’s book author, started whining in
terror. My mother recoiled from me, as if I were a stranger. TRRR? She sniffed
me for a long moment. en she sank her teeth into my ankle, looking proud
and sad. After all the tail wagging and perfunctory barking had died down,
the parents sat back on their hind legs. ey stared up at me expectantly, pant-
ing in the cool gray envelope of the cave, waiting for a display of what I had
learned.
“So,” I said, telling my first human lie. “I’m home.”
⁓ 
341
“[While writing CivilWarLand in Bad
Decline] the tech writing I was doing
influenced both style and subject. And
any claim I might make to ‘originality’
in my fiction is really just the result of
this odd background: basically, just
me working inefficiently, with flawed
tools, in a mode I don’t have sufficient
background to really understand. Like
if you put a welder to designing dresses.”
⁓ from e Wag, July , 
George Saunders
u CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
Born in Texas in 1958 and raised
in Chicago, George Saunders
received a B.S. in geophysical
engineering from the Colorado
School of Mines in Golden,
Colorado. After working as a
technical writer and geophys-
ical engineer and holding a
number of odd jobs, he en-
rolled in the creative writing
program at Syracuse Univer-
sity, receiving an M.A. in 1988.
His first book, the story col-
lection CivilWarLand in Bad
Decline, was a finalist for the
PEN/Hemingway Award. His
other works include stories, novellas, and a book of essays. His work often
appears in periodicals, including The New Yorker, Harper’s, and McSweeney’s,
and has been included in Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize
Stories. His awards include the National Magazine Award for Fiction, a Gug-
genheim Fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship. Saunders is currently on the
creative writing faculty at Syracuse University.
Whenever a potential big investor comes for the tour the first thing I do
is take him out to the transplanted Erie Canal Lock. We’ve got a good
ninety feet of actual Canal out there and a well- researched dioramic of a coolie
campsite. Were our faces ever red when we found out it was actually the Irish
who built the Canal. We’ve got no bud get to correct, so every fifteen minutes
342 | chapter 12 a mini- anthology: 15 stories
or so a device in the bunk house gives off the approximate aroma of an Oriental
meal.
Today my possible Historical Reconstruction Associate is Mr. Haber-
strom, found er of Burn’n’Learn. Burn’n’Learn is national. eir gimmick is a
fully stocked library on the premises and as you tan you call out the name of
any book you want to these high- school girls on roller skates. As we walk up
the trail he’s wearing a sweatsuit and smoking a cigar and I tell him I admire
his acumen. I tell him some men are dreamers and others are doers. He asks
which am I and I say let’s face it, I’m basically the guy who leads the dreamers
up the trail to view the Canal Segment. He likes that. He says I have a good
head on my shoulders. He touches my arm and says he’s hot to spend some
reflective moments at the Canal because his great- grandfather was a barge
guider way back when who got killed by a donkey. When we reach the clear-
ing he gets all emotional and bolts off through the gambling plaster Chinese.
Not to be crass but I sense an impending sizable contribution.
When I come up behind him however I see that once again the gangs have
been at it with their spray cans, all over my Lock. Haberstrom takes a nice long
look. en he pokes me with the spiny end of his cigar and says not with his
money I don’t, and storms back down the trail.
I stand there alone a few minutes. e last thing I need is some fat guy’s
spit on my tie. I think about quitting. en I think about my last degrading
batch of résumés. Two hundred send- outs and no nibbles. My feeling is that
prospective employers are put off by the fact that I was a lowly Verisimilitude
Inspector for nine years with no promotions. I think of my car payment. I
think of how much Marcus and Howie love the little play house I’m still pay-
ing off. Once again I decide to eat my pride and sit tight.
So I wipe off my tie with a leaf and start down to break the Haberstrom
news to Mr. Alsuga.
Mr. A’s another self- made man. He cashed in on his love of history by
conceptualizing CivilWarLand in his spare time. He started out with just a
settler’s shack and one Union costume and now has considerable influence in
Rotary.
His office is in City Hall. He agrees that the gangs are getting out of
hand. Last month they wounded three Visitors and killed a dray horse. Sev-
eral of them encircled and made fun of Mrs. Dugan in her settler outfit as she
was taking her fresh- baked bread over to the simulated Towne Meeting. No
way they’re paying admission, so they’re either tunneling in or coming in over
the retaining wall.
Mr. Alsuga believes the solution to the gang problem is Teen Groups. I
tell him that’s basically what a gang is, a Teen Group. But he says how can it be
a Teen Group without an adult mentor with a special skill, like whittling? Mr.
Alsuga whittles. Once he gave an Old Tyme Skills Seminar on it in the Black-
smith Shoppe. It was poorly attended. All he got was two widowers and a chess-
club type no gang would have wanted anyway. And myself. I attended. Evelyn
called me a bootlicker, but I attended. She called me a bootlicker, and I told
her she’d better bear in mind which side of the bread her butter was on. She
said whichever side it was on it wasn’t enough to shake a stick at. She’s always
denigrating my paystub. I came home from the Seminar with this kind of
whittled duck. She threw it away the next day because she said she thought it
was an acorn. It looked nothing like an acorn. As far as I’m concerned she
threw it away out of spite. It made me livid and twice that night I had to step
into a closet and perform my Hatred Abatement Breathing.
But that’s neither here nor there.
Mr. Alsuga pulls out the summer stats. We’re in the worst attendance
decline in ten years. If it gets any worse, staff is going to be let go in droves. He
gives me a meaningful look. I know full well I’m not one of his key players.
en he asks who we have that might be willing to fight fire with fire.
I say: I could research it.
He says: Why don’t you research it?
So I go research it.
Sylvia Loomis is the queen of info. It’s in her personality. She enjoys digging
up dirt on people. She calls herself an S&M buff in training. She’s still too meek
to go whole hog, so when she parties at the Make Me Club on Airport Road
she limits herself to walking around talking mean while wearing kiddie hand-
cuffs. But she’s good at what she does, which is Security. It was Sylvia who
identified the part- timer systematically crapping in the planters in the Gift
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Acquisition Center and Sylvia who figured out it was Phil in Grounds leaving
obscene messages for the Teen Belles on MessageMinder. She has access to all
rec ords. I ask can she identify current employees with a history of violence.
She says she can if I buy her lunch.
We decide to eat in- Park. We go over to Nate’s Saloon. Sylvia says don’t
spread it around but two of the nine can- can girls are knocked up. en she
pulls out her folder and says that according to her review of the data, we have
a pretty tame bunch on our hands. e best she can do is Ned Quinn. His
rec ords indicate that while in high school he once burned down a storage
shed. I almost die laughing. Quinn’s an Adjunct espian and a world- class
worry- wart. I can’t count the times I’ve come upon him in Costuming, dwell-
ing on the gory details of his Dread Disease Rider. He’s a failed actor who
won’t stop trying. He says this is the only job he could find that would allow
him to continue to develop his craft. Because he’s ugly as sin he specializes in
roles that require masks, such as Humpty- Dumpty during Mother Goose
Days.
I report back to Mr. Alsuga and he says Quinn may not be much but he’s
all we’ve got. Quinn’s dirt- poor with six kids and Mr. A says that’s a plus, as
we’ll need someone between a rock and a hard place. What he suggests we do
is equip the Desperate Patrol with live ammo and put Quinn in charge. e
Desperate Patrol limps along under floodlights as the night’s crowning event.
We’ve costumed them to resemble troops who’ve been in the field too long.
We used actual Gettysburg photos. e climax of the Patrol is a re- enacted
partial rebellion, quelled by a rousing speech. After the speech the boys take
off their hats and put their arms around each other and sing “I Was Born Un-
der a Wandering Star.” en there’s fireworks and the Parade of Old- Fashioned
Conveyance. en we clear the place out and go home.
“Why not confab with Quinn?” Mr. A says. “Get his input and feelings.”
“I was going to say that,” I say.
I look up the espian Center’s SpeedDial extension and a few minutes
later Quinn’s bounding up the steps in the Wounded Grizzly suit.
“Desperate Patrol?” Mr. A says as Quinn sits down. “Any interest on your
part?”
“Love it,” Quinn says. “Excellent.” He’s been trying to get on Desperate
Patrol for years. It’s considered the pinnacle by the espians because of the
wealth of speaking parts. He’s so excited he’s shifting around in his seat and
getting some of his paw blood on Mr. A’s nice cane chair.
“e gangs in our park are a damn blight,” Mr. A says. “I’m talking about
meeting force with force. Something in it for you? Oh yes.”
“I’d like to see Quinn give the rousing speech myself,” I say.
“Societal order,” Mr. A says. “Sustaining the lifeblood of this goddamned
park we’ve all put so much of our hearts into.”
“He’s not just free- associating,” I say.
“I’m not sure I get it,” Quinn says.
“What I’m suggesting is live ammo in your weapon only,” Mr. A says. “Fire
at your discretion. You see an unsavory intruder, you shoot at his feet. Just
give him a scare. Nobody gets hurt. An additional two bills a week is what I’m
talking.”
“I’m an actor,” Quinn says.
“Quinn’s got kids,” I say. “He knows the value of a buck.”
“is is acting of the highest stripe,” Mr. A says. “Act like a mercenary.”
“Go for it on a trial basis,” I say.
“I’m not sure I get it,” Quinn says. “But jeez, that’s good money.”
“Superfantastic,” says Mr. A.
Next eve ning Mr. A and I go over the Verisimilitude Irregularities List. We’ve
been having some heated discussions about our bird- species percentages. Mr.
Grayson, Staff Ornithologist, has recently recalculated and estimates that to
accurately approximate the  bird population we’ll need to eliminate a
couple hundred orioles or so. He suggests using air guns or poison. Mr. A says
that in his eyes, in fiscally troubled times, an ornithologist is a luxury, and this
may be the perfect time to send Grayson packing. I like Grayson. He went way
overboard on Howie’s baseball candy. But I’ve got me and mine to think of.
So I call Grayson in. Mr. A says did you botch the initial calculation or were
you privy to new info. Mr. Grayson admits it was a botch. Mr. A sends him out
into the hall and we confab.
“You’ll do the telling,” Mr. A says. “I’m getting too old for cruelty.”
He takes his walking stick and beeper and says he’ll be in the Great For-
est if I need him.
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I call Grayson back in and let him go, and hand him Kleenexes and fend
off a few blows and almost before I know it he’s reeling out the door and I go
grab a pita.
Is this the life I envisioned for myself? My God no. I wanted to be a high
jumper. But I have two of the sweetest children ever born. I go in at night and
look at them in their fairly expensive sleepers and think: ere are a couple of
kids who don’t need to worry about freezing to death or being cast out to the
wolves. You should see their little eyes light up when I bring home a treat. ey
may not know the value of a dollar but it’s my intention to see that they never
need to.
I’m filling out Grayson’s Employee Retrospective when I hear gunshots
from the perimeter. I run out and there’s Quinn and a few of his men tied to
the cannon. e gangs took Quinn’s pants and put some tiny notches in his
penis with their knives. I free Quinn and tell him to get over to the Infirmary
to guard against infection. He’s absolutely shaking and can hardly walk, so I
wrap him up in a Confederate flag and call over a hay cart and load him in.
When I tell Mr. A he says: Garbage in, garbage out, and that we were
idiots for expecting a milquetoast to save our rears.
We decide to leave the police out of it because of the possible bad PR. So
we give Quinn the rest of the week off and promise to let him play Grant now
and then, and that’s that.
