If you'll be attending a workshop this summer, here are a few ideas to consider.

1. Try to attend workshops where the purpose is to learn to write a literary fictional story (serious-purpose, character-based, and structured story creation). Many creative-writing workshops also teach memoir, creative nonfiction, some historical fiction and genre, in addition to literary fiction.   Classes with multipurpose agendas are a disadvantage to the serious literary fiction writer.

2. Take notes on every idea expressed in class sessions.  Review these in a private review later.  Categorize ideas for practice, further reading or consideration, and discussion.  Based on your notes and actions, write a daily summary  of your learning from a session as a permanent record for future reference.

3. Student  comments are required on most manuscripts and in-class exercises.   Don't let your own subjective likes and dislikes swamp your critiquing or your learning, and don't respond to subjective responses of others with your own subjective approval or disapproval.  Value judgments based on personal taste are not useful for learning.  Avoid comments like: "I don't like stories about fishing.", or "I don't care for priests as characters,", or "I'm tired of dysfunction families or abused children." or "Who cares if the gray wolf is on the endangered species list?"

Instead, look to the core of great literary stories.   Ask: What is purpose of the writer ?  Did something happen?  Did the major character change in some significant way?  Identify ways to improve:  story structure, characterization, prose craft, plotting, clarifying ideas and images.   (For a learning resource, click here).

4.  Don't think in terms of good and bad writing.  Think in terms of effective or not effective writing for what you think the writer was trying to do.  Then determine if improvement is dependent on improved storytelling (thinking), better characterization (imagining), better focus on story (ideation and information delivery), or more precise prose (craft).

5.  Ask the question when evaluating stories whether in scene action or narrative description suit the purpose of the scene to develop story and character.

6.  When your own prose story or fiction writing is critiqued, never be defensive.  Don't say things like: "Well, I worked on that for two weeks." "That's not what I read on the Internet." or "It really happened (implying, therefore, any criticism is unjust). "   Remember, good fiction is not described truth.

There are more than a few classmates who will be attending class more for the joy they receive in critiquing others rather  than for learning writing–it seems to boost their self-perceived qualities of their works and talents–and who will take self-important attitudes that can be distracting and useless, will irritate you, and be unhelpful for your improvement.  Ignore these critiques.   Never succumb to action based on unreasonable or unfounded critiques specifically; it is dangerous for your career as a writer.

For the most part, sort out objective helpful comments unfettered with thoughtless value judgments.  Don't be discouraged if you find less than 20% of student comments useful.   Instead of depending on student comments, encourage and direct the instructors to reflect and teach.

Good luck!  Keep focused.  Don't let socialization and networking-to-advance-your-reputation swamp your goals to improve your writing and storytelling.  Meticulously summarize and record every positive idea you captured during the sessions for future, frequent reference.  And if you have an unsatisfactory experience, share it with other writer-friends so they will not waste their time and money.

For further thoughts about workshops, you might be interested in these essays and articles:

Why Contemporary Literary Fiction Fails to Achieve Excellence

Exposing the Dark Side of Academic Fiction Workshops

Workshops: I. Making the Right Choice

Workshops: II. Making the Experience Valuable

Workshops: III. How to Critique a Manuscript

Workshops: V. Top-Ten Rules for Fiction Workshops

This post has been moved to storyinliteraryfiction.com. Click here to read.

The end of a number of summer fiction workshops highlights again the influence of academic writing programs on the quality of contemporary literary fiction. Most contemporary literary writers progress through their careers, with variations, like this: college English major; attend MFA program; published work (often workshopped to the point of committee writing) promoted by MFA program; teaching position in creative writing; new work poorly received and published mainly by friends and colleagues in the literary community. This scenario produces unpalatable fiction not of the quality to have any commercial value, and usually consists of autobiographical or memoir material, usually told in the first person and strong on voice because story is lacking, and usually consists of descriptive narrative of past events with minimal dramatization. And this scenario almost never develops quality teachers capable of the complexities and challenges that writing of great fiction demands.

The result, and many will argue although the raw truth is evident, is literary fiction is boring, unpalatable, and unreadable to the majority of readers. A writer who has the intellect and the talent to produce great fiction with meaning has few resources to learn the skills of writing fiction, and studying in an MFA wastes valuable writing time. The most devastating effect of MFA programs is the result of the universal trend to tag any graduate as writer and teacher, which is often not true on either count, so these teachers are thrust on eager students as competent.

