The Pretty Daughters by John O’Hara, 1945
The magic trick:
Producing short stories like he’s operating a conveyor belt
Sometimes, in my days in a band, when I’d hit a songwriting slump, I’d sit down with a Kinks album and really study the textbook.
Now, as my fiction writing slump extends into its fourth decade, I can at least summons a similar optimism, if not actual ability, by studying the template left behind by one the masters of conservative storytelling from the mid-20th century.
Conservative, meaning that O’Hara just locks his stories into place like they’re rolling off of some kind of magical conveyor belt. It’s as if he knows there is an effect he can achieve by doing X, Y, and Z, so he goes ahead and does X, Y, and Z.
Yes, to some perhaps that feels hopelessly limiting and unimaginative. But for me it’s reassuring. It reminds me that there is a way to do this thing called short stories. There are specific skills to learn and master.
Anyway, what are those skills? And what is O’Hara’s template?
Essentially, he begins the story with some specific action in the present tense. In this case, we see a military man taking a car to a specific residential address. Quickly the story pivots to memories of the man’s past, filling in background character information and providing a backdrop of previous experience.
Then we’re back to the action at hand. The man arrives at the residence, and the heart of the story begins: a conversation between the man and the daughter of the old friend he’s visiting. The conversation connects to the memories of earlier in the story – fundamentally changing the way the man views his entire life.
Easy to map. Very difficult to write.
And that’s quite a trick on O’Hara’s part.
The selection:
“Mother did say you – you got around a lot.”
“What did she actually say?” He smiled.
She hesitated. “Well, she said that if the term had been used in her day, you’d probably have been called a wolf.”
“Dear Nancy. That’s quite a build-up, isn’t it?” He was annoyed.
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