Person standing under tree with apple about to fall on their head
24 Červen 1990, Nedele, Praha
[Blank1.]
Young-Toby sees Sundays as a chance to do more work than usual.
Work is writing — work-work (teaching, writing language materials) is just what earns money. He thinks of writing as work, and calls it that, which may be a mistake. But he’s not yet willing to see it as a form of continued-into-adulthood play.
Action Men and Sindy dolls becoming fictional characters. Having conversations, having their limbs posed.
At this time, writing fiction is a way of possibly earning money to support the life of a poet. Young-Toby knows that Randall Jarrell wrote a novel (Pictures from an Institution) and John Ashbery and James Schuyler (A Nest of Ninnies).
A decision becomes a fascination that will — for a time, anyway — become the main thing.
Perhaps I’m heading back to poetry now. I don’t know.
Prose is a very strange thing. It’s an accommodation with the possible that can, now and again, give glimpses of a sudden sublime.
A description of someone having had an experience becomes, for the reader, a conjuring of going-somehow-through-it.
..the wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony, were fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union.
(Jane Austen, Emma)
I always feel that a description of an object isn’t enough — there aren’t enough details.
He was wearing a pale three-button suit and she was wearing her long red dress.
That might not be the highpoint of a short story, but no-one’s going to object and say that the characters haven’t been properly kitted out.
A couple of months ago, I did an event with former student, future debut novelist Philip A Suggars (The Lighthouse at the End of the World, Titan, 2026).
He said something like ‘fiction is a very low res form’. I hadn’t heard it put that way.
I’ve often thought of stories in terms of stick figures. Would this be interesting, if it were happening to very simple cartoons? I sometimes draw them on the whiteboard for students.
Person standing.
Is that a story?
No — not unless we’re inside their head.
Person standing under tree.
Is that a story?
No — but it might be the set up for one.
Person standing under tree with falling apple about to hit them on the head.
Is that a story?
Yes, especially in the aftermath — far more of a story than person standing.
If it happened to you, you’d likely tell someone about it at the end of the day. (Which is one test of whether something is or isn’t storyworthy.)
Person standing under tree.
But this, like most descriptive sentences I write leave me feeling That’s just not enough — they won’t be able to see that.
This is where reliance on the reader comes in. Give them a long red dress and they do the stitching. They choose the red, going by what they know of the character. They detail the details.