Here are recent events, all true, in workshops that work against the writing of great literary fiction. Collectively, these scenarios dominate the teaching of creative writing and erode valuable education of writers eager to write literary fiction constructed with dramatic scenes and affecting meaning and enlightenment about the human condition through story.

One teacher demanded that the action in a short story could be no longer than twenty-four hours, citing Aristotle as the source of this command. Aristotle, of course, never conceptualized a short story. And mention of famous short stories such as "A Simple Heart", by Flaubert (a lifetime) and "Lady with a Pet Dog" (months) by Chekhov were not mentioned in the pronouncement.

One teacher suggested an"'inventory" of things a character would have — empty a purse, go through a hope chest, explore a glove compartment for things to stick in the story as revelatory of character. This inventory-list activity does have value, of course, but it suggests that character development in a great story is description of things, when in truth great characters are best developed by unique and story-specific actions in scene and clear exploration of desires and emotions.

More than one teacher required a notebook. Ideas, scenes, characters, all described in detail from life. The idea was that when you were writing and you got blocked, you could go to your notebook and pull out a cute scene, an interesting character trait, or a vivid image to insert. Ridiculous. Great story writing is not a collection of unrelated ideas, no matter how cute or clever. Great literary stories come from story specific details imagined for best story effectiveness, not pulled from (although they may be stimulated by) the pantry of authors' experiences.

One teacher emphasized the importance of going a little crazy with the writing, a sort of free association in bizarre contexts and without fear of salacious or shocking effects on some readers. When asked if clarity in prose and structured story telling was important even in the crazy periods to keep the reader oriented to story, his answer was "no." "Writing stories is an art form," he said. But the great, memorable, literary stories are founded on clear prose, clear ideas, clear plot progressions, and not random, disparate ideation. To profess otherwise is to send beginning authors on a self-destructive, albeit easier, path to mediocrity.

One author/teacher shared his desire to fully incorporate the author's voice in his stories. He did not see this as memoir or autobiographical, and did not see the danger of excluding imaginative story development outside the author's experiences, nor of promoting ideas and opinions as the most reliable way to create the great literary story with meaning that readers might enjoy. His teaching of authorial catharsis as story writing also arrogantly assumed that what the author thinks and says will be important to a large number of readers. In his case, he had neither the intellect, talent, nor life-fascination of others to attract the attention of a serious reader of literary stories.

One class was the completion of many exercises during six workshop sessions. No manuscripts were reviewed. Not one exercise was designed for in-scene action, or developed for effective inclusion with what would come before and after the exercise when inserted in a story. Every exercise was based and judged on descriptive narrative and dialogue, all static approaches to the creation of fiction that is structured on a series of interrelated scenes that contain conflict, action, and resolution.

In one class students held hands with neighbors, closed eyes, and thought of words that were called out into the silence in the hope of stimulating something to write about. The goal was to get something on the page based on a random thought. It implies that writing fiction comes from the subconscious, and then is developed through description of the random idea, and other ideas that might follow. Definitely not the way to learn to write a memorable, meaningful, literary fictional story that needs structure. Literary stories are not built on description, but on the actions of characters and the change in perceptions of characters and readers as a result of these actions. The subconscious is a source, but it is the conscious where imagination develops action with meaning.

Many classes are openly advocating an author writing about him or herself. "I want to read about your story, not someone else's," one teacher said. He yearned for creative memoir, often enjoyable, but not the same as creating the great literary fictional story with dramatic scenes, meaning, and enlightenment.

A common practice occurs in every workshop. A student's writing is evaluated on word choice, rhythmic sentences and pleasing syntax, surprising and delightful prose, but rarely (if ever) is a writing segment (or story) considered for purpose. Does the writing have a purpose that develops character? Is the purpose of the writing to advance plot logically? Is the purpose of the writing to contribute to meaning, theme, and enlightenment? Is the purpose of the writing to meet your 3000-word daily quota or to structure a story with well developed characters through action? There is an alarming inability of present day teachers of creative writing to understand and teach the essence of a great story. And there is little awareness of the consolidated negative effect of workshops on the writers trying to create literature with the advantages of traditional storytelling.

