Copyright © 2013 Jerry Dunne
A fable is a short pithy tale consisting of characters that are usually animals, though plants, inanimate objects or natural forces are also used. The characters are anthropomorphized (given human characteristics) and act as props for human character traits and expression. In the fable, each character fulfils a very narrow set of consistent characteristics. For example, the wolf is always a clearly-defined predator with the nature to go with it; the fox is cunning, tricky, not to be trusted. Character is kept within simple boundaries so as not to interfere with the clear purpose of the fable: to reveal a single aspect of the universality of human nature. These revelations or messages, also called truisms or maxims also offer us a moral lesson due to the inherent weaknesses of the human condition.
In this post, we are going to think of a fable as a means of both inspiration and blueprint for credible and insightful short story ideas. Working toward this end, first we will analyse a fable, then think of an idea for a story based on it, and finally we will write the story itself – here a piece of flash fiction (1,000 words or less). This way the reader can see the whole process at work in a single go.
Analyzing the fable
The fable for analysis is one of Aesop’s. They are of such high quality that there was no need to pick and choose a suitable one for this work. The one chosen was the very first one from the book Aesop’s Fables from the Wordsworth Classics series of books.
The Fox and the Grapes
A hungry fox saw some fine bunches of grapes hanging from a vine that was trained along a high trellis, and did his best to reach them by jumping as high as he could into the air. But it was all in vain, for they were just out of his reach: so he gave up trying, and walked away with an air of dignity and unconcern, remarking, “I thought those grapes were ripe, but I see now they are quite sour.
The message is quite clear.
When we can’t have what we want because we fall short of the capability of having it, we must compensate our pride by belittling it and even pretending to ourselves it was never worth the trouble to begin with.
The message or truism of the fable is also its theme. Because the plain theme comes across clearly in such a short tale, we know that it can work, too, in a longer short story. It is not a theme that particularly needs a much broader canvas on which to be explored. So now we have a theme workable within the dynamics of the short story and one with a clear, simple and powerful insight into the universality of the human condition. The theme is the most important thing we can take from these fables in developing our own work.
We are at an interesting point. We have the theme of the story before idea or character. For some people, for those who get story ideas or character or even setting first, this will be like working on a tale from back to front. Nevertheless, we will soon see how this theme will give us an inspiration rush in our search for idea and character.
Let’s just play around for a second to make the theme a bit pithier.
Pride compensates for failure with ridicule and pretensions of grandeur aimed at the object that reflects the failure.
Okay. Now we are well aware of the theme, let’s leave it for a moment and turn back to the rest of the fable. Viewing it as a blueprint, we must ask ourselves: does it offer any other guidance for our short story development? Certainly it has all the other story telling elements: character, conflict, plot, setting, humour, irony, (often also the twist), and let’s not forget drama. Apart from drama, the other elements are obvious in our chosen fable.
Let’s look at character first.
The fable’s purpose is to deliver its truism about human nature without ever developing individual character. A set of characteristics is used simply as a pawn to deliver the message. Usually, a lack of character nuance is a weakness in a story, but here it adds strength in delivering the plain message without distraction. Without the message, the fable is worthless. With the message or truism it is powerful. So the fox’s character must be a stereotype.
But we are not writing a fable. We are using it as a guide. We must produce individuality and nuance of character. This will automatically start to happen as our characters will be human and so will strive for their individuality to be explored. The most important thing to take from the fox is his attitude to his set of circumstances. The fox’s attitude, of course, is tightly bound up with the theme. Our characters will be tightly bound up with the theme, too, but the trick is to make this universal expression of human nature originate from individual and recognizable personalities. This is what we do in the short story.
The conflict is in the fox’s physical struggle to reach the fruit, and then in the internal struggle where only with the additives of bitterness and lack of self-awareness does he accept failure.
The physical plot is: A struggles to get B, but after some failed attempts, simply gives up and walks away. The psychological or emotional plot is: A desires B, B holds back from A’s persistent advances, so A goes off in a huff, accusing B of being worthless to cover for his own sense of worthlessness.
Setting will emerge from character and/or storyline.
There is humour in the fable, and at the expense of the fox.
The human condition is full of irony because it is full of contradictions. This fable, like most of them, has irony. In many ways it’s linked in strongly with humour.
Is there a twist? The irony offered by the fox’s complete lack of emotional self-awareness is also the twist.
The drama is lacking because of the fox’s one-dimensional character. Drama is conflict which involves moral choices fuelling the conflict. If the fox had any character depth, we might see him fighting internally against the decision to diminish the grapes after failing to snatch them and instead walking away with a philosophical approach; for example, ‘Oh well, maybe next time I’ll find a bunch that’s hanging lower.’ With character depth, the potential for drama is obvious.
