Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular

by L Rust Hills

  The analogy between the sentence and the short story could probably be extended to a discussion of plural and singular forms, active and passive constructions, dependent and independent aspects, subordination or emphasis of elements, simple or compound or complex forms, genres that are exclamatory or interrogatory or declarative, and so on. Here I want to stress only the idea of agreement. There is agreement between all the parts of a sentence—between the adjectives and the nouns they modify, and between the adverbs and verbs, and in a greater sense there is an agreement or appropriateness of all the parts to the whole, to create the exact emphasis, the specific effect, the precise meaning that the sentence is intended to have. But all these refinements depend on the basic agreement between subject and verb. In a short story, too, agreement between character and action is primary.

  To use a fixed action instead of a moving action as the plot of a story would be like using a participle instead of a verb in a sentence. Just as in the latter case you get a sentence fragment which doesn't express a complete thought, so in the former you get a sketch, a story in which nothing happens.

  Similarly, the character to whom the action of a story "happens" must be capable of "agreeing" with that action. The complex interaction of character and plot in fiction requires a "subject" able to perform a twofold function: the character must have the capability to cause action, and the capacity to reveal change.

  Movement of Character

  Does character or personality ever in fact really "change"? There is of course a way of looking at the matter that precludes the idea of change altogether: a person is a person and a character is a character and remains that same person or character no matter how he acts or what he does. Even if his nature changes in the most extreme way, as from demure, retiring Eve White to fun-loving party-girl Eve Black or from nice Dr. Jekyll to bad Mr. Hyde, the identity remains the same, no matter how split it may seem to be. All that has happened is that another "side" of the personality, or "more" of the character, has been exposed—this other aspect of the personality or character having always been there, but not previously observed.

  On the other hand, most of us speak regularly about "change" in our acquaintances when we gossip about them, even when these changes are gentle and gradual. We say: "Boy, Martin has sure changed—he only had two drinks tonight and he was so nice to Jane," or "Jane has certainly gotten a lot better—so friendly and outgoing." What changes people this way is usually a more or less routine and dull alteration in their lives: they get married and move from the city to the suburbs and "become" dull; they get a different job that suits them better and "become" more confident and relaxed; they go to a doctor and lose weight and "become" less irritable. Such alterations in their lives achieve a gradual alteration in their personality. But if we go for a while without seeing them, the "change" in their personality will seem conspicuous, even startling. Most of this sort of "action" in life—moving to the suburbs, changing jobs, going to the doctor—is essentially nondramatic, even if it does achieve an alteration in character, and would have to be considerably reshaped to become the material for fiction. But the point here is that we realize that these "changed" people are still the same people: duller and more confident and less irritable as they may be, they are still themselves. All they have done is reveal a new potential of their personality, a new way that they are capable of being. Either we did not see it before, or they did not show it.

  There seems to be general agreement that as a result of the action of a story something does "happen" to a character. Admittedly it rather smacks of a formula to keep speaking of "movement of character by action." Perhaps it would be more graceful to speak of the "disclosure" or "unveiling" of "latent qualities" in a character. Or of a "development" or "further manifestation" due to the "revelations" of the plot. What one wants to call it seems to be a question simply of what one wants to call it. The fact is, that in fiction, as in life, the effect of seeing a new aspect of character, hitherto unperceived, is to feel that there has been a change.

  The Character Shift, as against Movement of Character

  Character shift is the conventional term for an unconvincing alteration in character; it should be distinguished carefully from the movement of character by action that we have been discussing. It is not necessary simply to say that in one case the alteration in character is convincing and in the other case it isn't, for while the two cases seem superficially similar, the actual differences are many.

  One way of detecting the difference between the character shift and movement of character is by considering the function the character change performs in the narrative. A character shift usually permits, rather than causes, something to happen. The girl's stern father turns nice after all, so she can marry the hero. The tough gangster turns nice after all and sacrifices himself, so the others can live. Movement of character, on the other hand, takes place after the action and as a consequence of it. The function of movement of character is not to allow something to happen, as in the character shift, but to show that something indeed has happened in the story. It remains an aspect of characterization, not a device of plotting.

  And besides, anyway, movement of character involves nothing like the complete changeabout of the character shift. It is not a flip-flop from all-good to all-bad or vice versa (pun intended). It is rather just the gentle, only-barely-perceptible movement, perhaps in only a certain quality of the personality—in, say, the degree of a young boy's innocence, or in an advertising executive's uprightness of character. The movement is just sufficient to show — or even just to suggest, by a change in tone or mood — that something has "happened," that as a result of the experience of the story a character has made some slight, but significant, adjustment to life.

