Be careful of the advice you take (with bonus microfiction)

I get sent links in my email to columns about writing, because some algorithm has figured out I'll read some of them. The articles I read are a mix of good and bad, with both usually being pretty easy to spot early on. The danger is when you read an article that's good in general, but all wrong for you.

The other day, the algorithm sent me an entry from this little blog by a woman named Mary Jo Campbell. I knew nothing about her, but it was a focused entry on how to write micro-fiction, so I read it. I thought it was fairly well done; it contained some advice most writers already know, like the importance of details and creative use of language, but it was generally worth my five minutes. However, if I hadn't already known the conventions of literary fiction pretty well, I'd have been led astray by some advice she gave. Here's the 100-word story she wrote that she shared as an example:

What Brings Us Together

My fingers are cold yet sweat drips down my armpits, under this black polyester suit jacket. Mom’s smile is her phony-phone-voice as she busies herself introducing the families that enter. The chosen groomsmen are called to the front of the aisle, one brother taller than the next, sleek in their dark combed hair, smooth complexions, pressed suits. Solemn handsome faces contrasted by the pink blotches on the bride-to-be’s cheeks. They are each handed a pair of too-small, bright-white gloves. I swallow hard as my brothers line either side of Bob’s casket.

I've said before I'm not a huge fan of 100-word stories, but they are a thing, and it's a way to get your name out there, so I guess I'd grudgingly write some if I thought I could do it well. But there's something about this story that doesn't sit right with me, at least as literary fiction. It seems to violate a critical aesthetic principle, voiced by Meg Wolitzer in the Introduction to this year's Best American Short Stories anthology. Wolitzer begins by discussing how the first short stories she was assigned to read in middle school were always the kind with a surprise ending, stories like "The Gift of the Magi." These stories conditioned her to always look for the big twist at the end, to consider it a sine qua non of a good story. Later, however, she came to realize that "if everything is surprising, then nothing is," and to dislike "an unearned surprise for a surprise's sake." She later comes to a more mature understanding of surprise: "...the idea of 'surprise' wasn't abandoned entirely; instead, it was given a shine and polish and a more mature translation. It's possible to see that a whole story--not just the ending--might itself take on what had been considered the function of an ending."

In other words, the whole story should shock one's expectations, should undo the reader's way of seeing things.  As a reader, you will "find yourself in a place you didn't know about before."

Campbell, however, specifically recommends the shock ending, calling for "...a twist the reader won’t see coming. But after a re-read, they feel that gut-punch of realization." The story above seems mostly designed for the sake of the surprise ending. There are details given that are clearly meant to lead the reader astray, like the mention of "groomsmen" and a "bride-to-be." (Campbell writes in the blog that this was taken from a cousin who died just before getting married. That's nice to know, but the story as it stands is a little confusing. Why are groomsmen at a funeral? When I read it, I wondered if someone died at the wedding, and they just had the funeral right there that same day because the church was already booked.)

It's nicely written, it has good details, and the unexpected, jangling simile of the smile actually "being" the voice is nice. So is the alliterative word play of "phony-phone-voice." There's nothing wrong with the story, except that it's not literary fiction. I finally realized at this point that Campbell's blog clearly calls attention to the fact that she mainly likes YA fiction. I missed that up front, because I was assuming the algorithm was smart enough to know I write one and not the other.

The lesson is to pay attention to the advice you're getting and where it's coming from. Most writing advice is universal, like use good details. There are some principles, however, that change according to tastes and are genre-specific. So pay more attention that I did.


BONUS FLASH FICTION!!!

Just to give everyone a chance to shit on my writing, instead of me just picking on someone else's (even though I've said I liked her story), I hereby submit to you all the only 100-word story I've ever tried to write. According to the rules, the title isn't included in the word count
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Professor Mulkin Equivocates before a Greater Power

Professor Mulkin tried to be both seen and invisible in the Book Bonanza!; he hadn’t been in a bookstore since Borders closed, hadn’t even known they still existed. He saw only DVDs of TV shows and tween vampire fiction. His wife, recovering in the hospital, had asked for an adult coloring book.

He had written for the Times criticizing such fare and those who read them. They signaled the end. Now, he asked for them out loud. He paid for his purchase with his card, finding it suddenly easy to forgive every crime in history. 

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I have no idea if that's a good literary fiction 100-word story. Like I said, I don't know of any of these things that have really dazzled me. I think they're just an effort to be cute and prove literature isn't always stuffy--like churches telling us that Jesus is cool. This was my best effort to do something with the form. If it sucks, it won't really hurt my feelings much.