Short story idea based on the fable’s analysis
With our workable theme we can now start thinking of character and storyline.
Pride compensates for failure with ridicule and pretensions of grandeur aimed at the object that reflects the failure.
The theme is so universal that it should conjure up effortlessly dozens of real-life situations (character and setting) where we have seen it at play.
1. Reaction to unrequited love/lust/passion/friendship.
2. Reaction to not getting that job or being fired from one.
3. Reaction to being turned away from a club you wanted to join.
The list goes on and on.
Let’s take one of the above examples and give it a whirl.
Let’s have a story where a man is turned down by a woman in an attempt to chat her up. Here is the fox trying for the grapes. Like the fox the man will have skills in his own right; they just won’t work effectively in this particular context. Like the fox unable to reach the grapes, the man is unable to ‘pull’ this woman. The fox believes the grapes are his for the taking. We can assume so because of his bitter verbal assault on them when he fails to grab them. This encourages us to laugh at the fox’s cocksure character twice over. One, for having misjudged his own ability, and two, for showing himself to be a fool in the way he deals with failure.
Our character will be cocksure and smart comparing favourably with the fox’s character, but clueless in the given set of circumstances. The woman’s character develops from the bunch of grapes. Let’s have her desirable like the grapes and out of his reach socially. But let’s make him a little self-aware. When she thwarts him, he knows he mustn’t knock her physically as it is not a nice thing to do. The point is not that he wants to continue thinking well of her, but to continue thinking well of himself. So knocking her is a bad thing to do to himself. That’s what his little bit of self-awareness shows him. But he has to knock her in some way in order for his own pride to stand tall, so his little bit of self-awareness forces him to look elsewhere for a reason to bring her to heel. Fortunately, he finds two. This gives the story deeper character, more twist and more humour and doesn’t distort the theme in any way.
Here’s the short story
Miss Modifier
When she began reading, his heart rate quickened.
Soft lilting voice. Scottish? Red autumnal hair tumbling around her shoulders; bright, clear grey-green eyes; warm, welcoming mouth; cardigan and jeans bragging of her curves; slim elegant neck with smooth pale skin.
He wanted to lick her neck like a child craving ice cream. His mouth was actually watering.
How to play it to impress her?
Oh, but that red hair! A hot sexy sunset right here in the classroom. When he knew her better, he’d recite some romantic lines… To wake with you, is to wake with the sunrise.
Secretly, he punched himself with delight at this turn of phrase. He really should start writing poetry seriously. A crime to let part of his talent go to waste.
To fall asleep next to you is to fall asleep with the sun on my face.
The power of words! A proper wordsmith, he was. He loved the word wordsmith. Shakespeare and James Bond both mixed up in there. At that party, that bird asking him what he did for a living. ‘I’m a wordsmith actually.’ The way her eyes lit up with curiosity and admiration! Saying he was a writer had nowhere near the same punch. James Bond never bloody well described himself as s public servant, did he?
The new love of his life stopped reading, looked up and smiled. The smile accentuated a little dimple in her left cheek, making her look even cuter.
Before anyone else could, he jumped in with, “Hi.”
Her sparkling grey-green eyes fell on him, making his heart boom in his ears.
“I think it resonates.”
Frown lines touched her forehead.
“I mean, I love your humour. It’s there. It’s really there. It touches me.”
The frown lines deepened.
Shit!
“I mean… in an ironic way. Yeah, in an ironic way.”
What was her story about, anyway? If she wasn’t so distracting, he might have actually listened to it. So whose fault was that?
“You see my character’s illness as resonating, humorous and ironic?” she asked.
From across the room, Dotty spoke up, pulling him off the hook. “I found it quite moving.”
The young woman smiled her way. “Thank you.”
Now Roger piped up, “Too many modifiers.”
“Oh?” she said.
Modifiers? What a bloody nitpicker! He’d never taken stocky, bald, bearded Roger for a homo, just a great big drip.
Roger went banging on about the ‘overabundance of modifiers’ while she sat there nodding away, taking it all in. He pressed his knuckles against his temples. Roger’s voice was like the relentless drip of water. He cracked his knuckles, seeing them embedded in Roger’s fat bald head. He jerked upright. He must rescue her from this tosspot.
“Actually,” he interrupted, silencing Roger. All heads turned his way, including hers. Oh, those eyes! “I think we need to look at the bigger picture here. Those modifiers offer a deeply pronounced and heartfelt expression of the story’s undercurrent.”
