As noted last week, characters must be complex. All of the stories you read for today are from a first-person point-of-view (even “Girl,’ which at first seems to be in the second), and feature strange, unreliable, or anxious characters. The first-person point-of-view creates intimacy between the character and the reader, which means that we must become intimately acquainted with people we may not like, or may even fear, and try to understand them more deeply.
Maass reminds us that “Readers want an emotional experience. They want to feel something, not about the story but about themselves.’ He tells us the key to this is merging the character’s inner journey (emotional self) with their outer journey (plot/action). That is, character and plot need to feed each other. He elaborates,
Plot excites our interest. It pulls us along with its urgent questions, tension, and, we hope, uncertainty about what will happen next. What holds our hearts in suspense, though, is the tension inherent in where self is going next. That excites our emotions. That excitement can be generated by inner need but more precisely by restlessness, resistance, searching, slow surrender, a sense of being alien, or knowing that one is incomplete. The cause can be as specific as a secret or as broad as existential angst. It’s invisible yet palpable.
We all yearn. Things happen to us. We cope, solve problems, suffer setbacks, get somewhere, and pursue our dreams. What, though, actually drives us to do those things? Something inside that has little to do with our challenges and goals. It’s a need to relieve inner anxiety, prove something, love and be loved, rage at what’s unfair, fit in, stand out, or find what will make us happy.
He spends a good deal more time in Chapter 5 advising us on the emotionality of our characters. He also gives us useful lists of questions we can ask to help us ascertain if our characters are doing the emotional work they should be doing. I won’t repeat them here; be sure to read the chapter for details.
However, in his chapter, Maass mostly focuses on conventional protagonists, reminding us that “normal’ people must have vulnerabilities and flaws, and also have emotional journeys they must take to resolve them. He doesn’t much talk about the opposite type: unconventional protagonists (villains, anti-heroes) with many flaws must also be human, and have human journeys. Mary Gaitskill’s “The Other Place,’ which you should have read already (please go back to read it if you haven’t yet), is a story that features an unconventional protagonist.
So, what can we learn from this story as writers?
Firstly, the story is a good lesson on empathic writing. In an interview, Gaitskill explains why she wrote the character as she did:
“The Other Place’ is about a person haunted by violent fantasies that he almost acts on; to me, it’s a story about a delicate soul carrying around something that is much too big and kinetic for him, but that he’s stuck with, that won’t leave him alone, although he doesn’t know how to deal with it. Perhaps few people carry that particular impulse with them, but it seems as though people carry so much that they don’t know how to make fit in with their lives or who they think they are or should be. It’s not always negative things, either; it could be a love or an ideal. I think my unfortunate character here is in love with the girl he spies on. What he’s doing seems creepy, but his desire to be in her presence, whether she sees him or not, is a hopeless sort of love, which has gotten attached to something else altogether and taken on a perverted aspect that he can’t control. I don’t think that is so uncommon even if most people don’t go where he does….There is so much hope, struggle, and suffering that we don’t see, because it’s almost impossible to convey–you have to be so inside the person to understand.
The heart of any character is vulnerability, not relatability, and especially not likability. Gaitskill wrote from the perspective of the thing she feared, rather than from her personal, autobiographical position. She made the protagonist the villain (not an anti-hero, which is different), and there is value in this technique. Those of you who have already seen Joker have another recent reference for this kind of protagonist. Arthur (pictured above) is humanized, because, like all sociopaths, he is a human being with desires and wounds, but his final acts of violence are (in my opinion) not excused by the film; they are instead contextualized, as Gaitskill similarly gives context for her narrator’s actions.
Secondly, Gaitskill said she wrote “The Other Place’ from personal experience:
I was afraid. I was living alone in a flimsy fishbowl house on a college campus that, as far as I was concerned, was a pervert magnet. The climactic scene of the story came to me before I had any intention of writing a story; I think it appeared in my mind because I wanted to imagine killer and victim coming right up to the crucial moment and the both walking away unharmed. At some point after that, the story formed.