One prominent teacher/editor said: "For me, there is no difference between creative nonfiction and fiction." He unintentionally revealed his dismissal of the potential of fiction as an art form to create great literary stories, and his promotion of literary fiction as a description of the author's memory and thoughts, as opposed to the creation of story through dramatic action on imagined characters. At another occasion, he admitted he preferred nonfiction, even though he made the final choices for fiction selections for a literary journal. These attitudes are discouraging to writers of literary fictional stories, and destructive to the survival of great fiction as a venue for lasting, memorable stories.

Beginning writers have few ways to evaluate the value of workshop leaders. Word of mouth is most helpful. But finding a workshop valuable to the writing process of great fiction requires multiple workshops to begin to know the true value of any one teacher's abilities. Moment for moment, the best way to improve in the writing of fiction is the meticulous study of authors who have achieved what the student wants to achieve. Students need to discover how authors created their effects on readers. This is not copying style, as so often advocated in workshops. It is, instead, learning how to tell stories effectively, with clear prose and solid control of characters' desires and emotions within the cobweb of a structured, purposeful plot. Writers must make their own discoveries through individual study on what will bring success. Overall, workshops can be valuable, but should not be a primary source of learning for the writer.

You might enjoy the post Top Ten Rules for Fiction Workshops.

Engaging a reader is crucial for a good writer.  It is a complicated process with different levels of engagement that require different skills and talents.  A story about a truck running through a guardrail and caught so it is suspended above a concrete slab two-hundred feet below, with driver and passenger trapped in the cab and bleeding from wounds, grabs the attention . . . a level of engagement.  There is curiosity about the outcome . . . a level of engagement.  For some readers, there might be fear when imagining the worst outcome . . . also a level of engagement.   This engagement is responding to circumstantial information about an event.  The prose is a description of what actually happened.  The engagement is similar to a comic book or graphic novel.  Images are stimulated by prose.  There is intellectual curiosity about what will happen and how the dangerous predicament will be solved.

In addition to images formed, engagement in this scenario may also be dependent on syntactical dramatization within the prose itself, clear transfer of ideation from author to reader, and the degree of importance to the reader about the information delivered.  It is journalistic in the sense that the reader is being told what has happened.

In writing a memoir, this journalistic type of engagement and reader responses are much the same.  A memoirist is intent on describing people who lived and experienced events and felt what they felt.  It is historical information described and positioned so drama is created by description of conflict and the positioning of information, so tension is generated when story information is presented to the reader.

In great literary fiction, reader engagement is different from journalistic (creative) nonfiction and memoir prose.  Fiction may be stimulated by past events and characters who lived; but the story-prose of literary fiction is created to engage the level of the responsive reader to lock the attention with minimal deviation, and to stimulate the reader to sympathize with characters, and at times be involved emotionally to a degree beyond the emotional involvement other types of fiction elicit.  The reader who enjoys literary fiction wants to know what will happen to a character they know well through intense characterization.   Involvement is less description of what happened and more what might happen.  And although there are created, journalistic-style circumstantial events in all fiction, the elements of created emotional conflicts and advancement and resolution of feelings have the prime impetus to move plot in literary fiction.

In addition, to achieve maximum engagement of a reader, characters must be credible; they must seem real; all happenings must be logical for story and plot; and all information about the story and characters must be reliable, or if not reliable, the reader must be aware of the unreliability and not puzzled or unsure.  Level of achievement of these goals in the story writing is proportionally related to engagement and satisfaction of a specific reader.

Engagement of a reader at this level also demands meticulous narration so the reader is always aware of who is telling the information and that the narrator is consistent for the context so the reader engagement of attention and emotion in the story is not broken.

Nonstory-related ideas and opinions must also be eliminated from the prose to prevent breaking the dream of involvement that fiction can evoke.  And errors in writing, such as wrong word choice, fuzzy or inaccurate metaphors, or grammatical errors must not be present.  Equally important for great literary fiction, the story and the characters must seem real–that is, to exist or be able to exist in a reader's mind–the very reason that book covers often contain the blurb "based on a true story" or "based on the life of ———."

John Gardner popularized the idea of a fictional dream into which the literary reader is immersed.  It is valuable, but only partially true to the involvement that certain readers have in great fiction.  Great fiction provides new perspectives — like looking into a stereoscope and discovering a three-dimensional change in the photo; being caught in an unsolvable,  dangerous dilemma . . . between a rock and a hard place and the space is closing in; in need of resolution of a longing or desire; and almost always in need to solve something–a puzzle, or a mystery, or an enigma.