When visitors first come in there’s this cornball part where they sit in this
kind of spaceship and supposedly get blasted into space and travel faster than
the speed of light and end up in . e unit’s dated. e helmets we dis-
tribute look like bowls and all the paint’s peeling off. I’ve argued and argued
that we need to update. But in the midst of a bud get crunch one can’t neces-
sarily hang the moon.
When the tape of space sounds is over and the walls stop shaking, we pass
out the period costumes. We try not to offend anyone, liability law being what
it is. We distribute the slave and Native American roles equitably among racial
groups. Anyone is free to request a different identity at any time. In spite of
our precautions, there’s a Herlicher in every crowd. He’s the guy who sued us
last fall for making him hangman. He claimed that for weeks afterwards he
had nightmares and because he wasn’t getting enough sleep botched a big
contract by sending an important government buyer a load of torn pool liners.
Big deal, is my feeling. But he’s suing us for fifty grand for emotional stress
because the buyer ridiculed him in front of his co- workers. Whenever he
comes in we make him sheriff but he won’t back down an inch.
Mr. A calls me into his office and says he’s got bad news and bad news, and
which do I want first. I say the bad news. First off, he says, the gangs have
spraypainted a picture of Quinn’s notched penis on the side of the Everly Man-
sion. Second, last Friday’s simulated frontier hunt has got us in hot water, be-
cause apparently some of the beef we toughen up to resemble buffalo meat was
tainted, and the story’s going in the Sunday supplement. And finally, the ver-
dict’s come in on the Herlicher case and we owe that goofball a hundred grand
instead of fifty because the pinko judge empathized.
I wait for him to say I’m fired but instead he breaks down in tears. I pat
his back and mix him a drink. He says why don’t I join him. So I join him.
“It doesn’t look good,” he says, “for men like you and I.”
“No it doesn’t,” I say.
“All I wanted to do,” he says, “was to give the public a meaningful per-
spective on a historical niche I’ve always found personally fascinating.”
“I know what you mean,” I say.
At eleven the phone rings. It’s Maurer in Refuse Control calling to say that
the gangs have set fire to the Anglican Church. at structure cost upwards of
ninety thousand to transport from Clydesville and refurbish. We can see the
flames from Mr. A’s window.
“Oh Christ!” Mr. A says. “If I could kill those kids I would kill those kids.
One shouldn’t desecrate the dream of another individual in the fashion in
which they have mine.”
“I know it,” I say.
We drink and drink and finally he falls asleep on his office couch.
On the way to my car I keep an eye out for the ghostly McKinnon family. Back
in the actual s all this land was theirs. eir homestead’s long gone but
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our rec ords indicate that it was located near present- day Information Hoedown.
ey probably never saw this many buildings in their entire lives. ey don’t
realize we’re chronically slumming, they just think the valley’s prospering.
Something bad must have happened to them because their spirits are always
wandering around at night looking dismayed.
Tonight I find the Mrs. doing wash by the creek. She sees me coming and
asks if she can buy my boots. Machine stitching amazes her. I ask how are the
girls. She says Maribeth has been sad because no appropriate boy ever died in
the valley so she’s doomed to loneliness forever. Maribeth is a homely sincere
girl who glides around mooning and pining and reading bad poetry chap-
books. Whenever we keep the Park open late for high- school parties, she’s in
her glory. ere was one kid who was able to see her and even got a crush on
her, but when he finally tried to kiss her near Hostelry and found out she was
spectral it just about killed him. I slipped him a fifty and told him to keep it
under wraps. As far as I know he’s still in therapy. I realize I should have come
forward but they probably would have nut- hutted me, and then where would
my family be?
e Mrs. says what Maribeth needs is choir practice followed by a nice
quilting bee. In better times I would have taken the quilting- bee idea and run
with it. But now there’s no bud get. at’s basically how I finally moved up from
Verisimilitude Inspector to Special Assistant, by lifting ideas from the Mc-
Kinnons. e Mrs. likes me because after she taught me a few obscure s
ballads and I parlayed them into Individual Achievement Awards, I bought
her a Rubik’s Cube. To her, colored plastic is like something from Venus. e
Mr. has kind of warned me away from her a couple of times. He doesn’t trust
me. He thinks the Rubik’s Cube is the dev il’s work. I’ve brought him lighters
and Playboys and once I even dragged out Howie’s little synth and the mobile
battery pak. I set the synth for carillon and played it from behind a bush. I
could tell he was tickled, but he stonewalled. It’s too bad I can’t make an
inroad because he was at Antietam and could be a gold mine of war info. He
came back from the war and a year later died in his cornfield, which is now
Parking. So he spends most of his time out there calling the cars Beelzebubs
and kicking their tires.
To night he’s walking silently up and down the rows. I get out to my KCar
and think oh jeez, I’ve locked the keys in. e Mr. sits down at the base of the
A light- pole and asks did I see the fire and do I realize it was divine retribu-
tion for my slovenly moral state. I say thank you very much. No way I’m tell-
ing him about the gangs. He can barely handle the concept of women wearing
trousers. Finally I give up on prying the window down and go call Evelyn for
the spare set. While I wait for her I sit on the hood and watch the stars. e Mr.
watches them too. He says there are fewer than when he was a boy. He says that
even the heavens have fallen into disrepair. I think about explaining smog to
him but then Evelyn pulls up. She’s wearing her bathrobe and as soon as she
gets out starts with the lip. Howie and Marcus are asleep in the back. e Mr.
says it’s part and parcel of my fallen state that I allow a woman to speak to me
in such a tone. He suggests I throttle her and lock her in the woodshed. Mean-
while she’s going on and on so much about my irresponsibility that the kids
are waking up. I want to get out before the gangs come swooping down on us.
e Parking Area’s easy pickings. She calls me a thoughtless oaf and sticks me
in the gut with the car keys.
Marcus wakes up all groggy and says: Hey, our daddy.
Evelyn says: Yes, unfortunately he is.
Just after lunch next day a guy shows up at Personnel looking so completely
Civil War they immediately hire him and send him out to sit on the porch of
the old Kriegal place with a butter churn. His name’s Samuel and he doesn’t
say a word going through Costuming and at the end of the day leaves on a bike.
I do the normal clandestine New Employee Observation from the O’Toole
gazebo and I like what I see. He seems to have a passable knowledge of how to
pretend to churn butter. At one point he makes the mistake of departing from
the list of en- Current Events to discuss the World Series with a Visitor, but
my feeling is, we can work with that. All in all he presents a positive and con-
vincing appearance, and I say so in my review.
Sylvia runs her routine check on him and calls me at home that night and
says boy do we have a hot prospect on our hands if fucking with the gangs is
still on our agenda. She talks like that. I’ve got her on speakerphone in the rec
room and Marcus starts running around the room saying fuck. Evelyn stands
there with her arms crossed, giving me a drop- dead look. I wave her off and
she flips me the bird.
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Sylvia’s federal sources indicate that Samuel got kicked out of Vietnam
for participating in a bloodbath. Sylvia claims this is oxymoronic. She sounds
excited. She suggests I take a nice long look at his marksmanship scores. She
says his special combat course listing goes on for pages.
I call Mr. A and he says it sounds like Sam’s our man. I express reserva-
tions at arming an alleged war criminal and giving him free rein in a family-
oriented facility. Mr. A says if we don’t get our act together there won’t be any
family- oriented facility left in a month. Revenues have hit rock bottom and
his investors are frothing at the mouth. ere’s talk of outright closure and liq-
uidation of assets.
He says: Now get off your indefensible high horse and give me Sam’s
home phone.
So I get off my indefensible high horse and give him Sam’s home phone.
ursday after we’ve armed Samuel and sent him and the Patrol out, I stop by
the Worship Center to check on the Foley baptism. Baptisms are an excellent
revenue source. We charge three hundred dollars to rent the Center, which is
the former lodge of the Siala utopian free- love community. We trucked it in
from downstate, a redbrick building with a nice gold dome. In the old days if
one of the Sialians was overeating to the exclusion of others or excessively mas-
turbating, he or she would be publicly dressed down for hours on end in the
lodge. Now we put up white draperies and pipe in Stephen Foster and provide
at no charge a list of preachers of various denominations.
e Foleys are an overweight crew. e room’s full of crying sincere large
people wishing the best for a baby. It makes me remember our own sweet bean-
ers in their little frocks. I sit down near the wood- burning heater in the Invalid
area and see that Justin in Prep has forgotten to remove the mannequin el der ly
couple clutching rosaries. Hopefully the Foleys won’t notice and withhold
payment.
e priest dips the baby’s head into the fake marble basin and the door
flies open and in comes a racially mixed gang. ey stroll up the aisle tousling
hair and requisition a Foley niece, a cute redhead of about sixteen. Her dad
stands up and gets a blackjack in the head. One of the gang guys pushes her
down the aisle with his hands on her breasts. As she passes she looks right at
me. e gang guy spits on my shoe and I make my face neutral so he won’t get
hacked off and drag me into it.
e door slams and the Foleys sit there stunned. en the baby starts cry-
ing and everyone runs shouting outside in time to see the gang dragging the
niece into the woods. I panic. I try to think of where the nearest pay phone is.
I’m weighing the efficiency of running to Administration and making the call
from my cubicle when six fast shots come from the woods. Several of the oldest
Foleys assume the worst and drop weeping to their knees in the churchyard.
I don’t know the first thing about counseling survivors, so I run for Mr. A.
He’s drinking and watching his bigscreen. I tell him what happened and
he jumps up and calls the police. en he says let’s go do what ever little we
can for these poor people who entrusted us with their sacred family occasion
only to have us drop the ball by failing to adequately protect them.
When we get back to the churchyard the Foleys are kicking and upbraid-
ing six gang corpses. Samuel’s having a glass of punch with the niece. e
niece’s dad is hanging all over Sam trying to confirm his daughter’s virginity.
Sam says it wasn’t even close and goes on and on about the precision of his
scope.
en we hear sirens.
Sam says: I’m going into the woods.
Mr. A says: We never saw you, big guy.
e niece’s dad says: Bless you, sir.
Sam says: Adios.
Mr. A stands on the hitching post and makes a little speech, the gist of
which is, let’s blame another gang for killing these dirtbags so Sam can get on
with his important work.
e Foleys agree.
e police arrive and we all lie like rugs.
e word spreads on Sam and the gangs leave us alone. For two months the
Park is quiet and revenues start upscaling. en some high- school kid pulls a
butter knife on Fred Moore and steals a handful of penny candy from the
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General Store. As per specs, Fred alerts Mr. A of a Revenue- Impacting Event.
Mr. A calls Security and we perform Exit Sealage. We look everywhere, but
the kid’s gone. Mr. A says what the hell, Unseal, it’s just candy, profit loss is
minimal. Sam hears the Unseal Tone on the PA and comes out of the woods
all mad with his face painted and says that once the word gets out we’ve gone
soft the gangs will be back in a heartbeat. I ask since when do gangs use butter
knives. Sam says a properly trained individual can kill a wild boar with a but-
ter knife. Mr. A gives me a look and says why don’t we let Sam run this aspect
of the operation since he possesses the necessary expertise. en Mr. A offers
to buy him lunch and Sam says no, he’ll eat raw weeds and berries as usual.
I go back to my Verisimilitude Evaluation on the Cimarron Brothel. Ev-
erything looks super. As per my recommendations they’ve replaced the young
attractive simulated whores with uglier women with a little less on the ball.
We were able to move the ex- simulated whores over to the Sweete Shoppe, so
everybody’s happy, especially the new simulated whores, who were for the
most part middle- aged women we lured away from fast- food places via supe-
rior wages.
