Writing the Collection of Connected Stories

and "Why not a novel?"

photo: courtesy of A. Whitmore

This post is borne of a subscriber’s question about writing a collection of connected stories. This will be my last “everyone” post of July. With one exception—to celebrate three months of The Unschool (keep an eye out!)—posts will be subscribers-only until the August newsletter.

Connected stories share characters and setting and other qualities. Often they take place in a defined area—a town or neighbourhood. They might have half a dozen characters whose lives are looked at closely. Or one main character, and each story will focus on a time in that person’s life, or their relationship with one or more of the other characters.

I read—or actually re-read—the collections South Hill Girls, by Barbara Sapergia and Marine Life, by Linda Svendsen.

The subscriber’s question really pertained to thoughts on what to include and exclude—or the “unsaid”—in each story. What is “enough” information to pique the reader’s interest, and enough to leave them without distracting gaps? And what is too much info… when you begin to repeat yourself?

Repetition has its role in writing, always. If it’s only purpose is to re-remind readers of some fact, then yes, possibly question it. But if you are, in subtle ways, building and layering that piece of info… that is purposeful repetition. Or you might use repetition with layers that shift the meaning of the piece. Or at least (and optimally) the reader’s perception. So the “info” might appear to be same or similar, but as your stories reveal, through stories told through different POVs, the reader will come to understand more about these people, their differences, similarities, goals.

So this was the original question. But I discovered, as I read these collections, scribbled notes about the stories and how they moved through the characters’ lives, I began to wonder about chronology. The Sapergia collection moves forward through time, and Svendsen’s moves backwards and forwards.

Chronology

Thinking about the possibilities caused me to think about judgements I’ve leapt to… only to discover something on a person’s background that shed altered light and as a result, made me aware of something in my own self. With Marine Life, there’s a sense of moving back and uncovering secrets, and of getting a bit lost, in a way that rings true.

Another collection I read (Winning Chance, by Katherine Koller) had only two connected stories, set within the usual mix. Rather brave on the part of the author, I thought, as the coupling—in a collection of stand-alones—stood out.

The first story was about a quarter of the way into the collection, with the connected piece following after a few stories in between, altogether set up so that the second story came as a delightful surprise. When I started to read it, I realized it was answering a question that had been left on mind after completing the first. Yet the second did not leave the same type of question. I was satisfied. The placing of the stories did not leave me expecting any particular pattern, or even any more connected stories. Again, as is significant in such collections, or couplings, each story could have stood completely alone.

Depending on your choice to move forward or back, the question shifts: What happens next? becomes Why did that happen? and How did that happen?

What sorts of sentences and phrasings do writers use to re-evoke a character, and move forward or shift understanding?

Some examples

From South Hill Girls: “As for the child, she would make an excellent punishment for some very great sin.” (This, referring to character the reader has met previously—but this casts her in another light, and reflects so much about the POV character of the story at hand. Ouch.)

Mid-way through the collection, the reader re-engages with the main character of story #2: “I have always been Allison Ransome, impatient, arrogant, demanding; filled with a restless, galling anger because I will never achieve my own standards.” Judge when such a blunt approach will work; this is indeed Allison’s voice throughout the collection, and distinguishes her from other characters. When I trip over her in another story, she instantly fills my mind. Later, in the same story, she says, “Well, Rita’s not so perfect either…” A page later, she fills in more background: “As long as I can remember, it’s been me and Rita. she’s always been there, like a sister but not quite a sister.” (And I recall, in reading, that they are cousins.) “Between us there has been too much intimacy—enforced when we were children by our parents—and not enough love.” Such summarizing serves well. Evokes enough of the past, the earlier stories, and moves me forward with my understanding of Allison. This is not background I’ve seen before. Nor was I aware of her take on their childhood. Though there is a sense that the negative emotions she now has, have not always been, but have grown through time.

Deep into the collection, Sapergia does not hold back on repeating some piece of story: “She imagines herself in twenty years advising some young woman not to marry her son… It’s what Charles’s mother, Ethel Wilkins, tried to do for her.” (Note use of full name, although reader truly knows who Ethel is by now.) And there’s a reminder of funds saved by this character for the purpose of escape. This is useful repetition.

In Marine Life, the POV character is always the same, Adele, who we see age and mature. When Svendsen shifts the time, it’s with a simple, “In 1960, Mom fell for Robert Kiely and began their affair.” Such transitions move the reader easily.

Thirty pages later: “Back in 1959, Sundays were still for family.” A story might be framed in the later years of the story, but then be filled with flashback.

