JOURNAL ENTRY VS. STORY (OR, WHAT I DID THIS WEEKEND VS. CONFLICT-CRISIS-RESOLUTION
Young writers often ask about the difference between writing a journal and writing a story. This highlights what I think is one of the most important aspects of writing. When teaching writing workshops this is something that I come back to time and again. Beginning writers are prone to write what I refer to as “what I did this weekend” stories. Nothing wrong with that, it’s part of the learning curve when learning the craft of writing. And what all of these “what I did this weekend” stories have in common is that they are of no interest to anyone but the writer. There is a reason for this: it’s because these stories do not give the reader anything for their reading.
When a reader picks up a story to read, there is an implied contract between reader and writer. The contract states that the reader will devote her time to a close and careful reading of this narrative, and the writer will not waste that time, but will instead provide a worthwhile reading experience. It’s a one-way contract, since by the time the reader picks up the text, the writer is no longer involved. But if the reader reads two pages and finds that the writer has broken the contract, the reader will break it, too, by putting it down.
There are many ways for a writer to break the contract. For example, if you are telling a story from the 1st Person Point-of-View (POV) of a four year old, then you must use the language of a four year old. Once that four year old says “Daddy comes into the kitchen and takes the blender from Mommy, exerting his habitual plenipotentiary control over our family,” then you’ve broken the contract, because four-year olds do not think or speak like this–the “spell” is broken.
Another way to break the contract is to do as I have described, to present the reader with a “what I did this weekend” narrative. What I did this weekend is nice, weekends are good, but why should a reader care what in the wide world of sports I did this weekend? Well, they might, if what I did is presented as a plot, with a beginning, middle, and end, and with a character the reader can care about, who makes a choice at the crisis moment that will change him forever. For most of us, our lives do not really fulfill this narrative arc, and we do not want them to. We don’t want to live every weekend having conflict and crisis and resolution of the kind that good stories are made of. Why not? Because that’s a lot of tension and anxiety, and our lives are way more comfortable without all the trouble.
But, in fiction (in nonfiction too), ONLY trouble is interesting. Unless there is a character who has some desire, and a conflict preventing her from attaining that desire, and a crisis, choice, and resolution, then the story is not going to provide the dramatic arc that a reader expects when she picks up a story. We don’t want this kind of trouble in our lives; but we demand it from our stories.
Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, widely considered one of the best novels of the 20th C., is also what is known as a Roman á Clef, a French phrase that means a ‘book with a key.’ This is a book whose fictional characters are all based on real people, and if you know which real person each character is based on, then you’ve got the ‘key.’
Hemingway went around Europe with his ‘lost generation’ expatriate friends after WWI, and he wrote his novel based on their exploits. However, the exploits of a handful of expats in Europe would not make for a story with the narrative arc that a novel requires. So, Hemingway did as all writers have been doing for centuries, he changed the real events so that they would provide the reader with a satisfying narrative arc.
It is early in the process to worry too much about these things, but it cannot hurt to have them in the back of your mind as you wrestle with the difference between writing a journal and writing a story, and other matters concerning the craft of writing.
So, what is this ‘Conflict-Crisis-Resolution’ that I’ve been writing about? We will address that in our next entry.