When I’ve finished the Evaluation I go back to my office for lunch. I step
inside and turn on the fake oil lamp and there’s a damn human hand on my
chair, holding a note. All around the hand there’s penny candy. e note says:
Sir, another pig disciplined who won’t mess with us anymore and also I need
more ammo. It’s signed: Samuel the Rectifier.
I call Mr. A and he says Jesus. en he tells me to bury the hand in the
marsh behind Refreshments. I say shouldn’t we call the police. He says we let
it pass when it was six dead kids, why should we start getting moralistic now
over one stinking hand?
I say: But sir, he killed a high- schooler for stealing candy.
He says: at so- called high- schooler threatened Fred Moore, a valued
old friend of mine, with a knife.
A butter knife, I say.
He asks if I’ve seen the droves of unemployed huddled in front of Person-
nel every morning.
I ask if that’s a threat and he says no, it’s a reasonable future prognosti-
cation.
“What’s done is done,” he says. “We’re in this together. If I take the fall on
this, you’ll eat the wienie as well. Let’s just put this sordid ugliness behind us
and get on with the business of providing an enjoyable living for those we love.”
I hang up and sit looking at the hand. ere’s a class ring on it.
Finally I knock it into a garbage sack with my phone and go out to the
marsh.
As I’m digging, Mr. McKinnon glides up. He gets down on his knees and
starts sniffing the sack. He starts talking about bloody wagon wheels and a boy
he once saw sitting in a creek slapping the water with his own severed arm. He
tells how the dead looked with rain on their faces and of hearing lunatic sing-
ing from all corners of the field of battle and of king- sized rodents gorging
themselves on the entrails of his friends.
It occurs to me that the Mr.’s a loon.
I dig down a couple feet and drop the hand in. en I backfill and get out
of there fast. I look over my shoulder and he’s rocking back and forth over the
hole mumbling to himself.
As I pass a sewer cover the Mrs. rises out of it. Seeing the Mr. enthralled
by blood she starts shrieking and howling to beat the band. When she finally
calms down she comes to rest in a tree branch. Tears run down her see- through
cheeks. She says there’s been a horrid violent seed in him since he came home
from the war. She says she can see they’re going to have to go away. en she
blasts over my head elongate and glowing and full of grief and my hat gets
sucked off.
All night I have bad dreams about severed hands. In one I’m eating chili
and a hand comes out of my bowl and gives me the thumbs- down. I wake up
with a tingling wrist. Evelyn says if I insist on sleeping uneasily would I mind
doing it on the couch, since she has a family to care for during the day and
this requires a certain amount of rest. I think about confessing to her but then
I realize if I do she’ll nail me.
e nights when she’d fall asleep with her cheek on my thigh are certainly
long past.
I lie there awhile watching her make angry faces in her sleep. en I go for
a walk. As usual Mr. Ebershom’s practicing figure- skating moves in his foyer.
I sit down by our subdivision’s fake creek and think. First of all, burying a hand
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isn’t murder. It doesn’t say anywhere thou shalt not bury some guy’s hand. By
the time I got involved the kid was dead. Where his hand ended up is incon-
sequential.
en I think: What am I saying? I did a horrible thing. Even as I sit here
I’m an accomplice and an obstructor of justice.
But then I see myself in the penitentiary and the boys waking up scared
in the night without me, and right then and there with my feet in the creek I
decide to stay clammed up forever and take my lumps in the afterlife.
Halloween’s special in the Park. Our brochure says: Lose Yourself in Eerie Au-
tumnal Splendor. We spray cobwebs around the Structures and dress up Staff
in ghoul costumes and hand out period- authentic treats. We hide holograph
generators in the woods and project images of famous Americans as ghosts.
It’s always a confusing time for the McKinnons. Last year the Mr. got in a head-
to- head with the image of Jefferson Davis. He stood there in the woods yelling
at it for hours while the Mrs. and the girls begged him to come away. Finally
I had to cut power to the unit.
I drive home at lunch and pick the boys up for trick- or- treating. Marcus
is a rancher and Howie’s an accountant. He’s wearing thick fake lips and
carry ing a ledger. e Park’s the only safe place to trick- or- treat anymore. Last
year some wacko in a complex near our house laced his Snickers with a virus.
I drove by the school and they were CPRing this little girl in a canary suit. So
forget it.
I take them around to the various Structures and they pick up their share
of saltwater taffy and hard tasteless frontier candy and wooden whistles and
toy soldiers made of soap.
en just as we start across the Timeless Green a mob of teens bursts out
of the Feinstein Memorial Conifer Grove.
“Gangs!” I yell to the boys. “Get down!”
I hear a shot and look up and there’s Samuel standing on a stump at tree
line. ank God, I think. He lets loose another round and one of the teens
drops. Marcus is down beside me whimpering with his nose in my armpit.
Howie’s always been the slow one. He stands there with his mouth open, one
hand in his plastic pumpkin. A second teen drops. en Howie drops and his
pumpkin goes flying.
I crawl over and beg him to be okay. He says there’s no pain. I check him
over and check him over and all that’s wrong is his ledger’s been shot. I’m so
relieved I kiss him on the mouth and he yells at me to quit.
Samuel drops a third teen, then runs yipping into the woods.
e ambulance shows up and the paramedics load up the wounded teens.
ey’re all still alive and one’s saying a rosary. I take the boys to City Hall and
confront Mr. A. I tell him I’m turning Sam in. He asks if I’ve gone daft and
suggests I try putting food on the table from a jail cell while convicts stand in
line waiting to have their way with my rear.
At this point I send the boys out to the foyer.
“He shot Howie.” I say. “I want him put away.”
“He shot Howie’s ledger,” Mr. A says. “He shot Howie’s ledger in the
pro cess of saving Howie’s life. But what ever. Let’s not mince hairs. If Sam
gets put away, we get put away. Does that sound to you like a desirable ex-
perience?”
“No,” I say.
“What I’m primarily saying,” he says, “is that this is a time for knowledge
assimilation, not backstabbing. We learned a lesson, you and I. We personally
grew. Gratitude for this growth is an appropriate response. Gratitude, and be-
ing careful never to make the same mistake twice.”
He gets out a Bible and says let’s swear on it that we’ll never hire a crazed
maniac to perform an important security function again. en the phone rings.
Sylvia’s cross- referenced today’s Admissions data and found that the teens
weren’t a gang at all but a bird- watching- group who made the mistake of being
male and adolescent and wandering too far off the trail.
“Ouch,” Mr. A says. “is could be a serious negative.”
In the foyer the kids are trying to get the loaches in the corporate tank to
eat bits of Styrofoam. I phone Evelyn and tell her what happened and she calls
me a butcher. She wants to know how on earth I could bring the boys to the
Park knowing what I knew. She says she doesn’t see how I’m going to live with
myself in light of how much they trusted and loved me and how badly I let
them down by leaving their fates to chance.
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I say I’m sorry and she seems to be thinking. en she tells me just get
them home without putting them in further jeopardy, assuming that’s within
the scope of my mental powers.
At home she puts them in the tub and sends me out for pizza. I opt for Mel-
vin’s Pasta Lair. Melvin’s a religious zealot who during the Depression worked
five jobs at once. Sometimes I tell him my troubles and he says I should stop
whining and count my blessings. To night I tell him I feel I should take some
responsibility for eliminating the Samuel problem but I’m hesitant because of
the discrepancy in our relative experience in violence. He says you mean you’re
scared. I say not scared, just aware of the likelihood of the possibility of failure.
He gives me a look. I say it must have been great to grow up when men were
men. He says men have always been what they are now, namely incapable of
coping with life without the intervention of God the Almighty. en in the
oven behind him my pizza starts smoking and he says case in point.
He makes me another and urges me to get in touch with my Lord person-
ally. I tell him I will. I always tell him I will.
When I get home they’re gone.
Evelyn’s note says: I could never forgive you for putting our sons at risk.
Goodbye forever, you passive flake. Don’t try to find us. I’ve told the kids you
sent us away in order to marry a floozy.
Like an idiot I run out to the street. Mrs. Schmidt is prodding her auto-
matic sprinkler system with a rake, trying to detect leaks in advance. She asks
how I am and I tell her not now. I sit on the lawn. e stars are very near. e
phone rings. I run inside prepared to grovel, but it’s only Mr. A. He says come
down to the Park immediately because he’s got big horrific news.
When I get there he’s sitting in his office half- crocked. He tells me we’re
unemployed. e investors have gotten wind of the bird- watcher shootings
and withdrawn all support. e Park is no more. I tell him about Evelyn and
the kids. He says that’s the least of his worries because he’s got crushing debt.
He asks if I have any savings he could have. I say no. He says that just for the
record and my own personal development, he’s always found me dull and has
kept me around primarily for my yes- man capabilities and because sometimes
I’m so cautious I’m a hoot.
en he says: Look, get your ass out, I’m torching this shithole for insur-
ance purposes.
I want to hit or at least insult him, but I need this week’s pay to find my
kids. So I jog off through the Park. In front of Information Hoedown I see the
McKinnons cavorting. I get closer and see that they’re not cavorting at all,
they’ve inadvertently wandered too close to their actual death site and are be-
ing compelled to act out again and again the last minutes of their lives. e
girls are lying side by side on the ground and the Mr. is whacking at them with
an invisible scythe. e Mrs. is belly- up with one arm flailing in what must
have been the parlor. e shrieking is mind- boggling. When he’s killed every-
one the Mr. walks out to his former field and mimes blowing out his brains.
en he gets up and starts over. It goes on and on, through five cycles. Finally
he sits down in the dirt and starts weeping. e Mrs. and the girls backpedal
away. He gets up and follows them, pitifully trying to explain.
Behind us the Visitor Center erupts in flames.
e McKinnons go off down the hill, passing through bushes and trees.
He’s shouting for forgiveness. He’s shouting that he’s just a man. He’s shouting
that hatred and war made him nuts. I start running down the hill agreeing
with him. e Mrs. gives me a look and puts her hands over Maribeth’s ears.
We’re all running. e Mrs. starts screaming about the feel of the scythe as it
opened her up.
e girls bemoan their unborn kids. We make quite a group. Since I’m still
alive I keep clipping trees with my shoulders and falling down.
At the bottom of the hill they pass through the retaining wall and I run
into it. I wake up on my back in the culvert. Blood’s running out of my ears and
a transparent boy’s kneeling over me. I can tell he’s no McKinnon because he’s
wearing sweatpants.
“Get up now,” he says in a gentle voice. “Fire’s coming.”
“No,” I say. “I’m through. I’m done living.”
“I don’t think so,” he says. “You’ve got amends to make.”
“I screwed up.” I say. “I did bad things.”
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“No joke,” he says, and holds up his stump.
I roll over into the culvert muck and he grabs me by the collar and sits
me up.
“I steal four jawbreakers and a Slim Jim and your friend kills and mutilates
me?” he says.
“He wasn’t my friend,” I say.
“He wasn’t your enemy,” the kid says.
en he cocks his head. rough his clear skull I see Sam coming out of
the woods. e kid cowers behind me. Even dead he’s scared of Sam. He’s so
scared he blasts straight up in the air shrieking and vanishes over the retain-
ing wall.
Sam comes for me with a hunting knife.
“Don’t take this too personal,” he says, “but you’ve got to go. You know a
few things I don’t want broadcast.”
I’m madly framing calming words in my head as he drives the knife in. I
can’t believe it. Never again to see my kids? Never again to sleep and wake to
their liquid high voices and sweet breaths?
Sweet Evelyn, I think, I should have loved you better.
