all the time. The real skill is as Claudia says: you need to find original ways of doing everything Aristotle said you should do, which isn’t at all as easy as just following his instructions. It takes some real hard work to create a reversal that’s not clichéd, to have a recognition that isn’t based on a token, or a “sudden realisation”, or something the hero knew all along – but on the rising action and tension in the whole plot. You should read Aristotle again, because he tells you not just how to write those bottle-of-oil stories, but proper, meaningful tragedies. And yes, they’re predictable too, sort of. But he says that one of the key things the writer has to do is to make the person who hears or reads the story feel astonished, even though the story itself has a formula and is written in accordance with probability and cause and effect. It’s a great art to make someone surprised to see the picture, and even more surprised when they realise they had all the pieces all along.’
‘But that’s the trick,’ Vi said. ‘Making people feel astonished when they hear the same old story is just the same as making people want a new kitchen every two years, and new clothes, and makeovers. People somehow forget that they’ve “heard it all before”. These narratives don’t make them see anything new. They don’t defamiliarise anything in their lives.’
‘How does throwing together some random events help people to see things anew? Every time I go out I see random events. It’s not art. Art needs artfulness.’
‘No one said that there’s nothing in the vast space between formulaic narrative and completely random events,’ Vi said. ‘Life at its least artful is life that is trying to follow a formulaic narrative. Don’t you think?’
I didn’t know quite what she meant, so I said, ‘No.’ I paused, but she didn’t say anything, so I went on. ‘You think Chekhov’s so great …’ I did too, of course, as she well knew. ‘But even Chekhov couldn’t get it together to write a novel. He found it too hard. He kept all his best observations and images for it, and they came to nothing, because actually making a plot hang together over eighty thousand words or more is almost impossible.’
‘He was busy making money with his short fiction and his plays,’ Frank said. ‘He was keeping his family afloat.’
‘Aren’t we all,’ I said.
Chekhov’s plan for his novel had been simple. He described it in a letter in 1888: ‘The novel will take in several families and a whole district, complete with woods, rivers, ferry boats, railways. At the centre of this landscape are two principal figures, a man and a woman, with other individuals grouped around them like pawns. I do not yet aspire to a coherent political, religious and philosophical world view; my opinions change every month, and therefore I must confine myself to describing how my characters love, get married, have children, die, and how they speak.’ To make a novel come together, perhaps you have to have a world view, even if it’s wrong. But I hadn’t settled on my own world view either, even one that was wrong.
‘You’re just making excuses,’ Vi said, sighing. ‘You have to start writing seriously before it’s too late. At least Chekhov wrote classic short stories while he wasn’t writing his novel. You’ve so far managed not much more than a few thin novels that preach neo-liberal morality to unsuspecting teenagers. You tell them that the world is OK if you can find a way of owning it, and possessing it and making “your own” sense of it. You tell them, indirectly, that everything fits into some pre-determined story-structure where you can do whatever you want, but only if you’re the hero. You tell them what a happy ending consists of, which is always individual success. You tell them that nothing irrational exists in this world, which is a lie. You tell them that conflict exists only to be neatly resolved, and
‘But that’s the trick,’ Vi said. ‘Making people feel astonished when they hear the same old story is just the same as making people want a new kitchen every two years, and new clothes, and makeovers. People somehow forget that they’ve “heard it all before”. These narratives don’t make them see anything new. They don’t defamiliarise anything in their lives.’
‘How does throwing together some random events help people to see things anew? Every time I go out I see random events. It’s not art. Art needs artfulness.’
‘No one said that there’s nothing in the vast space between formulaic narrative and completely random events,’ Vi said. ‘Life at its least artful is life that is trying to follow a formulaic narrative. Don’t you think?’
I didn’t know quite what she meant, so I said, ‘No.’ I paused, but she didn’t say anything, so I went on. ‘You think Chekhov’s so great …’ I did too, of course, as she well knew. ‘But even Chekhov couldn’t get it together to write a novel. He found it too hard. He kept all his best observations and images for it, and they came to nothing, because actually making a plot hang together over eighty thousand words or more is almost impossible.’
‘He was busy making money with his short fiction and his plays,’ Frank said. ‘He was keeping his family afloat.’
‘Aren’t we all,’ I said.
Chekhov’s plan for his novel had been simple. He described it in a letter in 1888: ‘The novel will take in several families and a whole district, complete with woods, rivers, ferry boats, railways. At the centre of this landscape are two principal figures, a man and a woman, with other individuals grouped around them like pawns. I do not yet aspire to a coherent political, religious and philosophical world view; my opinions change every month, and therefore I must confine myself to describing how my characters love, get married, have children, die, and how they speak.’ To make a novel come together, perhaps you have to have a world view, even if it’s wrong. But I hadn’t settled on my own world view either, even one that was wrong.
‘You’re just making excuses,’ Vi said, sighing. ‘You have to start writing seriously before it’s too late. At least Chekhov wrote classic short stories while he wasn’t writing his novel. You’ve so far managed not much more than a few thin novels that preach neo-liberal morality to unsuspecting teenagers. You tell them that the world is OK if you can find a way of owning it, and possessing it and making “your own” sense of it. You tell them, indirectly, that everything fits into some pre-determined story-structure where you can do whatever you want, but only if you’re the hero. You tell them what a happy ending consists of, which is always individual success. You tell them that nothing irrational exists in this world, which is a lie. You tell them that conflict exists only to be neatly resolved, and
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