Story – the magic of storytelling.

The other day I wrote about the absurd. I believe you have to write about the other, the in-betweens, even the absurd between your story arks.

If you string your readers along with glowing, sparkling Christmas lights all the time, it doesn’t do you justice. The reader has a hunch that you-may-be-just-full-of-shit. Your reader will never believe you and inevitably call you out.

Writers talk about this all the time in fiction and nonfiction. Characters must be believable.

So what do you do in the between? I think about this all the time.

How is this going to work? How can I keep my readers reading? How do you write the transitional sentences, transitional scenes let’s say between your 3 story arks book-ended? What do you say? What do you write?

This is the tough stuff. This is what writers talk about the most.

There are instincts and a pulse. Sometimes you are off and sometimes on. That’s why you have an editor.

Still have to write for story sakes – sometimes it’s the arrangement of stories.

When I read, I study how authors do this in fiction and nonfiction. I am reading but I am also observing.

Malcolm Gladwell has a great workaround for transitional sentences, topics. If you read him, you will observe. He even joked about it – once he learned what to do like the answer was in front of him all along.

Each author – it’s a mystery to see how they handle it; how they keep their readers going. Some authors have it down. My goal is to read a lot of their work.

And then sometimes the authors change their craft, and you are like, “What?! How did they do that? Why?!!”

It is helpful to follow certain authors and try and pay attention to what they are reading, if they share it.

It’s like I ask professors what they read, or see when they beam, get excited over an author or book. I want to learn from them and those authors.

Remember the scientific article I posted the other day?  To check and see if a story works, sometimes read it backward. That article made more sense when I read it backward. When checking your work, you can see gaps, breaks in linkages easier when you read backward.

Back to story –

Instinct; pulse; arrangement.

Too much tension, break the release. Too many rainbows must have rain. Too many clouds, blow them away with a big poof of strength.

The bullshit test.

On that note – a writer that gets it right: Vivian Gornick.

She is a fantastic writer. She just lays it out and walks away. And she walks with the perfect tone; not too abrupt, harsh, feeble, or neglect. She has been writing for a good chunk of her life and just released a new short memoir, just short of 200 pages titled The Odd Woman and the City.

Two stores similar in authorial tones, but two very different stories. Read on:

“During the Second World War, I was going home one night along a street I seldom used. All the stores were closed except one – a small fruit store. An old Italian who inside to wait for customers.

As I was paying him I saw that he was sad.

“You are sad,” I said to him. “What is troubling you?”

“Yes,” he said. “I am sad.” Then he added in the same monotone, not looking at me: “My son left for the front today and I’ll never see him again.”

“Don’t say that!” I said. “Of course you will!”

“No,” he answered. “I’ll never see him again.”

Afterwards, when the war was over, I found myself once more in that street and again it was late at night, dark and lonely; and again I saw the old man alone in the store.

I bought some apples and looked closely at him: his thin wrinkled face was grim but not particularly sad.

“How about your son?” I said.

“Did he come back from the war?”

“Yes,” he answered.

“He was not wounded?”

“No. He is alright.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “Fine!”

He took the bag of apples from my hands and groping inside took out one that had begun to rot and put in a good one instead.

“He came back at Christmas,” he added.

“How wonderful! That was wonderful!”

“Yes,” he said gently, “it was wonderful.”

He took the bag of apples from my hands again and took one of the smaller apples and put in a large one.”

Two: take note on this, the story above Gornick writes in the past. Below, even though it is framed in the past, she switches to the present to literally bring the camera closer as a flashback.

Overall I think it is easier to write in the past. I like writing in the present, but sometimes you get tripped up by some small detail and you are like “Ah, this doesn’t work, back to the past.”

Same principles when you write in the first, second, or third person. Easier to write in third, while most writers write in third.

Harder to write in first – and if you see a first-time published writer successfully write in the first person, they are skilled. They have been writing for a long time and they will have much more to write in the future. It is bold.

Second is super hard to write. I actually have an essay written in second, a totally different vibe. When I come across it I will share it. I actually seem to write in second on this blog more than I realize.

Back to Gornick, enjoy:

“In the drugstore I run into ninety-year-old Vera, a Trotskyist from way back who lives in a fourth-floor walk-up in my neighborhood and whose voice is always pitched at the level of a soapbox urgency.

She is waiting for a prescription to be filled, and as I haven’t seen her in a long while, on impulse I offer to wait with her. We sit down in two of three chairs lined up near the prescription counter, me in the middle, Vera in my left, and on my right a pleasant -looking man reading a book.

“Still living in the same place?” I ask.

“Where am I going to go?” she says, loudly enough for a man on the pickup line to turn in our direction. “But y’know, dolling?” The stairs keep me strong.”

“And your husband? How’s he taking the stairs?”

“Oh, him,” she says. “He died.”

“I’m so sorry,” I murmur.

Her hand pushes away the air.

“It wasn’t a good marriage,” she announces. Three people on the line turn around. “But, y’know? In the end it doesn’t really matter.”

I nod my head. I understand. The apartment is empty.

“One thing I got to say,” she goes on, “he was a no-good husband, but he was a great lover.”

I can feel a jolt in the body of the man sitting beside me.

“Well, that’s certainly important,” I say.

“Boy, was it ever! I met him in Detroit during the Second World War. We were organizing. In those days, everybody slept with everybody, so I did, too. But you wouldn’t believe it . . . “And here she lowers her voice dramatically, as though she has a secret of some importance to relate.”Most of the guys I slept with? They were no good in bed. I mean, they were bad, really bad.”

Now I feel the man in my right stifling a laugh.

“So when you found a good one” – Vera shrugs – “you held onto him.”

“I know what you mean,” I say.

“Do you, dolling?”

“Of course I do.”

“You mean they’re still bad?”

“Listen to us,” I say. “Two old women talking about lousy lovers.”

This time the man beside me laughs out loud. I turn and take a good long look at him.

“We’re sleeping with the same guys, right?” I say.

Yes, he nods. “And with the same ratio of satisfaction.”

For a split second the three of us look at one another, and then, all at once, we begin to howl. When the howling stops, we are all beaming.”

Much love, take care of you and you and you and you.

Work cited:

The Odd Woman and the City – Vivian Gornick

Fierce Attachments by Gornick is fabulous as well.