Several characteristics set prose fiction apart from other genres, and these distinct qualities define this genre.  The word fiction means that such a piece of writing must be imaginary, invented by the writer rather than arising from history or life.  In practice, all writers draw on their personal experiences, but often mutate and disguise the truth.

Prose differs from poetry in lacking both metrical schemes and the unifying devices of free verse, although the best prose possesses both rhythm and music.  The difference is one of purpose and degree.  Prose also requires an orderly arrangement of events rather than a simple listing.  Some aspects of prose, for instance the conscious use of style, diction, and sentence structure, developed more slowly than the elements of verse.  Prose differs from drama in that the intended audience is one person reading rather than many people in a theater watching a performance by actors.   Perhaps the most important influence on the style of modern English prose was the King James version of the Bible, published in 1611, an Anglican translation from Hebrew and Greek sources.  The aspiring poet can learn much about powerful use of English from reading this book.

The two genres known as novel and short story have origins and some elements of style in common, differing most importantly in length and complexity.  Both began in the times before history, when human beings possessed speech and fire but had not yet learned to write.  Perhaps the first stories were simple narratives of a day's hunt, but gradually such tales were remembered and passed on orally.  The ancient Egyptians and Greeks wrote down stories, some of which fit the present-day genres of poetry and drama.  As writers combined events to form longer narratives, plotting became increasingly important as a way to tie incidents together.

The novel began to emerge as a distinct form in Renaissance Europe, initially as books which featured a series of stories centered on one character.  Plots focused on romance and scandal, with prostitutes and corrupt priests as well as highborn and common characters mingled in tales which revealed the moral values of the times.  Picaresque is a literary term which describes this type of writing.

In 18th century England, where the first true novels took the form of pseudo-autobiographies narrated by first-person protagonists, this genre flowered.  At first, characters told the stories of their lives in a series of episodes, with a unifying emphasis of character development through a number of adversities.  As the novel developed, writers smoothed out the jumpy episodes.  The fit between characters and their societies continues to be a popular theme in the novels of today.

The short story as a genre owes much to American writers like Poe and Hawthorne, who ordered events in a tight and distinctive form shaped by the content of the story.  Both novel and short story were greatly altered by the deep interest in nature of the Romantic writers.  A reaction to the scientific revolution, naturalism applied to literature the principles of scientific determinism, particularly the notion of the world as a great jungle in which survival of the fittest is the basic structural principle.  With the advent of naturalism, narratives turned from flighty and romantic subjects to actual events of human life, taking on increasing responsibility to be realistic rather than fanciful.  In the early 1900s, a new type of self-examining fiction began to appear, known today as stream-of-consciousness writing.

More recently new forms have come from Central and South America, particularly magical realism.  Known in Spanish as lo real maravilloso, or "the marvelous reality", magical realism often involves putting one element which is impossible into the lives of otherwise ordinary people.  The resulting upheaval provides the plot.  For instance, in "A Very Old Man With Very Large Wings," an angel falls to earth.  However, this angel is feeble and has dirty wings and only a few teeth.   If you are interested in magical realism, read Jorge Luis Borges' Ficciones, a collection of short stories which greatly influenced the development of magical realism, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel Love in the Time of Cholera.

The basic factor determining whether a piece of prose fiction is a story or a novel is length:  a novel is long and a story is short.  However, this differentiation in length also sets up a requirement for more or less complexity.  A longer piece has room for more time, more characters, more plot events, perhaps subplots, more changes in setting.  The short story may be one of the most difficult forms for a writer to master because compact size requires so much precision and refinement in plotting and characterization.

Most often, the novel takes in a considerable sweep of time, while the short story focuses on a particular series of events which develop over much less time.  A novel can evolve over generations or during a few days, while a short story may span a period of a few days to a few minutes.  Although a novel is quite long, time is necessarily speeded up and events are squeezed together, connected by sections of summary.  In contrast, time seems more relaxed in the short story.  Summaries are quite short, perhaps only a few words, and scenes open out, expand, and slow down time.

The novel covers a great many events, some connected with the main plot and others developing subplots which in turn push along the main plot.  Events are seen in the context of the passage of time, and the reader learns from the actions of characters and their long-term consequences.  The short story usually focuses directly toward one main event, a turn which results in the reader's enhanced knowledge of one specific problem of life.  Usually, this climax is the single most important event.  Prose narratives may be compared to gemstones.  A novel is a large stone with many facets which refract light at many angles, while a short story has only one facet which nevertheless shines brilliantly.  Figure 8.1 shows the short story and the novel drawn as examples of Freytag's Pyramid.

Partly to fill up all that space, novels utilize many characters, a number of them developed and rounded, while short stories tend to focus on a change or epiphany in the life of one character.  In a novel, well-rounded characters are not all-good or all-bad.  Instead, they show a mixture of traits; good and evil, altruism and selfishness, love and hate battle within them to produce complex patterns of behavior.  In contrast, the short story usually shows a few primarily stereotyped characters, with the protagonist given a pair of conflicting characteristics which result in the turn of the plot.