Possessing perfect knowledge I hover above him as he hacks me to bits. I
see his rough childhood. I see his mother doing something horrid to him with
a broomstick. I see the hate in his heart and the people he has yet to kill before
pneumonia gets him at eighty- three. I see the dead kid’s mom unable to sleep,
pounding her fists against her face in grief at the moment I was burying her
son’s hand. I see the pain I’ve caused. I see the man I could have been, and the
man I was, and then everything is bright and new and keen with love and I
sweep through Sam’s body, trying to change him, trying so hard, and feeling
only hate and hate, solid as stone.
⁓ 
359
“e trick about fiction, as I see it, is to
make an unadventurous circumstance
seem adventurous, to make it excite the
reader, either with its truth or with the
fact that there’s always a little more
that goes on.”
⁓ from an interview with the Academy
of Achievement, June , 
John Updike
u A & P
John Updike was born in 1932
and raised in Shillington, Penn-
sylvania. He attended Harvard
University, where he studied
En glish and wrote and drew
cartoons for the Harvard Lam-
poon humor magazine. After
graduating, he worked as a
staff writer for The New
Yorker for two years, and then
he and his family moved to
Massachusetts. Over his long
and productive career, he
published more than fifty books, including story collections, novels, poetry,
and literary criticism. He won nearly every major literary award: the National
Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, a Guggenheim
Fellowship, and — twice — the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Updike died in 2009
at the age of seventy- six. His last book, published in 2008, was the novel The
Widows of Eastwick, a sequel to his 1984 novel The Witches of Eastwick.
In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits. I’m in the third check-
out slot, with my back to the door, so I don’t see them until they’re over by
the bread. e one that caught my eye first was the one in the plaid green two-
piece. She was a chunky kid, with a good tan and a sweet broad soft- looking
can with those two crescents of white just under it, where the sun never seems
to hit, at the top of the backs of her legs. I stood there with my hand on a box
of HiHo crackers trying to remember if I rang it up or not. I ring it up again
and the customer starts giving me hell. She’s one of these cash- register- watchers,
a witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones and no eyebrows, and I know
360 | chapter 12 a mini- anthology: 15 stories
it made her day to trip me up. She’d been watching cash registers for fifty years
and probably never seen a mistake before.
By the time I got her feathers smoothed and her goodies into a bag — she
gives me a little snort in passing, if she’d been born at the right time they
would have burned her over in Salem — by the time I get her on her way the
girls had circled around the bread and were coming back, without a pushcart,
back my way along the counters, in the aisle between the checkouts and the
Special bins. ey didn’t even have shoes on. ere was this chunky one, with
the two- piece — it was bright green and the seams on the bra were still sharp
and her belly was still pretty pale so I guessed she just got it (the suit) — there
was this one, with one of those chubby berry- faces, the lips all bunched together
under her nose, this one, and a tall one, with black hair that hadn’t quite frizzed
right, and one of these sunburns right across under the eyes, and a chin that
was too long — you know, the kind of girl other girls think is very “striking”
and “attractive” but never quite makes it, as they very well know, which is why
they like her so much — and then the third one, that wasn’t quite so tall. She
was the queen. She kind of led them, the other two peeking around and making
their shoulders round. She didn’t look around, not this queen, she just walked
straight on slowly, on these long white prima- donna legs. She came down a
little hard on her heels, as if she didn’t walk in her bare feet that much, putting
down her heels and then letting the weight move along to her toes as if she was
testing the floor with every step, putting a little deliberate extra action into it.
You never know for sure how girls’ minds work (do you really think it’s a mind
in there or just a little buzz like a bee in a glass jar?) but you got the idea she had
talked the other two into coming in here with her, and now she was showing
them how to do it, walk slow and hold yourself straight.
She had on a kind of dirty- pink — beige maybe, I don’t know — bathing
suit with a little nubble all over it and, what got me, the straps were down. ey
were off her shoulders looped loose around the cool tops of her arms, and I
guess as a result the suit had slipped a little on her, so all around the top of the
cloth there was this shining rim. If it hadn’t been there you wouldn’t have
known there could have been anything whiter than those shoulders. With the
straps pushed off, there was nothing between the top of the suit and the top of
her head except just her, this clean bare plane of the top of her chest down
from the shoulder bones like a dented sheet of metal tilted in the light. I
mean, it was more than pretty.
She had sort of oaky hair that the sun and salt had bleached, done up in a
bun that was unraveling, and a kind of prim face. Walking into the A & P with
your straps down, I suppose it’s the only kind of face you can have. She held her
head so high her neck, coming up out of those white shoulders, looked kind of
stretched, but I didn’t mind. e longer her neck was, the more of her there was.
She must have felt in the corner of her eye me and over my shoulder Stoke-
sie in the second slot watching, but she didn’t tip. Not this queen. She kept her
eyes moving across the racks, and stopped, and turned so slow it made my
stomach rub the inside of my apron, and buzzed to the other two, who kind of
huddled against her for relief, and then they all three of them went up the cat-
and- dogfood- breakfast- cereal- macaroni- rice- raisins- seasonings- spreads-
spaghetti- soft- drinks- crackers- and- cookies aisle. From the third slot I look
straight up this aisle to the meat counter, and I watched them all the way. e
fat one with the tan sort of fumbled with the cookies, but on second thought
she put the package back. e sheep pushing their carts down the aisle — the
girls were walking against the usual traffic (not that we have one- way signs or
anything) — were pretty hilarious. You could see them, when Queenie’s white
shoulders dawned on them, kind of jerk, or hop, or hiccup, but their eyes
snapped back to their own baskets and on they pushed. I bet you could set off
dynamite in an A & P and the people would by and large keep reaching and
checking oatmeal off their lists and muttering “Let me see, there was a third
thing, began with A, asparagus, no, ah, yes, applesauce!” or what ever it is they
do mutter. But there was no doubt, this jiggled them. A few house slaves in pin
curlers even looked around after pushing their carts past to make sure what
they had seen was correct.
You know, it’s one thing to have a girl in a bathing suit down on the beach,
where what with the glare nobody can look at each other much anyway, and
another thing in the cool of the A & P, under the fluorescent lights, against all
those stacked packages, with her feet paddling along naked over our checker-
board green- and- cream rubber- tile floor.
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“Oh Daddy,” Stokesie said beside me. “I feel so faint.”
“Darling,” I said. “Hold me tight.” Stokesie’s married, with two babies
chalked up on his fuselage already, but as far as I can tell that’s the only differ-
ence. He’s twenty- two, and I was nineteen this April.
“Is it done?” he asks, the responsible married man finding his voice. I for-
got to say he thinks he’s going to be manager some sunny day, maybe in 
when it’s called the Great Alexandrov and Petrooshki Tea Company or some-
thing.
What he meant was, our town is five miles from a beach, with a big sum-
mer colony out on the Point, but we’re right in the middle of town, and the
women generally put on a shirt or shorts or something before they get out of
the car into the street. And anyway these are usually women with six children
and varicose veins mapping their legs and nobody, including them, could care
less. As I say, we’re right in the middle of town, and if you stand at our front
doors you can see two banks and the Congregational church and the news-
paper store and three real- estate offices and about twenty- seven old freeload-
ers tearing up Central Street because the sewer broke again. It’s not as if we’re
on the Cape, we’re north of Boston and there’s people in this town haven’t
seen the ocean for twenty years.
e girls had reached the meat counter and were asking McMahon some-
thing. He pointed, they pointed, and they shuffled out of sight behind a pyra-
mid of Diet Delight peaches. All that was left for us to see was old McMahon
patting his mouth and looking after them sizing up their joints. Poor kids, I
began to feel sorry for them, they couldn’t help it.
Now here comes the sad part of the story, at least my family says it’s sad, but I
don’t think it’s so sad myself. e store’s pretty empty, it being ursday after-
noon, so there was nothing much to do except lean on the register and wait
for the girls to show up again. e whole store was like a pinball machine and
I didn’t know which tunnel they’d come out of. After a while they come
around out of the far aisle, around the light bulbs, rec ords at discount of the
Ca rib be an Six or Tony Martin Sings or some such gunk you wonder they
waste the wax on, sixpacks of candy bars, and plastic toys done up in cellophane
that fall apart when a kid looks at them anyway. Around they come, Queenie
still leading the way, and holding a little gray jar in her hands. Slots ree
through Seven are unmanned and I could see her wondering between Stokes
and me, but Stokesie with his usual luck draws an old party in baggy gray pants
who stumbles up with four giant cans of pineapple juice (what do these bums
do with all that pineapple juice? I’ve often asked myself). So the girls come to
me. Queenie puts down the jar and I take it into my fingers icy cold. Kingfish
Fancy Herring Snacks in Pure Sour Cream: ¢. Now her hands are empty, not
a ring or a bracelet, bare as God made them, and I wonder where the money’s
coming from. Still with that prim look she lifts a folded dollar bill out of the
hollow at the center of her nubbled pink top. e jar went heavy in my hand.
Really, I thought that was so cute.
en everybody’s luck begins to run out. Lengel comes in from haggling
with a truck full of cabbages on the lot and is about to scuttle into that door
marked  behind which he hides all day when the girls touch his eye.
Lengel’s pretty dreary, teaches Sunday school and the rest, but he doesn’t miss
that much. He comes over and says, “Girls, this isn’t the beach.”
Queenie blushes, though maybe it’s just a brush of sunburn I was notic-
ing for the first time, now that she was so close. “My mother asked me to pick
up a jar of herring snacks.” Her voice kind of startled me, the way voices do
when you see the people first, coming out so flat and dumb yet kind of tony,
too, the way it ticked over “pick up” and “snacks.” All of a sudden I slid right
down her voice into the living room. Her father and the other men were stand-
ing around in ice- cream coats and bow ties and the women were in sandals
picking up herring snacks on toothpicks off a big glass plate and they were all
holding drinks the color of water with olives and sprigs of mint in them. When
my parents have somebody over they get lemonade and if it’s a real racy affair
Schlitz in tall glasses with “ey’ll Do It Every Time” cartoons stenciled on.
“at’s all right,” Lengel said. “But this isn’t the beach.” His repeating this
struck me as funny, as if it had just occurred to him, and he had been thinking
all these years the A & P was a great big dune and he was the head lifeguard.
He didn’t like my smiling — as I say he doesn’t miss much — but he concen-
trates on giving the girls that sad Sunday- school- superintendent stare.
Queenie’s blush is no sunburn now, and the plump one in plaid, that I liked
better from the back — a really sweet can — pipes up, “We weren’t doing any
shopping. We just came in for the one thing.”
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“at makes no difference,” Lengel tells her, and I could see from the way
his eyes went that he hadn’t noticed she was wearing a two- piece before. “We
want you decently dressed when you come in here.”
“We are decent,” Queenie says suddenly, her lower lip pushing, getting
sore now that she remembers her place, a place from which the crowd that
runs the A & P must look pretty crummy. Fancy Herring Snacks flashed in
her very blue eyes.
“Girls, I don’t want to argue with you. After this come in here with your
shoulders covered. It’s our policy.” He turns his back. at’s policy for you.
Policy is what the kingpins want. What the others want is juvenile delin-
quency.
All this while, the customers had been showing up with their carts but,
you know, sheep, seeing a scene, they had all bunched up on Stokesie, who
shook open a paper bag as gently as peeling a peach, not wanting to miss a
word. I could feel in the silence everybody getting ner vous, most of all Lengel,
who asks me, “Sammy, have you rung up their purchase?”
