Look around. The world is filled with forums in which people tell their stories. These are gold mines where writers can find material. They’re also great settings in which to frame stories. While researching my books Choke and Invisible Monsters, I loved to call telephone sex chat lines. Here was channel after channel of people telling their stories. If one got boring, I’d just transfer to another. And if a story maybe wasn’t plotted so well I’d listen for the verbal tricks and tics that reinforced its truth. Rainy afternoons, I’d sit and jot notes holding the phone to my ear. These spoken anecdotes were wonderful and raw, and I’d look for similar patterns or themes that might allow me to cobble several together into a short story or a series of scenes. Who knows, someday I might set a story in the context of a 976 sex hotline. It would be especially poignant to hear a tragic story told over a tawdry phone sex line. Or even better, to hear a tale of redemption in the low-culture context of people talking dirty talk.
Another context for storytelling is addiction recovery groups. They really do serve as the new churches where people go to confess their worst selves and to be accepted back by their communities. Even if the stories are lackluster, they’re told by people who have years of practice. Outside of stand-up comedy, there’s not much oral storytelling left in America. But it’s thriving in 12-step support groups. Stand-up comedy versus sit-down tragedy. It goes without saying that no one’s confidence should be betrayed—but you can learn effective storytelling tactics. Better skills—for free and with free coffee—than you can learn in many MFA programs. And what about a story in which someone does steal a story from Alcoholics Anonymous and turns it into a hugely successful movie…? Imagine the rage, envy, revenge that act would engender while still keeping the reader’s sympathy.
Another excellent storytelling context is late-night radio. All that talk about Bigfoot, black helicopters, restless ghosts, Martians…it serves as a bedtime story for adults. The strange and fantastic plumbs the subconscious like a fairy tale does. The radio’s voice evokes dreamlike images that guide us into our nightmares. Listeners call and contribute their own anecdotes that support the general theme of the evening. It’s Scheherazade telling her endless stories in the Arabian Nights.
Yet another albeit unlikely context for stories is any of the cable television shopping channels. Any product will do, but my preference is for the jewelry channels where goofy folks with relatable down-home accents offer up pearl necklaces while spinning yarns about how your friends and family will admire and envy you for owning such a necklace. It’s like a guided meditation. “Just picture how the ladies at your church will flock to ooh and aah over this emerald ring! Why, you’ll be the center of attention. Everyone will turn green with jealousy!” And if status doesn’t hook you, they pitch you with love. “Your baby granddaughter will treasure this pinkie ring for the rest of her life, and every time she wears it she’ll remember you…”
So if you were my student I’d task you with writing a story in the persona of a customer phoning the channel and telling a story related to a recent purchase.
One great aspect of choosing an existing storytelling context is that the context dictates the structure and transitions. A phone sex hotline implies the ever-present ticking clock of credit card charges. The radio show includes commercial breaks. All of your framing devices are there and need no invention.
As a final example of a context, here’s a favorite. Some of the toughest men I know, former fire jumpers, active military, they love those antiques appraisal shows. Antiques Roadshow on public television, in particular. People bring in family heirlooms, and an expert examines the items. The owner tells the item’s history, usually linked to the family’s ancestry. And the expert either confirms or denies that story. Often the owner is publically devastated to find his dead relations were fools or liars. The item is not what it has always been supposed to be. Sometimes the item is appraised at a small fortune, but often it’s dismissed as junk.
In one quick public ritual, we’re presented with an emotionally fraught saga and the object that supports it. In the next moment the saga is disproved. The family’s idea of itself is dealt a serious blow, and all of this takes place on camera. The constant threat of ritual humiliation is why tough men love this show. The mighty are brought low. The prideful, shamed.
Even if the antique in question proves to be authentic and worth big money, there’s still a loss. All of its epic, magical power, the heroic tale of Great-Uncle Who’s It charging into battle with this sword or whatnot held high…it’s still reduced to a dollars-and-cents amount. Its power now limited by what the market will pay for it.
It’s the Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe–type anthology, updated.
Now if I were your teacher, I’d tell you to write a story in which a jaded on-air appraiser is asked to confirm the value of a cursed monkey’s paw…a shrunken head…the Holy Grail. Authority: Cribbing Authenticity from a Nonfiction Form
Among the easiest ways to establish your authority is to steal it. Think of Orson Welles’s radio broadcast of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds. By adopting all the conventions of nonfiction newscasts, Welles made a ludicrous story so believable that millions of people panicked. They fled their homes. They called their loved ones and bid them goodbye.
Think of the film The Blair Witch Project. Simply by saying that the story consists of documentary footage recovered after a team of investigators went missing, the film was able to rise above its rough edges and to frighten people. Likewise, the film Fargo risked being another slapstick crime caper like Raising Arizona
