PRINCIPLES OF STRUCTURE AND ORGANIZATION

 

 

            One of the writer's most important decisions lies in when his or her story takes place. It could be during:

            >> a minute or so ("Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge")

            >> an hour or less ("Witnesses")

            >> a day or less ("Snow” and "Cathedral”)

            >> or over a longer period of time ("The Man From Mars")

 

            Related to that question is another: what event can serve as a framework for the action of the story. It could be:

>> having a purse snatched while being a tourist ("Barcelona")

>> a man’s birthday party ("Plane")

>> going to visit a terminally ill friend ("In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried")
>> a man and woman arguing while waiting for a train ("Hills Like White Elephants")

          >> an afternoon's visit by a sister ("Everyday Use")

 

 

            THE HELPFUL LIMITATIONS: what will be soon apparent to the discerning eye, in any case, is that writers of short stories tend to force themselves to work within small spaces. Writers of short stories tend to look for simple events or naturally limited frameworks -- a single date, a visit to a museum, the delivery of a pizza, a business phone call -- to work within. Such a limitation forces the writer to focus and to concentrate the material.

 

 

            SINGULARITY: Generally speaking, for apprentice writers, it's often a good idea to follow the idea of "singularity." Like a short film or a one-act play, a story based on the idea of singularity will:

 

            1. Take place in a single setting.

            2. Take place in a single unified and unbroken time frame.

            3. Concern the experience of a single character.

            4. Be told using that single character's point of view, in either first or third person.

            5. Have a single line of action leading to a climax.

 

            As has been noted before, some very basic organizing and structuring devices are objects, places, events, and persons.

 

            CONFLICT: I can't stress too much how important it is for the reader to sense that the story he or she is reading moves forward by means of an inner tension or interest, some essential spring at its core demanding to be unleashed, demanding that its energy be spent and brought to an equilibrium. Traditionally in the short story, this has come from "conflict" -- one character against society, nature, another character, or against the self. More recently in contemporary short fiction, authors have attempted with varied success to substitute other kinds of tension to create interest. But what remains above all is the self-evident truth that to succeed a piece of fiction needs to create interest in a reader; it needs to conjure questions in the reader's mind that can be answered only by following the course of the narration.