Use Escalation to Transform Story

At some point most of us benefit from a writing coach. Mine is Pete Nelson, author of the novel I Thought You Were Dead. One point Pete often makes about developing a novel is this. The king died and then the queen died is a statement. The king died and then the queen died of grief is a story. Here, escalation happens in the reason for the queen’s death.

George Saunders, author of the novel Lincoln in the Bardo and the essential reference work for writers A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, makes the further point that escalation doesn’t just make a story but transforms it.

In Swim, Saunders says that a fundamental element of storytelling is really this two-part move. First, the writer creates an expectation. The classic example is: Once upon a time ... Second, the writer meets that expectation. But in the case of escalation, instead of fulfilling the expectation in one deft move and essentially ending the story, the writer creates a series of expectations, for example, through a pattern. Saunders’ illustration of this is the short story “The Darling,” by Anton Chekhov.

In “The Darling,” a woman meets and marries a man then takes on his personality. When her husband leaves or dies, she goes on to marry the next man. With each successive marriage, she takes on the personality of the new husband, but each time with a slight alteration. Once the writer sets a pattern like this, the reader expects the pattern to reappear. When it does, with a shift or an adjustment, readers are further engaged by the change because they see meaning in it. Which is what the writer intends.

When readers grasp a pattern, they don’t just anticipate the pattern. They wait for something to happen that disrupts it, either by challenging the pattern or by showing its consequences. Thus, what transforms an anecdote into a story is escalation. When readers feel escalation happening, they actually feel events becoming story and watch for a complication that will propel the story to rising action, climax and falling action.

Now we know that escalation transforms story and why. Our next question is, how can I get my story to make this transformation? If you feel trapped writing and writing but your story’s action isn't rising, add this sentence to that place in the work: Then something happened that changed everything forever. Now ask yourself what that is and write it.

But what happens when there’s more than one “something”? How do we choose? A great way to find out is to mine the story we have. Our work is already about something. It already has a theme, maybe more than one, and that’s where we find the possibilities for the kind of changes we need. When this happens, our pulse quickens. Then, inevitably, questions arise, questions we may fear answering. 

As John Updike said, it’s in the story you’re afraid to tell yourself that you find the real story. And that’s the one to write.

Reference
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, by George Saunders

Happy writing!

Adele Annesi is a curator for the Ridgefield Independent Film Festival. Her bestselling cultural heritage novel is What She Takes Away (Bordighera Press). Her MFA in creative writing is from Fairfield University, and her long-running blog for writers is Word for Words. Her podcast is Adele Annesi on Writing.