The Art & Craft of Fiction: Defining a story

I’ve been watching a conversation this past week over on the Literary Lab about stories. As in: what’s the definition?

I happened to be working on the section of my book on writing that deals with that very subject at the time. There are a couple of well-known angles on it, pointing from different directions. So I’m going to shelve the explorations of exposition and humor for a few more days and get into this right now, while the topic’s still fresh in my mind.

First, there’s Flannery O’Connor’s wonderful discussion of the subject in the essays in Mystery and Manners—collected from her papers and edited by her friends Robert and Sally Fitzgerald after her death—in which she defines a story as a complete action with a point.

Then there’s the canonical example (which O’Connor also discusses, although not in exactly the terms I’m going to):

The king died, and then the queen died. (plot)

The king died, and then the queen died of grief. (story)

Now, this example illuminates several aspects of the difference between plot—an action or a series of actions—and story—a complete action with a point.

One essential thing it illuminates is causality. Cause-&-effect.

Another essential thing it illuminates is character. Story is not just plot. Story is plot plus character.

Cause-&-effect.

Character.

Which are, in some cases, identical. . .

Read the full post on The Art & Craft of Fiction magazine.