JCB's Ruminations on the Craft of Fiction #54
May 27, 2021
This week I’d like to talk about what makes a story complete. I’ve written here before about how stories emerge from the intersection of character and plot, where a character is forced by events (the plot) into a decision that requires that they confront or overcome something about themselves. In this framework, I think a story would be "complete" when the character becomes capable of taking an action to resolve the main conflict at the end of the story that they were not capable of taking at the beginning of the story.
A story doesn’t need to be complete in this way. Short and Flash fiction often deal with slices of story, leaving quite a bit unsaid and sometimes implied, and these can be quite satisfying in themselves. At their heart, however, we should expect a character in conflict, the resolution of which would require the character to face something about themselves that must change in order for the conflict to be resolved. A short story might leave the character in the midst of the conflict without a clear resolution, gaining its emotional impact from an exploration of the conflict and the pressure it exerts on the character. Some stories even deny the possibility of a resolution, where a character rejects the possibility of changing. Or perhaps the conflict simply destroys the character. There are many options, and this notion of completeness I’m talking about here does not always pertain.
On the other hand, a complete story finds resolution for the conflict through character growth. The reason I call a story with this kind of resolution “complete” is because the ending is implicit in the beginning. Readers primarily find interest in story because they recognize a human being in conflict, and although exciting conflict may involve external factors like a car chase or alien invasion, the most compelling kinds of conflict derive from the character’s personality and consequent perspective on the world. We can see the character is ultimately the source of the conflict, and as events of the plot pile up, we know that they will somehow have to change their perspective in order to see the way out of the conflict. Hence, the story becomes complete when we get to see that ending play out, when we get to see what it is that changes the character’s point of view and allows them to find a resolution. There are many ways to tweak this formula, to thwart expectations in various ways, but there does exist a natural, implicit resolution that completes the story.
I don’t want anyone to think I’m saying all your stories have to be complete in this way. I’m only thinking about this idea as a way of approaching the underlying structure of story in general that might help us consider our stories in particular. If we want to subvert that structure, it’s good to consider the specific and concrete ways we might do so. It might help to consider what would naturally complete the story and then work backward from there to find out how to undermine that expectation. Whatever shape a story takes, because it is based on the intersection of character and plot, there is a way in which it could be complete, and a particular story’s shape is a derivative of that structure.
Next: On Writing What You Know