Poet Ted Kooser's most frequent criticism of one writer's short stories was that they had too many characters.  With only a few pages in which to get to know characters, readers sometimes have difficulty remembering who's who.  The short story writer who focuses on two or three characters helps the reader.  The novelist can use as many characters as he or she can keep track of, provided they are marked with identifying characteristics for the audience.

Setting is one of the most important aspects of prose fiction.  The writer must have a clear location for the story, a place with unique and identifiable geography, vegetation, and animal life.  In addition, buildings and machines must be realistic and believable within the context of the story. Otherwise, characters become talking heads, floating in empty space.  When developing a setting, writers must watch out for anachronisms, objects or behaviors which appear incongruously out of place.  Example 8.2 gives an extreme example of anachronism.

    Ugh squatted in the middle of the muddy trail next to Ganh.  He shivered in the chilly air of late autumn, the season of falling leaves and mating animals.
    Ugh picked up a twig.  "Ganh, see."  He drew the path as far as he knew it, first the place they were in, then the fork, along to the big dead tree on the left.
    Ganh nodded.  "Meat."  He pointed to the blank area of the map past the dead tree where the deer came to feed.
    "Cook in microwave.  Fast."  Ugh's mouth watered.  He remembered the taste of the sweet venison they'd eaten last week.

History, anthropology, sociology, biology, geology, meteorology -- all these sciences provide information writers can use to build settings.  As with any research, the first sources should be general:  dictionaries and encyclopedias.  Books on specific subjects provide more detailed but perhaps dated information, while periodicals such as magazines and newspapers give up to date reports.  Pioneer journals and letters provide insight into daily life on the frontier, and travel books offer details of foreign places.   Sometimes it takes only a few sentences  to set the scene, as in these lines from Sherri Johnston's story "Albert".

    His co-workers held a birthday party, complete with over-the-hill jokes, two years early, and a mug that read, "Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most."  Was that referring to him?  Was he losing the ability to think?
    Albert walked slowly down the hall to his cubicle carrying a piece of chocolate cake wrapped in a napkin, the icing sticking to it.

We learn a great deal about Albert's world in a short space:  he works with people who may feel antagonistic toward him, in a cubicle rather than an office. Even the icing on his cake is messy.

In a section from a longer short story, "Bad Weather" by Mark Ames, the setting develops more slowly, as though the author  is painting a picture for the reader.

    Nothing every happened to Francis Xavier Girany, nothing but the weather.
    Today:  sunshine.  But I knew that would change if I dared move from the porch swing.  I didn't move.
    "I'm never going to fall in love, and I'm never going to get laid," I whispered to Achilles lying next to me.  I reached out, scratching behind the beagle's ears.  "Never, Achilles, never."  The dog sneezed.
    "Thanks."  I wiped the snot off my leg.
    I was sipping lemonade.  I placed the glass on a wooden stand next to the swing, running the cool condensation from my head across my forehead, then down my bare chest.  "Never."

The reader learns that Girany is bored and lonely, sitting on his porch, beagle at his feet, drinking lemonade on a hot day.  What will happen to change this situation?  The answer to that question forms the plot of this story.

One new development in setting has proved a rich source for writers:  the use of regional settings and characters.  For instance, the southeastern United States produced a style of writing known as "southern Gothic", marked by a brooding terror which haunts a small town peopled with grotesque characters.  One of the best examples is William Faulkner's short story "A Rose for Emily."  New England regional stories often focus on the struggle between those who have lived in an area for generations and the newcomers, city people with money to spend but no sense of history.  Recently, some western writers have utilized a spare, stripped-down style reminiscent of the openness and simplicity of the Great Plains landscape.  Richard Ford's fiction plays up the persistent influence of the vast western landscape on his characters.  Grounded in place, these writers have a head start on those who write about settings they don't know intimately.

One goal of narratives is catharsis, a purging of emotions which allows the audience to maintain a sense of balance in the world.  The audience learns vicariously to avoid the pitfalls of life, thus gaining wisdom.  When a reader knows the results of a particular course of action, he or she fears the future less.  Readers of stories and novels look for wisdom which will aid them in coping with the difficulties of life.  Your audience wants to be involved in your stories on a deep and personal level.  Some critics believe that the hero becomes a scapegoat as well a protagonist, so that readers feel intense love and intense hatred simultaneously.  As characters either triumph or fail, the audience gets rid of a troublesome burden of emotion by both identifying with and distancing from the hero and his troubles.

The writer who begins a story invents a world.  At the core of the world is a chunk of rock, but only a small fragment of rock, the part directly below the story, is important.  This setting contains vegetation, receives sunlight, has temperatures and temperature changes.  Animals live and die there, and human beings follow their destinies.  They have houses and families, jobs and hobbies, physical appearances and characteristic patterns of thought and speech.  They know the social customs of this  world and their places within the social ranking.  They have hopes and fears and memories of the past.  The beginning of a short story or novel should communicate basic information to the  reader and set up what follows.  Consider the story beginnings in Example 8.5.

The Old Man Cactus     Henry pushed the screen door open with his right shoulder and eased out onto the front porch, a potted cactus balanced in each hand.  He wore a white T-shirt and bib overalls, and his white hair fluffed out around his wrinkled tan face.  A cane hung over his left elbow.  He shuffled his worn blue slippers to the edge of the porch, where he bent with a grunt to set the two cactus plants side by side in the sun next to the white-painted railing.  The next trip he carried out the astrophytum, or star cactus, the one his long-dead wife had called bishop's cap.