Engagement of a literary reader by a literary author in a great literary fictional story is extremely difficult to do and is rarely achieved by the millions of writers who attempt it in various degrees.   Most writers default to nonfiction or genre fiction, often with impressive successes.   Unfortunately, great literary fiction cannot be created without adherence to the basics of what literary fiction has accomplished through engagement in the past.  Even more significantly, writing good genre fiction and memoir and thinking it is, and promoting it as, great literary fiction will fail to meet the expectations of the literary reader, and the writing will come off as inferior and boring.

The goal of agents and publishers is to make money.  Great literary fiction well written does not have blockbuster potential in today’s marketplace of diminishing serious readers of great literary stories for engagement and enlightenment.  Wouldn't it be great, for those readers still enjoying great fiction, if one or a few publishers were to emerge who are willing to accept reasonable profits and publish accomplished writers writing great literary fictional stories that engage readers with intensity and emotion?

There is no science to guide a writer to strengthening his or her imagination.  But here are a few practical ways to hone what the writer has been genetically given as imaginative potential.

Live to experience and discover.

A rich life reliably stimulates imagination.

Learn to live actively, not passively.

Reading is active.  Watching TV is predominantly passive.  Listening to music is passive.  Creating original music by composing and/or playing an instrument is active.   Looking at travel photos of France is passive.  Two weeks of backpacking in the Loire Valley is active.

Learn as much about everything you possibly can.

Disparate ideas and unlike associations seem to sprout new images and ideas.

Examine metaphysical questions.

Who are we and why are we here?  Is there an afterlife?  Why do we suffer?  Who is God?  Is there an ultimate truth?  Why is there no justice?  What is beauty?

Musing on the unanswerable helps with character development and significant story meaning that intertwines plotting.

Know your own strengths and weaknesses.

Determine as truthfully as possible how you fit into a world with billions of other unique, vastly different human beings.  This may require painful self-examination.

Practice imaginative writing.

1. Study the great literary creations of the past, and carefully filter out any useless or harmful dogma of contemporary teaching.

2. Explore daily metaphors . . .  the timing of delivery, acceptability, and the logic and credibility.

3. Learn the use of clear and accurate language in all communication, and expand vocabulary with image provoking words and active verbs.

Learn to structure stories and create characters imaginatively.

Discover the reason for success of stories and characters in all forms of storytelling and all prose genres, and then imaginatively create your own new and immediate ideas for success in literary story fiction.

If you write a great literary fictional story, and if you're not famous or infamous, your chances of publication are minuscule.  Remember when writers sent their best to a publisher, waited three to six months for the usual rejection, and then sent the same work out again, and again, and again . . . always with the expectation that someone would some day believe in their talent?  There were galaxies of hope and expectations.  Besides, it didn't cost anything.  These writers believed they were being judged on quality . . . if they worked hard and learned their craft, they would be rewarded with publication and the possibility of recognition.  There were a few slicks (Atlantic, Harper's, The New Yorker, for examples) that published a new writer occasionally, and many small, usually university, presses that had a few slots, but published infrequently, and had a tenuous circulation.  But, in reality, these were at least publishing resources  available where writers had a fair chance of a fair read and a fair reliance that some threshold of quality was being applied to the possibility of acceptance.  But that life is almost gone.  Authors have been slow to realize it, but both print and online publishing have shifted; literary magazine publishing is killing it's life source–good writers with talent who write imaginative fiction–by charging fees for submission cloaked in the guise of contests.

Of course it's true that it's not just contests that kill fiction.  There is the trend to publish memoir and nonfiction as "fiction."  But the need for income from submissions has significantly changed literary fiction.    In the past, magazines that published quality fiction encouraged submissions.  Most of what they published was agented fiction, or from famous authors, friends,  or celebrities.  Still, there were always a few slots for the undiscovered writer of literary fiction.  Now, even those few slots have been diminished by dangling the carrot of possible publication before authors in undisguised manipulation for profit.  Publishers are using competitions and contests to encourage volumes of submissions, both commercial and "nonprofit" presses, to simply make money.  The contest prizes are paltry, often less than what a magazine would pay after acceptance before the contest mining of fees of  fifteen to fifty dollars per submission was instigated.

