Using Metaphor to Create Context
What happens to a story that starts with a central metaphor? How does this intrigue or affect the reader? In Desiree Cooper’s story, “The Good Hours”, the reader is invited into the story using language and image rather than setting and conflict.
It’s nine p.m. and the night stretches before me like a glacier. Despite the fact that it’s started to snow again, I pull on my fleece for an evening walk. These days, I walk until the cold slows my heart and I can sleep without nightmares. Sometimes I have to walk two or three times before dawn to stay in front of the dread.
Our first person narrator wants to take us on a walk with them, to let them in on the secrets of their fears. Cooper is so good here at creating a sense of who the main character is and the point of view in the beginning so we know who or how the details are being filtered and who controls the camera of the story! This makes the story more intimate from the very beginning, pulling the reader in and letting them know they are in the hands of a writer they can trust!
There is a promise of story, a lurking tension as the snow falls. A small action, but an action gets this story moving, and we’re fighting the weather, but also we need to escape, and most readers will want to know what the main character is walking away from. This is what I’d call an introduction openings. A getting to know this character’s world, because the setting is definitely important! Weather, especially cold weather is primed here because it’s important for the story and to build the metaphor! This weather is a specific detail! It’s a hinge to open the door of the story, watch for it to continue to shift throughout this story!
Next, the narrator must convince us of how bad they have it, how bad it is getting in their world!
There is a plague upon our house. It’s making the thin wallpaper curl, the tongue-and-groove floors moan. We have lost our grasp on tomorrow. We pretend to still have jobs as we come and go, waving at the neighbors.
You’ve entered the gate of this story, so come look! Sometimes stories spend too much time on the invitation part, but Cooper creates doom and velocity at the same time!
At least once a week during my walks, I see a new sign: “Bank Owned,” or “Auction.” Overnight, a white document appears on a neighbor’s front door. The opposite of lamb’s blood — a sign that God will not protect them.
The walks now have more context. The story occasion here (why this story, this character in this moment) is quite extended for a flash as time is certainly adding up.
I’ve learned to detect the early signs. The yard service is the first to go. Grass invades the cracks in the driveway. Leaves mound like fresh graves. After a night of snow, sidewalks go unshoveled. Windows shutter. Porch lights shine all day long.
We’re not experiencing this character moving through this world in a second-by-second frame like a movie, but more of a montage, a summary to help us understand the passage of time and how things get worse, how the narrator is just barely hanging on. Summaries of time passing can create context and depth if they are handled with precision and if they put pressure on the main character to act or make a choice. Repeated paragraphs of summary often bog down the narrative, when they should function to speed it up!
In October, Theresa Madding had an estate sale. I went for the same reason we go to wakes: to check out the condition of the body. The Madding house was in surprisingly good repair. Their downfall must have been swift; there would be no trouble finding a buyer for a short sale.
Cooper uses a time marker to orientate us to time and place as we move from context to an actual scene. Some stories might have led with the scene, but this story focuses on the fears of the narrator. We must assume their desires since we’re not told. In fact, fear is also revealed through metaphor rather than direct relaying of feelings. Cooper invites the reader to make inferences and judgments, to be o the stage of the story, especially here at this estate sale. We’ve been led by specific detail and summary, by image and metaphor to this moment, and there’s a rushing weight like a stone rolling down a hill, pushing us into this scene.
It’s against the unspoken code for us to circle the pyre of our neighbors’ belongings.
I love when a writer mentions one of the themes of a story directly, and how meaning and context radiate out from the theme, giving us a sense of two stories. This is how we make mundane activities like estate shopping into something fresh and dynamic!
We’re now set up and hoping for the shift, the move toward change for this main character! We’re looking for the next escalation and Cooper doesn’t disappoint!
Even then, I knew we probably were going to lose our home and the tureen would not survive our journey into the unknown. But in the moment, it felt like an inoculation of hope — a talisman to keep the infection from spreading to us.
People have a way of spending money on things they don’t need, things that are impractical when they are in debt and have the possibility of losing their car or house. But there’s a hope in only an impractical object, a feeling of the possibility of being saved. Who could be saved by a tureen? Probably none of us, but imagine the feeling if it could save you, imagine the story you could tell? This narrator is completely revealed for me in this moment, this choice and the reasoning for their choice! I’m rooting for them!
Once I got the tureen in the car, I started crying and couldn’t stop. We never used it. When our real estate agent came to size up our house, she noticed the tureen in the china cabinet. I made her take it home.”