Summer of the Tarantula

     Marie wiped a film of perspiration off her upper lip, then  pulled open a kitchen cabinet to stare at the canned goods.  Tuna  salad again.  Her fifteen year old son Soames liked it.  As Marie  rummaged in the drawer for the can opener, the telephone rang.
     Marie heard her sister Carol's hello, far away and strange. "Our brother Tim died this noon."
     "Oh, God."  Marie felt a sudden nausea, and sat down in a chair at the kitchen table.  She pulled a shriveled brown leaf off the philodendron which grew in a big pot on the counter.

    Illusions

     As she hurried out the door of River Valley Community College, Sue zipped her down jacket and pulled a stocking cap over her dark brown curls .   She walked across the parking lot through the December dusk, a backpack full of books hanging over her right shoulder.
    Worried about the time, she pulled up her coat sleeve and glanced at her Timex.  Ten minutes past five already.  Her husband Howie was waiting for her at the home for delinquent kids where he worked.  His shift ended at five.

At the Nut Brothers Farm

     The yard looked wild the first day I saw it, mostly weeds and thistles bordered by a line of dying elms.  The late summer afternoon hung heavy, and the grass smelled damp under the shadowy trees.  I  was getting big with the pregnancy, our second child, Brian, and had trouble walking in the rough yard.  I nodded appreciatively when my husband Johnny said this would be the perfect place for our mobile home, but the thistles scratched my sandaled feet.  The unroofed basement of the long-gone house held a jumble of logs, the corpses of relatives of the dying elms.  Even that first day I felt the badness of that place, something cold and evil coming up out of the ground.

In fiction, exposition is the material which introduces characters and situations, places the tale in a setting, and provides a particular tone.  The very beginning of a prose fiction writing should lay out the situation as it now exists, but should carefully avoid giving away the outcome.  Let the reader wait for the end.  However, this initial situation implies the direction the plot will follow as the threads of the story tangle, even if the writer does not know how the story will end.  The exposition should get the reader right into the action.  Long expositions which drone on and on tend to bore readers, so avoid those lengthy descriptions of setting.  Plunge right in, describing action and setting together.

The middle of a short story or novel develops the initial situation.  Narration moves the plot along, and description adds details which help bring the story alive.  In addition to the summaries provided by exposition, narration, and description, periodically a story or novel opens out into scenes.  Each scene should focus around an important plot event developed with dialogue and descriptions of the actions of characters.  The beginning of the story tangles only one or two threads in a short story, perhaps a hundred threads in a novel.  The middle weaves a tighter and tighter knot, eventually stretching the threads to the breaking point, the turn or climax which leads directly to the end of the plot.

(The Old Man Cactus) No answer.  Henry peered out into the dusk, but saw no one. "Funny, could have sworn I heard a noise."  Shaking his head, the old man turned back to his chair, but heard the step creak again.  Henry whirled, moving faster than he had for years, just in time to see a boy reaching for the ceramic pot which held the Old Man Cactus.
     "Oh no you don't!" Henry roared.
     The boy looked up, startled, and Henry saw it was Eric, Marty Benson's boy.

(Summer of the Tarantula)

     "Don't look now," she said.  "But Ernie's here.  With a  redhead."
     "Figures," Marie nodded.  "Everything else has gone wrong this summer."
     "They're heading this way," Mark muttered.  He filled their  glasses with beer.
     Ernie pushed his way toward their table, the redhead tagging  behind.  "Hi, gang."  The overhead light gleamed off his bald spot.

 (Illusions)

    "Nothing, nothing is wrong."  He curled his arms around his head to shut out her words.
    "Something is wrong, and I'm not going to deny it any more.  Are  you having trouble at work?  What's bothering you, honey?"
    When Howie lifted his head from his arms, his brown eyes looked so wide she could almost see through them.  "All right, if you have to know.  I'm in love with someone else, and I think I should leave."  The words sounded flat, final.

 (At the Nut Brothers Farm)

     The squeaking woke me.  At first I didn't know what caused the noise, but then I remembered the mouse.  We'd put poison out after the ladies' club meeting, careful not to leave the bait where Samantha might find it.  But these noises were too loud for mice, and I heard hard, naked tails slapping against the kitchen counters.  A dish crashed to the floor.  Animals were climbing on the dishes in the sink.
    A crunch from the corner of the living room.  Three rats, two small and one very large, were eating my beautiful green carpet. They bit off pieces and chewed them.  The big rat turned to stare at me with deep, old eyes.

The French word denouement accurately describes the unraveling of the knot which begins with the turning point or climax.  In the denouement, which happens quite rapidly in a short story and proportionately slower in a novel, everything is explained, the loose ends are tucked away, and the writer assures the reader that the story is indeed finished.  Protagonists and antagonists get what they deserve, and the reader feels satisfied, purged of emotion through catharsis.