Every publisher seems to reflexively say they receive ten thousand submissions a year.  Wow.  You can make $50,000 per contest.  Let's do more contests! Have a contest for under thirties, stories about dogs, tell us about your  family, or most recently a contest for six-word stories that will cost you $15.00 bucks per submission.  If it takes less than five seconds to read six words, that's a profit of about $10,800 dollars per hour.  Why not have a six-word story contest every month?  Forget the 5000 word limit and literary fiction.  Forget about traditional literary fictional stories of quality.  To what avail?  All this bloated submission activity fills the same number of limited slots available prior to contests (which skyrockets the odds against an author winning and/or getting published).

The  impact of these new contests on the great literary fictional story are more than transitory misdirections.  Consider the multiple groups that relate to the publishing of fictional stories in general: the publishers, the readers, the submitters of work to be published, and the subscribers (and donors) that represent a source of income.  Until now, publishers covered operating costs with subscriptions and gifts from donors, and to varying degrees, advertising.  Until recently, submitters were not paying to be read.  Now operating-income sources have shifted to what  have become  more dependable  and profitable submitter fees.  Subscribers and donors to magazines that published literary fiction were diminishing in numbers anyway.  So who cares?  No one but a few of the submitters and, with less intensity, the rare careful reader.   But the readers should recognize the effect on the publication of a great fictional story.   As publishers work to increase their revenue through submissions, they are openly trying to attract any style of writing, and have been willing to publish any style as fiction.  Specifically, memoir and "creative nonfiction" writing is sought and published as fiction, along with genre-based story writing such as mystery, sci-fi, and romance, partially in the belief that this is what will attract readers, but mainly because it makes a profit.  The effect on the literary fictional story writer is severe.  Well-written literary fiction with dramatic conflict and character based plot is not valued.  And with the new ways magazines fund themselves, good fiction has little chance of competing with contest winners who have been wooed with themes that work against the creation of great literary fictional stories.

This publisher effect on literary fiction has a painful irony; there are a significant number of readers who crave literary fictional stories as an art form who are ignored.  Almost surely, publishers could make profits by maintaining standards and morality to attract writers capable of creating these stories.  Such an effort would keep people reading for enjoyment, especially the serious reader.  It seems so necessary with the tidal-wave trends for story to be delivered on TV, film, and the switch of many former readers to methods of story telling like sporting events, where conflict and resolution, as well as the unexpected injury, defeat or death–are delivered for satisfaction without the use of prose media.  Yet prose remains, for some stories, especially those with significant meaning, the superior way to deliver the story.  Isn't it reasonable to ask publishers to resist the trends that story telling are taking, and support the quality of writing and story telling that talented literary fictional writers can deliver?

With equal impact is the loss of readers seeking great fiction.   The readers of magazines who want literary fiction have realized that present day fiction is not what they seek (they have to rely on the classics) and they have stopped buying subscriptions or reading publications that claim fiction but don't deliver.  This affects writers too.  Even for a good literary fiction writer who occasionally will get a significant fiction story published, the chances the story will find a significant readership have mostly disappeared.  And so the publishing industry is in more ways than just contests is extinguishing the literary fictional story as an art form.

It's a wonder these contests that require these veiled fees for submission survive.  They blatantly mine the endless hope of a writer.  And it demeans those writers who succumb to what could really might be classified as a scam.  Writers feel foolish reading the winners of contests they've submitted to for a fee.  They feel humiliated when they discover that most contests are not anonymously read; judges are unknown and may not be consistent; there are no criteria for what is acceptable and what's not; there is no guarantee of being read, even briefly;  that there will never be oversight of the contests that should be provided by government; and that friends and  associates can (and do) win.

This is mining the lodes of hope buried in every writer.  Oh, those dreams of being interviewed on Oprah, those visions of royalty checks, those expectations of readings in Barnes and Noble with attentive listeners.  This is taking money from the addicted gambler yearning for a quick, but almost impossible,  reward  . . . money needed for food and housing, and to dress the kids warmly for school.  Fading reality.  Why is there not outrage from literary writers at this publisher behavior?

Publishers are losing any aura of altruistic professionalism.  If there were only some justice for all those writers affronted.  Certainly refusal to submit could trigger financial loss as justice for publisher's greed.  Maybe the Internet will develop ways for writers to be recognized without having to participate in lottery-like schemes.  It's the hope for the future, something that all writers should work to create–a system to connect writers with their readers without unfair financial loss to both.

