{"id":10846,"date":"2015-06-10T07:34:24","date_gmt":"2015-06-10T12:34:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hilbertthm90.wordpress.com\/?p=2375"},"modified":"2022-06-21T12:32:42","modified_gmt":"2022-06-21T17:32:42","slug":"examining-pros-prose-part-3-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/2015\/06\/examining-pros-prose-part-3-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Examining John Cheever’s Prose"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Today, let’s turn to the master himself, John Cheever. As I said in the first post on the series, many say this modern “MFA” set of rules teaches people to write like Cheever. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
What might be surprising is just how often he doesn’t follow them. Today’s rule is the roughest of them all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our rule for the day is to avoid narrative summary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More accurately this should be: minimize narrative summary. Narrative summary means you tell the reader something happened rather than let the reader experience it. Often this falls under “show don’t tell.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let’s do an example. Bob went to the store. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is narrative summary. We hit our first difficulty because summary is not a binary concept. We could expand it to a paragraph. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Bob approached his car, he couldn’t help but be reminded of how desperately he needed a new one. At least the beat up, green ’82 Oldsmobile would get him to the store. The store sat only two miles away, so his frustration built at each successive red light. Kate’s cello lesson ended in a half-hour, and he wouldn’t get to hear her play if he was late to pick her up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
There’s still a bunch of summary in there! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This trip to the store could easily blow up into a 3000-word short story if you take the advice of this rule too seriously:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite the shining silver of the handle glinting in the sunlight, it never occurred to Bob to exercise some caution. His finger seared as he touched the handle of his ’82 Oldsmobile, and he pulled away with a quick, jerking motion before any serious damage could be done. His brow furrowed in annoyance as his superstition kicked in. I bet I’ll hit all the red lights with this luck.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Understanding the Rule<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
To understand why people talk about this rule, it is important to first understand that a spectrum of summary exists. And summary can never be fully removed (nor would you want it to)! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The point of the rule is that the more fine your description of detail, the more you will pull a reader in. Narrative summary is a problem if it takes the reader out of the moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Summary is how we remember books, but the great authors only give an illusion of continuity by creating a sequence of scenes where the time between them can easily be inferred by the reader. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
New writers often don’t realize this and try to explicitly fill it in, because this is what they think was done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the most common examples of breaking the rule (in a bad way) occurs with backstory. This may be a flashback or stray information. Either way, it is almost always better to turn it into a full-fledged scene that is not summarized or fit it in some more subtle way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Consider this example. If the main character’s mother died when he was ten, you could say “Bob’s mother died when he was ten.” But if this is relevant information to the story, it will be apparent on its own through conversations or thoughts or interactions or whatever. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is no need to summarize it explicitly like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why Summarize?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
This is what the rule means. Avoid the summary. If it isn’t important enough for the reader to figure out, then it isn’t important enough to summarize. If it is important, then you are repeating the information needlessly and pulling the reader out of the moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All this being said, summary provides a moment of respite for the reader. It can be judiciously used to slow down or speed up the pacing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you constantly describe every little detail of every minor, tiny thing that happens, you get a very intense experience that overwhelms the reader. There must be a balance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is one of those “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” rules. If you follow the rule too literally, you mess the pacing of your writing up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even when you are careful, if you break the rule (with good purpose!), critics\/editors\/reviewers have an easy target: look at this amateur, doesn’t even know to show and not tell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Are you screwed on this rule? Kind of. The only thing you can do is read the prose of people you admire and really think about how they get their balance right. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I imagine this is something the greatest writers struggle with even after decades of success. Maybe I’m wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
John Cheever’s Prose<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Let’s see how John Cheever handles it in The Wapshot Chronicle<\/a><\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n