It’s ok not to listen
I wrestle with openings, particularly with short stories. So when one feels right, when I think I really nailed it, it’s a hard thing for me to let go.
I used to be a member of a weekly writer’s workshop. If you’re out of school and want to get feedback on your work, I really suggest finding and joining one. If it sucks, leave. If you have a baby and also teach Wednesday nights, leave. But if it’s good, stick around. Just understand that everything your group says isn’t necessarily right.
I workshopped a story called “Dear Sir” about a year ago. Here’s the original opening:
It starts simple, like this: a young couple, recently divorced, stand on opposite sides of a fold-out couch. Between them, a white sheet billows and arcs. It hangs in the dim room like a wing. the two then pull the sheet from flight and tuck it snugly beneath the mattress.
“Listen,” the man says. “I appreciate this. Really.”
“It’s not a problem,” she says. “It was sudden. And the tennis thing.”
After the opening, during this moment of silence between the two, we flash back to the night he first slept on the couch, when he met her parents the first time, then forward a bit to a scene where the wife confesses she went to him that night to listen to him breathing. Then we arrive back in the dramatic present and finish their awkward exchange.
Flexibility with time is one of fiction’s strengths. The other is interior monologue. I tend not to focus too much on interior monologue because people’s monologues are often boring. And direct thought is deadly.
Time is amazing, though. Not only are there those moments when characters are propelled back and back via some trigger in the dramatic present, we also have those moments that seem to drag on forever. It’s the same with times that seem to tumble past us, impossibly fast. Think of a car wreck or sex you’ve had. Think of the things you noticed and the things you didn’t.
Some might argue you could do the same in film, but I’d disagree. In film you can’t place ultimate limitations on point of view without it being hokey. In fiction, the author gets to choose what the characters notice. By doing so, he reveals something about them to the reader. In film, there will always be a disconnect between the audience and the characters on some level unless the entire film is shot through characters’ eyes.
I have strayed.
Once back in the dramatic present, we watch the main character, Todd, sneak out of his ex-wife’s mom’s house (father, dead), and into the night. He drives to the strip, and we get one more flashback to his arrival. There we find out he drove up and down and couldn’t find a place to stay.
Some people in the workshop asked why I chose to begin the story where I did. At the time, the only answer I had was, “It’s a great image.” I don’t quite know if that’s enough, but I think it’s a good start. Still, they suggested maybe I try to begin somewhere else so we don’t have too much back and forth in time. They suggested I begin with Todd driving the strip, unable to find a place to stay. It would, they argued, get rid of one flashback.
The thing is, there’s a certain symmetry to the flashbacks, if I begin with the scene in the room:
Dramatic present - Todd and Theresa make up the fold-out
Flashback - First time he met her mother
Flashback - Theresa tells Todd she went to see him that night. He looked uncomfortable
Dramatic Present - They finish making the bed, she hurries from the room
Dramatic Present - That night Todd can’t sleep. He leaves in the night and drives to the strip
Flashback - Earlier that day Todd drives up and down the strip looking for a place to stay. All the hotels are full because of a tennis tournament
Dramatic Present - Todd gets coffee in a convenience store. The coffee triggers another memory
Flashback - Theresa and her mother go to the Mullet Festival. Robert (Theresa’s father) and Todd go to breakfast. Robert tells Todd not to worry so much. To have a little fun along the way.
Dramatic Present - two college girls come into the convenience store, try to buy beer and can’t produce ID, fake or otherwise. Todd buys beer for them, then offers them a ride back to their hotel. When they ask why he’s there, he confesses to the funeral. Having a dead father-in-law, having been married makes him safe, and the girls agree. He drives them to their hotel, they get out, thank him for the ride, and go inside. He drives to the outskirts of town and waits at a yellow light flashing yellow, then black. Yellow, then black.
Someone asked whether or not anyone felt lost. No one said they did. Still, there was that nagging doubt among the group.
I’ve been trying to revise the story with a new beginning, starting it with the drive on the strip and the subsequent failure to find a place to stay. I posted that new opening yesterday:
He arrives a day early, drives the gaudy strip. Denny’s and McDonald’s squat between high-rise hotels and lurid beach shops. Ugly towels, $2.99. The hotels are full. He stops in, each after each. Says, “I’d like a room, please.”
I don’t think it’s as good. It might make the story read a little better, and yes, it creates a more linear narrative, but I don’t think it has the same impact as those two people in the room with the sheet between them. As that protracted silence between two people who have said most of what they have to. Still, the first go can be better:
It’s simple. A young couple, recently divorced, stand on either side of a fold-out couch. Between them, a white sheet hangs in the dim room like a wing before they pull the sheet from flight and tuck it tight beneath the mattress.
I don’t know. This is the part I hate. This is the part that’s hard. This is the part that’s necessary.
