How to write a regular short story

Once upon a time, a woman thought What if I just wrote a regular short story? Wouldn't that be so artificial and funny? But what would it be about? Like...hmm...what do people write about? I dunno...grief! That's a classic one. Grief and submerged pain. But okay, it's got to be a genuine attempt, which means it needs an immediately recognizable very ‘literary’ voice. Hmm, let's look at Best American Short Stories and see what people are doing these days! Okay...just bought last year's BASS...now I'm reading, reading, reading...seems like a lot of first-person stories told in a clipped, neutral tone, like Bret Ellis without the drugs.¹ I can do that!

Primed and ready, the writer conjured up a potential first-person narrator named, err, Judith. A cisgendered woman, with kind eyes and a bobbed haircut. She wore leggings and a tunic, full-coverage foundation and light-brown lipstick—she worked as an account manager at a big tech company, which she seemed to like, but didn’t love. Just another millennial who’d never found her true metier. The writer and Judith met at the cafe in the Mission where the writer often worked. The writer asked if Judith wanted a coffee, and Judith said, "Not really. I actually have a call in a bit..."

"Okay," the writer said. "So let's just launch into it. Tell me about getting that phone call saying your dad is dead. Actually no wait, let's start after the call. What happened? Who did you call next? Where were you standing in the living room?"

"Excuse me," Judith said. "You want me to do what?"

"Just narrate in a cool, clipped tone the things you did right after hearing your father was dead."

"Are you joking?"

"Yeah, you know, there are lots of details to take care of, right? You have to call other people and tell them about it and stuff."

"But that's awful!"

"It happened to you though, right? You dad died ten years ago. I think it affected you quite a bit."

Judith and her dad were very close. The writer’s impression was that they were allies against Judith’s mom, a highly successful professional who’d earned many multiples of what her shabby-genteel father had brought in. Their situation was kind of like Mildred Pierce, the noir film about a hard-working restaurant owner who marries a sleazy aristocratic man who seduces her daughter. This film was, rather incredibly, Judith’s favorite movie.

"Yeah...but I just don't think about it,” Judith said.

"Ever?"

"No."

"And you don't want to tell a cool, clipped, detached story about it?"

"Absolutely not! To what end?"

"I don't know...I guess, to find some kind of transcendence? To summon up those feelings crisp and fresh and new and maybe get over them somehow?”

"I got over it by just never ever ever ever ever thinking about it."

"Huh. But someone could get over it some other way, surely? Like...maybe there's some value in just portraying this person who's so numbed, or whatever, but you let their surroundings hold the weight of...I dunno."

Judith was staring out the window, which was off-putting to the writer, so the writer lost her train of thought. "Stuff," the writer said. "The surroundings hold the weight of, err, some stuff."

"Yeah, stuff."

"Would distance help? I can age you! Come back ten years older. Come back twenty years older! Then let's have this talk again? You don’t need to transcend the feelings; we can just describe them very exactly, in all their depth."

"Absolutely not, I just have no interest whatsoever in revisiting that experience in any form. It does not help to talk about it. What about you? Do you want to write about, say, coming out to your parents?"

"Not really."

"Why not? It was an emotional time, right?”

"I mean...yeah...I guess."

"What happened after you came out?"

“You know…the problem with my coming-out story is that I've fully processed the experience. I understand it. Whereas you really want the reader to feel like they perceive something that the narrator doesn't or isn't or can't perceive."

"Why would the narrator tell you something they don't understand, but that the reader (who's literally just met them) does understand? How many incredibly-obtuse narrators can there be?"

"I dunno. I once knew a guy whose girlfriend had tried to kill herself. And he tried to make this documentary about the experience, but he couldn't finish it. So then he tried to make a movie about himself trying to make the documentary. Then he tried to make a movie about his attempt to make that movie. Ten years passed, and he kept adding new layers of meta storytelling. It was so comical! I was like Just make a movie about what happened that night. What'd happened was...his girlfriend called him to her dorm room and revealed she was in the process of killing herself, and she wanted his help to finish it. And eventually he called the cops and had her committed. But...it took him four hours (during which time blood was dripping down her wrists from her suicide attempt). So somehow during those four hours he was caught up in the spell, the folie a deux of this moment. There was something dark and thrilling in that moment that he couldn't capture. And whenever he described this project, everyone knew exactly what'd happened, but he didn't. He didn't get it. Any one of his friends could've said Oh, you considered helping to kill her, and that's why this is so compelling. But he didn't get it."

"Wow, you should write about that."

"I did! I wrote a whole novel about a guy who’s obsessed with making a movie about the night he almost killed his girlfriend. Much better than any of his attempts. But I never tried to get it published. I looked at it and was like meh. It's not that compelling."

"Really?"

"Yeah...just didn't seem like there was much there. I re-read the book and I was honestly kinda bored. The problem was…the story needs to be shaped. He obviously had this urge to kill her, but then…he didn’t do it! And he wants to explain that he had this urge, but so what? So he was almost bad? But is that really a story? Everyone is almost bad. Everyone almost hurts people, constantly. That’s not really a story. Years and years and years later I realized that since I was writing fiction I should’ve just gone back and written a story where she does in fact die that night. And then the cops investigate him for murder. It’s a thriller with the same premise (“What happened that night?”) but in this case there’s a shocking twist. He did it, he helped kill her. Boom, that’s a story.”

“Wow, that’s sort of like a noir. I’d read that.”

“Right! That’s the thing, people put so much effort into constructing the right images and style and tone for a story, but they don’t get that you can construct the story itself! In fact that’s literally the easiest and most powerful thing to change.”

