{"id":9447,"date":"2022-01-17T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-17T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9447"},"modified":"2022-01-16T21:17:01","modified_gmt":"2022-01-17T02:17:01","slug":"the-short-story-four-minute-mile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9447","title":{"rendered":"The Short Story Four-Minute Mile"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Sherlock<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Half-finished in a Word file on my computer is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche story, the second one I\u2019ve written. What I hadn\u2019t realized is that my two stories follow a very well-trodden path laid by Arthur Conan Doyle and followed by Holmes acolytes ever since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a Sisters in Crime webinar last week with short story dream team Art Taylor and Barb Goffman, Art presented the classic seven-part structure of a Sherlock Holmes story (which he credited to the apparently out-of-print book, Sherlock Holmes for Dummies<\/em>). Through some process of osmosis, it seems I\u2019d absorbed and followed at least the first few of those parts: Part 1 \u2013 cozy domestic scene; Part 2 \u2013 Sherlock shows off; Part 3 \u2013 the problem is presented. In my first Holmes story, the problem arrived by letter; in the new one, via a distraught Mrs. Hudson. Structural awareness greatly simplifies the writing job and prevents wandering about in rhetorical left field. I know what needs to get done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a short story, emphasized Barb, the writer has to focus. As she puts it, \u201cA short story is about one thing,\u201d even if that thing is unclear at the start. If you\u2019d asked me what my story \u201cBurning Bright\u201d in Busted! Arresting Stories from the Beat<\/em> was about, I would have said, \u201cTwo Wisconsin ne\u2019er-do-wells plan to rake in a lot of money by having a tiger fight a bear.\u201d I would have added, \u201cand it\u2019s also about an outraged deputy sheriff trying to stop them while trying to persuade her dad to move into assisted living.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, would Barb say \u201cHey, that\u2019s two things\u201d? Only after I wrote \u201cThe End\u201d did I realize the story was only superficially about those two things. What it was really about was respect for autonomy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art cited six steps in a typical short story, and they usually, though not necessarily, appear in order: 1- Introduce the character, 2- express their desires, 3- action (what the character does about those desires), 4- factors that impedes obtaining the desires (3 and 4 can repeat several times), 5- the climax, 6- resolution. In the classic analysis of Cinderella (below), action and impediments trade places many times (nothing to wear? fairy godmother).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art pointed out that the six steps are useful as a tool for planning a story, and for diagnosing why it isn\u2019t working. Barb pulls several of the steps together and recommends starting a story is by asking, \u201cwhat\u2019s the conflict?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lest you think these are recommendations to write to a formula, they are not. The variety and rearrangement of parts is practically infinite. Someone once said to crime writer Donald Westlake that writing genre fiction was easy: All you have to do is follow the formula. And he responded, \u201cI\u2019ll give you a formula for running a four minute-mile. Run each quarter-mile in less than a minute.\u201d (Art\u2019s talk and his slides will be in the members section of the Sisters in Crime<\/a> website.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Half-finished in a Word file on my computer is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche story, the second one I\u2019ve written. What I hadn\u2019t realized is that my two stories follow a very well-trodden path laid by Arthur Conan Doyle and followed … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Short stories require great focus and the discard of nonessentials. Having a structure in mind speeds the process along.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[62,174,120,29],"tags":[434,1865,609],"class_list":["post-9447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","category-first-draft-blog","category-short-story","category-writing","tag-art-taylor","tag-barb-goffman","tag-sisters-in-crime"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2sn","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9447"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9449,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9447\/revisions\/9449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}