The Tale of the Persnickety Aunt

The other day, I attended a forum sponsored by our local Metropolitan Library for “authors and aspiring authors.” As these things go, it was pretty good. One of the speakers—on editing—was a professor of writing at a local college. She opened her talk by asking us for questions that she might answer during her remarks—an interesting technique, and rather daring, too. I’m not sure I’d be prepared to ad lib a talk based on off-the-wall questions from the audience. You never know what they might come up with, like, say, the one I asked. But what got my attention was the way she answered one question in particular.

The Question

One of the participants, a published author, said he was working on a novel in which the plot called for one of the characters to make an unexpected choice. He wanted the choice to be surprising, but also to be one that, when it happened, readers would slap their foreheads and think I should have seen that coming.

Instead of giving possible techniques to accomplish this, the speaker told this story about her mother.

The Tale of the Mother and the Persnickety Aunt

All her life—or at least as long the speaker could remember—her mother had been the family peace-maker. Whether at home, or with the extended family, or just in social gatherings, she was always the one to smooth over differences. She was always all about harmony. I was thinking “classic conflict avoidance,” but then I tend to be cynical.

She went on to describe another family member, an aunt, who always had to be right and who loved conflict. For example, if she asked you if you wanted a cookie and you said “yes,” then she’d say, “It’ll make you fat.” On the other hand, if you said “no,” then she’d say, “Are you afraid it’ll make you fat?” No matter what you answered, she was right and you were wrong. Charming. But then, we’ve all known people like this, which makes the persnickety aunt memorable.

There came a day when her mother’s beloved, if a bit quirky, brother went to his heavenly reward. Her brother, it seems, was an Oklahoma good old boy. He always wore bib overalls, flannel shirts, and cowboy boots. They were even his Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes. No doubt this appalled the persnickety aunt.

For his funeral, the speaker’s mother wanted to dress him as he would have chosen, in his cherished overalls and favorite red flannel shirt. The aunt, ever eager for conflict, insisted they purchase a suit and tie and dress him properly.

For the first time in anyone’s memory, the speaker’s mother didn’t back down. She fought tooth and nail to dress her brother the way he would have dressed himself, not the way the aunt wanted him to dress.

The speaker told us that, at first, she couldn’t understand why her Mother acted in such an uncharacteristic manner. Even her father paced back and forth in the family parlor, she said, in a quandary over this strange behavior.

But the speaker finally realized that her mother acted this way because, for the first time ever, the outcome of a conflict mattered.

Why This Answered the Question

After telling the story, the speaker said, “Next question?”

That was it: her answer. In fact, not only was it a good answer, it was a brilliant ad lib response to the question.

Her answer is certainly better than the author jibber-jabber I would have given in response to that question. Her answer was an example, and showing is always stronger than telling.

Still, the mathematician in me yearns for that jibber jabber, so here it comes, like it or not.

Kurt Vonnegut said that every character should want something, even if it’s just a glass of water. All characters should have goals. The goals should matter: something bad should happen if the character doesn’t achieve their goal. This establishes the stakes. There’s no story unless the character also must overcome obstacles in pursuing their goal.

Goals and obstacles are in opposition, which gives rise to conflict. Because of the stakes, the outcome of that conflict matters. This gives rise to tension, the engine that drives the story. To add rising tension, authors can deepen the goals, raise the stakes, or increase the obstacles. The tension peaks at the climax where it finally releases with the character’s success–or failure–in achieving their goal.

Now consider the story of the mother and the persnickety aunt. The story tells us that family harmony is one of the mother’s enduring goals. If we were writing a short story, instead of telling this, we’d instead show it, revealing it through her words and deeds. Since it’s central to the dilemma she faces in the story, we’d show at least two incidents prior to the final arugment. Two establish a pattern, and the expectation of how she’ll act in the third incident when the persnickety aunt insists “no overalls, suit.”

But the mother has a second goal: honoring the memory of her beloved brother. Again, in a short story, we’d show this goal as well, in the same way, with two incidents.

Both sets of repeated incidents are not only establishing patterns, they foreshadow the events at the climax, when the mother stands up to the persnickety aunt.

The day of the fight over the overalls finally arrives. What’s the conflict? At first glance, it looks like it’s the fight between the mother and the aunt. But it’s more than that. The real conflict—the conflict that reveals how the story answers the original question—is in the mother’s heart. She has two conflicting goals: being true to her brother’s memory, or retaining a harmonious a relationship with the aunt. She can’t have both, since the aunt has to always be right. Each goal is the obstacle for the other. Her choice between the goals is the source of tension in the story, and it’s released when she chooses her brother.

Conclusion

Goals, stakes, and obstacles. Tension rising.Two-to-make-a-pattern, three-to-break-it. Foreshadowing. Those are the ways I would have answered the question. Jibber jabber.

The tale of the mother and the persnickety aunt is way better.