None But Eagles

Yesterday I handed in my last assignment — a 10-page short story — for the creative writing class I took this past term. The story evolved throughout the course by means of various assignments — a plot summary, then a first page, then the first draft for workshop, and then a final version. For me, each of these things (except the first page) were completely different stories. So I’m going to talk about how I arrived at the final version.

I knew going into this class that writing a real short story, a story more developed than the little bizarre plotless globs of fiction that I usually write, was going to be hard. I had a lot of half-formed ideas, most of them based on characters I had been writing very short pieces about for the last year or so, but then it was really difficult to find a plot to put them into. I usually like writing characters within a setting, making something happen, and going from there. I’ve never been able to map something out first and then write to those specifications without hating it. By the same token, however, the short pieces I write are very ‘underdetermined,’ as the prof would say, so I knew I had to crack down and make something happen to these characters that a reader could get invested in, something that could be sustained over much longer than I was used to writing. The prof was big on the short story as a moment in time/space, a portrait, or a revelation, rather than a real story arc with character development, etc. that you would find in a novel. He didn’t want a story that really wanted to be a novel. (I broke that rule; my story does actually want to be a novel.)

So I figured out something of a plot for these characters (without actually trying to write any of it. Ha! That was my big problem right there) and wrote up a plot summary. But the prof’s response was that I was taking risks and there didn’t seem to be a ‘core moment’ or ‘central metaphor’. And he brought up that fatal question: what exactly is the point of the story? Ugh, I hate it when people ask that question. It makes me want to curl up in a ball and wait for death. What is the point of anything?

So I dropped my original plan outlined in the plot summary and wrote the first draft, retaining only one element of what I first planned to write. Without actually trying to describe it, the story took place in a vaguely futuristic urban setting wherein a team of professional something-or-anothers found out some bad-but-good news that resulted in their decision to go on the run from the law. The first draft is what was workshopped.

The workshops went like this: everyone was supposed to have read the story before class and have comments ready. (The prof said to give actual handwritten comments to each person after workshopping their story, but very few people actually did that. I printed out the stories and made extensive comments directly on the manuscript, but I don’t think anyone else did that. I received comments from three other people, when I had given comments on every single person’s story.) Someone, not the author, gave a brief summary of the story to help remind everyone what it was about, then everyone discussed the story for 10-20 minutes. The author was not allowed to say anything during the discussion but had a few minutes afterward to respond to the discussion if they wished. I will say that the vast majority the criticism in this class was remarkably constructive; we had good, thoughtful discussions and, as far as I could tell, very few hard feelings or resentment. I was expecting that to be a very difficult thing to achieve; people really put themselves out there when they write (especially since we did a lot of poetry), but everyone was very positive and kind while still being constructive.

When the class workshopped my first draft, almost all of the comments had to do with how they wanted to know more about what the professional something-or-another was exactly. There was a lot of intrigue and a sense of danger but it was too dreamy and mysterious and there weren’t enough concrete details to understand what was at stake or what all the intrigue was really about. I had make a few very vague references to the area of profession but gave no further details. It wasn’t really important to the plot, but it seemed to be important in order to understand the characters better. Also, no one came out and said it directly, but the story was too confusing. There was a parade and a circus, the first taking place in the present, starting and ending the story, and the second was a memory plunked into the middle of the story that kind of mirrored what was happening in the present. But there were too many commonalities between the two settings, and I think most people assumed that they were the same thing.

The prof made a comment right off the bat that for me really got to the heart of my problem. He often asked a few general questions to help get the discussion going, and regarding my story he asked whether it belonged to a specific genre. As I thought about it, I realized that I had been tilting toward genre but still trying to avoid it; I wanted a futuristic, dystopian setting without creating a world within which it would make sense; I wanted smart, intriguing characters invested in a profession I didn’t want to describe. So I needed to make some decisions.

So over two weeks I ended up writing some 20 pages of ideas about the world in which the story takes place — mostly about what was going on socially and politically, the implications of certain events I had made happen, what exactly my characters’ jobs were. I did some superficial research and picked some superficial details that I hoped would evoke a sense of what the world was like rather than having to describe it. I went through dozens of versions of the universe I was writing about and wondered how I could possibly write a story based in something that was so nebulous and tenuous inside my head. I simplified the plot, I toned down the exuberant settings, and pumped up the exposition. (This was all done much less methodically than it sounds.)

I took another week to rewrite the story almost completely, pulling my hair out and putting off decisions for as long as possible, like usual. When I was more or less happy enough with it, I let Scott read it (an hour before I was planning to hand it in). We had a productive discussion about the problems and I made a few changes before deciding I was done with it. I reached maximum saturation and was ready to hand it in.

I’m not anxious about the grade. There are so many different ways to write a story, and this class gave me an opportunity to create something I’ve never been good at creating — specific forms of writing that fall outside my comfort zone. It was a good exercise. But I still prefer to write bizarre little plotless globs of fiction.