Chapter Ten: The Structure of a Story: Setting and Plot

 

As your text points out, setting and plot play important roles in a story and must coordinate well with character and conflict to create the soup we call a short story.

While you read, notice the emphasis on details, something we have focused on since the first assignment.

Now, you want to be careful about details, choosing a midway point between, say, Hemingway and James. But remember what you learned from writing poetry: use sensual details to reinforce images and ideas. And the specific is always more emphatic than the general and/or the abstract.

These details--which include the senses--play an integral part in establishing the setting or settings for a story. For purposes of economy, try to keep your settings to a minimum: you only have a few pages in which to work out your details and the conflict.

If you utilize a flashback, remain in your one spot and try to keep the changing scenes from getting carried away and confusing, for you will then turn the story into a ping-pong match.

But before you write about a scene, consider all the details you wish to establish, and with economy. For example, if the weather has no major role in the story, do not waste time discussing the rain or the heat. The setting is set, as it were, in such a way that your characters will come to life and accent the ideas you wish to emphasize:

"And remember too that the most important thing in any story is what and how the characters experience and deal with the conflicts and opportunities in the story" (206).

So, once you have an idea about what you want to do with your story, take the time to jot down details about the setting in which your characters will come to life for the reader.

Look over the "Writing to Warm Up" and "Writing for Ideas and Practice" sections in your text, especially AFTER you have an idea about a story. Then ask the questions your text poses, determining the most significant moment in the story and the most important conflict.

Think of where the scenes will take place.

And remember that the emphasis on a short story falls upon characters and their psychological conflicts: if you have a compelling character and a truthful conflict, the important elements that constitute a setting will remain relatively few.

So do not try to overload the pages with unnecessary details: less is more.

Above all, create scenes using elements from your own experience--but remember that you do not write biography. Now, the scene might not take place in your living room, for example; however, you can take details from your living room and that of a friend's to create the scene.

 

Remember what Alice Monroe said about "Boys and Girls": the details are autobiographical but the events did not happen to her. She borrows this scene and that person and puts the details together to create the setting for the story and the scenes that establish the characters and the conflict.

"In order for the reader to be able to relate to the story, you must identify those details in your story which establish the time, the place, and the overall mood of the story" (207)--to accomplish the preceding means that you must use words well and with economy.

On 207, you text mentions some excellent titles, some of which are on the internet:

"A & P" by John Updike

"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been," by Joyce Carol Oats

"Everyday Use" by Alice Walker

"A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

You need not read all these stories, of course; but look at how the various authors use the setting: the characters must utilize, consume, as it were, the settings in which they might not actually fit, which could be a major factor in establishing your conflict.

Plot unites, if you will, character, setting, and conflict: plot helps you unfold the narrative, which need not be offered in chronological order: clearly, you will need to jump in time in a story that contains a flashback.

"Plot can be defined as the series of events in the story, chronological or not, which serve to move the story from its beginnings through its climax or turning point and to a resolution of its conflicts." (210)

Again, look over the prompts in this chapter, for while each will not work for everyone, you can experiment with the various springboards to ideas.

As you read through the chapter, get familiar with the vocabulary; you need not memorize. When you read the stories for this week's discussion, however, try to bring this vocabulary into play, for this vocabulary provides you with a new way to read, one that will help you write. So think in terms of who is the protagonist in "Boys and Girls" and the antagonist in "Horse Dealer's Daughter."

In your own writing, whether Nanofiction or Short Story, you want to establish your protagonist right away: You must write your story so that you and the reader know who the protagonist is and what he or she is about: remember, the conflict is psychological in emphasis, even in the short story in the text, "The Appalachian Trail." Read the story and then the analysis your authors offer, for they do a good job of showing this simple work's sophistication.

Again, you need not memorize the vocabulary, but try as you read to find the climax or turning point in each of the stories. And when you write, look at ways in which the rising action leads, because of the conflict and the protagonist involved with the antagonist (which need not be a person), to an inevitable conclusion or climax.

Rising action and falling action refer to the narrative's rhythm, if you will, detailing the events that take place in the plot that carry the action and the reader to a resolution or denouement.

With respect to all the preceding vocabulary, take a look at this helpful web page in which Kathy Kennedy and others offer some wonderful insights into getting started with writing a short story: 10 Tips for Novice Creative Writers.

You will find that the hints include pretty much all the vocabulary in our text and reinforce what the authors have to say, including Jonas Agee.

Remember, however, that the ending does not mean that all is happy or totally tragic. A person who loses an expensive watch might, in fact, learn a powerful lesson or come to appreciate something important about herself--and work at making the lesson learned something your story implies.

You can practice with your nanofiction to encapsulate a scene. See for example on 213 the paragraphs about the man alone who wakes up and remembers his dead wife. He eventually decides to live, by implication, when he feeds the fish. This particular sequence could serve as a foundation for a flashback or, indeed, a flash forward: and you have a wonderful little bit of nanofiction, which in this case, provides a small narrative island, a scene.

Again, take a look at the prompts: the one on page 214 is particularly good to help you generate ideas.

Now, read about foreshadowing, round characters, flat characters, and stock characters, remembering, however, that you need only one character in your story. In other words, do not attempt to put too much into one short narrative.

You main character will become rounded as the story progresses, as she develops, and we come to appreciate the conflicts with which she deals.

Remember, too, that "Every single detail does not have to be directly related to the plot line, even though, as we said above, in a sense every detail relates to the advancement of the plot at least indirectly" (216). All to say that the narrative must hold together--must make sense, must have what your text (218) calls dramatic unity and coherence, even if the character experiences a certain incoherence.

Your text does not talk about one element of the story in specific detail: the beginning. In the beginning, posit essential details, for you do not want to misdirect your reader. Here details count very much; and a beginning should bear an important relationship with the conclusion.

So in your opening sentences, do not, as it were, beat around the bush, for you want to establish or set up mood, the setting, the character, and conflict. As with poetry, you want to get the plum in front of the reader.

The best advice is to start, but "do not think that once you begin thinking about a story that all will be well, that it will automatically fall into place and all the plot details will appear and work together. [...] Remember: one thing causes another; on thing builds on another; everything in the story is there for a reason" (220).

 

Pay attention, too, in your reading of fiction how authors utilize punctuation and spacing for quotations--very important.

And remember, too, that concise prose and good grammar are essential parts of all effective writing.

Use your imagination and practice economy! Write with vim.

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