  Movement of character is made convincing not only by not being abrupt and startling, but by being prepared for. We have discussed at length the enhancing effects of foreshadowing, which prepares for the character-plot interaction in ways that are to some extent extraneous to that interaction: in terms of mood, tone, theme, language, setting, various choric devices, and so forth. Especially useful in this area is what we might call "foreshadowing of character," intimations given early in the story of elements in the character that are to appear at the end. And the plot or action or narrative itself must be composed of event or incident that is significant enough or meaningful enough or so focused enough that it makes its effect, the change of character, credible and convincing.

  Unconvincing alteration of character has always been the distinguishing mark between the higher and lower forms of literary art. The distinction made between tragedy and the lower dramatic form, melodrama, is that in tragedy plot occurs as a result of character, characters determining their own fate, while in melodrama characterizations will shift according to the demands of plot for startling effects. Similarly, the distinction is made between comedy and the lower form, farce. In comedy, humor derives from character; while in farce it derives from the outlandish situations of the plot, which often requires characterizations to shift outrageously. And in fiction, slick fiction is distinguished from serious or literary fiction in the same way.

  Slick Fiction, as against Quality Fiction

  "Slick fiction" describes a kind of writing much practiced in America from its earliest days, but most popular when magazines were as popular as television is now. Slick fiction or "magazine" fiction or "formula" fiction was always distinguished from "quality" fiction or "serious" fiction—that is, literary fiction. The distinction to be made between them is that slick fiction—whether of the "romantic" sort or the "hard-boiled" sort—always partakes of the daydream, while quality fiction—as Jung said of Art—always partakes of the night dream.

  Slick fiction has always been a very curious business: although it's entirely based in misconceptions, its practitioners have always led in expounding theories and formulas of fiction method. The formulas for this "formula fiction" were sometimes as cut-and-dried as the famous "boy meets girl
, boy loses girl, boy gets girl" formula that was used over and over again, with only the slightest variations of locale and characterization, in magazine after magazine, year after year. Or the formulas were sometimes wonderfully nebulous, like the almost equally famous "Twelve Basic Plots" (or however many it was), which would present one of the so-called "basic" plots in a single word like SEARCH, then start listing: "Search for identity," "Search for loved one," "Search for the father," and so on. The categories never seemed to have much connection with plot; if they had any relevance at all, surely it was to theme. At any rate, the idea was that you'd take the basic formulas, provide some characters of your own, add some special background materials from your own experience or from research, mix well, and concoct thereby stories you could regularly sell to the slicks, making "up to" four hundred dollars a month "or more" in your spare time at home, send now.

  In truth, slick fiction seems to have been easy only for those who could do it. The practitioners who sold books saying it was simple may just have been out to make some extra money in their spare time, or perhaps the work seemed so repugnant to them that they wanted to mock its methods. But, then, writing slick fiction appears to have required a certain amount of belief in its materials. The money paid for it by the magazines was immense; but like writing television series drama today, it seems to be easier to analyze how it's done than to be able to do it. The only serious writer who ever had much success writing slick fiction was F. Scott Fitzgerald; and without disparaging his great work at all, I think it is possible to see a romantic tone even there that made the slick story easier for him than it would have been for other good writers.

  Slick fiction is now not much written, at least in short story form. What the magazine readers wanted from it was entertainment and escape, and television can do that now more mindlessly than magazine fiction ever could. As is well known, you can't beat a skunk in a contest that involves smelling bad. Commercial magazines that once emphasized slick fiction expired; new magazines rarely publish fiction at all; magazines that once published a dozen stories an issue, now publish one. The writers of slick fiction went along, with the audience, to television. For unlike serious fiction, which has always been written whether there was any demand for it or not, the whole point and purpose of slick fiction was that it was written to order for a market, and once the market was gone, the writing ceased. To write slick magazine stories now would be like writing scripts for a TV series that was taken off years ago.

  The translation of slick fiction from magazines to television was almost incredibly literal. The format was basically weekly and usually involved series characters. The Crunch and Des fishing boat series of Philip Wylie or the Mr. Moto mystery series of John Marquand in the old Saturday Evening Post were really interchangeable in tone with such television series as Route 66 or Hawaiian Eye. All the lovable family situation comedies, where shrewd rural virtue triumphs over evil urban slickness—Scattergood Baines and all that—appeared again in The Beverly Hillbillies. Westerns and "doctor" stories were transferred unchanged, and the prime-time television week closely resembles the fiction week of The Saturday Evening Post or Collier's. The audience looks forward to their favorite programs each week, just as they looked forward to having their favorite magazine delivered to their old-fashioned front porch. But, just as before, everyone—even a child—realizes that it is all "entertainment and escape," just a way "to relax," and that what's depicted is more or less pure fantasy.