I thought and said “No” but it wasn’t about that I was thinking. I go
through the punches, , , .  — it’s more complicated than you think,
and after you do it often enough, it begins to make a little song, that you hear
words to, in my case “Hello (bing) there, you (gung) hap- py pee- pul (splat)!” — the
splat being the drawer flying out. I uncrease the bill, tenderly as you may
imagine, it just having come from between the two smoothest scoops of va-
nilla I had ever known were there, and pass a half and a penny into her narrow
pink palm, and nestle the herrings in a bag and twist its neck and hand it over,
all the time thinking.
e girls, and who’d blame them, are in a hurry to get out, so I say “I quit”
to Lengel quick enough for them to hear, hoping they’ll stop and watch me,
their unsuspected hero. ey keep right on going, into the electric eye; the door
flies open and they flicker across the lot to their car, Queenie and Plaid and
Big Tall Goony- Goony (not that as raw material she was so bad), leaving me
with Lengel and a kink in his eyebrow.
“Did you say something, Sammy?”
“I said I quit.”
“I thought you did.”
“You didn’t have to embarrass them.”
“It was they who were embarrassing us.”
I started to say something that came out “Fiddle- de- doo.” It’s a saying of
my grandmother’s, and I know she would have been pleased.
“I don’t think you know what you’re saying,” Lengel said.
“I know you don’t,” I said. “But I do.” I pull the bow at the back of my
apron and start shrugging it off my shoulders. A couple customers that had
been heading for my slot begin to knock against each other, like scared pigs in
a chute.
Lengel sighs and begins to look very patient and old and gray. He’s been
a friend of my parents for years. “Sammy, you don’t want to do this to your
Mom and Dad,” he tells me. It’s true, I don’t. But it seems to me that once you
begin a gesture it’s fatal not to go through with it. I fold the apron, “Sammy”
stitched in red on the pocket, and put it on the counter, and drop the bow tie
on top of it. e bow tie is theirs, if you’ve ever wondered. “You’ll feel this for
the rest of your life,” Lengel says, and I know that’s true, too, but remembering
how he made the pretty girl blush makes me so scrunchy inside I punch the
No Sale tab and the machine whirs “pee- pul” and the drawer splats out. One
advantage to this scene taking place in summer, I can follow this up with a
clean exit, there’s no fumbling around getting your coat and galoshes, I just
saunter into the electric eye in my white shirt that my mother ironed the night
before, and the door heaves itself open, and outside the sunshine is skating
around on the asphalt.
I look around for my girls, but they’re gone, of course. ere wasn’t any-
body but some young married screaming with her children about some candy
they didn’t get by the door of a powder- blue Falcon station wagon. Looking
back in the big windows, over the bags of peat moss and aluminum lawn furni-
ture stacked on the pavement, I could see Lengel in my place in the slot, check-
ing the sheep through. His face was dark gray and his back stiff, as if he’d just
had an injection of iron, and my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the
world was going to be to me hereafter.
⁓ 
updike: a & p | 365
366
“e most radical po liti cal writing of
all is that which makes you aware of
the reality of another human being.
Self‑ absorbed as we are, self‑ imprisoned
even, we don’t feel that often enough.”
⁓ from e Paris Review, Fall 
Tobias Wolff
u Bullet in the Brain
Tobias Wolff was born in 1945
in Alabama and raised near
Seattle, Washington. After a
turbulent childhood (which he
later depicted in his memoir
This Boy’s Life), he enlisted in
the Army, where he trained in
Special Forces and was sent
to Vietnam. After leaving the
military, he attended Oxford
University and then Stanford University, where he was awarded a Wallace
Stegner Fellowship in creative writing. His short stories have appeared in peri-
odicals including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Harper’s, and he has been
the editor of Best American Short Stories, The Vintage Book of Contemporary
American Short Stories, and A Doctor’s Visit: The Short Stories of Anton Chekhov.
The author of eight works of fiction and memoir, Wolff has received the PEN/
Faulkner Award for Fiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rea Award for the
Short Story, the Story Prize, and three O. Henry awards. He is now the Priscilla
B. Woods Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University.
Anders couldn’t get to the bank until just before it closed, so of course the
line was endless and he got stuck behind two women whose loud, stupid
conversation put him in a murderous temper. He was never in the best of tem-
pers anyway, Anders — a book critic known for the weary, elegant savagery
with which he dispatched almost everything he reviewed.
With the line still doubled around the rope, one of the tellers stuck a
“ ” sign in her window and walked to the back of the bank,
where she leaned against a desk and began to pass the time with a man shuf-
fling papers. e women in front of Anders broke off their conversation and
watched the teller with hatred. “Oh, that’s nice,” one of them said. She turned
to Anders and added, confident of his accord, “One of those little human
touches that keep us coming back for more.”
Anders had conceived his own towering hatred of the teller, but he im-
mediately turned it on the presumptuous crybaby in front of him. “Damned
unfair,” he said. “Tragic, really. If they’re not chopping off the wrong leg, or
bombing your ancestral village, they’re closing their positions.”
She stood her ground. “I didn’t say it was tragic,” she said. “I just think
it’s a pretty lousy way to treat your customers.”
“Unforgivable,” Anders said. “Heaven will take note.”
She sucked in her cheeks but stared past him and said nothing. Anders
saw that the other woman, her friend, was looking in the same direction. And
then the tellers stopped what they were doing, and the customers slowly turned,
and silence came over the bank. Two men wearing black ski masks and blue
business suits were standing to the side of the door. One of them had a pistol
pressed against the guard’s neck. e guard’s eyes were closed, and his lips
were moving. e other man had a sawed- off shotgun. “Keep your big mouth
shut!” the man with the pistol said, though no one had spoken a word. “One
of you tellers hits the alarm, you’re all dead meat. Got it?”
e tellers nodded.
“Oh, bravo,” Anders said. “Dead meat.” He turned to the woman in front
of him. “Great script, eh? e stern, brass- knuckled poetry of the dangerous
classes.”
She looked at him with drowning eyes.
e man with the shotgun pushed the guard to his knees. He handed
the shotgun to his partner and yanked the guard’s wrists up behind his back
and locked them together with a pair of handcuffs. He toppled him onto the
floor with a kick between the shoulder blades. en he took his shotgun back
and went over to the security gate at the end of the counter. He was short and
heavy and moved with peculiar slowness, even torpor. “Buzz him in,” his
partner said. e man with the shotgun opened the gate and sauntered along
the line of tellers, handing each of them a Hefty bag. When he came to the
empty position he looked over at the man with the pistol, who said, “Whose
slot is that?”
wolff: bullet in the brain | 367
368 | chapter 12 a mini- anthology: 15 stories
Anders watched the teller. She put her hand to her throat and turned to
the man she’d been talking to. He nodded. “Mine,” she said.
“en get your ugly ass in gear and fill that bag.”
“ere you go,” Anders said to the woman in front of him. “Justice is
done.”
“Hey! Bright boy! Did I tell you to talk?”
“No,” Anders said.
“en shut your trap.”
“Did you hear that?” Anders said. “ ‘Bright boy.’ Right out of ‘e Killers.’ ”
“Please be quiet,” the woman said.
“Hey, you deaf or what?” e man with the pistol walked over to Anders.
He poked the weapon into Anders’ gut. “You think I’m playing games?”
“No,” Anders said, but the barrel tickled like a stiff finger and he had to
fight back the titters. He did this by making himself stare into the man’s eyes,
which were clearly visible behind the holes in the mask: pale blue and rawly
red- rimmed. e man’s left eyelid kept twitching. He breathed out a piercing,
ammoniac smell that shocked Anders more than anything that had happened,
and he was beginning to develop a sense of unease when the man prodded
him again with the pistol.
“You like me, bright boy?” he said. “You want to suck my dick?”
“No,” Anders said.
“en stop looking at me.”
Anders fixed his gaze on the man’s shiny wing- tip shoes.
“Not down there. Up there.” He stuck the pistol under Anders’ chin and
pushed it upward until Anders was looking at the ceiling.
Anders had never paid much attention to that part of the bank, a pompous
old building with marble floors and counters and pillars, and gilt scrollwork
over the tellers’ cages. e domed ceiling had been decorated with mythologi-
cal figures whose fleshy, toga- draped ugliness Anders had taken in at a glance
many years earlier and afterward declined to notice. Now he had no choice
but to scrutinize the paint er’s work. It was even worse than he remembered,
and all of it executed with the utmost gravity. e artist had a few tricks up his
sleeve and used them again and again — a certain rosy blush on the underside
of the clouds, a coy backward glance on the faces of the cupids and fauns. e
ceiling was crowded with various dramas, but the one that caught Anders’ eye
was Zeus and Europa — portrayed, in this rendition, as a bull ogling a cow from
behind a haystack. To make the cow sexy, the paint er had canted her hips sug-
gestively and given her long, droopy eyelashes through which she gazed back
at the bull with sultry welcome. e bull wore a smirk and his eyebrows were
arched. If there’d been a bubble coming out of his mouth, it would have said,
“Hubba hubba.”
“What’s so funny, bright boy?”
“Nothing.”
“You think I’m comical? You think I’m some kind of clown?”
“No.”
“You think you can fuck with me?”
“No.”
“Fuck with me again, you’re history. Capiche?”
Anders burst out laughing. He covered his mouth with both hands and
said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” then snorted helplessly through his fingers and said,
“Capiche — oh, God, capiche,” and at that the man with the pistol raised the
pistol and shot Anders right in the head.
e bullet smashed Anders’ skull and ploughed through his brain and exited
behind his right ear, scattering shards of bone into the ce re bral cortex, the
corpus callosum, back toward the basal ganglia, and down into the thalamus.
But before all this occurred, the first appearance of the bullet in the cerebrum
set off a crackling chain of ion transports and neuro- transmissions. Because of
their peculiar origin these traced a peculiar pattern, flukishly calling to life a
summer afternoon some forty years past, and long since lost to memory. After
striking the cranium the bullet was moving at  feet per second, a patheti-
cally sluggish, glacial pace compared to the synaptic lightning that flashed
around it. Once in the brain, that is, the bullet came under the mediation of
brain time, which gave Anders plenty of leisure to contemplate the scene that,
in a phrase he would have abhorred, “passed before his eyes.”
It is worth noting what Anders did not remember, given what he did
remember. He did not remember his first lover, Sherry, or what he had most
wolff: bullet in the brain | 369
370 | chapter 12 a mini- anthology: 15 stories
madly loved about her, before it came to irritate him — her unembarrassed
carnality, and especially the cordial way she had with his unit, which she called
Mr. Mole, as in, “Uh- oh, looks like Mr. Mole wants to play,” and, “Let’s hide
Mr. Mole!” Anders did not remember his wife, whom he had also loved before
she exhausted him with her predictability, or his daughter, now a sullen profes-
sor of economics at Dartmouth. He did not remember standing just outside
his daughter’s door as she lectured her bear about his naughtiness and de-
scribed the truly appalling punishments Paws would receive unless he changed
his ways. He did not remember a single line of the hundreds of poems he had
committed to memory in his youth so that he could give himself the shivers at
will — not “Silent, upon a peak in Darien,” or “My God, I heard this day,” or
“All my pretty ones? Did you say all? O hell- kite! All?” None of these did he
remember; not one. Anders did not remember his dying mother saying of his
father, “I should have stabbed him in his sleep.”
He did not remember Professor Josephs telling his class how Athenian
prisoners in Sicily had been released if they could recite Aeschylus, and then
reciting Aeschylus himself, right there, in the Greek. Anders did not remember
how his eyes had burned at those sounds. He did not remember the surprise of
seeing a college classmate’s name on the jacket of a novel not long after they
graduated, or the respect he had felt after reading the book. He did not remem-
ber the plea sure of giving respect.