There is a common belief that the best literary writing style is invisible to the reader.  This has a fundamental, but not all-inclusive, truth to it.  In writing great literary fiction, the reader should be engaged in the story in ways that leave no mental space to consider the writer's style type or quality.  Yet the style of writing and story telling should register with readers so that at the end of the reading, they  know they've had special, unforgettable reads that are unmistakeably due to the author's style, personality and skills.

Style is a way of using language and forming an effective, pleasurable story.  So, style really is everything a writer does in creating:  thousands of ideas and choices; hundreds of associations and comparisons; myriads of opinions, images, feelings . . . all dependent on the writer's intelligence, experience, education, memory, imagination and creative integrity.  Writing great literary stories is creating as only you, the writer, can, from the uniqueness of your personal existence as a human, and your time in the existence of all humanity, that contributes to a specific conscious era of thought and abstract reasoning.  It is the opportunity for writers to create their own style that provides fresh ideas and beautifully original stories – only they can create – for readers.

Almost all writers succumb to the influence of successful writers before them.  Reading the works of an author, appreciating the style of writing, and then incorporating that writer's style in your own writing is not, however, the way to achieve memorable, great writing and storytelling.  A careful reader will always feel the impression of another author in the writing, and publishers mistakenly feel that marketing blurbs such as, "He writes with the grace of Chekhov, the perception of Cheever, and the bite of Flannery O'Connor," will convince a reader they are about to experience  a great writer.  Not at all.  Such comparisons may sell books to readers who love these authors, but it is not a valid signal for that great literary fictional story, uniquely created, that will be remembered by many for generations.

Writers need to strive to find expression of their own individuality in life on the page and in their story telling.  That is where excellence is achieved, reader pleasure  generated, and memorability instilled.  And it does not come from copying the style of a favorite author.  The opposite, in fact.  The influence of another author can be so dominant that some authors do not read when they are in the creative process.  An author reading Flannery O'Connor, for example, especially if the author likes Flannery O'Connor, can shove the writing process and product into "the style" of O'Connor.  This, when perceived, even subconsciously, by a reader, is never useful and destroys the uniqueness of a writer's style for greatness and sustainability as a great piece of writing.  Of course, in learning, writing in the style of a favorite author is essential to develop as a writer, and a writer should be able to test the effectiveness of a story or a passage or a line of dialog by practicing writing the passage as he or she might imagine other authors would approach it.  But in the final work of art, the style must be created from the core of a writer's individuality . . .  his or her unique style.

Aristotelian thinking applies here.  Historians, he said, write about what has happened.   They describe the past.  Writers (the poets) write about what might happen  next.  These are the imaginative, dramatic creators of great literature.  It is in creating what might happen that the literary fiction writer develops that unique, enjoyable, informative style that fertilizes greatness.

William H. Coles

Great literary stories have a purpose for being written. They say something and they say it well. Fiction is the best way to achieve this. It allows story development unhindered by descriptions of a set reality and provides unlimited choices in character motivations and actions that support the purpose and momentum of the story. Significance is not achieved when the fiction is loosely conceived.

The author’s conscious will has to be in control of the story creation, and not simply left to ideas that might bubble up from the unconscious or are discovered in the description of a life experience where the significance is tagged on late in the writing, like a stamp on a letter. Significance comes from planned story happening, character change to a new way of thinking and understanding (enlightenment about the human condition), and reader enlightenment, which when different from the character’s enlightenment is the source for important ironies.

Significance is often directly related to an emotional experience for a reader. Reader emotions vary from story to story in intensity and type (joy, fear, sympathy, love, anger, et cetera). Emotions are best evoked by total engagement in the fictional dream that requires inclusion of the reader in the story rather than simply treating the reader as a listener. This means showing why and how in scene or dramatic narrative and not simple describing real or imagined events or thoughts.

In essence, a story will never be significant when a reader finishes and has no understanding why the story was written and can’t remember characters and or what the story was about. A writer must master not only craft of interesting dramatic prose but the entangled process of purposeful storytelling.