(The Old Man Cactus)      "Hey, now you don't need to work for old Henry," Chuckie said.
     Eric looked up.  "Yeah I do.  He needs me."
     "Who needs you?" Marty asked.
     "Henry.  I'm working for him now, mowing grass and running  errands and stuff.  For money."  Eric ran toward the garage to get his bike. "And besides, Henry's my friend!"

 (Summer of the Tarantula)

     Marie went into the den.  The tarantula crouched in a corner of the aquarium, and Marie lifted the lid to drop the meat inside.  "Yes, little one, we're both trapped."
     The spider lifted one foot after the other and edged toward the hamburger.
     "This is the worst summer of my life."
     The tarantula reached the hamburger and crouched over it,  pushing the meat into its mouth with eager, hairy feelers.
     "You don't give up, do you?"  Marie asked the spider.
     But the tarantula didn't answer.

 (Illusions)

     His dresser drawers hung open, empty, and his two good pairs of shoes were gone.  She felt for the hook inside the closet. Bathrobe, too, the one she'd given him last Christmas, brown velvet to match his eyes.
     Sue felt like an amputee, naked red flesh quivering, Howie like a ghost limb attached to her.  She sank to the floor, rested her back against the side of the bed and curled her legs beneath her.
    "In the morning I will call mother," she said aloud, beginning the list.  "And Marianne."  Her mother and sister would come for Christmas.  "We'll make mint fudge."
    Sue hugged herself, crying, as she rocked on the ebb and flow of her grief.

 (At the Nut Brothers Farm)

     We moved to River City.  After I started work at the library, I met a girl who lived in the trailer at the Nut Brothers farm with two roommates.  One night she was sitting at the kitchen table.  She felt a cold draft and looked up.  A little man dressed all in black stood in the hallway.  The girl and her roommates moved out the next day.

Simple plots often work best when arranged in chronological order with a third person limited narrator.  It is no accident that this type of story is the favorite of both beginning writers and creative writing teachers.  The plain story line allows the writer to practice exposition, description, and dialogue with a minimum of confusing jumps in time, place, and character.  In addition, writers get positive responses when they share such stories because readers can follow them.  However, a writer who successfully completes a few simple short stories and skillfully uses basic techniques may want to undertake a more ambitious project:  a novel or an experiment with form in a short story.

A novel represents a considerable investment of time and energy by the writer.  Working several hours per day, writers research and prewrite for many months, write a first draft for perhaps a year, and then revise for a period of months to years.  Novels set in the here and now world familiar to the writer may require less research time.

No one who has written a novel, beginning to end, will ever forget that experience.  For a time, you live in two worlds, with two sets of companions, one setting nearly as real as the other.  Then you finish the story.  For the rest of your life, you remember and long for that imaginary time and place, those characters who became part of your family.

Short story writers tend to experiment with plot, character, and setting, although combinations do occur and new forms sometimes arise.  Plot experiments may involve flashbacks or the use of tense change to indicate changes in time periods.  Recently writers have experimented with characterization of protagonists and antagonists, giving both sides a near-equal balance of positive and negative attributes, thus involving the reader even more deeply because the struggle occurs between two not-so-bad forces rather than an all-good hero and an all-evil villain.  Other writers work with varying points of view.  Experiments in setting include the imaginative worlds of fantasy and science fiction stories.

The story which follows, "Flying Saucer People," utilizes a combination of experimental plot and narration by multiple characters.  Each character tells a part of the story, outsiders in first person, the one insider in third person.  The central character does not have her own voice, but is seen and understood only through the words of others.

Flying Saucer People

     Mom got weird about three years ago.  She switched churches when they forced out the old pastor, started going to a little church down the street.  Pretty soon she was up from just the Sunday morning service to church every day, twice on Sundays.  Hank and I couldn't even get her to come over for Sunday dinner; she'd rather eat at the church potlucks.
     We didn't know what kind of church it was until they mentioned it in the paper, an article on flying saucer religions.  Said they believed in faith healing, aliens, all that crackpot stuff.  Hank and I called Mom up, asked her right out if it was true.  We never talked much about her church after that.

