Tag Archives: The Key Bearer’s Parents

An Interview with Siân Griffiths

2 Mar
Sian Griffiths

Siân Griffiths directs the creative writing program at Weber State University. Her story, “The Key Bearer’s Parents” was published at American Short Fiction.

Siân Griffiths directs the Creative Writing Program at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. She holds a BA from the University of Idaho and an MA and PhD from the University of Georgia, where she specialized in fiction writing. Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, American Short Fiction, Redivider, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Quarterly West, Ninth Letter, and Baltimore Review, among many other publications. Her poem “Fistful,” first published in Ninth Letter, was included in the 3rd edition of Janet Burroway’s Imaginative Writing. Her debut novel, Borrowed Horses, a semi-finalist for the 2014 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, was inspired, in part, by her work with the U.S. Equestrian Team in 1999-2000. Currently, she reads fiction as part of the editorial team at Barrelhouse and is at work on her second novel.

To read an exercise on grounding a story’s hook, inspired by Griffiths’ story “The Key Bearer’s Parents,” click here.

In this interview, Griffiths discusses her favorite advice about structuring flash fiction, using tense shifts, and the different creative impulses that drive poetry and fiction.

Michael Noll

One of my favorite pieces of writing advice is from Ron Carlson, who says that a story has two parts: the story and the world the story enters. I was struck in “The Key Bearer’s Parents” how clearly you lay out both. The first paragraph introduces the characters (clown parents, resentful son) and then next paragraph shifts gears pretty dramatically, introducing the possibility of nuclear war and the “key bearer plan.” The juxtaposition is unexpected and exciting. Was the story always laid out this way? Or did you have to discover this structure?

Siân Griffiths

It was definitely one I discovered as I drafted. I knew where the story was going before I started writing, which is actually fairly rare for me, but in my first draft, the key bearer plan came in much later, closer to when the son volunteers to fill the position. I’m lucky to have a husband who’s an amazing reader, and he asked if I had considered introducing that element earlier in. As soon as he asked, I knew that was exactly what the story needed, and I realized that Congress would have been debating this for some time, and so the story of the bill’s creation became a story running on a not quite parallel line to the son’s. Each plot line culminates at the moment they intersect.

Michael Noll

I recently heard someone say that flash fiction takes places within a scene, but not this story. It covers decades. Did it start out longer? Did you ever try out different chronological frames?

Siân Griffiths

My favorite advice about structuring flash fiction is something that the writer Pam Houston said, which was that in flash, the conflict doesn’t need to resolve, but the key image must resolve. I think that may be true of this story, though it’s less obviously true for me here than in other flash I’ve written. For this one, I had the ideas that I wanted to put in this story for some months before I figure out how I could weave them together. It was the voice that got me. As soon as I had “We were good parents,” I had all the pieces I needed and wrote it quite quickly (that is, if we’re defining writing as the actual putting into words and not the lengthier conceptualizing part.) I think because it takes that voice–that of parents telling their story–it’s able to jump through years quite quickly. It acts like the kind of story we tell our friends at a party or a bar–or, maybe in this case, sobbing over a coffee. It takes on that kind of relationship to time, where hindsight allows us to see the relevant events that led to the current moment.

Michael Noll

I also love the tense shifts. For example, near the end, the story shifts from past to present tense: “Our son was already filling out the online application. And now that he’s been selected…” This is the sort of thing that writing workshops tend to chew up, but it seems to give you great flexibility in moving through time in the story. Was it difficult to get these tense changes right?

Siân Griffiths

Oh, that’s well spotted! Honestly, I think that move came instinctively, arising out of that voice and the moment of the narration. I wanted to capture the voice of these parents right in the moment where they’re dealing with this new reality, the moment of fear and not knowing what will happen next. For me, that’s the moment of honest emotion. If it’s further ahead in time, when they know whether the son will be safe or not, then I think it would lose its heat.

Michael Noll

You’re a poet in addition to a fiction writer, a not unheard-of combination but also not very common. Are the impulses to write a poem and story similar? Do you sit down to write and discover, as you write, what form the piece will take? Or are the two forms separate in your mind: poetry on Tuesday and fiction on Wednesday, so to speak?

Siân Griffiths

Yes—I’ve never been any good at sticking to a single genre, which was always a bit of an issue in both undergraduate and graduate school, where I was asked to specialize. I tend to write prose most often—essay/memoir or fiction—but poetry has definitely always been an interest and I’ve just drafted my first screenplay, which was a whole new challenge. I feel like each genre offers its own possibilities and limitations. For instance, a poem doesn’t necessarily have the same push for closure as a story, so if I start with an image or bit of language and just want to kind of languish there with it a while, then I tend to write a poem. If I want to explore a character or a situation, then I write a story. If I want to talk about a real life incident I can’t stop thinking about, then I write an essay. Everything starts in my journal as fragments and notes, many of which go nowhere. The once that have heat stay with me and bug me to keep writing about them. Each piece comes with its own impulse, and I tend to know what I’m writing when I start.

“Tend to” is the operative phrase here, though, because I’ve definitely been wrong. For instance, I wrote this poem that I wrote that I really loved, but every time I sent it out, it was rejected. I couldn’t understand it. I was as proud of that poem as I’d been of anything, but I stopped sending it out, deciding I needed to figure out what was wrong. A year or two later, I read a Steve Almond essay suggesting that some failed poems might actually be flash fiction. (For those interested, the essay is called “Getting the Lead Out: How Writing Really Bad Poetry Yields Really Better Short Stories” and it’s in The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction.) I pulled out my line breaks, revised a bit, sent it out again, and sure enough, it was quickly picked up by a great journal. And so I learned that sometimes I need to loosen the reins, and that as much as I think I know what I’m writing, I always have to be ready to be wrong and let the piece become something else.

