This week we were looking at a short piece by Mia Couto, if you missed it you can find it here:
http://www.massreview.org/sites/default/files/Couto%2C%20Mia.pdf
The reason I chose this piece this week is because of its cyclical structure. This isn't something we discussed, but it is a really useful technique.
There are two sentence short stories that utilise this really well, such as this one:
On a side note, two sentence short stories are a really great way to get inspired for your writing. You should also try writing a few - it will make you think about the balance between being concise and still putting across all the information necessary.
In War of the Clowns, the cyclical structure works really well. Generally speaking, a cyclical structure serves to somewhat trivialise your piece as we know the same thing is going to happen again and again. It works for this piece because whilst it trivialises the deaths in that specific town, it actually compounds the sense of death in the ending:
"Together they crossed the city destroyed, careful not to tread on the cadavers. And they went in search of another city."
If we tried to analyse the structure of the story in terms of what we have been looking at this week, I would say it follows a falling plot line. The characters start off "amused", then "scared", "confused", "full of terror", and finally they die.
This story also utilises imagery really well. Whilst for some clowns represent fear, for most of us, and definitely for the people in the story, they simply represent humorous street performers. This really juxtaposes the idea of what they are doing: we have classic childhood imagery pitted against war and destruction.
Couto's use of language also contributes to this contrast. The clowns' argument is described as such:
Who could take them seriously? Ridiculous, the two comedians reparteed. The arguments were common nonsense, the theme was a ninnery.
This isn't the sort of language you'd expect about a war without a clear end in sight. The story has clear political undertones, and critiques the triviality of war.
What to take away from this week's reading:
1. Think carefully about how you are using plot - how quickly do things happen, at what point in your story do they happen, etc.?
2. Think about how your plot fits in with your topic. This one is about politics and war and so it uses a falling plot with a cyclical structure. If you were writing a traditional fairytale, you might use one of the rising plots (particularly the Cinderella plot), but if you were writing a modern fairytale you might choose something else.
3. Think about how you use language to support or juxtapose your plot. Couto's language choice supports his idea about (certain) politics being negative, cyclical and trivial.
Related exercises:
As I have already given you lots of exercises this week, try writing some one or two sentence stories. You can find hundreds of these online for inspiration.
This will be a really useful thing to have in your notebook as you can refer back to them for inspiration for further stories and you will get in good practice about distilling information.
Happy writing!
Thank you for your critique of "War of the Clowns." I've just read the story as part of a writing class I'm taking. Today we discussed the story for two hours. It's wonderful to have your critique of it as well. Thank you.