So, we can see how Gaitskill draws from a remembered experience of her own fear–that is, the fear of the unknown, the fear of the strangers she’d seen–rather than an actual experience of violence. She was not kidnapped and threatened by a madman on the side of a highway, but she feared it, and so she went deep into the roots of that fear and wrote. So, when we say “write from experience,’ we don’t always mean to write about something that has specifically happened to you. Sometimes it’s about tapping into a feeling you once had, a fleeting glimpse you once caught on an otherwise ordinary forgettable day, etc. She takes a shadow-figure here from the corner of her eye, and gives it life.
Whether we are talking about character, or plot, or setting, that is your task: to give it life.
For your reading response, please discuss either “Concert’ or “Horror Story.’
Christy Barrett
My reading response this week is on “Concert”, and I was immediately struck by the imagery in the very first line: “Death drapes performance the stage like is over. all those things you know you must do when the performance is over.” There are so many descriptions of this opening scene that follow this line, but then I felt like the entire story was the opening scene. I really felt like a picture was painted here. He seems to be exaggerating the image of a black, urban setting. The narrator is telling a personal story from his past, and it opens at a social gathering. But he is receiving big news. The way this is written though gives the impression he is very distracted by his surroundings. There is a musical motif as he describes very vividly members of the band. His descriptions are so colorful, in fact, I got the impression throughout that he was hallucinating or experiencing delusions of some sort. Especially when he writes “If I hurry home, it won’t have happened yet.” His brother seems to be trying to tell him something important about his mother, but he keeps slipping off. I still don’t know what “Buck your magic twanger.” means, but this is read multiple times. I got the sense he was drunk maybe? Or that he feltl ike his brother was trying to trick him. I still don’t fully understand, but it seems that maybe that’s the point. Maybe he is painting a picture of how that moment would feel to the narrator because he clicks back into the moment, and he admits he doesn’t want to hear the bad news again. My absolute favorite part was the ending. It reminded me of how I felt when I got the call that my dad was dead.. “The Chinese water torture drop of the phone no one is left to answer but me in the bright hall.” While I enjoyed the imagery, it seemed excessive to me. You get lost in all the distractions, but again, I think that is the point. It’s like how the rhythm of a song can say more about the message than the lyrics. Once I reached the end, it made more sense to me in a nonsensical kind of way.
Sarah corbett
I’m choosing to respond to Horror Story. I had to read it a few times to really grasp what the piece was doing.
At first, I was looking to see whether or not this character was relatable, likable, unlikable, etc. The second time, I was analyzing the plot, trying to find what it was saying. I still wasn’t quite getting it though.
The third time though, it dawned on me that this “ghost” was no ghost at all. The way I interpreted it, was that this ghost represented the wedge in the narrators marriage. She mentions that they had considered therapy before the cracked window and the clogged drain; and then this “ghost” is causing them to continue to blame each other for odd things happening around the house, further pushing them apart. Stuff continues to go downhill, and they dig into the history of the house, trying to find some external reason for what is going on; when in reality, the issue lies with them, and not with some “ghost”. I think the realization that they have been avoiding the real problem, searching for someone else to blame, is made clear to the narrator at the end. She sees a “ghost”, the one I’m assuming was strangled by her lover; but instead of seeing this persons death, she sees her crawl into bed with her lover, who also happens to be a woman. For the narrator, it’s like looking into a twisted looking glass, reminding her of a younger version of her marriage. The whole things ends with, “after that, we were alone, together”. To me, this was saying that the narrator dropped this idea that there was an external problem affecting their relationship, and she was taking personal responsibility.
This hidden message really brought this piece to the next level for me. Because you could just look at this as a basic ghost story, and be like “uh that was weird”, and move on with your day. But if you LOOK at it, REALLY look at it, you see this beautiful description of a failing relationship, and the the difficult stages of coming to terms with that; as well as the the pinnacle decision of whether or not it will be fixed, or if they will keep ignoring the root of the issue.
The author definitely did their job giving this piece life.
