storytelling – BACCA Literary

Three photos of a strip of paper from different perspectives, the last looks like a star. — A mess…

I can’t stop thinking about the finale of Stranger Things. As a fan of the show, I’ve made peace with it. As a lover of story and story-making, I’m still fascinated with the choices that were made, and puzzling over the reactions they elicited. (If you haven’t finished Stranger Things and plan to, maybe save this read for another time.)

I saw trouble coming. How could the anticipation for this finale not fly out of control? Season 4 was so good, so well-constructed, and the ending—a beautiful balance of tragedy and triumph, mystery and illumination. In the months that followed, wild and disparate theories about what might happen and cryptic cast interviews just fanned the flames of frenzy. Add to that some very clever distribution decisions—delivering episodes bit by bit throughout the holiday season—my expectations spiraled. I felt like some magic, secret Santa had come to give us special prizes just for surviving this miserable year. Poor Duffers, with hopes flying so high, there is no way they could have pleased us all.

In terms of resolution, some viewers expected nothing less than a bloodbath. Most of us wanted answers. Some wanted one more horrifying twist so badly they invented a secret 9^th episode—Conformity Gate. I admit it—I tuned in just to be sure I wasn’t missing out. What a brilliant formal innovation that would have been, to use the streaming platform itself to hide one final surprise. I think all expect a future show to try that out sometime soon.

How about that Denouement?

While watching the actual climax of Stranger Things, I noticed with some trepidation that nearly 55 minutes of air time remained. Like so many others, I braced for a terrifying turn. But instead of more plot twists and an even bigger climax, the Duffers gave us an extra long denouement.

Here’s where they won me over. Denouement is such an underrated and necessary tool of storytelling. It’s so much more than happily ever after. Denouement is for sorting and mending. It’s for a bit of fanfare and a sigh of relief. It offers stillness and space for the big insights to bloom. It gives respite for the characters left standing, or sometimes justice, retribution—the righting of wrongs, restoring of balance. A big climax can rock your world, while denouement holds your hand, walks you to the door, and gives you a little more love before you leave the story and return to your life. And when it’s done very well, it feels like a gift. A chance to farewell a beloved story, its world, and the characters within. Denouement offers a little more time to say a proper goodbye.

The Duffers’ denouement included loss, little victories, celebrations, and grief. It gave us well-earned unions and bittersweet partings. It tied up some loose ends, and left some others dangling. The ending was about sacrifice and survival and continuing on in hope. And finally, the finale left us with a what-if or two. I loved the ambiguity and I’m glad all of that wasn’t undermined by one more turn. As for what wasn’t there, I noticed, but I also see what the Duffers gave us—an ending that honors their characters, and as a whole, a great journey that ended with some lovely parting gifts.

Noelle Beverly writes poetry and prose, supports local writers in the surrounding community, and is a member of the BACCA Literary group. Photos by the author.

The Stories We Tell

I loved to make up stories when I was a kid. It seemed a simple, easy thing to do, back then. As I grew up, I stopped writing stories. Later, I committed to other art forms, and when I wrote sentences, I wrote nonfiction, not stories. Not long ago, I began again. I dared myself to try making up stories, by signing up for classes at WriterHouse.

Since then, I have slowly gotten more competent through practice, practice, and practice. My writer group, BACCA Literary, is one reason why. We first met, in fact, in a fiction class at WriterHouse.

This writer group has provided me with a monthly deadline for producing – well, something. We’ve been sharing work with one another for at least thirty months. I’ve emailed a Word document out to the others by the late-Friday deadline, every darn month. Well, there was one exception, when my family life was too chaotic, a couple of years ago. So let’s say I’ve been sharing work for at least 29 months and leave it at that.

Good Enough?

Sure, I recognize that I haven’t always sent my best work to the other three writers in the group. “Best” is relative, measured on a sliding scale. Over time, I raised my standards for what’s good enough to send out to the writer group members. After I allocated more time each month to work on writing, I became dissatisfied with my earlier stories. Now I can predict with confidence that the stories I am pleased with now will one day look a little shabby to me.

Your Best doesn’t always look the same

Meanwhile, I have become less able to turn off the inner voice whispering, “Go ahead. Send something out and see if it gets published.” It was easy the first couple of years to hush that voice. I knew my work wasn’t ready to travel beyond the writer group.

For new-ish writers like me, hushing that voice gets trickier over time. We want to believe we’re improving. We want to believe there’s going to be an audience one day, however small or particularly quirky that audience may reveal itself to be. We want to nourish the creative spirit that energizes our whole enterprise. We want to begin to send work out to people – strangers – not in our writer group. I considered how to start.

The P-Word

To prepare to send work out into the world, I set up a spreadsheet to track my efforts to get published. Then I let the spreadsheet sit for quite a while, untouched. Later on, I added a tab to my spreadsheet with key facts on the publications that most appealed to me – things like deadlines, formatting preferences, lag time before they decide what to publish, method of submission, categories they favor, contact information, etc. The enhanced spreadsheet sat again, for a long break. More recently, I actually sent a few things out and made entries into the spreadsheet. I’ve heard back with two rejections, which I dutifully entered into the appropriate cells. I’m waiting for replies from the others.

I hesitated to send out my work until I felt satisfied enough with it that it didn’t feel too embarrassing. I chose carefully the places I sent those first few submissions – not too grandiose, and yet consistent with who I am as a writer.

And that just begs the questions, doesn’t it?

Questions

Who am I, as a writer, and why am I doing this? Author Dan Holloway, in his recent essay, What Do You Want from Your Writing in 2014 and Beyond? at Jane Friedman’s blog, says:

“If you don’t know what you want from your writing, what on earth are you doing writing anything? How can you possibly tell whether your words do what you want them to?”

It’s actually not that hard a question. It rests on a more fundamental one. Why do you write?”

Please don’t tell me the answer is “I make art because I must.” To me, that feels lazy and self-aggrandizing in a “poor-me,” humblebrag kind of way. Besides it ignores free will.

the words, Why Write? — Oh. THAT question.

I could tell you I write because I’ve engaged with the challenge to improve my work. The challenge is difficult enough always to involve real effort, yet rewarding enough, because of the progress I am making, to continue to motivate me to get better at it.

I could tell you I write because my life with music was altered when hand surgery made playing instruments too difficult. I could tell you I write because I’ve grown old enough to take a longer and more loving view of life. I could tell you that there’s plenty to love about writing for its own sake. Polishing a story can make my day, even when no one else has seen it yet.

Also, the most fun I’ve had with my writing lately was when some visiting non-literary friends asked me to read them a piece after I cooked them dinner. That was a blast. My fellow BACCA-ite, Claire Elizabeth Cameron, touched on this recently when she wrote,

“People are doing work for free, work for fun, work for creativity all over the place, and it’s making this world a better place. Success [in writing] is making a connection.”

So why am I writing? To get better at it. To see how much I can improve. To see if my embarrassment-meter gives me the green light to send out stories to more publications. To see if I receive a green light in return. And, in the meantime, to keep telling stories.

#amwriting

— A M Carley

A M Carley is a co-founder of BACCA Literary. She owns and operates Anne Carley Creative.