  Along with the daydreaming and the cliché in slick fiction virtually always goes the character shift. And all three abet one another. A standard slick story, for instance, used to have to do with the daydream of "showing them." An outcast and lonely young recruit would "prove himself" and save his buddies in peril, often by the very quality (an interest in reading, say, or in doing puzzles or making kites—more or less anything) that made them scorn him in the first place. The obligatory scene at the end where the boys show in some way that they not only accept him now, but look to him for leadership, was always played for the lump in the reader's throat. What it all derives from, of course, is the author's daydream: lonely and outcast, he dreams of "showing them" and proving the worth of his work. But what it all ends in, in the short story, is a character shift. Similar character shifts are involved in many of the stories that have solutions that depend on someone having been in disguise: the poor girl is really an heiress; the personable crook is really an undercover agent. The throwing on or off of the disguise functions in the story the same way as a character shift functions—that is, it's an easy device for confusing things at the beginning, for working surprises in the middle, and for wrapping things up neatly at the end.

  Moving Characters, as against Fixed Characters

  What we have called "agreement" between character and plot is important because once a characterization has been established it ought not to be simply changed so as to accommodate the action (character shift), but must alter naturally as a result of it (movement of character). More than that, to serve as a dynamic or moving character in the action of a story, a characterization must have not only the capacity to be affected by the action, but also the capability of causing it. This is the back-and-forth, one-causes-the-other-which-in-turn-causes-the-other interaction of character and plot.

  Something of the distinction we are making here between moving character and fixed character is suggested by E. M. Forster in Aspects of the Novel, where he speaks of "round" characters and "flat" characters. Flat characters, he says, are usually "constructed around a single idea or quality." He tells us that "they remain ... unalterable for the reason that they are not changed by circumstance." A round character, on the other hand, "is capable of surprising in a convincing way." Forster gets into all sorts of difficulties with these words, as for instance when he talks about "discs" which are both round and flat; but the real trouble with the terms is that they don't indicate the function that these two kinds of characters perform in literature. Flat characters are fixed characters, capable of what we call fixed action. Round characters are moving characters, capable of movement both of and by action.

  What sort of character will this be? The answer is, of course: anyone, any kind. Any individual in life could be the model for a moving protagonist in fiction. Anyone is capable of changing; anyone is capable of doing something, or of allowing something to be done to him, that will cause change in his life. It really all depends on how convincingly the character and the narrative are presented by the author and the skill with which he uses the methods of enhancing the interaction of character and plot.

  But some sorts of characters seem easier to work this interaction with than others. One can realize this simply by thinking of the central characters in successful stories, novels, and plays. Passionate, active personalities are more liable to act (perhaps foolishly or impulsively) in ways that cause something to happen to them. Weak, vacillating personalities are more liable to fail to act in such a way that something happens to them.

  Perhaps this is why there seem to have been so many successful stories about young people and old people. Young people tend to act impulsively, and incident is capable of having a great effect on character that is not as yet fully formed. Exploiting this doubly moving quality of youth has made a virtual cliché out of the "initiation story," in which a youth makes a sort of rites de passages from boyhood into young manhood as a result of some action rendered in the story: a disillusionment with a worshiped older figure; a first experience of sex; or some incident involving acceptance or rejection. Old people, too, are often seen in a period of transition: their lives are shaky and precarious and whatever "happens" to them in the course of the story seems to have a finality about it that can be genuinely moving.

  In life there is a normal distribution of those who are ascendant or active and those who are submissive and passive. Extremes at either end of the scale are few. But, in fiction, because of the necessity for something to happen to someone as a result of ac
tion, there is perhaps a more-than-normal percentage of forceful, energetic activists who evoke event that causes the something that happens. And there seem to be more too of those who are passive and submit to their fate, to drift into situations that cause what happens to them.

  We tend to encounter characters in fiction at a time of stress in their lives. Anxiety always accompanies change, and anxiety may cause the passive to act or the vital to submit. The situation they've gotten into is too much for them, or is something they feel they must break out of. The discord of the situation creates suspense, requires resolution, and these effects may be enhanced, but in the creation of these basic situations the plot may be said to be helping itself.

  The key thing, though, is that the characterization of a moving figure must be deep enough. If too little is known of the character, if he is presented only superficially or in a one-sided way, then he will appear fixed to the reader. He must be presented as capable of having something happen to him. This requires development and it is of course why so many of the so-called major figures of fiction are moving characters, while the fixed characters function more usefully as minor ones.

  The Series Regulars, as against the Guest Stars

  You can perhaps see better how it ought to work by looking at television series dramas, which have got it all just exactly backwards.