Nadia Finley
In response to John Edgar Wideman’s “Concert,” I had a hard time understanding what he was laying down. I felt lost in a sea of vivid metaphors connected merely by the concert setting and the conversation between the main character and Buck. If there is anything I feel that I understand, as of now, it is that the main character throughout the story is trying to feel comfortable in a situation where he is feeling very uncomfortable. He is feeling dread; he is feeling denial; he is longing for freedom from something he does not even know is a sure fact yet. Something that pierces him by the arrow of the bassist’s bow and hammers him out by the xylophonist’s mallets.
This character, at least in this story, is not very stable. He looks to his dream to foreshadow the intent of the call in the theater. He goes to talking to Buck about their shared past, their coming to the city; he lingers on about the performers on stage, their heritage, their emotions, anything to avoid what he feels is inevitable. The main character is unstable, but this is what makes the story. We get a glimpse into the world of this unique man. We see how he experiences grief (whether his mother truly had come to some “harm” [death?] or if it was all his imagining after all) through the vivid metaphors but also through the way he saunters around confronting that which threatens to solidify a menacing fear.
Jewel Blanchard
I am reflecting on Horror Story by Carmen Machado. To be very honest, I was not able to understand the story after the first read.. I went to the reading discussion and was relieved to see I was not the only one. So I went back and reread the story.
After rereading the story I was in shock at how deep and meaningful the story was. The things I thought, why does that even matter in the story, turned out to be the things that were most meaningful in getting the point across. First I thought; alright your house needs repairs, go to the store-buy more spices, your haunted house needs to be blessed, and so forth.. Then I noticed the deeper meaning behind it all and was like wow! This writer does an excellent job of giving this story life.. She notices slight faults in her marriage referring to the clogged drain, cracks in the wall. Then she notices elements missing in her relationship referring to the spices. Then this next example was pinnacle for me, “It sounded like the cat until the cat disappeared; then the padding continued, looping our bed like a satellite, soft-pawed but no longer comforting. We lay there in the dark asking each other questions..” Asking each other light questions to avoid the deeper problems they have and trying to ignore the real questions they should be asking themselves until they fall asleep. That blew me away. That is relatable. Carmen Machado does an excellent job of giving life in Horror Story.
Ainsley Smith
This week, I decided to discuss Horror Story by Carmen Maria Machado. The story itself is layered with metaphors, imagery, and symbols which made the story hard to understand at first. After I re-read the story again, I grasped the central idea of the “horror” that was living in their household. She sold the idea of a horror story embodying the idea of a struggling marriage, which truly made the story come to life.
To start off, she mentions that, “It started so small: a mysteriously clogged drain; a crack in the bedroom window,” which symbolized how small, “unimportant” situations can build into more catastrophic scenarios. Actions, words, thoughts, etc. that we take can have negative consequences in the end if they are not addressed, especially within a marriage. She moves on to mention that the spices went missing. The spices that were missing in their home was a reflection of the missing elements in their marriage. Spices are meant to give flavor, to add something new, and they are the keys to make a tasty meal. Without those spices in the marriage, it can become bland, and loose substance. I truly understood the story when she lists the different rhetorical questions that the protagonist and her wife would ask each other in the silence. They would ask about their memories together to fill the awkward silence but also to avoid the deeper, unspoken of conversations that they needed to have, but never will. They distracted themselves. I believe that they also talked about the memories to help excite what they did together; trying to remember the good times.
Those simple images is what really made me understand how the marriage is living a horror story. Yes, they lived in a haunted house. Yes, they had mysterious things happen to them. Ultimately, it is the little things in between which made their living so miserable. I believe that the disconnection to one another is what really made their lives a horror story.
Miranda Reynolds
I am going to respond to “Horror Story.” The first thing I noticed was the way that Machado used the suggestions of Maass in “The Emotional Craft of Fiction.” In chapter five, he mentions the importance, not only of an engaging and interesting plot, but of a fascinating internal struggle for the protagonist. When these two ideas align, the story is much more engaging for the reader. This technique can also give more likeability and interest to the characterization of the protagonist, which is what made “Horror Story” intriguing for me.
