At her reading yesterday Rebecca Makkai spoke about the arc of story, distinguishing it from simple sequence or anecdote. It’s easy to workshop a story with our primary focus on the style, character, setting, but arc or architecture is harder, since it involves tension and suspense, character development, relationship of scenes and (hardest of all) theme, yet requires an understanding of the story’s fundamental shape. It may be the most complicated question to put to a story, but we need an answer simple enough for us to see pattern shining through all the verbiage, what Chris Gavaler calls “the stuff.” How do we get at this with a story-in-progress, our own or a peer’s? Is it advisable to begin with a tentative outline, and work that toward something more unique and recognizable.? We know, for instance, the general arc of Moby-Dick, but how clearly must we see the stresses and buttressing system before we can see and begin to feel its true architecture? Someone wade in here with an example of a story whose arc is visible to one who knows the plot and tone.
Makkai and the Arc of Story
R. T. Smith has edited Shenandoah since 1995 and serves as Writer-in-Residence at Washington & Lee. His forthcoming books are Doves in Flight: 13 Fictions and Summoning Shades: New Poems, both due in 2017.