     Jesse's fingers tingled, and he felt so happy.  He closed his eyes, relaxing into the man's soothing voice.
     "Your fingers and toes are numb, and your hands and feet.  Your legs and arms are so heavy.  Feel all the muscles relax, go limp.   Now your whole body feels relaxed.  Your head feels like gray cotton inside."
     Jesse held onto it, the gray tickle in his mind.  Everything was empty, bland, ready for the voices.
     The man talked on.  "Open yourself.  We open ourselves.  O Great Ones of the Beyond, we await you."
     "Come to us."  Jesse's voice echoed fifty others, but nothing stirred at the edge of his mind.  The stars held still in the sky, and no dot of light grew bigger.
     After the service, Jesse went up to the front of the temple  where Pastor Rainbow stood behind his podium congratulating those who had heard the aliens.  The pastor wore a cape of bright velvet stripes, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. Pink skin gleamed through the few strands of white hair on his head. Ten faithful clustered around him, and once in awhile Pastor Rainbow reached down to hold the hand of one or another.
     Jesse noticed an attractive older woman in a red suit and red hat with white feathers step up to the podium.  Pastor Rainbow sandwiched her hand between both of his and spoke seriously, nodding his head.  Jesse edged closer to hear.
     "Yes, Sister Caroline," the pastor said.  "You have been called on a mission."
     The woman looked down toward the floor, began to turn away, then stopped.  She raised her eyes to the pastor.  "My family, they don't like the church.  My daughter."
     "Dear sister."  The pastor patted her shoulder.  "Your family will get along without you."
     "Yes, that's what the Great Ones said."
 "Now, sister, get in your car and follow the instructions.  We don't often get opportunities for encounters, and you should feel honored."
     "Honored."  Her voice softened.  "Oh, yes, I am."
     When the woman turned away from the podium, Jesse stood in her path.  He stuck his hand out jerkily.  "Hello, Brother Jesse Hampton here."
     "Sister Caroline Burkhalter."
     Her hand felt cool and damp in his, and she pulled away after a moment.
     "I understand you have received the gift of voices, Sister."
 They strolled between rows of wooden pews gleaming with polish.  Jesse's nose itched from the dusty air, and his eyes dazzled for a moment as a ray of light shone in through the stained glass window.  He clasped red-knuckled hands behind his back, felt the shiny material of his one good suit.
     "Yes, a mission."
     "I have tried for voices, but have never been gifted."  Jesse shook his head.  "The gray cotton comes, but then nothing."
     Caroline bit her lip, chewing at her red lipstick.  "I waited a long time."
     The pair stepped through plain wooden doors into the lobby, turned right, and followed the scent of coffee and casseroles  downstairs to the basement where the potluck dinner waited.  Twenty people chatted in small groups at the ends of long tables.  The line at the kitchen door was short.  Caroline and Jesse stood at the end, moved ahead to pick up plates, paper napkins, silverware.  Jesse filled his plate with broccoli, rice casserole and meatless spaghetti.  He bypassed the salads, but noticed that Caroline did exactly the opposite.  Maybe diet had something to do with getting the voices.
     They sat by themselves at the end of one of the long tables.  When his plate was empty, Jesse wiped his mouth with a crumpled paper napkin, careful to clean the hairs of his neatly-trimmed moustache, then laid the napkin beside his plate.  "Coffee?" he asked politely.
     "No, thank you," Caroline replied.  "I try not to use drugs any more.  The mind must be clean to receive voices."
     Jesse nodded.  Perhaps that was his problem.  But his wife drank coffee, and it was awful hard to ignore the smell in the morning.  "Ever notice that we come to these meetings alone?  Without our families?"
     "That's because they don't believe us.  And it's all right.  We'll go with the aliens, and our families will stay behind."  Caroline took out a gold compact and lipstick and painted her lips a lush red.  "It makes no difference in the end, except that we will know the wonders of the universe."  She seemed to be looking at something far away.  "Excuse me."  She stood up.  "I have to go.
     Jesse watched her walk away, the rounded hips swaying back and forth under the skirt of her red suit.  Then he pushed those thoughts away, stood, and picked up their dishes.  Time to go home.

     He met that Burkhalter woman at one of those flying saucer  services.  Jesse liked books about space and UFOs even before we were married, but I never thought it would go so far.  I should have put a stop to it when he started going to conventions, where the people who read those kind of books all get together.
    That's where Jesse met that Rainbow guy.  He came home all bubbling over with the greatest news, that aliens were in contact with the earth, talking to us through a chosen few, and we had to listen.  I said to him, I said Jesse this time you've really flipped, but he kept going.
    Started to spend money, donating to them.  With three kids we hardly had enough to get by on, and pretty soon he was at meetings every night, waiting for the alien voices, he said, and Saturdays and Sundays, too. Wanted the kids and me to come along, but those people make me real nervous.

     That evening Jesse had a voice, just a faint one and very far away.  "Caroline," it said.  "Follow Sister Caroline."  After the service, he went up to Pastor Rainbow's podium to be congratulated.  The pastor's hands were as warm as his smile.  When Jesse turned away after the handshake, Caroline was at his elbow.
     "So you have joined us?" she asked, tilting her head to one  side as she raised her eyebrows.  Her hair curled dark and pretty  around her face, and her brown eyes were deep, so deep Jesse felt  afraid.  She bit her lower lip between white teeth.
    "Yes."  He paused.  "The voice said to follow you."
 Caroline looked away for a minute, then turned back to him.  "I have a mission."
     Jesse nodded, and reached for her hand.  "I will help you."
     "They told me to go to a place, to wait there until they come."  She gently removed her hand.
     "Where?"
     "We used to camp there when I was a kid.  Bear Lake.  Up north."
     Jesse shook his head.  "I've never been up there.  Just moved here two years ago when the company transferred me."
     "You have a job then.  And a family?"
     "My wife, Betsy, and three kids.  I'm assistant manager at the Harrison House Cafeteria."
     "Then you won't be able to go with me.  I have to leave this week.  They'll be here soon, the voices said."
    For once, Jesse didn't want to join the others downstairs.  Instead, he pushed open the door and stepped outside into the warm autumn evening.  Caroline followed.  They stopped on the steps to look up to the stars.
      "We are so lucky," Caroline whispered.  "To receive this gift."
      Jesse sighed.  "The voice told me to follow you.  We'll need money."
      "Traveler's checks.  I'll get some.  My late husband left me a little savings account."
      "I get paid Wednesday, every other week.  But Betsy and the  kids will need money while I'm gone."
      "If the Great Ones come right away, you can be back with the money before they need it.  If you could leave Betsy a little money, a few dollars.  The aliens told me they'll bring a million dollars, and surely the church will pay back anything you spend out of your own pocket.
      "A million dollars?"  Jesse looked at Caroline wide-eyed, and she gazed back confidently.  "When do we leave?"
      "Wednesday, after you pick up your paycheck."
     "I don't know if my boss will like this.  I have a few personal days, though.  Can we be back by Monday?"
    "If they come right away.  Listen, here's my phone number and  address."  Caroline dug into her red leather handbag, pulled out a checkbook, and ripped off a deposit slip printed with her address and telephone number.  "Call me in the morning."
     "Okay."  Jesse stood there, holding the deposit slip, and  watched her walk down the stairs and across the street to a blue Plymouth Horizon.  As she drove away, he crumpled the deposit slip in  his hand and stuffed it into his suitcoat pocket.