Nor did Anders remember seeing a woman leap to her death from the
building opposite his own just days after his daughter was born. He did not
remember shouting, “Lord have mercy!” He did not remember deliberately
crashing his father’s car into a tree, or having his ribs kicked in by three police-
men at an anti- war rally, or waking himself up with laughter. He did not
remember when he began to regard the heap of books on his desk with bore-
dom and dread, or when he grew angry at writers for writing them. He did not
remember when everything began to remind him of something else.
is is what he remembered. Heat. A baseball field. Yellow grass, the whirr
of insects, himself leaning against a tree as the boys of the neighborhood gather
for a pickup game. He looks on as the others argue the relative genius of Mantle
and Mays. ey have been worrying this subject all summer, and it has become
tedious to Anders: an oppression, like the heat.
en the last two boys arrive, Coyle and a cousin of his from Mississippi.
Anders has never met Coyle’s cousin before and will never see him again. He
says hi with the rest but takes no further notice of him until they’ve chosen
sides and someone asks the cousin what position he wants to play. “Shortstop,”
the boy says. “Short’s the best position they is.” Anders turns and looks at
him. He wants to hear Coyle’s cousin repeat what he’s just said, but he knows
better than to ask. e others will think he’s being a jerk, ragging the kid for
his grammar. But that isn’t it, not at all — it’s that Anders is strangely roused,
elated, by those final two words, their pure unexpectedness and their music.
He takes the field in a trance, repeating them to himself.
e bullet is already in the brain; it won’t be outrun forever, or charmed
to a halt. In the end it will do its work and leave the troubled skull behind,
dragging its comet’s tail of memory and hope and talent and love into the mar-
ble hall of commerce. at can’t be helped. But for now Anders can still make
time. Time for the shadows to lengthen on the grass, time for the tethered dog
to bark at the flying ball, time for the boy in right field to smack his sweat-
blackened mitt and softly chant, ey is, they is, they is.
⁓ 
wolff: bullet in the brain | 371
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373
A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
Sherman Alexie. “is Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” from e Lone Ranger
and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie. Copyright © 1993 and 2005 by
Sherman Alexie. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Richard Bausch. “Tandolfo the Great.” Copyright © 1992 by Richard Bausch as taken
from e Stories of Richard Bausch by Richard Bausch. Copyright © 2003 by Richard
Bausch. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Kevin Brockmeier. “A Fable with Slips of White Paper Spilling from the Pockets” from
e View from the Seventh Layer, p. 260. Copyright © 2008 by Kevin Brockmeier. Used
by permission of Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
Percival Everett. “e Appropriation of Cultures” from Damned If I Do: Stories, p. 91.
Copyright © 2004 by Percival Everett. Reprinted with the permission of e Permis-
sions Company, Inc., on behalf of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota. www .gray
wolfpress .org
Becky Hagenston. “Midnight, Licorice, Shadow” appeared in Strange Weather by Becky
Hagenston (Press 53, 2010) and in Crazy horse (Fall 2008). Copyright © 2008 by Becky
Hagenston. Reproduced by permission.
Barry Hannah. “Water Liars,” from Airships. Copyright © 1970, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977,
1978 by Barry Hannah. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Jesse Lee Kercheval. Building Fiction: How to Develop Plot and Structure, University of
Wisconsin Press, Copyright © 2003 by the Regents of the University of Wisconsin
System. Reprinted by permission of e University of Wisconsin Press.
Jhumpa Lahiri. “is Blessed House” from Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri.
Copyright © 1999 by Jhumpa Lahiri. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Jill McCorkle. “Magic Words” from Going Away Shoes by Jill McCorkle. © 2009 by Jill
McCorkle. Reprinted by permission of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. All rights
reserved.
Lorrie Moore. “How to Become a Writer” from Self- Help by Lorrie Moore. Copyright ©
1985 by M. L. Moore. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random
House, Inc.
Tim O’Brien. “On the Rainy River” from e ings ey Carried by Tim O’Brien. Copy-
right © 1990 by Tim O’Brien. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
ZZ Packer. “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere” from Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer,
copyright © 2003 by ZZ Packer. Used by permission of Riverhead Books, an imprint
of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
374 | acknowledgments
Karen Russell. “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” from St. Lucy’s Home for
Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell, copyright © 2006 by Karen Russell. Used by
permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
George Saunders. “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline” from CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by
George Saunders, pp. 960– 71. Copyright © 1996 by George Saunders. Used by permis-
sion of Random House, Inc.
John Updike. “A & P” from Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories by John Updike. Copyright
© 1962 and renewed 1990 by John Updike. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a
division of Random House, Inc.
Tobias Wolff. “Bullet in the Brain” from e Night in Question. Copyright © 1996 by Tobias
Wolff. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
375
index
Accessories belonging to
characters, 44
Action
of characters, 44
rising and falling, Freytag
Pyramid and, 90, 91
Active protagonists, 119– 21
Active verbs, versus passive,
146
Adjectives, using clearly,
146– 47
Adverbs
in dialogue tags, 72
using clearly, 146– 47
Air quotes, 175
Alexie, Sherman, “is Is
What It Means to Say
Phoenix, Arizona,”
185 – 9 7. See also 23,
28– 29, 30, 103, 108, 109
“All right,” 181
“A lot,” 181
Ambiguous writing, 143– 44
Anderson, Sherwood, “e
Egg,” 132
Animal House, 132
Appearance, physical, of
characters, 43
“Appropriation of Cultures,
e” (Everett), 218– 26.
See also 1 5– 16
“A & P” (Updike), 359– 65.
See also 20, 35, 36, 63,
64, 84, 91– 92, 94,
96– 97, 98– 99, 101, 108,
124, 134– 35
Armageddon, 115
Art, fiction as, 4– 5
Art of Fiction, e (Gardner),
42, 58, 153
“Art of Fiction, e” (James),
3, 48
Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot,
e (Baxter), 120
Aspects of the Novel (Forster),
93
Assignments. See Exercises
Atonement (McEwan), 18
Attention, paying, 3– 4
Attributions, dialogue, 72
Atypical day, compelling story
of, 121– 22
Audience
engaging with details, 13– 14
gaining trust of, 171
Autobiography, writing
character’s, 163
Avatar, 65
“Away from the page” writing,
163– 64
“A while”/“awhile,” 181
“Babylon Revisited”
(Fitzgerald), 150
Backing up computer files, 161
Backstory
of characters, 44
verb tense and, 149– 51
Baldwin, James, “Sonny’s
Blues,” 36
Barth, John, “Lost in the
Funhouse,” 106
“Bath, e” (Carver), 167
Bathtub story, 122
Bausch, Richard
“Man Who Knew Belle
Starr, e,” 29– 30
“Tandolfo the Great,”
198– 210. See also 48,
56, 71, 115, 118, 120,
121, 124, 131– 32, 138,
145, 151, 174
Baxter, Charles, e Art of
Subtext: Beyond Plot,
120
“be,” forms of, “- ing” words
and, 181
Beginnings, 25– 41
basic information in, 39– 40
breaking from routine in,
32– 35
choosing perspective for,
38– 39
connecting endings with,
129– 30
establishing story’s stakes
in, 30– 32
purpose of, 25– 27
revealing key information
in, 27– 30
starting in medias res in,
35– 38
376 | index
Believability
of causal connections,
95– 96
of characters, 46
details and, 12– 13
Beloved (Morrison), 154– 56
Bias
in first- person point of
view, 51– 52
in third- person point of
view, 54– 56
Big words, using, 144– 46
“Billiard ball” causality, 95
Bird by Bird (Lamott), 158
“Black Cat, e” (Poe), 62
Blair Witch Project, e, 104
Breaking the rules, 27
Bright Lights, Big City
(McInerney), 54
Brockmeier, Kevin
“A Fable with Slips of
White Paper Spilling
from the Pockets,”
21 1 – 17. See also 26 – 2 7,
39, 57, 101– 02
e Illumination, 107
Brothers Grimm
“Goldilocks and the ree
Bears,” 25– 26
“Hansel and Gretel,” 26
Building Fiction: How to
Develop Plot and
Structure (Kercheval),
47
“Bullet in the Brain”
(Wolff), 366– 71. See
also 6, 49, 62, 75– 76,
91, 115, 140, 177
Canterbury Tales, e
(Chaucer), 104
Capitalization
in dialogue, 172– 73
of whole words, 178
Carver, Raymond, 21
“Bath, e”/“A Small,
Good ing,” 167
“Cathedral,” 62, 167
“Student’s Wife, e,” 36
Catastrophe, Freytag
Pyramid and, 90
Catcher in the Rye, e
(Salinger), 52
“Cathedral” (Carver), 62
Cathedral (Carver), 167
Causality, 93– 96
Change, internal and
external, 100– 02
Characterization. See also
Characters
challenge of, 46– 47
definition of, 43
setting and, 49– 50
Characters, 43– 48
active, 119– 21
changes in, 100– 02
desires of, 116– 19
distance between narrator
and, 57– 59
feelings of. See Feelings of
characters
introducing, 25– 26
names of. See Names of
characters
plot and, 48
third- person point of view
and, 54– 59
thoughts of. See oughts
of characters
writing autobiography of,
163
Chaucer, Geoffrey, e
Canterbury Tales, 104
Checklists. See also Tips
for avoiding clichéd
writing, 9
for choosing perspective,
38– 39
for establishing basics of
your story, 39– 40
for focusing on climax,
100
for reading like a writer,
5– 6
for setting stakes of your
story, 31
for sitting down and
writing, 7– 8
Chekhov, Anton, “e Lady
with the Dog,”
132– 33, 139
Christmas Carol, A (Dickens),
101
“CivilWarLand in Bad
Decline” (Saunders),
341– 58. See also
80– 83, 123
Clarity, 143– 56
in sentences, 145– 46,
147– 53
versus simplicity, 154– 56
in story as a whole, 153– 54
vagueness versus ambiguity
and, 143– 44
in words, 144– 47
index | 377
Clear sentences, 145– 46,
147– 53
Clear words, 144– 47
Clichés, avoiding, 9, 181
Climax
as element of story
structure, 98– 100
Freytag Pyramid and,
90, 91
Cloud Atlas (Mitchell), 107
Collage story, 105– 06
Comedy, using lofty diction
for, 145
Comma
before and after name in
dialogue, 173– 74
with comma splices, 176
inside quotation marks,
172– 73
Comma splices, 176
Comparative language, voice
and, 61
Compelling story, writing,
114– 27
active protagonists and,
119– 21
atypical day and, 121– 22
character desires and,
116– 19
compressed time period
and, 124
external conflict and,
122– 23
high stakes and, 115– 16
internal conflict and, 123
originality and, 125– 27
suspense and, 124– 25
Computer, writing with, 8
Computer files, saving
revisions in, 160– 61
Conclusion
character changes
acknowledged in,
100– 02
Freytag Pyramid and, 90,
92
Concrete details. See Details
Confessions in story, 31
Conflict
compelling story of,
122– 23
as element of story
structure, 96– 98
introducing, 25– 26, 29
Constructive criticism,
164– 65
Contract of story, 27
Conversation. See Dialogue
Credibility. See Believability
Criticism, constructive,
164– 65
Curiosity, sparking, 29– 30
“Demonology” (Moody),
105– 06
Description, in scene- writing,
75– 78
Desires of characters, 116– 19
Details, 12– 24
believability and, 12– 13
choosing, 19– 21
engaging reader with, 13– 14
feelings and, 21– 23
showing and telling and,
15– 18
writer’s sensibility and, 23
writing as telepathy and,
18– 19
Deus ex machina, 136– 37
Dialogue
about, between and by
characters, 44– 45
addressing person in,
173– 74
formatting and
punctuating, 172– 73
paragraph breaks in, 174
scare quotes in, 175
in scene- writing, 67– 74
Dialogue tags, 72
Dickens, Charles, A
Christmas Carol, 101
Diction
formality of, 146
voice and, 61
Diehard, 115
Digression, in dialogue, 70
Discipline, in writing, 6– 8
Disruption, beginning with,
33– 34
Distance, narrative, 57– 59
“Double I” point of view,
52– 53
Double quotation marks,
174
Dramatization of story,
108– 09
Dreads, 117– 19
Dreams, 117– 19
“Drinking Coffee Elsewhere”
(Packer), 303– 23. See
also 34, 115, 150, 152
“Driving and thinking” story,
122
378 | index
“Egg, e” (Anderson), 132
Elements of fiction, 42– 64
character as, 43– 48
interdependence of, 42– 43
plot as, 48
point of view as, 50– 60
setting as, 49– 50
theme as, 63– 64
voice as, 61– 63
Elements of Style, e (Strunk
and White), 14
Emotions. See Feelings of
characters
Empathy, fiction writing as,
10– 11
Endings, 128– 42
challenge of, 129
common pitfalls of, 135– 39
strategies for, 129– 35
word choice in, 139– 41
Environment, physical, for
writer, 8
Epiphany, 100– 01
Errors, in published stories,
171
Everett, Percival, “e
Appropriation of
Cultures,” 218– 26. See
also 1 5– 16
Everyday, break from
beginning with, 32– 35
compelling story of, 121– 22
Exclamation marks, 178
Exercises
for being clear, 156
for breaking from the
everyday, 122
for building suspense, 125
for choosing the day that’s
different, 35
for choosing relevant
details, 21
for choosing the unusual,
127
for confessing, 32
for connecting plot and
character, 48
for continuing your scene
— adding exposition
and interiority, 84
for continuing your scene
— adding narration
and description, 76
for creating conflict in
your story, 98
for creating scenes, 87
for describing an event, 19
for developing your
characters, 47
for discovering voice, 63
for drawing on experience,
11
for evaluating your story’s
form, 108
for experimenting with
endings, 142
for experimenting with
setting, 50
for identifying and
developing theme, 64
for identifying how your
character changes, 102
for informing and
convincing, 28
for knowing your
character’s desires, 119
for making causal
connections, 96
for making your character
active, 121
for plotting a story, 92
for practicing point of
view, 59
for practicing writing scene
and summary, 109
for recalling details, 14
for setting the story’s
stakes, 116
for showing with raw data,
18
for sparking curiosity, 30
for starting at the
beginning — or
middle, 38
for structural imitation,
110
for thinking about point of
view, 53
for trying a variety of
openers, 41
for using details to convey
emotion, 22
for using details to tell
stories, 24
for using narrative
distance, 59
for writing a letter and
diary entry, 13
for writing a scene — just
dialogue, 73
Expectations, 117– 19
Experience, writing from
own, 8
Experiencing scenes, 65– 66
index | 379
Exposition, in scene- writing,
78– 80
External change, 100– 02
External conflict
compelling story of, 122– 23
versus internal, 97
“Fable with Slips of White
Paper Spilling from
the Pockets, A”
(Brockmeier), 211– 17.
