What's wrong with Faith?

Hello,

I'm studying for an exam where I may have to write a story in 45min including planning and checking. The prompt may be a picture or it may be a written one (e.g "Write a story with the title Abandoned" or "Write a story about two people from very different backgrounds").

I've tried to write a few stories in the time limit but they've all been boring. So I've decided to analyse some short stories which I enjoy, in the hope that I'll get a feel for how a good story is put together and begin to write better ones myself.

I've read about some structures such as beginning, middle, end; and the W plot, but I don't seem able to form a story around them within the allocated 5-7 minutes planning time.



Many thanks,
Ed.

 

I'm not sure if this thread will meet with the prohibition on "homework" - but it does at least seem to be voluntary self-study rather than a set exercise.
And the OP is some distance into a creative writing course, and has discovered their stories are boring.
This must be taken as a desperate cry for assistance from a fellow literate human being!

Not least because if the OP passes the exam, the course might turn him/her into another Joanne Harris, with all that entails.

(Referring to http://www.joanne-harris.co.uk/v3site/stories/Story_FaithAndHopeGoShopping.html)

The flaw in the Faith character is that she likes expensive shoes. It isn't any deeper than that. She wins her battle against temptation by refusing the shoes.
The story lacks an antagonist: or rather it wants 'Society' to be the antagonist and relies on the reader having set cultural assumptions about how old people are normally treated.
This is really a cheap trick to avoid making an antagonist character and challenging the protagonist via a character conflict.

The next thing to look at is whether the protagonist is well-characterized, and a tactic I like is to look for the first place where she makes a choice that isn't convenient to the writer.
She has a taste in books, but it's reading-list bilge of the sort Joanne Harris probably taught to her pupils. That can be discounted.
I think what's wrong with Faith is that she is faintly-characterized: not a true character but a plot device: a mobile viewpoint from which to inject the reader with a cynical political message that "society is oppressing old people's socio-sexual needs!", which is familiar from UK social care (cf. Esther Rantzen and Age UK), and likely to attract praise from certain quarters. Particularly the quarters that Joanne Harris herself moves in. (btw, for the treatment of old people's make-up and self-presentation as a sexual need this is familiar from academic social care - it's how UK care homes etc are supposed to understand e.g. old men's human rights to wear cologne to make themselves attractive)

There is a secondary logic-of-composition in the piece to do with Jacob's Ladder (Faith Hope Charity), with 'Charity' being an off-screen or ghostly presence who makes herself felt in the young man's gift of the flower(=sexual appreciation). But I think it's incredibly weakly delivered. If Faith and Hope had been named Butch and Sundance instead we wouldn't lose much from the story.

And a third logic-of-composition is intertextuality with Lolita - the implication that the old ladies' sexuality is considered as socially-taboo as Lolita's.
But this is cringeworthy and speaks to the same pre-defined political audience who have been sticking Lolita on the reading lists for the last 50 years.
Harris is playing to the gallery.

And by the way I find the story's political message patronising of old ladies, and insufficiently respectful of their ancient and fearsome sexual role in English folklore - which wasn't to do with dressing up in shoes like new maidens, but deciding which infants would be strong enough for the tribe. Removing Faith's social role as a judge over life and death has infantilised her - and residential homes often are infantilising but:- (on the one hand) the author didn't have to set her story there; and (on the other) she could have documented the harm done to elderly women better without this 'heartwarming'(=schmaltzy) approach. Because, most of the time, we don't escape: the day-trip is a comforting fantasy insulating the reader from how horribly Britain's social elite (whose creature Joannne Harris is) will allow them to be treated in old age.

 

Thank you evild4ve for your comments.

This makes my life easier. I thought that the flaw should be some kind of damaging personality trait or belief which holds the character back at the beginning of the story. If it can be as simple as liking something too much, then that opens my options up considerably - maybe I've been trying to overcomplicate things.

 

No problem Selbbin, I fully understand why you removed it. I promise this is not related to any homework, though; it's just me trying to get to grips with how storytelling works so that I can practise writing my own and increase my speed.
Ed.

 

Here's a thread about short story structure that might be helpful in a general sense: Need help to write my first short story

 

Thank you very much Xoic!