One of the older devils in the room was grinning at him.
“Excuse me?” she said.
Yeah, Scottish. Definitely Scottish. Tension in the voice brought it out more. He prayed they wouldn’t be arguing over Scottish and English league football in the coming months. Better she hatred football like most women. It would save on pointless tribal squabbling.
Unexpectedly, she swung back to Roger. “I’m sorry, what were you saying?”
Blood rushed to his cheeks. Did she just blow him away? For Roger? Roger didn’t know his head from his ass. Modifiers, indeed.
What now? Wait till break time, that’s what!
At the break, she rose, he rose. He smiled, she frowned. Even his feet melted under her eyes.
“I’ll tell you one thing,” he said.
Now she smiled. Yeah, he was winning her over. If he closed his eyes and breathed her in, he knew he’d smell the Highland heather. But he dared not. Not yet. He really had to write that poem. Only a poem could express all this properly.
“Are you a football fan?” he asked.
Clouds appeared from nowhere, the sun vanished and a gust of wind swept her away. He heard her tut loudly, or was that the metallic click of the door’s lock closing behind her.
He scratched his scalp. What in the world had gone wrong?
He felt hollow as a football.
But soon hot prickly blood flooded his chest.
That dimple on her left cheek. Up close, it made her smile look a bit off centre.
Wait! Wait! He slapped his cheek. Don’t do this! Don’t put her down! It’s beneath you. It’s creepy. You’re better than that.
He was alone in the room. Her story lay on her desk. He licked his lips, picking it up. What was it about?
Soon a smooth smile spread across his face. Actually, Roger, you’ve got a good point, mate. Miss Modifier does seem to like topping up her nouns with tons of adjectives, compound adjectives and adjectival nouns. And what in God’s name is this? Four, yes four long clumsy adverbs. He laughed aloud, and dropped the story back on her desk.
He’d actually been prepared to give her another chance but… well… his woman had to be his equal, not some inferior talent. Looks weren’t really enough in the end, were they?
Another thing! And he wasn’t really criticising her appearance so he was hardly being sexist. This wasn’t about looks at all, but FAKERY. If she was so fond of modifiers, maybe she’d used one on her hair. How often, anyway, do you see such a natural and beautiful colour? He wasn’t accusing her of it. Just something to think about, eh! He might have written his special poem for her all based on colour from a bottle.
He shook his head in despair. He couldn’t stand fake people. He didn’t even know her name. It didn’t matter now. He reckoned he knew quite enough about her.
Other types of story
Using the theme as your anchor for the story, the subject and format matter is wide and varied. Length may also affect the format and even the subject. Flash fiction pieces may take a different approach to longer short stories. For example, a format involving e-mail exchanges on a dating website using a similar story to the one above might accomplish the task in well under a thousand words. The obvious exchanges might be constrained whereas the subtext, witty or otherwise, is delivering the real messages, or the exchanges could be loud, farcical and in your face.
Miss Modifier could be written as a longer short story, developing the young woman’s character and giving witty exchanges between her and him and possibly involving other characters. It could be made of very dark tones ending in a sense of menace, or something light and humorous like this story, or even true farce. It could involve a double payoff on the theme. For example, he pursues her, she rejects him. Then, aggrieved and snubbing her internally, he actually behaves less ridiculously to her, which in turn prompts her to take a greater interest in him. But his pride pushes him to reject her now. So then she puts him down because she feels thwarted.
The writer might even try a series of formats and storylines around the same theme. Only imagination will limit the possibilities.
Summing up
The most important thing about the fable is that it acts as a source of inspiration for well-tested themes in the very short story format. There’s no doubt that its structure shows us know to deliver the theme with a simple but powerful punch, but this means that character is reduced to a stereotype. Our job is to let the theme emerge through the nuance of character rather than through stereotype.
Once we work out our fable’s theme, we can write it down as a pithy statement like in the example above. This way we are able to focus on it easily and whenever necessary to help prevent ourselves losing our way.
Take care not to overcomplicate the story, especially with longer ones, or the theme may well disappear into a state of confusion. Once that happens, any twist or punch will be weak, or worse, confusing. We can return to the fable’s simple structure for guidance if we find our plot wandering.
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Similar techniques to those shown above but regarding a ‘saying’ as inspiration for developing original short story ideas can be found here: How to develop original short story ideas from a saying
For far more of this sort of stuff check out my book How to Develop (Imaginative, Insightful & Credible) Short Story Ideas, by Jerry Dunne
Links:
How to write a modern fable for the adult reader
How to develop an original fantasy idea
How to create a saying
How to develop original short story ideas from a saying
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