     When Mom took her whole savings account out of the bank and put it into traveler's checks, Hank and I knew something was wrong.  He said we ought to try and have her committed, but I just couldn't.
     Anyway, I went over to her apartment and there she was, packing.  All those funny vitamins she takes went in one suitcase.  She made peanut butter sandwiches from a whole loaf of bread and put them in the cooler with ice and cans of fruit juice.
     "Where are you going, Mom?" I asked.
     "Up to the lake."  She took a bag of apples out of the  refrigerator and moved the ice over to make room in the cooler.
     "What lake?"  I was getting frantic.
     "Just a lake up north."
     "But why?  You have your bridge club and the hospital  auxiliary."  I walked around in front of her.  "You just can't go off like this."
     "The voices told me.  I've been chosen for a mission.  You  wouldn't understand."
     I grabbed her arm.  "Listen, Mom.  Sit down for a minute."  I dragged her to the kitchen table and pushed her into a chair.  Everything was so neat in her house, just like always, not a crumb on the tabletop.
     She looked me hard in the eyes.  "You're not going to change my mind.  There are more important things than family.  The whole future of the world is at stake.  You'll understand when this is over."
     "Please, Mom.  Explain it to me."
     She looked at me out of the corners of her eyes.  "The aliens wait just out of sight, and they want to come to earth soon.  They asked me to meet them."
      I put my hand on hers where it lay on the table, but her hand felt so cold.  "Don't you think you're carrying this flying saucer stuff too far?"
      She jerked away.  "Others hear the voices, not just me.  And they have important messages too, Sissy."
      "You don't think it might be loneliness?  I mean, with Dad  dying and all, you've been alone so much."
     "No.  Now I have to finish packing."  She stood and pushed me away when I tried to hug her.
     "Will you at least call when you get there?"
     "No.  My business is mine, and yours is yours.  I'll call when I get back."
     So I left her there packing.  There's really nothing more I could have done.

     Those crazies up at the lake?  Yeah, I ran into them, must of been October.  Wife and kids and I had a picnic one Sunday.  Nice day for that time of year, I remember, must of been seventy degrees out.  We pulled into the picnic grounds parking lot, right on the lake.  Birches were all yellow.  Another car was backed up against the trees at the edge of the parking lot, little blue car.
     The kids puddled in the water with sticks while the wife and I lifted a couple of cold brews.  We lit some charcoal, cooked hotdogs.  The kids ran around screaming like kids do, and I guess the woman in the car didn't like it.  Heck, we didn't even notice anyone in the car until she got out and yelled all that crazy stuff about the great ones was coming and we'd scare them away.  She had on a red outfit, all wrinkled, like she'd been sitting a long time.       Weirdos, I told the wife, but the kids got scared and the temperature chilled down, so we left.  Tell you the truth, that woman spooked me.  While we packed up the picnic basket, a man got out from the driver's seat and walked over to us.  Said they were doing a science study, watching birds migrate.  Said the woman was afraid we'd scare the birds.  I figured the real birds was flapping around inside them two's skulls, if you get my meaning.

