Immediate Fiction

Immediate Fiction by Jerry Cleaver Page A

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Authors: Jerry Cleaver
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agrees to be neat; she agrees to put up with his messiness; or they both agree to try to be more flexible— to name a few. It's a victory or a defeat for the main character, the woman, or a mixed victory.
    In terms of this character's emotions, she's angry and upset and worried. But the words angry, upset, and worried were not used. Her emotions were expressed in her thoughts and her actions. Here irritation and frustration come across nicely with: "Just one nudge of the finger is all it takes to make everything neat. Just one nudge. But I guess that's too hard." We don't need to be told what she's feeling, we need to be shown it in scene, in action. Scene is the purest form of showing. Scene is experience happening in real time, moment by moment, word for word, right before our eyes. Here's the beginning of the last piece:
    Ever since I told her I was a lesbian, my mother has taken to talking about me in the past tense.
    How are you with this piece? A provocative opening? Most people are with it with this first sentence. Why? Because there are a want and an obstacle—a mother who is not pleased with her daughter. Here's the rest:
    "You were such a beautiful baby," she says, her large, sea green eyes filling up with a lethal mixture of nostalgia and longing.
    I groan.
    "You were the very essence of femininity." Her voice trails off dramatically. I begin to tap the toe of my cowboy boot very lightly on the tile floor beneath the kitchen table, bracing for the assault.
    She shrugs, and in the sagging folds of her Eastern European face I see a ragtag clutter of disappointment and despair. Her mouth, which is usually bow shaped and generous, tightens slightly as she looks at me.
    "Your walk, your voice, your body . . . everything about you was perfectly feminine." She shakes her head as she ponders this and the tap tap tap of the tip of my cowboy boot begins to pick up speed.
    "For God's sake, mother, this is an absolutely ridiculous theory—and it's easily the third time you've presented it this month."
    "Please hear me out," she says and I sag under the intensity of her conviction.
    As I lean back in my chair, she leans forward and puts her hand—a smaller, more time worn version of my own—on my arm.
    "I believe we —your father and I, that is—gave you a perfectly healthy endocrine system."
    I can feel the slight pressure of her hand on my arm as I close my eyes. Through clenched teeth, I give her one last chance to explain her "theory" of my lesbianism before I explode. "What's that supposed to mean, 'a perfectly healthy endocrine system'?"
    "Well, it means, it's not our fault," she says, letting her hand slide off my arm and hit the table with a small thud. She shrugs again, heaving her bosom. "So, the warp must be in your psyche. It's the only possible explanation."
    That's it. How did it go? Whatever problems you might have with it, it's a strong piece that takes hold of most readers and hangs onto them as these two characters struggle with each other.
    Let's look at it from the story angle. Who wants what? The daughter wants to be accepted as she is. The mother wants a straight daughter, ideally, but short of that, the mother's going for something else. What is it? She wants to be guiltless and to blame the daughter, the daughter whom she's trying to convince (action) has a "warp" in her "psyche." The daughter is putting up with her, for exactly what reasons we don't know. So we have want, obstacle, action. There is no resolution yet—neither scene resolution nor story resolution. Can you figure out where this is going? You should be able to, since it's already going in that direction. Victory, defeat, mixed victory.
    So, that's the story form and technique. Conflict (want + obstacle), action, resolution, emotion, showing. Just five elements. If you stay focused on these five elements and don't let yourself get distracted or sidetracked, if you master these five, no matter what else you do wrong, you will succeed.

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