“So why don’t you do it?”

“Oh I don’t know—he was another artist. Would’ve been shitty to take his material. And then I had other ideas—who knows. Maybe I’ll revisit the idea someday.”

"So then why do you need me? How would you tell my story?”

“Umm…I dunno…”

“I’d love it to be an old-school noir. Like something with that beautiful wavy hair, and that golden glow that comes out even in black and white. Did you ever see that movie Mildred Pierce?”

“Are you kidding right now?”

“It has Joan Crawford. It was so excellent. She’s gorgeous. I loved her.”

“What about the daughter?”

“Veda!” Judith said. “Ann Blythe. Ugh, what a sex kitten. Don’t you hate that type? They’re everywhere these days. We should watch that!”

“Definitely,” the writer said. “I mean I’ve kinda seen it already though. But I think there’s a new version with Kate Winslet?”

“Her,” Judith said. “Hate her. So severe-looking. Looks like a school-teacher. Even in Titanic. Oh well…they ruin everything, don’t they?”

“Yeah, I guess. Hey…uhh, did you have a meeting?”

Judith looked at her watch. "Oh it's actually for 12:30. But I really should go." Judith grabbed her bag, and they awkwardly hugged each other. As Judith’s brown hair brushed lightly against the writer’s cheek, the writer had a strange, intense jolt of longing.

Thinking about it later, the writer would remember, Oh yeah, I used to be in love with Judith. Like, before I’d experienced real love, I had this one-sided, unrequited attraction for her. I loved the whole vibe: the damaged, cynical daddy’s girl. I wanted so desperately to be with her. The oddest thing was that awhile after the writer had come out, she and Judith had hung out together, and there’d been drinking, and Judith had sort of made a pass at her, had drunkenly leaned on her chest, with her face held close to the writer’s, and had said, “I can’t believe I never knew you were gay...” The writer had been paralyzed—hadn’t said a thing, almost hadn’t moved. Probably for the best—there’s no way Judith would’ve wanted to actually be with a woman. She was just dropping bait, trying to manipulate the writer, the way straight girls feel compelled to do to gay women. But for a few years, remembering that moment, the writer had thought, Even if it was a game, I should've played it out. I should have tried for the kiss. What a strange thing that would’ve been. And the writer understood now why she’d summoned Judith back into existence: the writer was angry with her, wanted to hurt her somehow.

And reading over what she’d written, the writer saw there was a clear story here, where the writer drops all the posturing and metafiction and cool, detached tone and just tells a story. What happens is, Judith is depressed. She calls the writer over, and she’s in the process of killing herself, and she asks for help. And the writer considers helping her, because in reality she still has this terrible anger towards Judith for that one abortive pass made years ago.

It’s definitely a story that could be told. And the writer could tell it. But nobody would want to read it! She wouldn’t even want to read it herself! Her subconscious was pushing her towards creating this story, and yet she just as resolutely simply didn’t want it to exist. Not because of the inherent unpalatableness of the content, but for the truth it revealed about the writer—a part of her did indeed want Judith to die. But that wasn’t really a story. Not yet. It was simply a cold-hearted fact. But what was equally true was the fact that the writer wouldn’t really ever help her friend kill herself. So what to do with those two truths? The writer didn’t know. Maybe in ten or twenty years, the writer would discover something new that would allow her to turn the fact of that deadly ambivalence into a real story. But the writer simply wasn’t there yet—and no amount of cool, calm detached tone could hide the fact that although the writer had plenty of insight, she didn’t quite have the wisdom needed to shape that insight into a real story that would make sense of the full and accurate contours of her feelings about this person.

Of course she could write the story anyway and hope that something in the images or choice of words would convey some meaning she didn’t quite understand herself, but seeing what she’d already written, she just couldn’t see anything there. Sometimes a muddle is just a muddle! Maybe the writer should simply surrender Judith back into the unconscious and let her come back again someday in some entirely different form.

But all that would come later, in retrospect. Right now the writer was still on this imaginary sidewalk, still wrapped-up in this imaginary goodbye with a person who was, if not quite imaginary, then certainly not totally real.

“Hey,” the writer said.

“Hey you…?” Judith was already on her phone, presumably looking to see if her car was about to arrive.

“I’m sorry,” the writer said.

“What?”

“You were an important person in my life for a long time. You went through a lot. You were in my thoughts. I'm sorry he died. I know he was sick for a while. I'm sorry you were in so much pain. You didn’t totally need me, I know, so I don’t really feel that bad, because I did reach out, and it just seemed like you didn’t need or want me around anymore. BUT you’re a special person. Thank you so much for seeing something in me, when we were in college together. I had friends, but I was an alcoholic, and I was so shy when I wasn’t drinking. You took me under your wing. You spent time with me. You were the first person I ever felt comfortable texting and saying, ‘What’s up? Do you want to hang out?’ And I know you knew that I liked you, and aside from that one time, you always made it very clear, without words, that you didn’t feel the same, and I appreciate you doing so in that very gentle way (aside from that one time!) and I appreciate the faith you had in me that, despite my drinking, I would get the picture and not push things. Thank you so much for your friendship. I hope you are happy, wherever you are now.”

Judith turned around. Her eyes welled up. There was hugging and crying. The writer isn’t going to write out the whole fucking thing for you, but it was obviously very emotional.

P.S. The genesis of this piece is described in my last post (“The literary short story is an empty formal exercise”). I actually wrote this story first, and then that post about the Best Americans later.

1. One thing to know about me is I love Bret Easton Ellis’s work. American Psycho is one of the best novels of the last fifty years.