Monday, March 27, 2006

More on Story Shaping

I used the phrase "story shaping" the other day, and have been thinking about it a bit since. I really mean at least two things by the expression: how we shape stories (as writers and storytellers) and how stories shape us.

I've recently reaffirmed how much I prefer old-fashioned story shapes. That is, stories with some discernable linear progression (even if not completely straightforward), with transitions, connections and inner weavings that make sense, with solid beginnings and ends. By solid ends, I don't necessarily mean happy or tidy endings, but I don't like complete ambiguity either. And what completely drives me crazy is stories that really don't end...they just...stop.

So I'm an antiquated fish, completely at sea as I try to swim in and out of postmodern stories. I honestly appreciate some aspects of postmodern approaches to art: in particular, the way postmoderns don't mind "borrowing" from other places and times and finding new ways to "blend." Stories that can blend vintage sensibility with contemporary characterization and setting, for instance, I like very much.

But I'm getting a little tired of the postmodern celebration of "voices" in fiction. That is, creative and interesting voices that either have nothing truthtful or beautiful to say, or that don't say anything in a way that one can easily discern meaning.


Example: the other day I came upon a creative but frustrating short story titled "Notes to my Biographer" by Adam Haslett. Haslett was a bright star in the literary firmament a handful of years ago when he first got published (not sure what's he's been doing lately; I just happened to pick up his first short story collection) and had one of those writing pedigrees that it would be so easy to envy (studied at Yale, at Breadloaf, won major grants, stories picked up by NPR). "Notes to my Biographer" was apparently the story that garnered him first major attention, and I found it a fascinating read. Well-paced, distinct "voice," interesting characters, kept me turning pages. I think it was hailed as 'fresh' but it felt a bit trite to me, embodying familiar stuff of contemporary fiction -- including an unreliable narrator (strugging with mental illness...or was he?) with a gay son. A few pages from the end, I had to put the book back on the library shelf and didn't get back to it for a couple of days. I was curious enough about the ending to go back and finish it. And argh! It had one of those endings that drives me crazy. It didn't really end; it just stopped. And I can't help but feel that this was a well written vignette, an interesting sketch or slice of life, but not really a story -- at least not a story that feels shaped for any purpose beyond impressing me with its literary tricks. Somehow that doesn't feel like enough. Maybe I'm not being fair, since I often love poetry that seems to exist just to play with language, or to celebrate sound. But stories, though they can have those poetic elements, feel like a different category for me...

When I was not long out of college, I attended (by invitation) a two-week series of workshops at an intensive/low-residency MFA program that was considering inviting me to join the program. I took a lot of things away from the experience, not least the realization that as a relatively young woman (twenty-three) trying to find a way to articulate stories that connected with my faith, I was already an antiquated fish -- or at least an odd duck. :-) One clear memory I have from the two weeks was a one on one coversation I had with a very kind but clearly somewhat weary writing mentor, who kept trotting out good but tired advice about what I should be reading. She kept telling me I needed to "develop my own voice," and that until I did, my writing really wouldn't get anywhere.

It's not bad advice, though I have to admit in the past fifteen years, as I've grown and developed, my writing voice has changed and deepened right along with me. It's not a stagnant thing; its not as though I can reach a point where I think I've "arrived" in the development of my writing voice. I've also come to a place of some creative humility about the relative unimportance of my own distinct "voice" -- in part because I've come to recognize that my voice is simply responding to other voices in an ages-old conversation to which I am a pretty recent arrival. And in art but also on the larger levels of life and prayer, I am always in a position of response: responding to the one who first called me into being, and later called me out of darkness into his wonderful light. The Word spoke first, speaks first, always takes the initiative. He's the real Story-teller; I'm invited into the story (thanks be to God) and even invited to imitate his activity as Maker. Maybe I will always be hungering then to shape stories (with a small "s") that in some way reflect the ultimate (large "S") Story.

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