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What we're talking about here, Lionheart, is a concept that creative-writing types kick around and that you may or may not know about: the "MICE quotient"—Milieu, Idea, Character, and Event. One of these tends to be dominant in any given story, and that largely determines the story's structure. This slideshow (lecture notes for a writing class) lays it out in a bit more detail.
Your story, as it stands, has a classic Idea Story structure. A mystery (Why is the protagonist trying to get himself arrested?) is laid out, and the last paragraph—the twist ending—is supposed to make us go, "Oh, so THAT's what it all meant!"
There's something I've seen in my years as a writer and writing tutor: beginning writers tend to structure all their stories as Idea Stories. That comes, I think, from insecurity about their own writing skills—character and atmosphere are hard, let’s face it. (Endings are also hard: the Idea Story structure takes care of that, too, since you know you’re building towards the Big Reveal.)
And so they try to make an end-run around the demands of character and milieu, and push their stories into a structure where (they think) those things don’t matter as much—where the only thing that’s really important is surprising the reader with that great shock ending. Some teachers call ‘em HAITE stories: “Here's An Idea, The End.”
There's nothing wrong with Idea Stories, as such. But not every story fits comfortably in the Idea Story structure—and even for those that do, it takes a very very strong idea indeed to carry a story (even a short one) all on its own. (And your one idea is, frankly, not that strong.) The best Idea Stories also have strong character writing, action, and atmosphere to help the idea along—to make it jump through hoops, to return to my previous metaphor.
But many stories don’t belong in the Idea Story structure at all. Yours, it seems to me, is clearly a Character Story, a study in loneliness and the extremes to which it drives one man, and of his attempt to change his situation. Why not approach it from that angle? Instead of trying to surprise us with the ending, why not make your idea, your premise, your starting point, and build from there?
An idea: Why not rewrite the whole thing, starting with the line “Gordon, sorely in need of companionship, put on his overcoat and set out to get himself arrested again,” or somesuch, and see where it takes you? |
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