Machado uses the motif of a clogged drain and a crack in the window to spark a chain of mysterious and suspicious events that we later learn have to do with the history of the apartment building that the couple lives in. However, these plot devices also pose as allusions for the internal struggle of the point of view character and her wife. She feels that they are falling out of their relationship but is not sure how to stop it. She becomes a helpless observer and, like the suddenness of the cracked glass, surprised at the changes.
Machado continues to build on the relationship between the plot and emotional struggle of the protagonist. Her use of repetitive word choice, such as the sentence “accused and accused” and the next paragraph with the repeating “Do you remember…?” questions, furthers the sense of suspense and parallels the emotional turmoil with the repeated theme of household objects gone missing. I think that this style choice allowed me as the reader to become more engaged with the plot of mysterious clues, which may have been slightly repetitive without the added emotional interest. This is what gave the plot life beyond simply being another mystery thriller.
Kyleigh McArthur
This week I’m going to respond to “Horror Story” because I found it was a very interesting read. I also very much enjoy horror, scary, paranormal, all of the above in that genre. The fact that the story has so much death and ‘other side’ themes in it kind of makes it ironic that this week we are talking about giving a story life. The author wrote so well about how an environment can tear apart a relationship; how environmental cues and stressors can pull two people apart. The two women in the story have this stress of the new apartment that is also haunted by the lost souls of many different unfortunate people. Inside of the apartment are the trapped souls that instead of bringing life, are taking it slowly. The story is told from the point of view of one of women that are living in the apartment, experiencing the hauntings of the previous victims to its tragic magnetism. The narrator explains how slowly the two are being torn apart by the ghosts living with them. Towards the end the narrator actually ends up crying because she sees a happy romantic relationship between two women as an illusion the ghosts made, she closes the door and opens it again to see her wife standing there “mournful” which is quite the opposite of loving. Life is given in this story through breaking it apart.
Adeline Knavel
For this week’s reading response I chose to read “Concert” by John Edgar Wideman. When I first started reading his story I felt lost, I couldn’t understand what was happening at first and what the entire story was about. I had a hard time understanding what he was trying to write and tell in his story. After reading it a couple more times I started to understand what he was saying. I started to notice the imagery at the beginning of the story and all the metaphors he used throughout his writing. The main character in John Edgar Wideman’s story seems unstable, he seems confused and all over the place. He doesn’t seem focused on one thing to say. I found this while reading about him making a conversation with Buck, he starts to tell Buck something about his mother, something important, and then two seconds later he is talking about a dream he had. After I read his story a couple of times I sort of enjoyed it. I liked the imagery, but it did seem a bit excessive and made me get lost in all of his distractions while discussing them with Buck. I enjoyed the story and reading John Edgar Wideman’s writing and all the imagery and little distractions the main character had discussed with Buck.
Gabriel Miller
I’m choosing to respond about “Concert” because of the reflection of the concert to the narrator’s reaction to the call. The concert is explicitly compared to how the narrator is feeling by the second to last paragraph, where the metaphor of the concert is powerlessness. In the case of the literal concert, this is apparent in the performers’ absolute power over the audience as seen in the futile attempts to raise an encore. This then mirrors the narrator’s situation with the call as he is powerless in the situation due to his debilitating dread of bad news, in particular death. This metaphor of concert is ultimately used to fully describe his reaction to the call through recontextualization. His reaction to the call in this case is a concert; a concert where Buck is the performer and the narrator the audience. In his role, the narrator helplessly tries to avoid the situation where he even evokes musical imagery through the rhythm of him repeating “Buck your magic twanger.” I personally liked this because I felt that it developed the narrator in an interesting context while also maintaining a very strong use of imagery.