From the essay "How Literary Stories Go Wrong" by William H. Coles

Meaning in fiction is often conceived as an element of writing that may or may not be inserted into a story, like a plastic baby doll in a Mardi Gras king cake. But meaning, its presence or lack of, is ubiquitous in a literary story, like the taste of sugar in a meringue. Writers seem to disagree, or at least not seek uniformity, on what meaning actually is in a story. Some seem to believe meaning equates with morality; others seem to think that it is equated with significance and, as a result, subsequently means ponderous and difficult, perceived attributes that make them avoid meaning altogether. For some, meaning has an existential twist—the worth of life. In speaking of great literary stories, however, it is most helpful to agree that for meaning to be memorable and to last in the human consciousness, a great literary story has meaning embedded in a defined environment: a story that is character based, has a beginning, middle and end where something happens to the character who progresses through time, and at the end of the story, the character and the reader change to see life and humanity in new ways. In Misery (sometimes translated as Heartache), in a few pages Chekhov reveals change in a character that focuses and enlightens the reader about grief and humanity, aspects of love and grief they had not thought of for some time, if at all. It is an awakening for these readers. And it provides unique satisfaction.

Many beginning writers tend to assume that meaning imparts a thou-shalt-not-kill or do-not-commit-adultery message; but a simple, clear change in perception about how the world and humanity is viewed can be significant and transfer meaning that has impact. To achieve this, there is a change in the way the reader (and the character) perceives the world after reading (and, for the character, acting in) the story. This is, of course, the beautiful potential fiction gives to a writer, and that nonfiction can not achieve because of the restrictions of the necessity in describing what happened.

So this meaning, which can be associated with Joyce’s epiphany although it probably needs broader thinking to be effective for a contemporary writer, is essential for a story to have impact, be remembered, and persist on to future generations of readers.

Useful meaning for writers occurs in a variety of complex ways. As scary as it may seem, metaphysical questions are essential in literary fiction where it is not sufficient for the reader to simply discover who killed whom, or if the crack in the dam will rupture and flood the village. In essence, the development of every fictional character directly or obliquely addresses difficult, unanswerable metaphysical questions such as: Who are we? Why are we here? What should I do? At the core, great literary stories deal with what it means to be human and the anguish of confronting omnipresent metaphysical questions. Where do I go when I die? Is there a God? Does God care about me? Why do I suffer? Readers learn from seeing how fictional characters struggle with their humanity, their lack of perfection, their doubts and fears. It is reasonable to conclude that any well-written literary story that is memorable will be significant in what it demonstrates through story action about enlightenment of the human condition. It often is not simply right/wrong morality, politics, or issues of conformity. Rather, it most frequently considers moments of grace, illuminating thoughts, or revelations of the significance of actions among humans. It always deals with human interaction on a concrete level in the story line with metaphysical abstractions permeating the prose. And it is always best expressed through dramatization.

Rarely is meaning determined in a story before the writing begins. The perceptive writer sees the meaning in every good story as a process of discovery from inside, not predetermined and inserted. And, for respect of the story, the writer then allows the discovered meaning to permeate and solidify within the prose, but avoids hammering the reader through overly forceful prose focused only on meaning.

Meaning often requires the complexities of fictional prose to transfer maximally effective meaning to the reader. When a reader is engaged, the reader feels rather than just contemplates. It is imaginative character development and plot construction that permits fiction to engage a reader in a story with meaning. Nonfiction, and fiction dependent on description of happenings without imagination, does not engage with the same potential of fiction for significant meaning.

Literary fiction is critically dependent on the appropriate use of the imagination. Yet, much of contemporary fiction seems void of imaginative input, either because the author lacks imagination, or – and more likely – does not use imagination effectively.

One trap for an author is to use imagination in characterization that becomes bizarre in the search for the unique.  As a working example, consider a thirty-year-old unwed mother.  She has brown eyes, auburn hair and a ruddy dark complexion.  So far, a rather ordinary character.  Many authors will mistakenly seek alternatives in traits or description, thinking the unique character is one that is markedly different.  One commonly used trick is to give the character a disease the author thinks the reader won’t know about – such as von Willebrand Disease (a bleeding disorder) or retinitis pigmentosa (blinding eye disease).  Or even more out of sync with good character development, is to make the character look odd.  Give the mother a Mohawk hair cut, hair in the ears, an amputated hand or foot, vitaligo (a skin disease of color irregularities).  These are all attempts to make the character different, but they ignore valid strength in characterization that comes from learning about the character’s soul, morality, adaptive capabilities, kindnesses versus meanness and cruelty, etc.  This in-depth type of characterization is best developed dramatically, through conflict, action, and resolution, and developed usually through the character's behavior and prose telling.

