All language subtitles for Masterclass Joyce Carol Oates Teaches the Art of the Short Story - 05.Structure and Form

It's very exciting to experiment with

structure. I think that many stories are

best told in some elliptical way or some

unusual way.

There's only one rule of of show

business or writing and that's don't be

boring. So, anything that you can do

that's interesting and novel and keeps

keeps an audience engaged. Almost

anything you you can do that's not

boring will be successful. Like you

could have a story that was just all the

beginning. Now, I've never tried that.

Just a story that kept having a

beginning but never went anywhere. But

yet, it could have its own ending that

would be very experimental and it

couldn't be too long. You could have a

story that was just the middle. You

could have a story that was just final

paragraphs.

I've asked my students sometimes to do a

story that was just description of the

scene

where you're setting the scene very

carefully for a story

using really good descriptions and

really original metaphors, but then

that's the story. The whole story is

setting the scene. So that would be

experimental. I've seen a story by

somebody whose younger brother died of a

drug overdose and they didn't know he

was even a drug addict. It was a shock

because no one knew he was a he's taking

heroin. So, he's reported he's dead. So,

people in the family are so stunned by

this. They just keep remembering when

they last saw him. And did they have any

hint? You know, people are always

saying, "Oh, we had no hint." When

people commit suicide, everybody said,

"I I had no idea." Or, "Well, I might

have had an idea." Or, "That's my fault.

I didn't help." Or, "I didn't know what

I could have done."

All these thoughts lend themselves to a

kind of like question and answer. You

could have a whole story that was a

questionnaire.

I probably have done that, you know, a

question, a question and answer. Okay,

that'd be that'd be a nice story for a

writer who wants to experiment a story

in a question and answer mode. Another

story could be just answers. I once

wrote a story that was answers like the

question you don't see. You just see the

answers and that that was fun to do.

So, I recommend for any story that you

have that you like that you're haunted

by to find some unusual way of telling

it. Some experimental writers like like

Donna Bar and Robert Coover and John

Barth have done all sorts of wild

things.

I once wrote a short story that was just

notes to contribute on contributors. You

know at the end of a magazine I have

notes on contributors. So my story was

called notes on contributors and it was

in the magazine. So when people who read

the magazine thought that thought that

was the notes of the contributors but it

really wasn't. It was a short story, but

anybody could do that. I mean, that's

something that somebody else could try.

Notes on contributors.

I think it would be really great for a

new writer or young writer to say to

herself or himself, I'm going to write a

series of pros works

so a novel that there's no name for what

they are. And somebody will say, well,

is it pros? Is it poetry? Is it work of

art? and have each each story will be in

the form of some interesting shape that

no one's ever done before because to do

something that no one's ever done before

is really quite an accomplishment.

So that's a challenge.

Some time ago in in my own life, I was

very interested in experimental music

and there are piano pieces by Henry Cow

who lived in early 20th century and I

I'm not sure that I was trying to play

these piano pieces but I was listening

to them in recordings and Henry Cow had

this really wonderful

weird eerie technique opening the piano

and playing the strings of the piano And

when you play the piano in that way with

the strings, this is very ghostly and

strange sounding. It sounds like the

piano, but it's different.

And there's no resonance. Like when

you're playing piano, usually you're

using a pedal. So there's a little

memory, the resonance of the music and

and the vibrations continue. But with

Henry Kyle, everything was kind of

broken. And so it was discontinuous in a

very exciting way. So ma I had the idea

to write a story that would mimic that

that structure. So the story would have

these floating paragraphs like the

chords of a piece of music and each

little paragraph would be very small and

just have a fact

each fact and then some paragraphs got

longer. The title of the story is heat.

So it was midsummer, the heat rippling

above the catam roads, cicas screaming

out of the trees and the sky like pewtor

glaring. So I worked on that first

paragraph for a while with the commas

and the sky like pewtor comma glaring.

