Framed

Exercise Your InkTank
Framed

One of the oldest forms of the story is the frame story, which makes sense given the story’s roots in oral tradition. Often the frame of the story involves the act of telling of a story. The teller narrates a story to a fictional audience, whether actual or implied. Eventually, the larger frame seems to fall away and the true story becomes the story that is told within the frame story, the story within the story.

In the best frame stories, we are always aware of the frame, though we may not focus on it. In the worst frame stories, the frame is a clunky device that merely bookends a story.

The telling of the story (or the frame) need not have primary or equal interest but it should certainly have an impact on the shape and character of the story within. The frame can determine the bent with which the story within is told, it can provide an occasion for the story within, it can even give the audience a glimpse of the world beyond the story within.

In establishing a good frame, we have to think about how we want the story within to be told; we have to think about audience. For our craftshop exercise today, I’m going to provide you with some criteria which should help you to establish a sound frame.

Here goes: Your storyteller is a character in the story within the story. Though not the most important character, she does have a story to tell. As a teenager, she knew a man who was later to become a highly respected and well known public figure. At one time, though, he was an ordinary high school student. They weren’t friends. They shared an evening together, both of them stranded (awkwardly) at a party in the woods gone haywire. There were others there and he wouldn’t have noticed her there, but she saw him do something extraordinary. Something that would make the story worth telling now, especially in light of who he has become. And perhaps also in light of who it is that she has become.

Your task is to find a way to let this character tell her story. Give her an audience within the story. Give her a voice. Ease us into the story within a story.

Sweet Emotion

Exercise Your InkTank
Insides and Outsides: Telling A Good Joke

We’ve all heard the advice that showing is a better choice than telling, but if we always show what a character is feeling, our stories will likely collapse under the weight of a thousand meaningful hand and facial gestures. In other words, sometimes it’s necessary simply to say, he was mad, especially if showing him pocketing his hands or biting his lip until it bleeds disrupts the timing or rhythm or efficiency of the storytelling. Imagine a world in which characters can never say what they feel, but instead must find ways of otherwise revealing themselves. How cumbersome and how comical.

(A few provisos and sidebars: Of course, he was mad, can be written more interestingly. Word choice alone often seals the deal, brings the reader in like showing can. And of course some telling is always a terrible tire. Inflated dialogue tags, for example, or telling that is appended to showing, which is a sign that the writer does not trust the reader to make the proper assessment.)

How do we know when to say he was mad and when to send him stomping down some lonely corridor? Many writers will tell you that it’s a matter of instinct. We learn how to tell a good story when we’re children and we learn it by listening to the stories of others. We carry those same lessons with us as adult readers. We can remind ourselves of what good storytelling is by looking to what children want from a good story. According to Margaret Atwood, in “Reading Blind” children want these things: “They want their attention held … They want to feel they are in safe hands, that they can trust the teller … They will not put up with your lassitude or boredom: If you want their full attention, you must give them yours.”

Atwood also likens timing in stories to the logic of joke telling: “If we guess the riddle at once, or if we can’t guess it because the answer makes no sense – if we see the joke coming, or if the point is lost because the teller gets it muddled – there is failure. Stories can fail in the same way.”

Bringing it all together: If the writer’s desire to demonstrate/show what the character is feeling inside overwhelms the reader’s basic investment in the story by losing her attention, by betraying her trust, by seeming to lack urgency, or by muddling the story, the story will fail.

Let’s work on this by telling some really bad jokes and turning them into good ones. You’ve all probably got one joke, an old standby you’ve told a dozen times. First try inflating it to the extreme, omitting nothing and showing as much as possible. Next try paring it back. Keep some of your showing, but only enough to perfect the timing of the joke.

Time After Time

Exercise Your InkTank
Time Management

When we talk about back-story in storytelling, we’re often talking about the revelation of information and it’s sometimes a tricky chemistry. The introduction of other stories to the larger story can create an evocative sense of depth or even a sense of verisimilitude. And when you think about it, it’s hard to imagine a story that only moves directly forward in time. Even if a story does not invest a substantial formal movement to back-story, it may often recall moments (here and there) in a character’s life that work to explain things like motivation. When we understand why a character behaves the way he or she behaves, we’re more likely to believe and to invest; we’re more likely to allow ourselves to be moved. Back-story is a tool with great power, but if we’re not careful how we reveal information, we risk disrupting our readers. They can feel manipulated, or betrayed, or they might just sense the machinery behind the story and lose faith in it.

There is (of course) no one right way to reveal information, but there are some less than respectful ways that tend to irritate the hell out of readers. Token irritating revelation: “And then she realized she’d been dreaming.” Token infuriating revelation: “And then she realized she was dead.”

Here’s a smattering of good advice I’ve heard over the years: By revealing necessary information too late, we up-end the reader’s investment in the story. A good reveal is one that feels earned and organic, not theatrical. Real suspense is not created by withholding. Always connect. A good narrator is one who wants to tell you everything. A good hint is undetectable. It falls out like any other bit of information. The pleasure the reader derives from piecing things together will be greater if the piecing isn’t the focus of the narrative’s energy, but a consequence of it. The reader must always know where the story is. Always set the scene first – don’t ask your readers to re-imagine it later. Don’t make the story explain the difficulties away – break the bone to re-set it if you have to. If the story hinges on a central revelation, reveal without a hint of smarminess. Nobody really likes to know the writer is there behind the writing. There are unreliable narrators and there are unreliable narrators.

Many stories devote large formal movements to shifts in time. Here’s some advice I’ve heard about that: Set and maintain a pattern. Hang the back-story on a strong enough line. Reliance on juxtaposition alone for the activity of meaning-making between segments or sections creates exhaustion rather than interest. Again, always connect. Formal shifts can be denoted in many fashions ( * * * or white space or italics or chapter breaks, for example). Size is often an issue when deciding between them, but also taste.

Here’s my big craft-shop idea for the night. I’m going to give you some back-story on a character. You find a savvy way of revealing it in your own little story:

Once, when George was a child, he confused his father’s lessons. During a fire he was to evacuate with everyone else to the yard. During a storm he was to take cover beneath the large wooden table in the basement. But while everyone else stood in the yard and watched the house burn, he sat beneath the table and wondered at the smell. He was unharmed, but shamed greatly. His father trusted him to do nothing alone thereafter.