The Fiction Toolkit, Part 11
Shelly Lowenkopf -- May 11, 2008
Another in a series of excerpts from Shelly Lowenkopf's The Fiction Writer's Tool Kit: Terms, Concepts, and Devices for Building a Better Story. In this installment Shelly looks at Action, Agenda and Ambiguity.
action -- movement and demonstrated purpose from characters within a scene. Characters take action on themselves and others within scenes and throughout a narrative. Do not be lulled into thinking action must be limited to the physical. Action can be the result of a character making a choice, pursuing a line of inquiry, or the result of emotional responses to a stimulus.
Action is dramatic information that drives a story forward and/or helps articulate a character for the reader. F. Scott Fitzgerald made the salient observation ACTION IS CHARACTER (capital letters his), with emphasis on the verb is. What a character does or is conspicuous in not doing presents a working image of that character to the reader. It is permissible and often prudent to use narrative telling ("show, don't tell") to convey character traits and goals, but it is also good practice to allow the reader to see major characters actually performing the action relevant to the development and resolution of a story. A good balance may be struck by showing the major actions and telling the ones of lesser importance. This strategy is predicated on the need for the writer to make apt decisions somewhere between first draft and revision.
Relevant action is movement or behavior that is critical to the reader's grasp of a story or narrative. It is Ishmael, deciding to sign on the Pequod. It is Ahab, co-opting the mission of the Pequod in order to concentrate on the white whale.
Rising action, is a condition in story where events force a character to make an adjustment or decision, increase activities relevant to the story, work harder to extricate himself from some advancing test or problem. It is the swimmer, noticing a shark in the water; the cook, aware of the kettle boiling over. Writers and characters may ignore rising action, but they do so at increased risk.
agenda -- a course of action to which a character is drawn by emotional, and/or intellectual goals; a rationale for behavior in a novel or short story.
Because of its close relationship to motivation, which is one of the driving forces in fiction, agenda becomes a useful tool for the writer. What a character wants informs the way the character behaves. This is true even when the agenda is hidden (and the character is attempting to avoid going public) or the character is in denial.
ambiguity -- a dramatic or logical condition in which more than one possible interpretation presents itself; an agenda, motivation, or situation in a story where the reader may plausibly infer a number of possible meanings. Ambiguity is often used as a humorous device, resulting in one or more characters misinterpreting what the reader knows to be fact. An immediate example of how ambiguity can open the door to humor may be found in any word play or pun, the basis of which is two or more similar-sounding words having diverse meanings.
Twenty-first century fiction, particularly the short story, relies heavily on ambiguity as a payoff or story-resolving factor, suggesting among other thematic elements that authors see a number of possible meanings in contemporary logic, politics, and social issues.
On occasion it is tempting to conflate ambiguity with vagueness, but the temptation is well avoided. Ambiguity offers the reader and characters a choice. In its own way, choice is a potential medium for tension. Vagueness is merely, well -- it is merely unclear.
Shelly Lowenkopf's soon-to-be-published The Fiction Writer's Tool Kit: Terms, Concepts, and Devices for Building a Better Story. is more than a lexicon. It defines a conceptual language for thinking about fiction, providing the writer with the tools to raise the level of craftsmanship of his own work.