That seemed important to me. So, I had

that first paragraph

and then the second paragraph, the days

were the same day, like the shallow mud

brown river moving always in the same

direction but so low you couldn't see it

except for Sunday. Every day is the same

day. Then church in the morning, then

the Sunday newspaper, the color comics

and newsprint on your fingers. So, when

I got to the second paragraph,

the word you came up. So now it seems

that somebody's remembering something.

The days were the same day. There'll be

church in the morning on Sunday, the

newspaper, the comics. So that suggests

that these are children

in this world and the newsprint on your

fingers, which is something I remember.

So then the third paragraph,

I introduced Ria and Role.

So now there are two girls. Now, we

don't know how old they are, but they're

flying on their rusted old bicycles down

the long hill toward the railroad yard,

Whipples Ice, the scrubby pasture land

where dairy cows grazed. They'd stolen

$6 from their own grandmother who loved

them. They were 11 years old. They were

identical twins. They bask in their

power. So, the third paragraph, it's not

necessarily related to the others. It's

like this Henry Cow music that is kind

of floating.

And then the fourth paragraph is out of

time. It's just sort of an observation

from the future. Rita and Roa Conungle.

It was always Ria and Roa. Never ROA and

Ria. I I don't know why. You just

couldn't say the names that way. Not

even the teachers at school would say

them that way. So, this seems to be some

girl classmate of theirs remembering

them, but she doesn't know too much

about what she's saying.

Then the fifth paragraph,

we went to see them in a funeral parlor

where they were waked. We were made to.

So, by the fifth paragraph, we see

they're already dead. Ria and Roa, we

saw them on their bicycles, but by the

fifth paragraph, they're dead already.

We were made to go see them in the

funeral parlor. We were made to meaning

we were children and we had to do it.

Our parents made us. The twins and twin

caskets, white, smooth, gleaming,

perfect as plastic with white satin

lining puckered like the inside of a

fancy candy box and the waxy white liies

and the smell of talcum powder and

perfume. The room was crowded. There was

only one way in and one way out.

So that paragraph is packed with a lot

of meaning. We see that the girls are

dead and they're in this very plastic

looking situation with white

like a candy box

and waxy liies and a smell of talcum

powder and the room is crowded. There's

only one way in and one way out. This

suggests like there's one way into our

lives.

and there's one way out and the children

are made to go in the funeral parlor.

Then the next paragraph, Rean wrote it

with the same girl. They'd wanted it

that way. Only looking from one to the

other could you see they were two. This

is a child speaking in kind of illogical

almost like a comic voice. They were the

same girl, meaning they looked

identical. They were twins. They wanted

to look identical. You have to look from

one to the other quickly to see that

they were two. Try to figure out which

is Ria and which is Roda.

But the person who's saying this is a is

childish. And so her method of speaking

is a little bit naive. Then the next

paragraph

is out of time. It's some different

time. The heat was gauzy. You had to

push your way through it like swimming.

On their bicycles, Ria and Roa flew

through it, hardly noticing from their

grandmother's place on Main Street to

the end of South Main where the paved

road turned to gravel leaving town. This

was the summer before seventh grade when

they died.

Death was coming for them, but they

didn't know.

So the whole story proceeds in these

paragraphs that are cutting back and

forth in time

and we get introduced to other people

and you're introduced to their murderer.

The murder is introduced very soon.

It's said that he's arrested before we

know who even who he is because the girl

who's remembering the story remembers it

in a discontinuous way which is the way

our memories were.

The whole story was imagined as this uh

experiment in in paragraphs. And so I

just started writing it and I wrote the

paragraphs in no particular order the

way a child might remember them. If you

were remembering somebody you knew in

grade school, so you somebody you knew

in seventh grade and this person died,

you have a discontinuous memory like you

remember uh well you remember the first

time you met the the girl, you might

remember the girl with your mother, you

might remember the girl who was already

dead, you remember how she died, you

remember thoughts about her, you

remember something that she did. None of

it's none of it's continuous because our

memories are very broken and fragmented.