So, to apply this idea to our mother character above, we might imagine situations that would reveal a lot about how she thinks, what she believes, who she is.  Let's make her pregnant in the first trimester.   She doesn’t care for the father of the child, who is in prison on an assault conviction (implies, maybe, bad genes); she has been fired from her waitress job because of arguing with customers over their “demands for service” and has no income to support another child; and she doesn’t like mothering the child she has.  Now she considers abortion.   But she is pro-life: she’s demonstrated against abortion and has been arrested but never charged.  She was even peripherally involved in an abortion doctor’s beating.

Now the imagination is making the situation complex, and simultaneously giving the reader lots of information about the character that makes her unique, without relying on awkward description.   The imagination is now being used effectively.

The same thinking can be applied to plot and dialogue.

In plot (everything that happens in story) authors often apply imagination through thinking that the imagined unexpected event will provide surprise that will satisfy the reader.  In general, surprise is important in literary fiction (using change and reversal), but is of the essence in genre fiction (the priest murdered the choir soloist?  I would never have guessed that!).  But in literary fiction, plot twists cannot be fatalistic (predetermined and inevitable), that is, twists that are out of control of character choice and will.   Plot twists in literary fiction  must be credible and logical, and within the context of the emotional arcs of the story and all the conflicts that propel the action in the literary story.  (In a plot with alien body snatchers, characters are reacting, and the aliens come out of the blue, so to speak.  In literary fiction, the beast is often within the characters: there is free will, with choices to be made and decisions that succeed or fail.)  Characterization in literary fiction requires more concentration by the reader to appreciate the nonfatalistic logic of the plot progression, but it is more satisfying to many literary story readers.   To achieve this, the author must use imagination in plot structure that is controlled and involves the characters, not just acts on the characters like a giant meteor killing off dinosaurs.

In dialogue, authors also must apply imagination that heightens the effect of the dialogue on the reader, not just seek the unexpected.  This means imagining the responses of dialogue so that the emotional valence, the physical and mental environments of each character, the voice of the character, and the information already delivered in the plot are all consistent with what is said.   An example:

“I hate the way she does that. Always with her nose in the air as if she is better than us.”

“I don’t know.   Maybe she is better.”

“She’s famous.”

“She’s smart.  I think she sees the world pretty much as it is.”

“She thinks you’re an asshole.”

“Really. You know that?   I mean what she thinks.  How could you know that?”

“Everyone knows.”

Comment. Note the exposition error in this dialogue. “She’s famous,” is the author’s need to transmit information.  It is something both these speakers would know and would not need to say, especially in heating-up discourse.

The dialogue is not bad in that it has conflict that is reasonable and between the speakers.  Note also, the conflict is not description of something else.

Example of inferior dialogue:  What if the dialogue went like this?

“I hate the way she does that.  Always with her nose in the air as if she is better than us.”

“Give her a break.   She’s alone.  Her husband left her.”

“Really.  I didn’t know that.   Is it for good?”

Comment continued.   This is really fill dialogue.  Exposition about the husband leaving (that may not even be important to the story line).  But also the dialogue is not working. It lacks imagination. It is without significant conflict between the speakers, unrevealing of opinions and feelings essential to reader’s understanding of the character. It does not expose the emotional and intellectual innards of the characters in significant ways that advance plot.  If dialogue takes on this aura of false purpose, then the information is better delivered in narrative passage, internal reflection, or even, rarely, setting or description.

Business schools have perpetuated “thinking outside the box” as a path to innovation.  For the fiction writer, who must thrive on imagination, the concept might be more useful if stated: “almost never think inside a box, any box.” Fiction writer’s fight cliché, sentimentality, and stereotypes and try constantly to engage a reader through logical and credible surprise told with fresh original prose in stories with momentum.   Their most effective tool is their own unbridled imaginations.   (Note how this separates fiction from memoir and nonfiction where imagination for story and prose is hobbled from needs to adhere to past reality.)

Summary.

Imagination is essential in literary fiction for effective prose and story, and should not be limited to simply altering description for surprise. Knowledgeable use of imagination in characterization, forming plots, and in creating effective dialogue can make an author’s storytelling prose more acceptable and enjoyable for the reader