See also 2 6 – 2 7, 39, 57,
101– 02
Facts, revision and, 162– 63
Falling action, Freytag
Pyramid and, 90
Fan Man, e (Kotzwinkle),
62
Farewell to Arms, A
(Hemingway), 128– 29
Fast Times at Ridgemont High,
132
Fears, 117– 19
Feelings of characters
compelling story and, 123
details that convey, 21– 23
motivational continuum
of, 117– 19
scene- writing and, 80– 83
Fight Club (Palahniuk), 136
Files, computer, saving
revisions in, 160– 61
Finishing, 166– 67
First draft
understanding, 159– 60
variety of ways to write, 158
First impression. See
Beginnings
First- person point of view,
51– 53
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
“Babylon Revisited,” 150
e Great Gatsby, 17,
21– 22, 38– 39
Flashbacks, verb tense and,
149– 51
Flaws of character,
believability and, 46
Focal character, 43. See also
Characters
Foreshadowing, 127
Form. See also Structure
of story
as meaning, 103
variations of, 103– 07
Forster, E. M., Aspects of the
Novel, 93
Fragments
in dialogue, 173
use of, 152, 177
Frame story, 104– 05
Freytag, Gustav, Technique of
the Drama, 89– 90
Freytag Pyramid, 89– 92
Future, pointing to in
ending, 132– 34
Gardner, John, 106, 171
e Art of Fiction, 42, 58,
153
Gender of main character,
revealing, 39
Gerunds, sentences beginning
with, 180– 81
“Gift of the Magi, e”
(Henry), 100
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins,
“e Yellow
Wallpaper,” 132
“Goldilocks and the ree
Bears” (Brothers
Grimm), 25– 26
“Goodbye and Good Luck”
(Paley), 36
“Good Man Is Hard to Find,
A” (O’Connor), 17
Great Gatsby, e (Fitzgerald),
17, 21– 22, 38– 39
Habit of writing, 6– 8
Hagenston, Becky,
“Midnight, Licorice,
Shadow,” 227– 38. See
also 8, 37– 38, 67, 74,
75, 79– 82, 84– 85,
104, 129– 30, 158– 59
Hannah, Barry, “Water
Liars,” 239– 43. See
also 110– 12, 115
“Hansel and Gretel”
(Brothers Grimm), 26
Hemingway, Ernest, 7
A Farewell to Arms, 128– 29
“Hills Like White
Elephants,” 39, 50,
55– 56
Henry, O., “e Gift of the
Magi,” 100
High- stakes story, 115– 16
Hills, Rust, 102
“Hills Like White Elephants”
(Hemingway), 39, 50,
55– 56
History of characters, 44
380 | index
Hitchcock, Alfred, 69
Homer, Iliad and Odyssey, 36
Hopes, 117– 19
“How to Become a Writer”
(Moore), 54, 279– 86
Humanity, insights into, 10– 11
“Hunters in the Snow”
(Wolff ), 140– 41
Ideas
finding, 8– 9
stories as delivery of, 63– 64
If You Want to Write: A Book
about Art, In de pen dence,
and Spirit (Ueland), 163
Iliad (Homer), 36
Illumination, e
(Brockmeier), 107
Imagination, revision and,
162– 63
Inevitability of ending, 129
Information
revealing at beginning,
27– 30
withholding, vagueness
and, 144
withholding, versus
suspense, 124– 25
“- ing” words, sentences
beginning with, 180– 81
In medias res
as out- of- sequence story, 104
story structure and, 35– 38
Instructional point of view,
54
Interiority
compelling story and, 123
in scene- writing, 80– 83
Internal change, 100– 02
Internal conflict
compelling story of, 123
versus external, 97– 98
Internet, avoiding while
writing, 7
Introduction, Freytag
Pyramid and, 90
“I” point of view, 51– 53
Irony, using lofty diction for,
145
Irving, Washington
Sketch Book, 104
“Sleepy Hollow,” 105
“Issue” story, 138
Italics, for character’s
thoughts, 175
Jackson, Shirley, “e
Lottery,” 62
James, Henry, 42
“e Art of Fiction,” 3, 48
Journal, keeping, 8
Joyce, James, 100– 01
Kafka, Franz, e
Metamorphosis, 28,
33– 34
Kercheval, Jesse Lee,
Building Fiction:
How to Develop Plot
and Structure, 47
Kerouac, Jack, On the Road,
157
Key information. See
Information
King, Stephen, 18, 20
On Writing, 4, 146– 47
Kotzwinkle, William,
e Fan Man, 62
“Lady with the Dog, e”
(Chekhov), 132– 33, 139
Lahiri, Jhumpa, “is Blessed
House,” 244– 61. See
also 43, 44, 45– 46,
131, 144
Lamott, Anne, Bird by Bird,
158
“Lay” versus “lie,” 178– 80
Lee, Harper, To Kill a
Mockingbird, 45, 53
“Lesson” story, 138
Lethem, Jonathan, Motherless
Brooklyn, 125
“Lie” versus “lay,” 178– 80
Limited omniscient point of
view, 56– 57
Linking verbs, “- ing” words
and, 181
Location
clear sentences and, 151– 53
purpose and importance
of, 49– 50
Lofty diction, 144– 46
Long sentences, 152, 153
“Lost in the Funhouse”
(Barth), 106
“Lottery, e” (Jackson), 62
Lucas, George, Star Wars, 36
Lying, details and, 12– 13
Magee, Kelly, “Not People,
Not is,” 56
“Magic Show, e”
( O’Brien), 46– 47
index | 381
“Magic Words” (McCorkle),
262– 78. See also 12– 13,
19, 39– 40, 57, 93– 94,
103, 154
Main character, 43. See also
Characters
Making Shapely Fiction
(Stern), 122, 135– 36
Malamud, Bernard, 157
“Man Who Knew Belle Starr,
e” (Bausch), 29– 30
Mason, Bobbie Ann, “Shiloh,”
17, 149
McCorkle, Jill, “Magic
Words,” 262– 78. See
also 12– 13, 19, 39– 40,
57, 93– 94, 103, 154
McEwan, Ian, Atonement, 18
McInerney, Jay, Bright Lights,
Big City, 54
Memento, 104
“Memento Mori” (Nolan),
104
Metafiction, 106– 07
Metamorphosis, e (Kafka),
28, 33– 34
Meta phors, voice and, 61
Middle, starting story in
as out- of- sequence story,
104
story structure and, 35– 38
“Midnight, Licorice,
Shadow” (Hagenston),
227– 38. See also 8,
37– 38, 67, 74, 75,
79– 82, 84– 85, 104,
129– 30, 158– 59
Misplaced modifiers, 180
Missouri Review, e, 114
Mitchell, David, Cloud Atlas,
107
Moby Dick, 14
“Modest Proposal for
Preventing the
Children of Poor
People in Ireland from
Being a Burden to
eir Parents or
Country, and for
Making em
Beneficial to the
Public, A” (Swift), 61
Mood of story, setting and,
49– 50
Moody, Rick, “Demonology,”
105– 06
Moore, Lorrie, “How to
Become a Writer,”
279– 86. See also 54
Morrison, Toni, Beloved,
154– 56
Motherless Brooklyn (Lethem),
125
Motivational continuum,
117– 19
Movies, finding ideas from, 9
Names of characters
addressing in dialogue,
173– 74
revealing, 39
tips for choosing, 148
Narration
about characters, 45– 46
distance of, in third- person
stories, 57– 59
point of view in. See Point
of view
in scene- writing, 74– 75
voice of, 61– 63
Newsworthy details, 20
Nolan, Christopher, 104
Nolan, Jonathan, “Memento
Mori,” 104
“Not People, Not is”
(Magee), 56
Novel writing, 9– 10
Oates, Joyce Carol, “Where
Are You Going,
Where Have You
Been?” 59, 163
Objective point of view
in first- person narrative,
51– 52
in third- person narrative,
54– 56
Objects
belonging to characters, 44
repeated in ending, 130– 32
O’Brien, Tim
“Magic Show, e,” 46– 47
“On the Rainy River,”
287– 302. See also 31,
94– 95, 97– 98, 99– 100,
101, 115– 16, 118– 19, 127
“ings ey Carried,
e,” 132
Observation, 3– 4
O’Connor, Flannery, 5, 16
“A Good Man Is Hard to
Find,” 17
Odyssey (Homer), 36
Omniscient point of view, 56
382 | index
“On the Rainy River”
( O’Brien), 287– 302.