Nobody has a chronological memory.

All our memories are just sort of like

ripples in the pond and they're very

discontinuous, but they're very u it's

very exciting that way because there's a

certain delayed continuity. The

chronology is definite.

Something happened 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. The

the chronology is very clear, but the

memory of it is discontinuous.

So for me it was very exciting to write

it because once in a while the girl she

thinks death is coming for you but you

don't know when and suddenly she thinks

that's true for her too. You know it's

when you're a child you don't think that

death is coming for you. When you get

older you do I think that we become

ghosts in our own pasts and there are

certain places that we haunt in our

memories. We keep going back to those

places and looking at them again. And

the idea of the girls on the bicycle is

something that is very haunting to me.

If you're a writer, you want to find

something that's haunting to you,

something you may remember, but not

completely.

You remember parts of it.

There's a very famous short story by

Charlotte Perkins Gilman called The

Yellow Wallpaper that people probably

know. I recommend that story, but that's

all just sentences and almost no

paragraphs. And that story is written

from the point of view of a woman who's

suffering a nervous breakdown. She's

been put in a room at the top of a house

that almost feels like she's been put

away like she in a her own family's put

her in an asylum like her husband's put

her up in that room. And that story when

you look at it is very manic. She's

manic. The sentences are like machine

gunfire. She's in a manic state all the

way through. She's breathless.

And when you look at that story as a

typological phenomenon, you really want

to read it. Now, there are other stories

and other pros where it's all one

paragraph. And there have been novels

that are all one paragraph. They

represent a certain challenge to the

brain because we we like continuity

and discontinuity. We like continuity to

end. We like finite things. We like

minutes to minutes lead to hours and

hours end. Hours are hours lead to a day

and that ends. You cross off that and

then it leads up to a month and you

cross off the month and then we have a

year. Now in nature there are seasons

but there are not these finite things.

You know birds and animals have no sense

of what what the chronology is. But

there's something about the human brain

that likes things to be finite. So you

like something to come to an end. And

when it's all one paragraph, like a long

novel,

that's a challenge. It's a challenge.

Your readership diminishes. You don't

have as many people read it. A typical

Stephen King novel moves very swiftly.

And all the novels, probably every novel

that's a bestseller

ever is something that moves pretty

fast. And some of the sentences are are

pretty short in the declarative

sentences. I wanted to write a story

that was about a maze and as you go

around the maze you get farther and

farther till you're in the middle and it

might have been something I called the

maze or the captive. So the story

has sentences all around like in in a

large type all around. So you you read

it like this and then the next line in

is slightly smaller font. So you're

going in and that's slightly smaller. So

you keep going around and around

slightly smaller font until it gets way

way way in. Then in the middle there's

like a a rectangle

that ends with like two words

and a period. So the idea is that some

person has gone through this whole maze

and ends up in the middle and it's it

was reprinted printed in a magazine. So

you had to keep turning the magazine

around and so I was pasting things in

and then I photocopied it. So it became

more like a work of art. But I would

like to experiment with something like

that again. And I should I should

encourage my students to do that kind of

uh

typological experimentation.

There are there's a whole kind of poetry

you know that like a poem in the shape

of a tree, a poem in the shape of a key,

a poem of the the shape of a bird. Um, I

have had I've tried to write poems in

different shapes like the shape of a

tree with a little thing on the bottom.

Those are very interesting because they

acknowledge the the fact that's neur

neurological that art comes to us

through our eyes.

So art and and literature come to us

through our eyes and you can do things

with the white space. That's very

arresting. If I were an editor, I used

to be an editor. If I got a st short

story that had different

uh typography and different shapes and

fonts, I would read that story with more

more interest than a conventional story.

I would find that very exciting visually

and I would hope that I could publish

it. There may be other editors who feel

that way.

But most stories that come in are just

conventional. So I would like to do more

unusual things like like that. So as I

think more about it, maybe I'll go home

and write some of these strange stories.