Author: Susan Breen

Today is the first day of my Gotham Writers spring schedule, which means that I will be spending today teaching. So I felt I should include something educational in today’s post.  One of the things I’ll be talking to my students about is how to plot a novel, and something that is very useful in that respect, is to start taking apart stories. Not everyone looks at it this way, but I think there is some validity to considering a short story a very short novel. So with that in mind, what are some good short stories to tear apart and learn from: 1. “What You Pawn I Will Redeem,” by Sherman Alexie.  Read this for voice, for first person point of view, and for the beautiful structure. Everything you want to know about narrative arc is in this story. 2. “Labors of the Heart,” by Claire Davis. Read this for character and dialogue and that hopeless yearning that fuels the best stories. 3. “Afterward,” by Edith Wharton, which contains one of my favorite plot twists in all literature. 4. “A Death,” by Stephen King, first published in The New Yorker. A real master of story telling.  5. “Wants” by Grace Paley. Just love her voice. 6. “A Slight Deviation from the Mean,” by Susan Oleksiw. Set in India. In the November/December issue of Alfred Hitchcock. 7. “Cat Person,” by Kristen Roupenanian. This New Yorker short story went viral because of its provocative account of a young woman’s relationship with an older man. A great story to discuss with a class.  8. “The Lottery,” by Shirley Jackson.  Because this story has stayed in my head since the first time I read it, and it’s just as chilling the tenth time around. Do you have any favorite stories?

Lately I’ve been on a short story writing binge. Partly that’s because I have a novel on submission, and I can spend my excess energy drinking or writing short stories and it seems more healthy to write. (I am working on a new novel as well, but I have a lot of excess energy.) But I have also come to realize how much I enjoy reading short stories. (I keep a copy of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine in my pocketbook for emergency situations.)  One of the things I like about stories is that you can write them and finish them in a confined period of time. Generally it takes me about three months to write one, and then about six months to sell one, which, in the publishing business, is about as close to immediate gratification as you’re going to get.  I also like the way you can be experimental with a short story.  For example, I am intrigued by families of serial killers. This is probably because I grew up down the road from Joel Rifkin (Long Island’s worst serial killer) and one of the things I found fascinating about that whole thing was that after he was convicted, his mother continued to live in the house in which the murders took place. Which was a rather mundane looking split level house. What is it like to live in such proximity to evil? What do you know or make sure you don’t know? What choices do you make? I considered writing a novel with the protagonist the daughter of a serial killer. But I was concerned that it would be hard to get the readers to commit to such a character. Would it all be too creepy for a commercial novel? But with a short story, I have no such concerns. So the woman I sent off to Tahiti (in the story I mentioned yesterday) is grappling with the fact that she is leaving behind a father who is being sentenced to prison for murder.  Do you like short stories? Which are some of your favorites? 

You’ll notice that in every picture of me from India, I’m wearing a puffy pink coat. That’s because I was freezing the entire time. It wasn’t actually that cold. Probably in the 40s. But there was no central heating. So whatever it was, it was, unless you could get a seat at the fire. How I came to appreciate fires! The central fire, and the hub of all conversation at the orphanage, was in an old mango tree that had toppled over in a storm.  We would all huddle together on a log and watch the flame. (I was huddling. Most of the kids were trying to jump over the fire.) My hair, my clothes, my skin all smelled of smoke. Periodically someone would go off with an ax and come back with wood, which they would throw onto the fire. Time passed in a different way than I’m used to. You could spend hours just chatting with the people who came and went. The coziest fire was in the library, in a fireplace. Here many of the kids congregated in the afternoon. (I should say that I was at the orphanage at an unusual time. For most of the year, the kids would be at school.) Here I played an intense game of Monopoly with Rampal (and we came in second). I was also introduced to a lot of good books, such as the Percy Jackson series. The most exciting fire was in the jungle. One night, we all crammed into a jeep and drove into the jungle, which was only about ten minutes away, but felt like an entirely different world. There was a huge vat filled with curry, that the cooks had been working on all day. Music was blaring. A lot of Justin Beiber. (It struck me funny that the kids used the flashlights from their iphones to navigate their way around the jungle, but ate food cooked over a wood fire.)  Then there was the fire I went to first thing in the morning. At 7:00, music would come over the loud speaker–uplifting hymns. Soon thereafter a girl would knock on my door. “Your tea, aunty.” Then I would make my way over to the kitchen fire, where Maya and some others were cooking the toast. I’d sit there and chat until it was time for breakfast.  When I got back to Delhi, the first thing I did was take a long, hot shower. It felt great, but I missed the warmth, communal and otherwise, from those fires.