     Jesse didn't mind waiting.  He watched autumn progress, the leaves turning red and gold, then brown.  Migratory birds came and went, the herons and Canada geese, all the different kinds of ducks he didn't recognize.  But after the leaves were on the ground, the nights got colder.  At first he drove to town every few days for bread and peanut butter and fruit, but after the leaves were gone the voices told Caroline the Great Ones would come soon and she refused to leave.  So they drank water from the lake and ate handfuls of vitamins from her suitcase stockpile.
     When ice skinned the lake, Jesse broke it with a stick to scoop up water in a tin can.  He didn't like the water, brown and full of bits of sticks and leaves, but he drank it anyway.  Nights they huddled under their coats for warmth.  Jesse wanted to start the car engine and run the heater, but Caroline said no.  The Great Ones might land a ways off and they'd need the gas to drive to the ship.
     One night they saw a ship go over.  Jesse liked to stretch his legs every few hours.  Caroline never seemed to get cramped in the car, but after a lifetime of moving around, Jesse found the confinement difficult.  That night when he swung the door open and stepped out, the forest waited, dark and silent.  Not even the wind moved.  He looked up.  Sprinkled across black nothingness, the stars winked.  Although the Great Ones talked with Caroline all the time now, Jesse had never heard a voice after that one time in the church.
     He crunched across the gravel parking lot to the outhouse.   Inside, he unzipped his pants and started to pee.  At least there  were no bugs now.  Earlier they'd had to sleep with the car windows open because of the heat, and all night the mosquitos whined and bit them.  Now they kept the windows closed and shivered, but cold was better than bugs.
     A car door opened, and he heard Caroline's feet shuffle as she  groped for a foothold in the gravel.  "I'll help you," he yelled as  he zipped.
     "Jess, come quick, they're here."  Caroline's voice shrilled with excitement.
     Jesse ran toward her small shape huddled next to the car.
     "Where?  Where?"  He scanned the sky until he saw two tiny dots moving between the stars.  "That's them?"
     "I knew they'd come.  The voices said so."  Caroline pulled her coat tight around her, and fumbled in her purse.  She dug out her lipstick and compact, smeared the red across her mouth with a hand shaking from excitement or cold.
     "Shouldn't we wait in the car?" he asked.
     "No."  Caroline's voice was firm.  "We'll stand right here and watch them come in.  The ships can land on water or in the parking lot.  Oh, I'm so happy."  She clasped her hands and stood on tiptoes.
     They waited all night, even after the lights disappeared, but the ships never came.  Caroline's voices told of galactic war, great ships battling above the earth.  Jesse didn't look at the sky anymore after that.  He figured if they were coming, the aliens would land where he'd see them.

     About the end of November, just before the first big snow, we make one last cruise through the park to make sure teenagers haven't been partying up there.  Sometimes a lot of beer cans get thrown around and we have to send someone in to pick up.
     Anyway, the two of them was sitting in that car parked  practically in the woods, at the far end of the parking lot.  My Jeep made tire tracks in and out, but the snow was smooth as could be the rest of the way.  They must not have moved that car for days or weeks.  I saw movement in the car, so I got out and went over.  Thought maybe it was backpackers or someone in trouble.
     The man rolled down his window to talk to me, but neither one of them got out.  They smelled awful, like sweat and dirty clothes.  His beard had grown all raggedy, and the overcoat was buttoned right up to his chin.  Had a little stocking cap on, and thin city gloves.
     I tried to bend over and look into the car without seeming too nosy, and the woman had a fake fur coat spread out over her.  Her face looked thin, but her lipstick was fresh, bright red.  He said they were studying birds.  I didn't believe it for a minute, but people's business is their own, the sheriff says, as long as they're legal.  We ran a check on the car when I got back to the station, and they weren't on anybody's wanted list.
     That was the last I heard of them until that Reilly girl called the sheriff's office to report she'd found a man crawling in the snow.

     After the first big snow, Jesse begged Caroline to leave, but she huddled under her coat without talking.
     "Please, Caroline.  We're getting so thin.  And it's colder every day.  We have to get out now, while I can still drive to the highway."
     She stuck her head out from under the coat, her hair standing up in crazy tufts.  "No, I won't go.  You can leave any time you want to, but it's my car and the voices told me to wait here for the Great Ones."
      "Maybe the voices made a mistake, Caroline."  He tugged at the corner of her coat, tried to lift it off her face.  "Maybe they can't come down because of the war or the snow.  We'll try again next summer."
      But his arguments did no good.  Caroline was physically weak, but stubborn.  Then more snow fell, and they were so cold neither one cared.  The voices continued to encourage Caroline, but Jesse spent most of his time sleeping.  Then Caroline started to wet herself instead of going to the outhouse.
      "I'm going to drive out," Jesse said, and despite Caroline's weak protests he started the car, tried forward and reverse.  The snow was too deep.
     "See?" she taunted.  "The Great Ones mean for us to wait here."
     But Jesse didn't wait.  He pushed the door out into the snowbank which had formed around the Horizon.  He had no boots, but he waded ahead through hip-deep snow, stumbled, fell.  Sunlight dazzled him, wind-blown ice crystals scoured his face, and he crawled toward the narrow opening in the trees which led to the park road.  He did not remember how long he crawled, time made no sense after waiting for so long, but he knew when the woman's voice, not Caroline's, spoke to him.
     "Mister?  Are you okay?"
     Jesse looked up at an angel in blue.  The woman kicked off her cross-country skis and gave him warm tea from a thermos.  Afterward, she spread her down jacket over him and told him to wait, but Jesse kept crawling down the road toward town, following the ski tracks.

     I wasn't sure he was alive when I first saw him.  He moved so slow, just a black spot on the snow about halfway between the picnic grounds and the highway.  Nobody uses the park in winter except skiers.  The sledding hill's in town, and snowmobilers stick to the highway because that's where the taverns are.
     Anyway, the crazy guy was so intent on crawling I couldn't get him to look at me.  Finally I stood right in his way, and then he stopped.  His eyes were awful bloodshot, and his beard was full of scabs.  He called me an angel.  I got a thermos out of my backpack and gave him a drink of tea.  He wanted to keep on crawling, so I skied out to the highway, drove three miles to Corner Gas, and called the sheriff.  Then I went back to pick the man up.  He kept mumbling about some woman named Caroline.