On page 113, there’s a line, “He called her Beauty.” Elsewhere in the collection, more than once at that point, the reader has read his use of “Beauty,” but here, at this point, the POV character, Adele, articulates this. Again, repetition that works. The reader is free to make their own observtion, and hear it from the character when it is significant for the character… which in turn, makes it significant for us.

Names

While certain types of repetition are useful, do be aware of it in the names you choose for your characters.

Be doubly aware of it as you move from one story to the next. Be aware of the first letters of names, the number of syllables. Differentiate the names. In South Hill Girls, the opening of one story kicked off with the intro of a character named Edith after just having finished a read with Ethel, and throughout, I was having to remind myself.

In the layers of connection—and they do become layers growing in readers’ minds—names that are too similar will cause confusion and distraction.

Emotional Pacing

While we’re on names consider, too, the titles of your stories. While an individual title might work when you submit the story to a literary journal or elsewhere, before you send out the collection, look at your table of contents: how are the titles functioning? This can be a real clue as to the emotional pacing of the work as a whole.

Emotional pacing has a greater role with collected stories, more so than in a novel even. (Obviously, novels have pacing. But the constructing of it in a collection is variable and deliberate.) HOW is the whole building? How do you want it to build? If you were to draw it, with arrows for a sense of moving “forward,” “backward,” or “digression,” or even a circle… how would that look? (You might add to this diagramming the above questions under “Chronology”—the What next/how/why” and see how these directions/questions evoke emotion.)

The closing-story for the Sapergia collection leaps ahead in time and moves to a completely different continent… which at first feels almost disjointed, but once I allowed myself to sit with it, I realized it truly carried a sense of “moving on” and was the perfect end-note to the whole.

When you are deciding on the sequencing, when you think you have it down, play further, and ask Why this story here? You might find surprises. Ask any beta-readers for feedback on this.

Organizing Principle

What are motifs and themes that carry through multiple stories? Give thought to this. Humans tend to be pulled toward patterning, and it can guide you to collating the works. Or upset their expectations, if it will bear fruit.

Might an organizing principle be geography? An emotion or two or three? Yearning, anger, regret, let’s say—what would come of that, examined in a collection? Family tree with secrets? A particular grid of streets? A house or two? People who are enchanted by strange collections of objects? Memories/hauntings?

You don’t want for this to become gimmicky. It may be something only you—writer—are aware of. It’s more a matter of growing organically, or of “being recognized” when such thought shows up.

What key are we in?

If you are familiar with music and music theory, you know that there are many types of scales, and each scale has its succession of steps and half steps that define the notes that create the sound of that particular “key” of music. (Or as my jazz piano teacher said to me, first lesson, “those notes are your vocabulary for this key.” I’d had no idea what scales were for beyond finger-strengthening and boredom-inducing irritation. I digress… )

Suffice to say that, if you strike a note that is not in that scale in a piece of music, even an untrained ear will know there is something afoot. It is not necessarily “wrong”—some rich works are created by playing with this. But such “play” is done with understanding.

A novel tends to be all-of-a-key. Or have some “organizing principle” that sets up otherwise. A collection of short fiction, on the other hand, can be all over the map (literally, at times) with tones and notes, voices, structural experimentation.

A collection of connected stories tends to be tonally mono-, even though the characters should all each have their distinct voice. (Note I say “tends”—there are always exceptions.)

Why not a novel?

This is a valid question. I have overheard a writer, some years after publishing such a collection, wish in retrospect that she’d published the collection as a novel, as—in her words—it’s easier to publish and market and promote a novel. And while that is true, the statement makes me re-think the purpose of connected stories. It also makes me ponder the unsaid in novels; connected stories leave deliberate and rich gaps.

If a large part of having an engaged reader is leaving them with threads to weave and gaps to fill—and it is—then connected stories should be doubly engaging. You need to give the reader just enough, at just the right time. But that is true of all writing.

This question should be answered in your own mind however, as the creator: why this? and not a novel? Why connected? If you changed the names, would a reader notice that they are connected?

What are the gaps in these characters’ lives? If one story is “A” and then you skip to “H” can your reader fill in “B-G”? Or might you leave them to fill in “B-E,” evoke “F” later in another story, and leave them filling in “G”…?

Hybrid

The collection of connected stories can be a satisfying hybrid. It can answer both the urge to create a novel and that of fashioning a story collection, and draw on the best elements of both. If you have not written a novel, and the sheer length is intimidating, it’s an option. If you find short stories unsatisfying because there’s always a sense of not diving quite deep enough for under-sea sights, then it can allow for that, too.

Questions

Please write to me or post any writing questions you have at this point! I appreciate knowing what is on your mind, and what you are wrestling with.

Email: alison@alisonacheson.com