Writing Short Stories by Ailsa Cox - Article Example

Structure and Pace Introduction While short stories are as divergent in form as other aspects of cultural expression – exhibiting genre characteristics from drama to science fiction and fantasy – there are a number of recognizable characteristics that underline the short story form. In Writing Short Stories Ailsa Cox argues that, “Many of the differences between writing short stories and writing a novel are related to questions of structure and pace” (Cox, pg. 6). Following Cox’s formulations, this essay examines structure and pace in William Boyd’s Dream Lover, and Alice Munro’s Wood and Dimensions. Analysis William Boyd’s story Dream Lover is an impressionistic narrative of an incident that occurs to a man when he is studying in France. The story is impressionistic in the sense that it is structured around a series of journal like entries that detail from one man’s restricted point of view his relationship with a fellow student from the United States. The story implements a structure designed to at first draw the reader into the narrative. At the beginning of the story detailed explanation of the narrator’s life in France is given. This functions to establish his situation in direct opposition to that of his friend Preston. While Preston leads a lavish lifestyle the narrator’s existence is significantly modest, leading him to state, “as I sip my sour drink a tremendous sour sense of the world’s huge unfairness crowds ruthlessly in” (Boyd, pg. 83). In addition to establishing the fundamental opposition between the two characters, these early descriptions introduce a sense of mystery – why is Preston in France – that functions to create a sense of suspense that draws the reading into the narrative. The pace of the story is regulated through a series of impressionistic breaks that designate a change in time. The breaks function to structure the story as journal esque, adding stylistic dimension that makes it less a barebones narrative, and opening the text to the reader’s imagination. In this regards it’s worth quoting Kristeva (1983, pg. 199) as her formulation of this phenomenon is apt and relevant in characterizing the structural and pacing aspects of the short story: Next to complete clauses that are nonetheless concatenated by the three dots, one notes two kinds of ellipses. On the one hand, the points of suspension cut off a constituent from the main clause or from the predicate; thus isolated, the constituent loses its identity as object phrase, for instance, and while it does not gain a truly autonomous value it still floats in a syntactic irresolution that opens a path to various logical and semantic connotations, in short, to daydreaming. While the passage from Kristeva is particularly apt for the dream-like narrative of the William Boyd short story, it’s also essential in gaining an adequate understanding of elements of structure and pace; indeed, the medium of the short story demands closer attention to the smaller details of form. In a sense the structure of the entire story collection must be considered, notably the title, as these elements influence and play on the signification inherent throughout the text. Alice Munro’s Wood presents a fairly direct and straight forward narrative that plays on its own traditional structure to create pacing effects. At the beginning of the story Munro follows the life of Roy by describing his job and his reluctance to hire someone else to help him with his work. The story then offers an developed paragraph of exposition on Roy’s other interest; the paragraph withholds essential information before finally releasing it the next one word paragraph. Wood cutting. The effect functions to break up the pace of the story as well as to emphasize the centrality to the story of the descriptive element. In Alice Munroe’s short story Dimensions in the same collection, pacing is effectively implemented though ellipses in the narrative. In the first paragraph of the story the narrative describes Doree’s expedition on three separate busses. In this paragraph the narrative has already started in medias res as the narrator assumes a familiar tone regarding Doree. While the second paragraph follows logically from the transitional final sentence in the first, the third paragraph marks a significant narrative jump. The paragraph begins, “None of the people she worked with knew what had happened” (Munroe, pg. 7). While there is a transitional element as the preceding paragraph concerns Doree’s work-life, the line marks a significant jump from the second paragraph. In this regard, Munroe is implementing pacing through ellipses to create interest in the narrative. The story has withheld “what had happened” and as a result creates a sense of mystery that elicits active participation by the reader. This is an example of what Cox is referring to when she differentiates between the novel and short story form; rather than using such pacing techniques, the novel traditionally functions by exploring situations in depth and elicits interest from grand movements of character development; the pacing technique implemented here is more aligned with editing practices used in films. There seems to be distinct ways of revealing narrative information that can be identified in the stories under examination. In Boyd’s The Dream Lover the reader learns of central plot elements as they are interworked into the natural order of the text. For instance, consider that the reader is never directly told the nature of the narrator’s job or purpose until the story states, “We watch our fellow students” (pg. 80). In Munro’s story Wood the information is given directly, as in the nature of the protagonist’s career and interests. Another differential element is the story’s opening lines. While Boyd’s text begins with an engaging and amusing anecdote about the search for French girls rather than ‘typical’ European girls, in Munro’s Wood the story begins with the line, “Roy in an upholsterer or refurnisher of furniture” (pg. 172). The effect in Boyd’s story is to draw the reader into the narrative, where in Munro’s story it has a sort of Brechtian distancing effect – it is simply boring. For these reasons, as interest producing, the structure and pace of Boyd’s narrative is undeniably more effective. However, it seems that Munro’s intention is more than merely advancing a compelling plot, but purposely distancing the reader from the text to elicit a more contemplative response. Conclusion Ultimately, the nature of pace and structure are revealed to be essentially linked to textual meaning and interpretation. It’s worth digressing here on the nature of the relation between pace, structure – and the nature of textual meaning. While much traditional literary theory focuses on the nature of the linguistic elements of the text, this is clearly misguided as in the literary form the text and its structure are indistinguishable. Without the elliptical breaks in Boyd’s ‘Dream Lover’ the story would read as essentially emphasize women and competition; its incorporation gives the story its impressionistic Parisian feel. Similarly, textual differences interruptions in Munro’s Wood have the added dimension of giving the story a stylistic touch implementing pace and structure to affect the human’s fundamental desire for spontaneity of form. Particularly in the contemporary cultural landscape, writers and critics must pay greater head to the interrelations and potentials of the medium. References Boyd, William. The Dream Lover. Cox, Ailsa. Writing Short Stories. Kristeva, Julia. (1983). Powers of Horror: An Essay on the Abject. Munro, Alice. (2009). Too Much Happiness. Alfred Knopf. Read More