When I arrived at the Good Shepherd Agricultural Mission, I was warmly greeted by a great cluster of children, each of whom hugged me and told me their name. A minute went by. Then came the first question,  “Do you remember my name, auntie?”  As a teacher, I have long known the value of remembering students’ names.  In fact, I make a practice of calling my students by name over and over again during the first few classes, because I believe that if you keep calling people by their names, other people will call them by their names too. They will remember the names, will become friends and the class will be a success. All of which is to say, I desperately wanted to remember each child’s name. But it was so hard. There were so many names to remember, and the names were so unfamiliar and even if I remembered them I didn’t say them right. Rosey and Shane and Gladys were easy to memorize. But then there was Roshni and Khushboo and Jyotika. I spent the first day fumbling around and everywhere I turned was a beautiful child looking at me and saying, “Do you remember my name, auntie?” That first night I thought a long time about the issue, and in the morning I had a plan. I went to breakfast (oatmeal over toast) with my notebook and I asked each child to write down his or her name with some distinguishing characteristic. Immediately they leapt in. Rampal wore a gray hat. Indro had a colorful hat. Ayushi had a puffy watch and Jyotika a scar on her chin. I filled up pages (one of which is in the photo). An orphanage is a communal place, and no one makes a decision on her own. There was much discussion over each person’s distinguishing characteristic. Was her nose unusual? Were eyes a particular color? Did she look like she came from Nepal? After that, every time someone came up to me and asked if I knew her name, I could at least pause and point to the notebook. It bought me some time and good will. By the time I left, I could pick out everyone pretty well, and since I’ve been back I’ve gone over all my pictures and written names on them to be sure not to forget. Just last Sunday, Rosey called me and her first question was, “Do you remember me, Aunty?” Yes Rosey, I remember you and Anthea and April and Raymond and Rampal and…”  

How I happened to go to India this past January is a long and convoluted story involving tragedy, triumph, stubbornness  and one very sweet young woman at an orphanage who I’ve been sponsoring for the last 3 years. Since I first began communicating with her, Rosey has been gently suggesting that I come for a visit, but getting to India is not an easy proposition. She lives in an orphanage 300 kilometers to the east of New Delhi, near the border with Nepal. To say that it is remote is putting it very mildly.   At first I planned to fly from Delhi to Pantnagar, which would have taken me somewhere close. But that plane only leaves 4 times a week. And it’s often canceled, which, in fact, it was. So then I decided to take the train. When you are going to India, many people have advice for you, most of it harrowing, so when I got to the train I didn’t know what to expect. (I should say that I had hired a guide to drive me to the station. He deposited me in my seat and said, “Don’t move.”) Fortunately, almost all the signs in India are in English. I knew that Haldwani, the stop I was getting off at, was second to last and that it was 5 hours away and that one of the men who runs the orphanage would be picking me up. With Rosey! Still, it is a little daunting to be a middle-class woman from Westchester, NY, with all that means, on a train going into the heart of India. The fabulous thing was that they kept serving food, and I kept eating it. There was cereal with warm milk. There was a very tasty vegetarian thing. Also very tasty desert, and tea. The Indian tea is the best tea I have ever had. Finally we got to Haldwani. It is not a metropolis. I stepped out and looked around and saw no one who looked like Clifton, from the orphanage, who I knew to be very tall, white and Australian. There was no one who looked like Rosey either, who I knew to be very small, beautiful and Indian. I felt a little like Cary Grant in that scene in North by Northwest when the cropduster is coming after him. I felt the teeniest surge of panic, except there was no way out. The next train back to Delhi would not leave for hours. So I followed the direction in which other people were walking and then I said a prayer and then lo and behold I heard a very tall Australian man saying, “Susan?” I had been found. And what an adventure I had. which I will relate tomorrow.

