There’s More Than One Way to Tell a Story

By M.E. Proctor

We had dinner with friends a few days ago and Carol (not her real name) said, out of the blue, “I don’t need the crutches anymore.” I looked at her, and she was the same as always. She’d walked in without giving a hint that anything was wrong. We’d been talking about kids and travel. Regular conversation between people at ease with each other. She continued with another non sequitur, “I’ve had a stiff neck for a long time.” That statement was followed by, “I broke two legs.” At that point, my mind was doing cartwheels.

It isn’t the first time I’ve had to fasten my seatbelt when Carol launches into stories. They often ramble in search of a plot. Sometimes they get somewhere, but if they don’t, it’s okay. The journey, not the destination. This episode had a compelling narrative. I hadn’t seen her in almost a year, and a lot had happened. Eventually, the puzzle pieces fell into place, but in IKEA fashion it took some assembly work.

After the couple left, I turned to my husband and said, “It’s like Pulp Fiction.” He deadpanned, without missing a beat, “The world needs non-linear thinkers.”

I pictured a scene. Apartment, night, lights dimmed. Carol has witnessed a crime. She’s being interviewed by a cop. He’s a solid, no-nonsense type with a hangdog face. A guy who has seen everything in a long career of getting sore feet from beating the pavement. Walter Matthau in the role. He listens to her. I see him pushing his hat back, going ‘uh?’.

We’re taught from a young age to put things in chronological order and focus on what’s important. In French, it’s called ‘esprit de synthèse’ (ability to synthesize). Example: a kid’s running home, flushed red, screaming, ‘Mom, you gotta see this, Jake’s up there, Billy’s in the pond …’ Mom raises a hand and says, ‘Breathe. Now, what happened? Make it short.’

Why is this the recommended approach? Because it’s efficient, it saves time. In the Billy-in-the-pond case it might even save a life. In an emergency, you don’t want a long-winded explanation before sending Lassie to the rescue. But does conciseness make for good storytelling? Not necessarily, unless Hemingway does it. And we’ve known what works since cave dwelling times. I doubt our forebears served the tale of the hunt straight up. I bet they enjoyed a bit of suspense. After supper.

We all have quirks, and they manifest themselves in our particular ways of telling a story. How we react is also largely dependent on how our minds are wired. What entertains some will irritate others.

My friend Carol is not incoherent. She knows what’s going on—in fact she knows it too well. She doesn’t need a tidy narrative. She’s telling you what’s most important to her, in the moment, and expects you to follow along. My mother was also an unorthodox narrator. She trained as a seamstress, had a keen eye for design, and loved historical movies. If you asked her for the plot, she’d start at the beginning but would never complete the tale because what she really wanted to talk about were the gowns, in crushed-velvet and lace detail. Mom wasn’t alone. I once worked with a girl who was the most tortuous storyteller I ever met. She’d stuff side plots inside side plots, like nesting dolls. I must have told her a hundred times ‘for heaven’s sake get to the point.’

Decrypting Carol’s story made me think about forms of storytelling. The classic beginning-middle-end structure, the three- or five-act model, the linear narrative. All familiar. Boring?

Laurence Sterne in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman used linearity for comical effect: “I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me …” Start at conception, you can’t be more chronological than that. Dickens did it too, a hundred years later, when he titled the first chapter of David Copperfield: I Am Born.

If these guys poked fun at the straight timeline, why shouldn’t Carol dynamite it? Writers do it all the time. They all borrow from Carol, my mother, or my office colleague. In crime fiction, stories often start in the meat of it and jump around: flashback, flash forward, quick cuts, diversions, subplots. Last week, I rewatched Sunset Boulevard, which starts one scene from the end. Double Indemnity is one flashback, so is Murder, My Sweet. Memento plays backwards. I used to own a deck of Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies (must have lost it in a move, which is quite ironic), and it’s all about reshuffling: plot, time, characters. Exactly what Carol did, in my dining room. I might not tell my stories her way, but a character who hopscotches like she does? Absolutely. I think I’ll revisit with that flabbergasted cop, the one with Walter Matthau’s cocker spaniel eyes … 

Now is your turn, how do you tell a story?

 About Catch Me on a Blue Day

 According to one reviewer:

“Catch Me on a Blue Day is a speedboat of a detective yarn, sleek and sexy and fast as hell. You'll love it.”

“For Ella and all the innocents slain by soulless men.”

It’s the dedication of the book on the Salvadoran civil war retired reporter Carlton Marsh was writing before he committed suicide.

A shocking death. Marsh had asked Declan Shaw to come to Old Mapleton, Connecticut to help him with research. He looked forward to Declan’s visit.

Now Declan stands in the office of the local police chief. The cop would prefer to see him fly back to Houston. He’s never dealt with a private detective, but everybody knows they are trouble. In Catch Me on a Blue Day, Declan is far from his regular Texas stomping grounds. He’s off balance in more ways than one, and the crimes he uncovers are of a magnitude he could not foresee. Between the sins of an old New England town and the violence of 1980s El Salvador. And the links between the two.

Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Catch-Blue-Declan-Shaw-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B0FR3DWYGD/

M.E. Proctor was born in Brussels and lives in Texas. She’s the author of the Declan Shaw detective mysteries: Love You Till Tuesday and Catch Me on a Blue Day, the author of a short story collection, Family and Other Ailments, and the co-author of a retro-noir novella, Bop City Swing. Her fiction has appeared in Vautrin, Tough, Rock and a Hard Place, Bristol Noir, Mystery Tribune, Shotgun Honey, Reckon Review, and Black Cat Weekly among others. She’s a Shamus and Derringer awards short story nominee. Website: www.shawmystery.com. On Substack: https://meproctor.substack.com.