     The woman was dead when we got to the car.  Pity, because according to the man she'd been alive in the morning.  No food in the car, hardly any warm clothes, don't know whether she froze or  starved.  The man was luckier, only lost some toes and one thumb to frostbite.  I went to the hospital to tell him the woman was dead, and he just laid there on the emergency room cart, staring up at the ceiling.  They'd cleaned him up some, but he still smelled real bad.
     "Mister?"  I asked.
     "Yes?"  He rolled his head to look at me, and those blue eyes were sunk so far back in his head he looked empty, kind of like he'd forgotten how to think.
     "Your friend, the woman."
     "Caroline."
     I fumbled around a bit, but finally managed to get the words  out. "It was just too late.  She died."
     His face broke all up, and he sobbed right out loud, big tears running down his cheeks.  And do you know what he said?
     "They came for her," he said, his voice all hoarse and cracking.  The tears kept running out of his eyes.  "They came for her and left me behind."
     We didn't know what to make of it until we heard about these  flying saucer people the two of them was involved with.  Turns out they was waiting for flying saucers to land out there at Bear Lake.  Can you imagine that?

Writers use paragraphing and punctuation to signal readers that a change is taking place.  Although some experienced writers vary from the norm, beginning writers should learn accepted forms which both they and their readers will understand.  For instance, a new speaker or thinker or doer requires a new paragraph.  This means that paragraphs are often quite short in prose fiction, especially in scenes where the focus changes rapidly from one speaker to another.  Words spoken aloud by a character are bracketed in quotation marks, with the end punctuation of the spoken piece placed inside the final quotation mark.  Thoughts are usually left as ordinary lines, although some writers underline or italicize thoughts as an additional clue to the reader.  In Example 8.9, the first paragraph (Mark as speaker/thinker/doer) simply inserts thoughts into the narration.  The second paragraph (Sue as speaker/thinker/doer) uses underlining to indicate her thoughts.  In a given story, choose one method or the other and stick with it to avoid confusing readers.

Mark stared at the computer screen.  Now how do I indicate to my readers that this character is thinking at this point? He leaned over toward Sue, a classmate who was working at the computer terminal next to him.  "Do you remember how to indicate thoughts in a story?" he asked.

Sue rolled her eyes.  That's Mark, always interrupting.  Just put them in as part of the narration,"  she said.  "The reader will pick up on thoughts."  She shook her head and went back to work on her short story.

Prose fiction greatly rewards both writer and reader.  More accessible to many people than poetry, drama, or nonfiction prose, stories transmit their own wisdom.  But the writer should not begin with a lesson to teach or a point to prove.  Instead, put characters into a difficult situation and then see what happens.  Let the plot move along in a cause and effect sequence of events which feels realistic.  Then rewrite for clarity, leaving out any unnecessary words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters.  Like all writing, prose fiction should use the most exact and fewest words, arranged in the best possible order.

1. What characteristics set prose fiction apart from other genres?

2. Outline the growth of fiction as a genre.

3. Describe the relationship between length and complexity in fiction.

4. What does setting do for a story or novel?

5. Define catharsis.  Why is emotional involvement important to readers?

6. What should the beginning of a short story tell the reader?

7. What happens in the middle of a short story?

8. How do scenes work in prose fiction?

9. What is the function of the denouement?

10. Describe the characteristics of experimental fiction.

11. In prose fiction, when should the writer begin a new paragraph?  Why?

12. Write a short dialogue, using quotation marks and other punctuation correctly.
 

As with other journal exercises, get comfortable, relax, close your eyes, and concentrate on breathing deeply and slowly, relaxing more each time you exhale.

When you feel ready, begin to think about your own life, the unusual things which have happened to you.  Let your mind explore these events, and pay attention to the people who were present and the places where these things occurred.

When you have explored the ideas which come to mind, take a deep breath, open your eyes, and write down what you remember.

You may want to develop one of these ideas into a piece of prose fiction.

Other people can provide you with story ideas, too.  Talk to the old people in your family or neighborhood.  Ask them to tell you stories from times of great change in their lives:  the Depression, the death of a spouse, moving to a new home.  Listen when your peers tell stories about shopping, hunting, buying a new car, or a blind date.  Jot down interesting ideas in your journal.

When you want to write a piece of prose fiction, read through your journal entries and choose one idea to develop into a short story.  Topics to be avoided include the birth of your first child (nearly every woman does it), getting your first motor vehicle (most of us experience this), or high school adventures (we've all done this, too).  Instead of focusing on the mundane and usual, look for the offbeat and slightly wacky idea.

Buy a supermarket tabloid with lurid headlines:  "Cow with the Head of a Man," "Woman Bears Child of Gorilla," "Man Visited By Dead Mother."  Read the articles, looking for one which especially captures your interest.

Now assume the persona of one of the characters in the article and write a short story focused on that person's experiences.  Keep the story moving, but choose a small period of time.  For instance, you can't give the whole life story of the woman who loves the gorilla; write their love story, from the moment they met until he was hauled away in a cage to be returned to the jungle.

Be sure to include conflict, narration, setting, characterization, and dialogue.