FlashFiction.Net

(Part II in the series “Writing the Monomyth into the Short Short.” Part I available here.)

Plot, Peter Brooks argues in Reading for the Plot, is a “form of desire that carries us [readers] forward, onward, through the text” (37). In other words, for plot to work, both readers and characters must be “stimulated from quiescence into a…tension, a kind of irritation, which demands narration.” If plot, as Brooks argues, occurs in both the text and the readers, then the writer must be concerned, not only with inspiring within the character the desire to do something, but also with arousing within the reader the intention to read. Both character and reader sit quietly, yes, but also poised for something to happen. The known world doesn’t do it for them anymore. A deadness pervades the everyday. They’re ready for something to happen—and something does, the inciting incident that demands a story.

This incident should make the character have to act. Here’s where the story begins. The sooner the writer gets to this point, the sooner the story can get started. In flash, the first sentence works well:

My eight-year-old son found a wig in the garbage dumpster this morning. —Brady Udall, “The Wig” 

It’s late Christmas Eve at Spinelli’s when Dominic presents us, the waitstaff, with his dumb idea of a bonus—Italian hams in casings so tight they glimmer like Gilda’s gold lamé stockings. — Pamela Painter, “The New Year” 

Here is a seriously injured man on a frightened horse. — Dan O’Brien, “Crossing Spider Creek.”

Stories happen for characters because, as Campbell asserts, “the familiar life horizon has been outgrown; the old concepts, ideals, and emotional patterns no longer fit; the time for the passing of a threshold is at hand” (51). In other words, the character urgently needs a life-changing incident. Not just any—but one that will make the character confront “the darkness of the deepest chamber of the heart” (109).

Notice how, in the above first sentences, a question that demands action arises for these characters. What will the father do with the wig-wearing son who now reminds him of his recently killed wife? What will Dominic do with this dumb idea of a ham? How is the injured man going to survive? Of vital importance is the connection between this incident and the character’s psyche, for “…fundamentally [the passage] is inward—into depths where obscure resistances are overcome” (29). The inciting incident presents a challenge, the very challenge this character needs to get unstuck, out of the same-old, same-old, and into action. This initial incident should infuse the character with a very clear desire, one not easily obtained.

Of course, this initial scene and resulting question should also stimulate readers’ interest. Will readers care enough to be carried onward? What “obscure resistances” will readers be forced to confront within their own depths? The inciting incident takes both the story’s character(s) and readers “beyond the veil of the known into the unknown” (82), into the heart of the story.

For Further Reading

Brooks, Peter. Reading for the Plot: Design and Innovation in Narrative. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1984.

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton/Bolingen Paperback Third Printing Edition. New York: Princeton University Press. 1973.

Clift, Jean Dalby and Wallace B. Clift. The Hero Journey in Dreams. New York: Crossroads. 1988.

O’Brien, Dan. “Crossing Spider Creek.” Flash Fiction: 72 Very Short Stories. Edited by James Thomas, Denise Thomas, and Tom Hazuka. New York: W.W. Norton. 1992. 28-30.

Painter, Pamela. “The New Year.” Microfiction. Edited by Jerome Stern. New York: W.W. Norton. 1996. 50-1.

Tobias, Ronald B. 20 Master Plots and how to build them. Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books. 1993.

Udall, Brady. “The Wig.” As read on NPR’s This American Life. http://www.whysanity.net/creative/brady.html. May 1, 2006.