12/23/2023 0 Comments Lazy storywritingThis is some of the original passage:Ĭlive was the student they were sure would still appear, even after years of slogging through grade books and writing parents never-delivered notes. In the process, I got fired up about why the teachers responded so strongly to Clive. At the start of an early draft, I described how the teachers ignored Casey and lavished attention on his nemesis, Clive, the perfect student. My story “Casey” centers on an adolescent boy who’s sure he’s a loser. Once you’ve worked out your transitions, decide how long to stay in the expansion. ( 9 Ways Writing Short Stories Can Pay Off for Writers) Decide on the Scope of Your Expansion From the narrower action or narrative, the scene expands naturally and then contracts again back to the main focus, and the story’s forward motion. Jackson uses the expansion here and the minute, repetitive detail before and after it to elongate the action, heighten the tension, and rivet our attention. We watch the citizens take their turns drawing slips of paper from the box to the story’s final horrific end. With this background established, Jackson quickly refocuses on the present. This precise and detailed account emphasizes the centrality of the black box to the ancient, outdated rite that is still mandatory. By now it was no longer completely black but splintered badly along one side to show the original wood color, and in some places faded or stained. There was a story that the present box had been made with some pieces of the box that had preceded it, the one that had been constructed when the first people settled down to make a village here. The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago. Now Jackson expands with the history of the lottery’s focal point, the “black box”: The townsfolk aren’t preparing for a county fair after all but instead for a macabre ritual-involving those apparently innocent stones-as old as the village. We’re introduced to the townsfolk by name as the men exchange sage words about the crops and weather, the women gossip, and the boys collect smooth stones and play boisterously.īut then, in the fourth paragraph, we’re given the first real indication of the day’s sinister nature. On a balmy summer day, the citizens of a typically pleasant small town gather as if at a county fair. In “The Lottery,” Shirley Jackson starts her classic and bone-chilling story with a conventional opening in this case, immediate action. But in a short story, you don’t have the luxury of chapters for each scenario. Another chapter could describe Jason’s grandfather as father, and a third could trace Jason’s father, finally introducing Jason. In the second example about Jason, after the expansion, an entire chapter could easily be devoted to Jason’s great-grandfather’s mode of discipline and its influence on each family member. You are asked to push beyond the accepted rules of the short story-and you may land at the edge of a novel. The range is also more courageous than the customary background. The design is larger, and the discipline is passed down through the generations. and Isn’tĬan you see from these examples how expansion differs from typical exposition? Both establish necessary grounding, but the expanded dimension is wider. None of the children could escape, and this oppressive mantle was now being passed to Jason. Son to son-and even to sons-in-law (by some bonded osmotic process) as men married into the family. It always got transmitted in torturous exactness from father to It had gone on for generations and didn’t break for holidays, births, funerals, or world wars. Patriarchal discipline was ingrained into the very fabric of the family. From earliest childhood, Jason knew this was what to expect.
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