by Lawrence Coates | Dec 10, 2014 | Techniques of Fiction, Titles
One of the best pieces of advice I’ve heard for finding a title is to look within the work itself. Read your work carefully and look for a particularly compelling phrase or image within it that evokes the mood or setting or plot. I’ve heard this from Jane Bradley (author of You Believers), and this is also a technique favored by Jerome Stern in his book Making Shapely Fiction. Another method for discovering a title is to think of the overall work and pick out the setting, the season, the main character’s name, or the main action of the plot. This could lead you to one of the kinds of titles I’ve posted about in “The Who of Titles,” “The Where of Titles,” etc. Hemingway used to brainstorm titles, writing down anything that came to mind and then crossing out the bad ones. This is why we know that he came up with such clunkers as They Who Get Shot and The Carnal Education before settling on A Farewell to Arms. If you’re fortunate, you might have a spouse like Carol Steinbeck. She came up with the titles to John Steinbeck’s two best novels: The Grapes of Wrath, and Of Mice and Men. He divorced her after the success of The Grapes of Wrath, but that’s another story. One of the reasons I began this techniques blog with a consideration of titles is because I have had so much trouble settling on a title for my fourth novel. My original title was Temporary Landscapes. This title expresses an important thematic concern in the novel, but my editor said it...
by Lawrence Coates | Dec 2, 2014 | Techniques of Fiction, Titles
While there are still other kinds of titles that will be listed in my taxonomy, I wanted to move to the last category, the Metaphysical/Symbolic title. This kind of title expresses something essential to the meaning of the work, frequently in a high poetic language. The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner Everything that Rises Must Converge Flannery O’Connor The Red Badge of Courage Stephen Crane The Heart is a Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers The Song of the Lark Willa Cather It seems to me that this kind of title is not as suitable for a short story. They seem to be too weighty for short fiction, though there are always exceptions. Sometimes these titles come from a larger literary work. Shakespeare and the King James version of the Bible seem to be inexhaustible sources for titles. Faulkner used both – along with The Sound and the Fury, from Macbeth, he used Absalom, Absalom, from the Book of Samuel. The verse goes as follows: And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept: and as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son! Interestingly, there is also a novel entitled My Son, My Son, by an author named Howard Spring. A good title of this kind will attract the reader because of its beauty. Ideally, it will also take on greater meaning once the book has been read. In...
by Lawrence Coates | Nov 21, 2014 | Techniques of Fiction, Titles
After writing about the journey story for a few weeks, I’m returning to titles. Titles that establish a season of time are worth consideration. I enjoy them in part because of how important the season is in my thinking about stories. Here’s something I’ve said often in class. If you are writing about a particular part of a character’s life, you are implicitly saying that this part of that character’s life is story-worthy. This time of that character’s life is important – it’s a season of time filled with significance. Things will happen in that character’s life that are unique, unrepeatable, and irreversible. Let me repeat that. For a season of time to be worthy of story, things will happen that are unique, unrepeatable, and irreversible. It’s a commonplace in workshops to ask “What’s at stake” in a story. If things happen that are unique, unrepeatable, and irreversible, you won’t have to worry that not enough is at stake. So a title that expresses the season of time in which events will happen might be a good choice. The title can let the reader know the beginning and end of the story, and also give some hint about the subject matter, the characters, the tone, or other aspects of the story. Here are some examples: “Doe Season” “The Year of Getting to Know Us” “A Romantic Weekend” “A Day in the Open” “Blackberry Winter” “That Championship Season” The season invoked could be a season in the normal sense of the word – autumn, or winter. It could be a single day or a weekend, it could be a season...
by Lawrence Coates | Nov 13, 2014 | Journey, Plot, Techniques of Fiction
This will be my last blogpost on the Journey Story. Our plot outline, as detailed in the previous posts: Action Background Development Climax Ending We’ve discussed the first two. The development of a journey story frequently arises from obstacles that come up along the way. Imagine if a journey story had great transportation, clear highways, cheap gasoline, flawless mechanical performance, no highway patrol… boring, isn’t it? The kinds of obstacles that come up are almost infinite. They could be physical: a car breakdown, a defective pair of hiking boots (as in Cheryl Strayed’s Wild … nonfiction, but still relevant), a wrong turn, as in “Good Country People.” Or the obstacles could be people. Given that I’m a fan of Aristotle’s Poetics, I’ll divide the kinds of people into three categories. Strangers Enemies or adversaries People bonded by friendship or kinship Now, one might think initially that the most dramatic action would come from an encounter with an enemy, or a stranger who becomes an adversary, as happens in “Good Country People” or in “The Man Who Knew Belle Starr.” And those certainly are both wonderful stories. But Aristotle would say that the best stories show conflict between those bonded by friendship or kinship. In many of the stories I listed several posts ago, friendship or kinship is at the heart of the conflicts. “The Rich Brother” is a story about two brothers. “The Ant of the Self” is about a father-son conflict. “Stars of Motown Shining Bright” is a story about two friends (or frenemies) journeying to see a boy they both are enamored of. Whatever obstacles you create...
by Lawrence Coates | Nov 6, 2014 | Journey, Plot, Techniques of Fiction
Here’s something I’ve said hundreds of times in the creative writing classes I’ve taught over the years: A character without a past doesn’t have much of a present, and certainly has no future. You could write this: John walked into his office with a cup of coffee in his hand. But you have not created a character. You’ve got a name, nothing more, something paper thin. On the other hand, you could write this: The day after his mother’s funeral, John walked into his office with a cup of coffee in his hand. You suddenly have a character with the beginnings of a past. I’ve heard the writer Josh Weil say that a character should have a wound and a want. A wound, something from their past that they must address. A want, perhaps growing from their wound, something to send them toward the future. So to return to our plot outline for the journey story Action Background Development Climax Ending The background, creating characters who have a past, is vitally important. There are other parts of the background that are also important, and I think you would do well to be able to answer those famous questions from journalism: Who What Where When Why and How. Why do people go on journeys? Or, more to the point, why do people go on journeys in stories? The Quest is the most common reason. If you look at the list of stories from a couple of posts ago, a majority of them are quests of one kind or another. And the goal is concrete and specific. In “The Father,” the...
by Lawrence Coates | Oct 30, 2014 | Journey, Plot, Techniques of Fiction
To continue with my posts about the Theory and Practice of the Journey Story. In my workshop at Winter Wheat, I’m going to ask everyone to take a piece of paper (or open a document on their laptop) and list five journeys they’ve taken in their lives. These could be long journeys (to the Grand Canyon) or they could be short journeys (a trip to see Grandma, or a boyfriend). I might even ask everyone to list one imagined journey, either fantastical or simply desired – a Jules Verne style Journey to the Center of the Earth, or a journey to Tuscany during the grape harvest. And I might ask everyone to list the most amazing journey someone in their family ever took. I want everyone to come up with a few kernels from which a complete work of fiction might grow. And sometimes family stories can be a great source for fiction. From time to time, I’ll discuss books that have been useful to me in writing, since I want to make sure that I give credit where credit is due. And the next part of this post comes from a book I like, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. There’s a plot outline in Bird by Bird that works very well for the Journey story. It goes ABDCE: Action Background Development Climax Ending I’ll take on the first point of this outline in this post. Beginning with action is one of the most effective ways to start a short story. It’s certainly not the only way, but it’s one that is certainly used frequently. You begin the story...
Lawrence Coates is the author of five books, most recently The Goodbye House. His work has been recognized with the Western States Book Award in Fiction, the Donald Barthelme Prize in Short Prose, the Miami University Press Novella Prize, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction. He currently teaches in the MFA program at Bowling Green State University.