Writing: Other Structures

What if there other ways to structure a fiction?

I think Kishōtenketsu and Non-Western Story Structures by Angie Hodapp addresses this question.

...If our ubiquitous structures aren’t adhered to, then these stories shouldn’t work. So why do they? The answer is simple: Because different types of stories and different ways of telling them have, over centuries, evolved all over the globe. Learning, using, teaching, or critiquing others’ work based on only one of several similar structures is painfully limiting to both storytellers and their audiences.

Ms. Hodapp gives a tight description and links to examples. I have to find the time to follow them down. Why? Because of this:

Here’s another difference. In our familiar Western structures, writers are expected to wrap everything up at the end, to leave no questions unanswered (unless they’re setting up a sequel, in which the expectation is still that cliffhanger questions must eventually be answered). But of Kishōtenketsu, Kim Yoon Mi says, “the conclusion isn’t always a resolute solution to everything….It’s more like a wrap up for that particular issue, while indicating the story still goes on beyond that…often with notes about the occasional backslide.”

When I took my one college writing class, my professor criticized one story for not wrapping up the story with a neat resolution. I walked away thinking I did not know how to write a short story. Thing is I thought then as I think now that reality has no neat resolutions. I see the short story as a vignette contained with a larger reality.

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1/22/22