The beauty of good short fiction comes through even when it’s bad. Or something like that. 

Max Blue’s story from NDQ 90.3/4, “How to Write Good or the Bad Story Ever” is a funny and awkward but somehow also touching piece of short fiction that embodies the best (and also the worst) of short stories. But it does it in the best worst way possible.

Enjoy! 

How to Write Good or The Bad Story Ever

“I ran into Aksel in the coffee shop yesterday,” Florrie said, trying to pass this off like it didn’t mean anything, like this was just a silly anecdote and not something that had devastated her.

They were in Whole Foods. Effie was squeezing tomatoes and Florrie was bending carrots to see if they had reached the rubber state.

“We always talk about how to write good stories,” Effie said, sniffing her tomato hand. “I want to see if you can write a really, really bad story.”

Florrie felt her stomach turn over. Why did Effie have to insist on being so interesting all the time? And how come she never listened to Florrie complain about her, Florrie’s, problems? Or maybe it was time Florrie took the hint: Aksel wasn’t her problem anymore.

“Fine,” she said distractedly, moving on to broccolini. “All my stories are bad anyway.”

“No,” Effie said, “they are not. And besides, I mean try to make the story bad this time.”

Effie had a date with Marcus, the guy from singles’ night at the pottery studio (only $200!), so they split off at the subway entrance and Florrie took the L train back to Williamsburg.

On the train ride home, she couldn’t help but feel upset with Effie. She should have told her how she felt about the writing challenge thing. She never stood up for herself. This was something she and her therapist were working on. Her therapist kept telling her to start small, in little encounters with people she trusted. Did this mean she didn’t trust Effie? Or just that she, Florrie, hated herself that much?

The other main thing her therapist wanted her to work on was her struggle with indecision and accepting imperfection in her writing. The two were related, according to Florrie’s therapist, even though she, Florrie, hadn’t realized this at first. But a lot of things in therapy had been like that. What upset Florrie so much was that realizing two things were connected, or figuring out the source of a problem, didn’t make either problem go away. In fact, it just made both of them more present, because then you noticed the problem and couldn’t stop it from happening, whereas before you didn’t realize what was going on at all. You just suffered at the whim of some vague entity.

A bad story, Florrie thought, would switch between the third person and second person points of view.

oOo

The next day, Florrie told her therapist she was upset because her friend Effie had challenged her to write a bad story.

Her therapist suggested, very gently, that she, Florrie, ought to try doing it and asking herself why it felt so difficult to do.

Florrie and Effie had had a friendship-length conversation about what makes a story good, ever since they met in their MFA program at an important university in New York. The conclusion they had arrived at was: Honesty. They arrived at this conclusion after arriving at another conclusion first: All truth is fiction. Everyone is always telling a story about the person they think they are, the life they think they’re living, in everything they do and say. We live by the stories we tell ourselves and about ourselves. Writing stories isn’t any different.

To attempt a bad story, Florrie would lie. (Florrie has already lied: Her friend’s name is not Effie; her name is not Florrie.)

The kinds of stories Florrie hated were narratives which placed great emphasis on plot and character development rather than a translation of theoretical ideas and a transference of emotional honesty. Florrie didn’t care for the development of someone made-up. She cared how a story would develop her. This, she thought, was the difference between literature and entertainment. She still liked entertainment. Just not contaminating her literature.

To write a bad story, Florrie decided, she would do everything her professors had taught her in her MFA program.

She would lead a protagonist through a pyramid-shaped plot structure: Exposition; Rising Action; Climax; Falling Action (the pretentious guy in class had called this Dénouement); Resolution.

To begin with, the protagonist would face some essential yet mystifying challenge, and by the end she would arrive at a realization, an epiphany in her mind or heart that was significant but not so grand as to make that realization feel unattainable to the reader.

Who reads? Florrie often wondered. This seemed like an important question to answer before writing the story. Her ex-boyfriend, Aksel, worked at a bookshop, and he had told her that it was mostly women in their mid-twenties to late-thirties, primarily Asian, white, and Black, with money to spend on books and a self-esteem complex to maintain since graduating from college. Florrie thought that maybe, because Aksel worked in a bookshop in a wealthy neighborhood, in a wealthy city, in a wealthy nation, his subject pool had been limited. But she hadn’t questioned him because he had paid for dinner that night.

Knowing who reads would help make your characters Relatable, and the next rule she would follow was that all characters must be Relatable. (Florrie detested this word because she maintained that we were all strangers to ourselves.)

A bad story would be in the third person, which Florrie also detested because she thought it was an unrealistic reproduction of real life. Even when one looked at another person and wondered how they lived, one did so by putting oneself in the other’s shoes.

The Protagonist (Florrie prefers Narrator) would have a name like Effie or Florrie: Quirky enough to make the reader feel special, but not a name outside the realm of possibility. All readers have known at least one Effie or one Florrie, a little girl in a sun-faded, grade-school memory. She was the girl who always washed her hands first, who didn’t take her shoes off in the sandbox, who was never seen crying, not even once.

Effie or Florrie or Natasha would be gendered but sexless, white or maybe beige, and work a well-paying job in tech or publishing, so that the challenge set to her in the story would never be financial and thereby could be universal. She may also be a successful writer, but she must never be an artist (unless on the side; she may do watercolors in the evenings, or go to classes at a pottery studio). She may not have a boyfriend or husband, but she may have an ex-boyfriend who she may run into who must have a similarly quirky but familiar name, such as Aksel. She may not be a lesbian, but she may be bi-sexual. Her toenails must always be painted but never her fingernails.

This character might be relatable to a woman who wears stretch pants to run her errands and a sundress to brunch in the park on weekends with her “girlfriends.” (There would also be quotation marks in Florrie’s bad story, since Florrie hated those, too, for their artificiality.)

The challenge the protagonist faces is perhaps the most variable constraint but it is still limited and must adhere to the following principles: It may be relational but must not be marital (a conflict between family members (preferably the protagonist’s sister or mother) or friends, is best); It might also be a creative challenge, such as the protagonist’s struggle to write a good short story that will win her a prize. Florrie decided to combine the two types of challenges: Florrie’s white, female, writer protagonist, named Florrie (who deviated from the set guidelines by wearing sweaters—quirky!), was annoyed with her friend who had challenged her to write a bad story (what would be referred to as the Inciting Incident in Florrie’s MFA program).

This was an exemplary Inciting Incident because it set several tensions for the protagonist which were extremely relatable: Difficulty with work; annoyed with friend; struggling with emotional difficulty.

In a short story, there need be very little Exposition. The thing about mentioning Aksel and squeezing the fruit was enough. In a short story, it is better to get to the Inciting Incident quickly and throw the protagonist into the fray.

Now, the Rising Action (which Florrie was already halfway through): Florrie trying to write the story, over a period of one or two days.

oOo

On the second day writing her bad story, Florrie ran into Aksel again at Starbucks.

Florrie was a regular at the neighborhood Starbucks. (In a bad story, the protagonist would never go to a locally owned, neighborhood coffee shop. That would be just too quirky. And even at Starbucks, the barista may be queer and beige or an exceptionally handsome (white) man who can mysteriously afford a great apartment.)

Aksel was coming out when Florrie was going in. (A bad story makes extraneous use of emotionally charged exchanges in doorways.) They did the doorway dance.

Florrie laughed. She could feel herself flushing. Her neck and chest always flushed when she was embarrassed, and she knew the pale skin was turning red and blotchy under her turtleneck and where her earrings grazed her cheek.

“How have you been?” Aksel asked. “Since a few days ago.” “I’ve been great,” Florrie said.

“You’re flushing,” Aksel said.

Florrie laughed again.

“Well,” she said, “I haven’t been great.”

“Get your coffee,” Aksel said. “I’ll wait here and walk with you.”

When Florrie came out with her latte, she was almost surprised to see Aksel still there.

“Now,” he said, “what’s the problem?”

Florrie rolled her eyes.

“It’s really stupid,” she said. “But Effie challenged me to try to write a bad story and it made me upset.”

“Because you think that your stories are bad enough as it is?”

“Yes! And because I felt like she wasn’t listening to what I was telling her at the time.”

“What were you telling her?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It might feel good to tell someone.”

Florrie stopped at the corner and looked at Aksel. He had cappuccino foam on his lower lip. He was listening.

“I was trying to tell her I miss you,” Florrie said.

Aksel touched her neck with his fingertips.

“You flush when you’re nervous,” he said.

He kissed her.

This is an exemplary Climax. It plucks a note sounded at the beginning

of the story which may be unexpected to the reader yet makes perfectly good sense as soon as they read it. This is what Florrie’s favorite professor in her MFA program called The Unexpected Inevitable.

oOo

Reading back over her bad story, Florrie realizes that there are no bad stories, there is only poor form.

But she has done it! She has written a story adhering to all the rules she learned in grad school. It’s written well, it’s textbook good. It’s so good it’s bad. She hates it so much. She wants Effie to love it.

The only thing she has left to do is give the story a title.

A bad story, Florrie thinks, would have a quirky title, a slogan or play on words, like, “How to Write Good,” or “The Baddest Story Ever.” Florrie likes the second option better than the first one but since “baddest” isn’t a word, except in slang, to mean “good,” it doesn’t quite work. And it isn’t a quirky or catchy misspelling, it’s just annoying and confusing. Out of force of habit she autocorrects “baddest” to “bad,” and then decides she likes the look of that: “The Bad Story Ever.”

But she still can’t decide so she keeps them both, letting herself be okay with indecision. This is such a big step for Florrie. Her therapist will be so proud.

~

Max Blue’s art criticism has appeared in Cultured and Hyperallergic among others, and his short fiction has appeared in Mount Hope and Your Impossible Voice, among others. He lives in San Francisco.

90.3/4