See also 31, 94– 95,
97– 98, 99– 100, 101,
115– 16, 118– 19, 127
On the Road (Kerouac), 157
On Writing (King), 4, 146– 47
Openings. See Beginnings
Originality, 125– 27
Out- of- sequence story, 104
Packer, ZZ, “Drinking
Coffee Elsewhere,”
303– 23. See also 34,
115, 150, 152
Palahniuk, Chuck, Fight
Club, 136
Paley, Grace, “Goodbye and
Good Luck,” 36
Paragraph breaks, in
dialogue, 174
Paris Review, 128– 29
Passive verbs, versus active,
146
Past participle, of “lie” and
“lay,” 179
Past perfect tense, in stories
with flashback, 149– 51
Past tense
of “lie” and “lay,” 178– 79
in stories with flashback,
149– 51
Perfect characters,
believability and, 46
Period, inside quotation
marks, 172– 73
Personal history of characters,
44
Perspective. See also Point of
view
choosing, 38– 39
clarity of, 154
in scene- writing, 75– 76
“Place in Fiction” (Welty), 49
Plot. See also Structure of
story
as element of fiction, 48
setting and, 49– 50
versus story, 93
Poe, Edgar Allan, “e Black
Cat,” 62
Point of view, 50– 60
choosing, 38– 39
clarity of, 154
consistency of, 60
first- person, 51– 53
introducing, 25– 26
in scene- writing, 75– 76
second- person, 53– 54
third- person, 54– 59
Pound, Ezra, 103
POV. See Point of view
Practicing, to improve
writing, 4
Present participle, sentence
beginning with, 180– 81
Present progressive tense, of
“lie” and “lay,” 179
Present tense
of “lie” and “lay,” 178– 79
in stories with flashback,
149– 51
Problem solving
with deus ex machina,
136– 37
in ending, 139
Protagonist. See also Characters
active, 119– 21
establishing, 43
Psycho, 69
Psychological distance, in
third- person stories,
57– 59
Pulp Fiction, 104
Punctuation
of character’s thoughts,
175– 76
of dialogue, 172– 75
multiple, 178
Question marks, 178
Questions, asking
while reading, 5– 6
while revising, 161– 62
Quotation marks
for character’s thoughts,
175– 76
double versus single, 174
punctuation and, 172– 73
Raiders of the Lost Ark, 37
Reader
engaging with details,
13– 14
gaining trust of, 171
Reading
aloud, for revision, 164
to improve writing, 4
like writer, 5– 6, 161– 62
Relationships between
characters, revealing,
39– 40
Relevant details. See Details
Reliability
index | 383
of first- person point of
view, 51– 52
of third- person point of
view, 59
Repetition, in ending,
129– 30
Reservoir Dogs, 104
Resonance of ending, 129
Revising, 157– 67
first draft and, 159– 60
knowing when to stop,
166– 67
purpose of, 157– 58
strategies for, 160– 66
understanding, 158– 59
Rising action, Freytag
Pyramid and, 90, 91
Routine, break from
beginning with, 32– 35
compelling story of,
121– 22
Rules
of stories, 27
of writing, 4– 5
Run- on sentences, 176
Rushdie, Salman, 136
Russell, Karen, “St. Lucy’s
Home for Girls Raised
by Wolves,” 324– 40.
See also 20, 34– 35, 36,
133– 34, 141, 181
“Said,” 72
Salinger, J. D., e Catcher in
the Rye, 52
Sarcasm
in dialogue, 71
scare quotes and, 175
Saunders, George,
“CivilWarLand in Bad
Decline,” 341– 58. See
also 80– 83, 123
Saving computer files, 161
Scare quotes, 175
Scene- writing, 65– 88
description and, 75– 78
dialogue and, 67– 74
as element of story
structure, 108– 09
exposition and, 78– 80
interiority and, 80– 83
narration and, 74– 75
versus summary, 65– 66
Scheduling of writing time, 7
Second- person point of view,
53– 54
Senses, writing with five, 19
Sensibility, writer’s, details
and, 23
Sensory details. See Details
Sentences
beginning with “- ing”
words, 180– 81
clarity in, 145– 46, 147– 53
length of, 151– 52
run- on, 176
Setting
introducing, 25– 26
purpose and importance
of, 49– 50
Sex of main character,
revealing, 39
“Shiloh” (Mason), 17, 149
Short sentences, 151– 52
Short story. See Story
“Showing” of story, 15– 18
Similes, voice and, 61
Simplicity versus clarity,
154– 56
Single quotation marks, 174
Situation, introducing,
25– 26, 29
Sketch Book (Irving), 104
“Sleepy Hollow” (Irving), 105
Slice- of- life story, 121
“Small, Good ing, A”
(Carver), 167
“Sonny’s Blues” (Baldwin), 36
Specific details. See Details
Speech. See Dialogue
Spelling mistakes, 181
“St. Lucy’s Home for Girls
Raised by Wolves”
(Russell), 324– 40. See
also 20, 34– 35, 36,
133– 34, 141, 181
Stakes of story
establishing, 30– 32
high, 115– 16
Start of story. See Beginnings
Star Wars (Lucas), 36
Stern, Jerome, Making
Shapely Fiction, 122,
135– 36
Story
clarity throughout, 153– 54
versus plot, 93
within story, 104– 05
writing compelling. See
Compelling story,
writing
Story’s stakes
establishing, 30– 32
high, 115– 16
384 | index
Structure of story, 89– 113
causality and, 93– 96
classic, 89– 92
climax and, 98– 100
conclusion and, 100– 02
conflict and, 96– 98
form as meaning and, 103
Freytag Pyramid and,
89– 92
imitating, 110– 13
other forms of, 103– 07
scene and summary and,
108– 09
Strunk, William, e
Elements of Style, 14
“Student’s Wife, e”
(Carver), 36
Student writing samples,
73– 74, 77– 78, 86– 87,
112– 13
Studying, to improve
writing, 4
Subjectivity, of first- person
point of view, 51– 52
Subtext, in dialogue, 71
Summary
as element of story
structure, 108– 9
versus scene- writing, 65– 66
Surprise endings, 28, 135– 36
Suspense, 124– 25
Swift, Jonathan, “A Modest
Proposal for Preventing
the Children of Poor
People in Ireland from
Being a Burden to
eir Parents or
Country, and for
Making em
Beneficial to the
Public,” 61
Symbolism, in settings, 50
Syntax, voice and, 61
Tags, dialogue, 72
“Tandolfo the Great”
(Bausch), 198– 210. See
also 48, 56, 71, 115, 118,
120, 121, 124, 131– 32,
138, 145, 151, 174
Tarantino, Quentin, 104
Teaching lesson in ending,
138
Technique of the Drama
(Freytag), 89– 90
Telepathy, writing as, 18– 19
Tele vi sion, finding ideas
from, 9
“Telling” of story, 15– 18
Ten- dollar words, 144– 46
Tense(s). See Past perfect
tense; Past tense;
Present progressive
tense; Present tense;
Verb tenses
“at” versus “who,” 177
eme
purpose and importance
of, 63– 64
revision and, 162, 164
setting and, 49– 50
“ings ey Carried, e”
( O’Brien), 132
inking, like writer, 3– 11
ird- person point of view,
54– 59
“is Blessed House” (Lahiri),
244– 61. See also 43, 44,
45– 46, 131, 144
“is Is What It Means to
Say Phoenix, Arizona”
(Alexie), 185– 97. See
also 23, 28– 29, 30,
103, 108, 109
oughts of characters
compelling story and, 123
developing character with,
45
formatting and
punctuating, 175– 76
scene- writing and, 80– 83
Time
clear sentences and, 148– 51
compressed, compelling
story and, 124
lag, between events and
telling of events,
52– 53
Tips
for keeping point of view
consistent, 60
for making characters
believable, 46
for naming characters, 148
for writing with five senses,
19
“to be,” forms of, “- ing”
words and, 181
To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee),
45, 53
Tone
introducing, 25– 26
voice and, 61
Trick endings, 135– 36
index | 385
Trouble. See Conflict
Trust, gaining reader’s, 171
Ueland, Brenda, If You Want
to Write: A Book about
Art, In de pen dence, and
Spirit, 163
Unexpectedness of ending,
129
Unreliability
in first- person point of
view, 51– 52
in third- person point of
view, 59
Updike, John, “A & P,”
359– 65. See also 20, 35,
36, 63, 64, 84, 91– 92,
94, 96– 97, 98– 99, 101,
108, 124, 134– 35
Vague writing, 143– 44
Verbs. See Active verbs;
Linking verbs; Passive
verbs
Verb tenses, in stories with
flashback, 149– 51
Video games, finding ideas
from, 9
Violating the contract, 27
Vocabulary, clarity of, 145
Voice
introducing, 25– 26
purpose and importance
of, 61– 63
Vonnegut, Kurt, 97
“Water Liars” (Hannah),
239– 43. See also
110– 12, 115
Welty, Eudora
“Place in Fiction,” 49
“Why I Live at the P.O.,” 52
“What if” game, 8
What We Talk About When
We Talk About Love
(Carver), 167
“When,” asking, clear
sentences and, 148– 51
“Where,” asking, clear
sentences and, 151– 53
“Where Are You Going,
Where Have You
Been?” (Oates), 59
White, E. B., e Elements of
Style, 14
“Who”
asking, clear sentences and,
147– 48
versus “that,” 177
“Why I Live at the P.O.”
(Welty), 52
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 145
Wizard of Oz, e, 107, 136
Wol ff, Tobias
“Bullet in the Brain,”
366– 71. See also 6, 49,
62, 75– 76, 91, 115, 140,
177
“Hunters in the Snow,”
140– 41
Word choice
clarity and, 144– 47
in ending, 139– 41
voice and, 61
Workshop, writing, 160,
165
Wright, Steven, 94
Writing
of compelling story. See
Compelling story,
writing
like writer, 3– 11
workshop for, 160, 165
“Yellow Wallpaper, e”
(Gilman), 132
“You” point of view, 53– 54
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about the author
Michael Kardos (michaelkardos.com) is the author of
the story collection One Last Good Time and the novel
The Three-Day Affair, named by Publishers Weekly as a
best book of fall 2012. His stories have appeared in such
journals as The Southern Review, Crazyhorse, and Prairie
Schooner, and his essays about fiction have been published
in The Writer’s Chronicle and Writer’s Digest. Kardos
received his B.A. from Princeton, his M.F.A. from Ohio
State, and his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri. He currently lives in
Starkville, Mississippi, where he co-directs the creative writing program at
Mississippi State. He also writes for Bedford’s LitBits, where he blogs about
teaching creative writing (bedfordstmartins.com/litbits).
brief contents
art & craft
1 thinking, reading, & writing like a writer
2 the extreme importance of relevant detail
3 starting your story
4 working with the elements of fiction
5 creating scenes: a nuts & bolts approach
6 organizing your story: form & structure
7 writing a compelling story
8 ending your story
9 the power of clarity
10 revising your story
boot camp
11 the mechanics of fiction: a writer’s boot camp
anthology
12 a mini-anthology: 15 stories
The Art and Craft of Fiction is available as a
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The Art and Craft of Fiction Kardos BEDFORD
ST. MARTIN’S
ISBN 978-1-4576-1390-6
As a beginning fiction writer, could you use some practical ideas on ways
to begin, end, and revise your stories? Support for creating vivid scenes and
characters? This book offers a focused approach designed to help you move
from learning your craft — to practicing art. Brief, friendly, and wonder-
fully readable, The Art and Craft of Fiction gives you all you need — in
under 400 pages.
prepublication praise
“Clear and down-to-earth.” — Wiley Cash, Bethany College
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The Art and
Craft of Fiction
A Writer’s Guide
Michael Kardos

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