March 2017

Michael Noll Michael Noll is the Editor of Read to Write Stories.

Tags: , , ,

How to Set Up a Story’s Hook

28 Feb
"The Key Bearer's Parents" by Siân Griffiths appeared online at American Short Fiction.

“The Key Bearer’s Parents” by Siân Griffiths appeared online at American Short Fiction.

A story must hook its readers. Everyone knows this. The problem is that a hook can sometimes feel as if it’s trying too hard. I remember once, when I was a reader for a literary journal, coming across a first line that was something like “He was walking down the freeway with a turd in a bucket.” It caught my eye, sure, but it also felt like something that wanted to be noticed—and that is fine as long as the writer is able to place the hook within a world and story. In this case, it was just a turd in a bucket. Nothing that followed was as interesting or compelling, which means the opening line was a failure.

A great example of a story that places its hook firmly in a story and world is “The Key Bearer’s Parents” by Siân Griffiths. It was published online at American Short Fiction, where you can read it now.

How the Story Works

Here is how Griffiths’ story opens:

We were good parents. We know people assume otherwise when they see our wide ties and honking red noses, but we were. We took that job seriously. We told our son that he could be anything he wanted to be, just like you’re supposed to. Yes, we could see his embarrassment when we showed up for Career Day, how he threw the basketball into the field as our tiny car pulled in so that his friends would look away. And though we were happy clowns, smiles broader and wider than any lips, the disappointment underneath our makeup was easy to read. “It’s fine,” we said, fitting on our over-sized shoes and adjusting the flowers in our hats. We told ourselves that he would get over it.

The hook is obvious: the shock of encountering “honking red noses” in a story that starts off seeming like a realistic story about two parents. It’s sometimes useful to imagine how else a story could have been written, and so here is another version of these opening lines:

When people saw our honking red noses, they thought we weren’t good parents, but we were.

The basic elements haven’t changed: parenting, red noses, and the expectations people have based on those noses. But the effect isn’t the same. This new version is trying too hard, in my view, like a teacher who tries to be cool and uses five-year-old slang. It’s focused entirely on how people will see it and, as a result, doesn’t come off as natural. Griffiths’ actual opening, on the other hand, starts inside the narrators’ heads, focusing on what they believe about themselves: We were good parents. This grounds us. No matter how many unexpected details the story throws at us, we know who these characters are because we know what they worry about.

As the paragraph continues, we get more clown stuff: makeup, over-sized shoes, flowers. These details are humorous and interesting, but we see through them to what matters: the parents’ conflicted feelings as they watch their kid be embarrassed of them.

As with all “rules” for writing, this one won’t hold true all of the time. Sometimes a story will need to start, from the first word, with how a character is viewed. That said, it’s probably a good idea to start a draft inside a character’s head, feelings, and desires. Establish the kernel of humanity—the conflict or desire that readers will intuitively recognize—and then add a honking red nose or turd in a bucket.

The Writing Exercise

Let’s set up a story’s hook using “The Key Bearer’s Parents” by Siân Griffiths as a model:

  1.  Start with the hook. Know what it is. If you’re not sure, tell the first part of the story to someone—anyone, someone you trust or a complete stranger. What detail makes their eyes open wider? If you can’t bring yourself to do this, do it in your head. Which detail surprises? To quote the wisdom of Sesame Street, which of your details is not like the other?
  2. Figure out your character’s self-affirmation. If you’re old enough to remember Al Franken’s Saturday Night Live character Stuart Smalley, you know what I’m talking about. Smalley would repeat to himself, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and, doggone it, people like me!” It didn’t matter if this was true or not. What mattered was that Smalley needed it to be true, the same as Griffiths’ narrators need to feel that they’re good parents. So, what does your character need to be true? How does your character need to be viewed?
  3. Place the self-affirmation before the hook. It doesn’t need to be as over the top as Stuart Smaller’s. Griffith’s first line seems like a basic statement of fact—but, of course, it’s not. It’s a matter of opinion, but it’s stated to plainly that it doesn’t jump out at us—until we read “honking red noses.” Ordering the sentence in this way can make the hook stand out more and also make the essential human need of the character stand out.
  4. Add action. When I was in college, I’d go to the rec center’s weight room, and there’d be enormous guys who’d grunt when they lifted and then drop the weights to the rack or the floor with a bang. They wanted to make sure that everyone saw them because they needed to be seen as strong. Desire always leads to action. Either the character acts, like the guys in the weight room, or the character becomes intensely aware of other people’s actions, like the narrators in “The Key Bearer’s Parents,” who notice every small thing their kid does when they show up. What action (acted or noticed) follows naturally from your character’s desire and self-affirmation?
  5. Don’t forget the hook. Keep it present in the reader’s mind. If you don’t, then it’s a gimmick. But if you commit to it, referencing it whenever possible, in the context of the action and desire, then you’ll create something readers haven’t seen before and they’ll keep reading.

The goal is to hook readers with something surprising and with an essential element of every story: character desire.

Good luck.

Tags: , , , , , ,

%d bloggers like this: