Thanks too for commenting, Vanessa. (I’m a fan of your work and your blog, and am waiting in excited anticipation for my copy of ‘Short Circuit’ to arrive.) I’m glad you found that extract as moving as I did. For me, ‘Uncle Ernest’ is one of those stories that takes you to a place of enormous pity that – in some ways – you’d rather not go at all and yet…
Thank you for the two recommendations. I’ll look forward to the reading pleasure that awaits!

Fiona x

There is something unbearable about those line up there. Uncomfortable. It’s hard to then turn to the next story and forget that feeling.

Another to try: In the Gloaming, by Alice Elliott Dark. (Best American Short Stories of the century, Ed John Updike)
and The Ledge, by Lawrence Sargeant Hall. Happens to be in the same collection.

So-called character-driven stories, which often end in a sudden profound realisation on the part of the central character, do more than just show a change in that character’s perception or understanding. The term epiphany is often associated with modernist writers – Woolf, Joyce, Mansfield for example – whose work concentrated on evocations of consciousness and largely eschewed the use of plot. An epiphany is a device used to evoke a profound change in the consciousness of a character resulting from their experience: a kind of momentary revelation. It need not be a particularly violent or dramatic experience that brings about such a change. But the change, when it comes, is internal to the character, even though changes in behaviour may follow from it. The epiphany is usually evoked in the imagery of the story rather than by the narrator telling us it has happened. Thus, to cite two famous examples, the sense of the snow falling all over Ireland is the image Joyce uses to evoke Gabriel Conroy’s epiphany in The Dead. Similarly, in Katherine Mansfield’s story Bliss, Bertha’s epiphany is evoked through her perception of the pear tree.

I think this is what your two critics meant when they suggested that the ending of your story would have benefitted from greater evocation of the way your central character’s experience made the world seem different. Through your writing we need to see the effects of that change of heart.

Of course ‘character’ stories have plots, just as ‘plot-driven’ stories have characters. It’s in the way writers use language to evoke the significance of their characters’ experience that the difference lays. I suspect the change in your story might only require a touch here and there to make it work, but the main difference
would be in your understanding of what your story can do.

Hope this helps,

Nick x

Nicola

Thanks for commenting. Glad you liked the Sillitoe example! It’s really funny when I look at stories I wrote, say, a couple of years ago. They seem to be characterised by what I’d call the Fizzle Out ending, i.e. “the story’s over now so you (the reader) can resolve it for yourself.” Actually that now seems such a cop-out AND a missed opportunity to connect with the reader, and to (subtly) build layers that hopefully will resonate with him/her for a while afterwards… That’s the theory anyway!! Fiona