Katie Hopper
Death ushers in denial. It’s one of those phases of grief that everyone goes through, has to get through, “like all those things you know you must do when the performance is over.” There are so many things in life that have to get done, whether we like it or not. Death has to get done. Death is always done. There’s death and there’s dying and there’s no escaping either so instead we dread deny dread deny. It’s all so very dreadful. Dread is heavy. It’s loud and obnoxious and we fight the losing battle until we give in and usher in a new phase of grief, acceptance. I have been fortunate enough thus far to not have to go through the true process of grief. There have been close calls and if those moments had turned out differently, I imagine it would be a lot like this surreal concert dreamscape. The author overlays this dream with reality, the main character slipping in and out of his state of disorientation. My favorite part of this piece is the detailed description of the concert, the minute moments, the shimmering strikes of objects that make beautiful noise and build tension. It feels like an echo of what’s going on inside, in his denial, in his grief. By dancing around the plot and instead being inside our character’s mind in this choppy, dreamy way, the vastness of grief is felt much more deeply. This piece took a few tries to grasp and I think that’s part of the point. Death is disorienting. Death needs no introduction. Death just shows up and stops the show.
Johnny Bishop
So I read concert and the one thing that really caught my attention was how he described the phone call. How he felt when the call came in how he didn’t want to answer because he was afraid to. He described in detail how he felt after he got the call. Not wanting to answer again because he knows what its about. its touching to me because one memory of getting a phone call and getting that news can paralyze someone when my brother in law died as soon as heard the words he’s dead come out of my moms mouth I dropped the phone without even realizing it until my dad came out. The author I think pulls on your feelings when he talked about what the character did without him realizing what he’s done after the fact and I think that’s what makes the story come alive.
Curtis Wolfe
This week I am responding to Concert by John Edgar Wideman. Once I first starting reading it, I felt like I knew where it was going right after the line “Your mother, man. Its your mother.” It made sense that then it would jump into his denial about it with his thoughts trying to distract himself from the phone call. I just felt like it was hard to follow along and make sense of his thoughts. But then again, I’ve never received a phone call like that and put myself through distractions. One thing that I did enjoy was how he was able to use great imagery. His imagery of the all the different members of the performers really stuck out to me with all the little details for every member. He made it easy to see what he was seeing, but not what his mind was thinking.
Ta'Mariah Jenkins
After much analysis, I decided to read Horror Story by Carmen Maria Machado. One of the first components I notice in the story after simply reading the paragraph is the imagery that is possessed within the story. I feel as though I am within the house and standing at the entrance. From the discussion of non-natural happening things happening, such as clogged drains and broken. When the characters are brought to face these circumstances, there is a representation of character between the two. The wives are already facing marital problems and to conclude these strange things are happening because of one or another just brings more stress on the characters and their rationality.
I found that the environmental change hurt their marriage, but didn’t break it. The author’s use of current gender relationships is what I feel is an important factor of the story, Instead of facing a man and a woman, where the man is usually more dominant and in control, you have two females of estrogen to duke their problems out. So the use of two queer women as the characters set a different form of imagery in the story. Overall I really like the author’s use of fiction and nonfiction in the story and the imagery used.
Casey Fetterhoff
I am an avid fan of horror books and film, so how could I resist responding to Horror Story?
I think as complexity in stories goes, especially in short stories, Horror Story has plenty of it to go around. While I feel that it is important for a short story to contain lots of detail, I struggled a little with this particular story and the level of description/pace at which it was presented. I had to read it several times to “pick up” all the content. Unfortunately, my relatively simple head seems to have struggled with this one a bit. However, I think that’s largely because of the first-person perspective. The storyteller is not thinking entirely of the reader when they tell this story-It’s written (in my opinion) more as a diary, an introspection into a story that they already know intimately. It is not intended to be a horror story for entertainment which can be easily picked up and understood-It’s written to help the author process the events she is describing, or perhaps to communicate them to somebody already intimately familiar with it themselves. I may not personally find it an easy to grasp quick read, but I can certainly see how, with the detail and emotion wrapped in it, it makes an excellent processing method for a person going through a traumatic time in their life.
Devin Byrd
I’m glad I didn’t understand Wideman’s piece. The way the imagery was detailed thoroughly and intensely, but without context made every line a mystery, and drew my interest quite quickly. Perhaps it’s more due to a lack of understanding on my part, but I perceived “Concert” to be more of a desperate journal than a thought out narrative.
