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Margaret I. Carr

Crafting with Change

Change is scary, exciting, threatening and revitalizing. Whether we welcome it or dread it makes no difference. Change is inevitable. Change is life. At the basic level of respiration lungs have a finite capacity: you can inhale just so long before they reach that capacity and then you must change over to exhaling.

Change is an essential element in writing. Sometimes the change is slow and lyrical and other times it is fast paced and sweeps the reader along with the action. Both can be the basis for excellent stories or articles.

Very often beginning writers spend most of their words establishing the status quo that precedes the change the story is really about. I remember that the first story I ever submitted anywhere was like that. The consequences were as you might expect. The editor obviously got bored quickly, skipped to the end, muttered, sighed and took a quick look at the middle. I was lucky in that the magazine used a check-off form rejection and once I stopped weeping, wailing and banging my head against the wall, I realized it. But, oh my! Beginning too slow? That was the best writing in the story, everybody told me that, except the editor. Ending rushed and unresolved? Ouch! Sagging middle. Sigh. She was right.

I cut and cut and rewrote and resubmitted. It took longer to be rejected the second time. I wrote other stories and used the whole checklist to try to self-evaluate before submitting. Eventually I came to the conclusion that change was what people meant by stimulus when they give the stimulus/response advice. Change comes first. In 'real life' or in fiction you won't have a response without reason or cause and that reason or cause is almost always some sort of change. It can be a change outside or a change inside the person. Either way, it comes first and should be first in the story.

But what about background? Will the change mean anything without explaining the background first?

If it won't most people, including me, won't read far enough to find out about the change. Even with a very different setting from what we are used to it is still possible to pick up clues as you read. There are, for example, some really fine science fiction stories in which half the pleasure of reading is figuring out the setting as you go. Other stories, in which the background is more familiar, don't need any explanation.

Say you want to write a story about someone losing a job and how that person copes with the loss. Most people who will read it have either lost a job or known someone who has been through the experience.

"Payday! Gerry ripped open the envelope and stared numbly at the pink slip. After ten years?"

Does the reader need more than this to realize that Gerry has been employed and is looking forward to his paycheck? The exclamation point alone takes care of the anticipation. We don't know if he has special plans or is just scrambling to keep up with bills but that can come out later. His thought of 'after ten years' and the 'stared numbly' tells us he didn't expect the termination and the pink slip and envelope gives at least a general idea of the level of job, he's probably not an executive.

What happens next? You want the reader to wonder this and keep reading to find out. If you proceed to explain the background you may well lose the reader. After all, once all the questions are answered why keep reading? Well, the main question won't be answered but once you start wandering around answering all the secondary questions it is easy to lose track of the main question.

Change can also be internal.

"Marna hit delete. Three hours work for nothing."

Why? Is she programming, writing, designing or doing a school assignment? What is wrong with it? Is it flawed or has she just gotten bored with what she is doing?

We do know that she is working on a computer and dissatisfied with the results. As she follows this initial action with other actions we will learn more.

Try it. Try tight focus on change and see if it doesn't pep up your beginnings and tighten up sagging middles.