ESSENCE OF STORY
By Deb Vanasse
What’s your book about? There’s a question every writer dreads. How does one sum up 60,000 words, give or take a few thousand, in a one or two sentence reply? We might as well be asked, in casual conversation, about what kind of people we are or why we love our children. It’s something we know well, and we of all people, purported masters of words, should be able to able to formulate a quick, succinct reply. After all, who knows a story better than its author?But it’s not so easy. One can resort to plot summary, something you’d read in an old card catalog or a guide to TV reruns. My book? I’ll begin, stammering. It’s about a Yupik Eskimo who’s upset with the changes brought by white people. Ugh. That’s not my book. That’s not the essence of the story. I can be more articulate. It’s a compelling tale of a family struggling against nature and itself. At least now I sound like a writer. Too bad I had to plagiarize the copy from my own jacket cover.As much as I hate the question, and as much as I struggle with the answer, I do think it’s good for me to wrestle with both, because through the question and the answer, I learn more about that mysterious thing we call story.How does story begin? Ask ten writers, and you’ll get ten different answers. If you press them, you’ll get a different answer for each story they’ve written. But all the various answers have this in common: stories begin with a whiff. Whether the author first imagines a character or a conflict or a situation or an ending, story begins with a whiff, a fleeting impression that somehow lingers in the memory, compelling the author discover more.I’ve not done a serious study on smells, but I do know that scientists are learning that they work on us in a deep, primordial way. They linger in our memories and impact our emotions. They cause us to take all kinds of actions, from the trivial to the life-changing - order a slice of pie, take out the trash, flirt with a stranger, leave a place and never return. It all begins with a whiff, like the story. The writer circles around it, sniffing. Where did it come from? What is it? What does it mean? Where will it end up? As the story builds into its own entity, the underlying aroma never leaves. Plots change and characters rewrite themselves, but the subtle smell that started it all remains.Ever try to describe a smell to someone who’s never smelled it? Jasmine? Cinnamon? Rotting fish? We may invoke adjectives and similes in an attempt to settle the experience into something already familiar, but the end, the smell is its own entity, defying description. A story may be reminiscent in its plot or characters or themes to some previous work, but it ends as it began, its own unique essence, snubbing attempts to encapsulate it in words.Whenever I’m struggling with a story, I know I must return to its essence. When the plot’s not quite working or the character’s motivations are unclear, I know I need to sniff my way back to where I began. Underneath my sometimes clumsy efforts to bring the story to life, there’s an underlying essence that I may not be able to describe, but it is the story.On a couple of occasions, I’ve visited a perfume factory in Southern France. Perfumes, like wines, are described by adjectives and comparisons in a feeble attempt to capture what is as much experience as product. Spicy undertones accented with delicate floral scents. The consumer doesn’t care about the words. She sniffs and tries on the scent. It may please her in a way she can’t quite describe. On her friend, the scent may be quite different. Surely a manmade scent, like a story, does not happen by accident. There must be an underlying essence, an idea, a whiff. It must be painstakingly developed until it is just right, until the result comes full circle to match the essence. Then it’s ready.Perfume, like story, must be distilled. Tons of petals are gathered from fields of unsuspecting flowers and boiled until their essence drips into tiny bottles. The writer distills from the great fields of life – experiences, observations, notes, journals. It’s a cumbersome process, to be sure. Inefficient, to say the least. But without combing those fields, there can be no essence, no story.It’s no wonder that stories elude description, even by their creators. Each story has its own essence that touches the reader at some deep place, an essence distilled from thousands of parts that an author could never begin to name.Stories are not “about.” They are. So they’ll never be easy to describe, to summarize in a few words, especially by their authors, who knew them first as a whiff, an essence too powerful to resist.