It’s as if someone with an ailing mind, or caught in a tumultuous tragedy was struggling to transcribe and make sense of a series of powerful, treasured memories so that they could still remember their past and themself even after their mind and/or memory degraded, or they were attempting to override and ignore some harsh realization.
The structure of Wideman’s piece was chaotic and confusing, and I assume it was intentionally written that way in order to reflect the similarly chaotic status of the main character’s mind. There doesn’t seem to be any exact meaning or intention behind the piece besides taking a literary snapshot of the main character’s mind during a shocking moment, and I believe it achieved that goal nicely.
Timberly Kneebone
This week I am responding to Horror Story by Carmen Maria Machado. This story took multiple reads in order to fully understand the meaning. After a few read throughs I was more easily able to understand the attention to details. Each detail no matter how small had meaning in the story which I found extremely interesting. Everything from the clogged sink to the cracks in the wall gave way to a deeper meaning referring to the marriage. Especially in the first read those things are easily passed over but the writer really put thought into every word written. Symbols, metaphors and imagery were all heavily used throughout the story. Not only did these tools help explain the struggles in the marriage but it also made the story a lot more interesting. These tools really helped me see that the real horror story was the marriage.
The thing I found most interesting about this story is the fact that you could read it once find it interesting and move on but if you take the time to truly understand what the writer is expressing it brings a whole new meaning to the reading. For me I found it really amazing when I finally understood the connection between the house falling apart and the marriage falling apart. I was able to really think. Like would I find it worth it to try and fix all those small issues slowly in order to rebuild the house or would I just give up on the house. The crazy part is the relationship really is able to be related to the house.
Zofia Sheesley
Right off the bat at the beginning paragraph of Horror Story, before the marital troubles were announced, I could piece together that the “paranormal activity” was setting the tone for a divorce like story. It’s a classic trope, a couple is in a rough patch and something weird and crazy happens and they turn on each other and that’s what sets them over the edge. It’s hauntingly (lol) beautiful and the way the ending lets you know what you’ve been picking up on the whole time is ture is magical. The whole story is about them going through these trials and tribulations in their relationship and finally she has this revelation and really sees her wife and since then they have been just them, together, happy. It’s a great use of symbolism and a great twist on a classic divorce like story. I think having it end with her just seeing it through and everything going back to normal and okay was really strong. She just had to see it through and stay strong and keep fighting for their marriage. The story is ultimately about them fighting for their marriage, seeking all kinds of help and fighting to stay together. This piece makes sense the first time you read it but it gets clearer and better every time after that that you read it again. It’s a beautifully written and simply written subtext piece. The author definitely brought this story and these characters and this house to life.
Anna Johnson
I am responding to “Concert” by Wideman. It was a confusing read for me and not something I’d normally read but after the first line, I noticed how imagery is already used. I envisioned an auditorium with a lively performance until it wasn’t. I thought this was a very interesting way to portray mixed thoughts and distractions, it surely felt like I was in the jumbled mind of Wideman.
I was aware that Widemanw was trying to avoid being told the inevitable, there were a few times where Buck tried telling him that his mother passed. One distraction that caught me was his dream, which was an odd one about the stage and different things that happened like birds turning into fish and fish turning into birds. Again, there was so much imagery being used from one sentence to the next, it was hard for me to keep up and grasp it all. One thing that was so vivid to me is “the trick of slapping one hand against the other, like hundreds of trained seals”. We know how seels have big flippers. They can also be loud, so I was seeing a crowd full of people clapping uncontrollably.
What I related to the most is when Wideman talks about not wanting to pick up the phone and how he can’t hang up because he didn’t pick up in the first place. I think one of the things I fear is a call from my parents with any bad news of death. I have gotten calls before where I knew there was bad news and didn’t want to hear it, not death thankfully but that is where my mind turned to first. So I kind of relate to this in a way with being all over the place not wanting to hear what is to come.