One of my favorite things to read is The Ethicist column in The New York Times. This is a place where various people ask an assortment of ethical questions and a pundit responds. One of my favorite recent ones was from a woman who was going to two therapists. She had not told the one therapist about the other and wondered if that was unethical. Personally, I thought it defeated the whole point of going to a therapist, to hold back secrets. But the question intrigued me. This is the sort of issue I can ponder for days. So I began to think about ethical questions writers confront, and I decided to pose one particular question to my fellow Miss Demeanors (who turn out to be a very ethical bunch!) Here it is: Your friend tells you a story about something her teenage daughter did and it would be an absolutely perfect plot twist for the book you’re writing. It’s quite specific, so it would be hard to disguise. Your friend would be sure to recognize it. What would you do?  Tracee:  Rule of thumb? Never use anything that would be hurtful to either a friend or an individual. I think we all know when a story is hurtful (in this hypothetical case, to either the friend or her daughter). On the other hand, I’ve heard many stories from friends and families about people and events, and I don’t know who they are talking about, so to me it is non-specific and close to being eavesdropping. Those I would repeat with pleasure! Maybe next time a friend starts to relate a story that sounds particularly interesting ask them to speak in hypotheticals! Paula:  Since most of my friends are writers, they probably wouldn’t appreciate that. If the incident were really good, I’d find a way to disguise it. I usually disguise everything anyway—at least in my fiction—not so much intentionally, but as part of the process of imagining and reimagining the characters and plot lines of my story. That said, we have a rule in our family—which is made up of mostly writers—that everyone gets to write their version of our family story. If you don’t like my version, you can write your own. Cate: If it was really transparent I wouldn’t use it. I like to think I can come up with something else just as good from my imagination that wouldn’t run the risk of hurting my friend. People see themselves in stories that I write even when they’re not there and weren’t used as a basis at all. I’d be too nervous about using an anecdote directly from someone’s life without permission. I wouldn’t want a friend to feel that I betrayed a confidence and not want to really talk in depth with me in the future. Michele: No. Just no. There is no shortage of human folly so I’d toss any thought of it away and not risk a solid friendship. Those are rare. Alison: Such an interesting question, Susan. I posed it to my family last night at dinner. (Raclette–nothing quite as wonderful as melted cheese for a meal.) I assumed that this was like a law school hypothetical where we couldn’t dance around the issue by disguising it or making other changes to the main story: this was an ethical dilemma. So the conversation began. My husband and son were more interested in the friend’s feelings than the writer’s. There was a sliding scale, though. If the friend told the story at a cocktail party, it was more likely to be fair game than if the story was told to the writer alone. If the writer didn’t care about the friend that much, no problem! My position was if the story was delicate (i.e., not the cocktail anecdote), I’d ask the friend how she felt, knowing I may lose the ability to write about it. My teenage daughter had an entirely different position. She felt very strongly that even if the friend was fine with writing about the incident, it was not the mother’s story to tell. She has a point.I have to admit that I’m persuaded by my fellow Miss Demeanor’s perspectives on this as much as my own. Guess that’s why it’s such a good question! Robin: Funny question because a friend once asked me to create a villain based on him. My first response was “how do you know I haven’t already?” Then I said no, because of libel and copyright laws. Having spent many years as a litigation paralegal such disclaimers are a knee-jerk reaction. That said, I think writers file away observations, experiences, and conversations that find their way into our work as amalgams or inspiration for the “what if’s” that take real situations in different, unexpected fictional directions. So that’s what I would do. I’d sit down with a notebook and distill the situation down to its core to figure out what about it I find perfect for my story, then dream up different “what if” scenarios to twist and turn it until it’s unrecognizable so as not to betray the friendship. Alexia: I confess, I’d use the incident but I’d find a way to disguise it. The girl would become a grown man, I’d divide the incident into multiple incidents and assign the pieces to several characters instead of one, something like that. I’d find a way. I’d also hope the story came from my friend who said (in writing) that she’d be so happy to be in someone’s novel that she wouldn’t care how the author used her. I’d attribute the incident to her instead of her daughter.Is there really anything that anyone of us has done that no one else in the world has ever done? Even if you make something up, unless it’s physiologically impossible, at least one person will have done it and think you were talking about them, as Cate noted.