Some stories might have ended here. The tureen, a special object, has been purchased and given away, its powers never given to the main character, their hope dashed, their chance at a shift or change in their lives gone. But Cooper decided to dig us deeper into this narrative, to push past the expected ending. I talk a lot about risks when working with other flash and micro writers, and how taking a risk is a negative, but it doesn’t always pay off. No risk, no chance for deeper resonance though, so I invite us all to do like Cooper does in this story and to push past the expected ending, and look for a fresher outcome!
Tonight, the air stings.
Now we’re past the estate sale, back into the front story from the beginning, or is this another walk on another cold night? There’s some ambiguity here, and I think it works with the way this story delves out time. Either way, the images and language of cold have seeped back in. Our narrator isn’t quite done trying to reckon with what is coming for them. They will certainly lose their house. But Cooper suspends this outcome, and takes us into the head of our narrator. A move that usually kills flash by making it too interior, too focused on feelings rather than action, but Cooper takes that risk! And she can because we’re twinned with the narrator, we’re living this story with them, and we want to know, How could this have happened? And Cooper uses this excellent craft/language move by creating a summary of untaken actions using the word “should” to build this conditional state!
I should have saved more money. I should have left town a long time ago. I should have majored in something else. I should have married better, or had one fewer child.
Again, Cooper could have ended the story here, leaving us stuck in this conditional state, slightly feeling sorry for the narrator, and possibly ourselves, but Cooper returns us back to the physical world of this story.
Beneath a dim streetlight, I turn and repent. All the windows are blackened this winter’s eve. The good hours have gone.
The narrator here doesn’t have a chance to change by story's end, because they should have changed long ago! Here, Cooper rejects the change narrative, because it wouldn’t be realistic for this character in this situation! Sometimes the rejecting of a change is just as satisfying for an ending. Repenting past sins isn’t necessarily changing, as much as it’s having the hope to change the next time they are presented with something they should do. For now, they must live in this cold and dark world, awaiting their turn to be thrown out, forced to start over somewhere else.
There’s surely more to learn from this story as Cooper displays a mastery of compression and escalation, creating a fantastic flash fiction.
Prompt: Start your story with a metaphor. Put it in that first line! Then take the risk of providing the reader with a glimpse of this world, this setting, and how that context will put pressure on the narrator to act. Find small ways of creating/showing action along the way. But also consider the risk of using summaries to move time forward quickly! Load these summaries with concrete, specific, and telling details! Halfway through find a window to put the main character directly into a scene, a scene that is being influenced by the previous paragraphs! Have your character make a choice of hope, an impractical action, purchase, line of dialogue. Give us the reasoning! Then show us just as quickly how this impractical action falls to rescue or deliver your character! What could/should they have done? How are they facing their lost chance to change now?
Try It At Home: Find a story draft you’ve written that’s not quite working. Highlight all of the feeling words, highlight all of the actions, and highlight the places where you lapse into exposition. Is it imbalanced? What parts are taking over the story? Is the tension merely embers or have you built in escalations to add sparks toward igniting a fire in your story? Are all of the actions too small, too mundane or conventional? Does the reader need all of the information to understand the story? Have you left room for the reader to make inferences and judgments?
September 28, 2022: Flashing with Metaphor Zoom Generative Class
Cost: Pay what you want/can
From 3:00-4:30 pm Eastern Time Zone
Having trouble creating depth and resonance in your flash and micro stories? Do your stories lack the metaphors and similes that create a wider context? Do you struggle with creating vignettes rather than stories? In this 1 hour generative class, we’ll look at flash and micro stories that use metaphors to create context and depth, and warrant multiple reads. Come for the inspiring and engaging prompts in a safe environment! Metaphor isn’t just for the Poets!
November 2-14, 2022: Building Fictional Relationships through Dialogue, Ritual, and Objects
9 Spots left
Cost: $160
Asynchronous
Are you tired of your characters standing around, thinking, and doing nothing in your flash? When creating characters in a story that’s a thousand words or less, economy of words and actions is the key. The writer must think specifically about how a character acts, talks, looks and use details that present a picture of a living, breathing person. There isn’t enough space in a flash story to write paragraph after paragraph of character description. This class will focus on building and revealing character in flash stories by focusing on building relationships through Dialogue, rituals, and special objects!
The class structure is asynchronous, so you can log in as needed throughout the week. I’ll provide 1 prompt per day Monday-Wednesday-Friday for two weeks. Each learning day will also contain model texts and my analysis of how to use the model texts. You can write a flash for each day and post it to the learning environment (Canvas). I will then provide positive encouraging feedback for each flash piece you write. You will also get a chance to give and receive positive comments from your peers. We’ll use Saturday and Sunday to catch up on writing and commenting!
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