She could try to walk closer to the road again, out by the neighbor’s fence, but Mary would notice and say something. Reception was awful this high in the canyon. The wildness of the backyard made everything beyond it look fake: the city skyline, the stars. I can vividly picture this scene though.Ĭline gets down to business in the next hunk of description: Kayla drank two over dinner, then a third out on the porch, her legs tucked up into the oversize hoodie she had taken from Mary’s son’s room. Kayla appears to be our protagonist, and she’s being fed on the fly, maybe even an inconvenient or unwanted guest. I didn’t find this opening very enticing. “Dennis, do we have any beer? Maybe check the garage refrigerator?” When Kayla asked for a beer, she saw Mary and Dennis glance at each other. Kayla ate the spinach, took a few bites of crust. “Gotta have something a little fresh,” Mary’s boyfriend, Dennis, said cheerily, heaping spinach leaves from a plastic bin onto his pizza. Mary set the table, bright Fiestaware on place mats alongside fringed cloth napkins. First and foremost, we naturally like the art form, but more specifically, we get hooked by the opening: There isn’t much in the house,” Mary said. And even more than that, why do people read short stories. I’m also analyzing what do people like to read and why. However, writing techniques are not the only thing I’m studying with this BASS 2020 project. And “The accumulation of significant details is the key to great fiction” is the most important piece of advice I got at Clarion West in 2002, a six-weeks writing workshop.
And as soon as I started reading “The Nanny” I noticed that her story is full of significant details. This makes “The Nanny” an important story to study because we know Cline has the knack for attracting readers. Getting short stories published is like making it onto farm team in baseball – but the real goal is to get into the show.Įmma Cline has already made it to the big time with The Girls in 2016, so I expect her short story production to fall off as she writes more novels. Few bookworms read short stories, and I think that most that do are would-be writers. However, I’m not sure what kind of reader will like them. I’m reading and reviewing The Best American Short Stories 2020 (BASS 2020) this year to see if I can spot what good writers do that I don’t.Įven though I’m about to nitpick another story, I must reiterate that all these stories are well written and entertaining. I don’t know if I fail because I’m a bad writer or because I don’t understand how stories are told or constructed. Writing stories is much harder than it looks. Have you ever dreamed of writing fiction? I have.
“The Nanny” by Emma Cline is available to read online at The Paris Review. By James Wallace Harris, Sunday, November 15, 2020
0 kommentar(er)
