Observations on story structure

There may very well be words for what I’m going to talk about here, but I’m not aware of them, so bear with me as I go through the long awkward process of describing them.

There’s a certain structure of some short stories, sometimes novels as well. The first, say 80-95, maybe even 99% of the story is as expected, with some central dilemma, the characters attempting to resolve it. Then at the very end, an accident happens. Maybe the main character has a heart attack, or the villain gets hit by a truck. Usually the story ends shortly thereafter. Like a deus ex machina, the event happens out of left field, with no build up or foreshadowing. Afterwards, there is very little or no reflection.

(Aside: Some stories might have an outwardly similar structure, where a random accident provides a solution to the dilemma. That falls more in the “deus ex machina” category than this. Compare also Kishōtenketsu, which has often a “twist” at act 3, but provides an act 4 to provide closure and resolution.)

It’s very obviously not a happily ever after, but it also doesn’t give the emotional release of tragedy and other unhappily ever afters. The intended emotional impact of these endings is at best to leave people with a “realistic” ambiguity, at worst a feeling of meaningless and powerlessness in the face of random happenstance.

I think it’s an interesting device, used once or twice. But, when it becomes a genre unto itself, the new standard of what a “deep” ending is, then something else is at work.

Liberal Nihilism

Unfortunately most thoughts about “liberal nihilism” seem to come from conservative viewpoints, but it’s also something you notice from farther left as well. After all, if you are “liberal” (used here not by its official definition, but to refer to a group of people who identify themselves that way), your eyes are open to the problems of the world: systemic racism, climate change, homelessness, the erosion of our social fabric. But the solutions to them require large changes to the status quo: radical reworkings of welfare, work, community. The people who believe these changes are possible quickly find themselves in the company of at minimum progressives, sometimes communists, anarchists, and so on. But those who hold harder to the status quo have only one option: to believe they are powerless and that nothing matters.

This is why these endings are so fashionable to a certain flavor of liberal publication. They’re aware that there’s something hollow in the happily ever after that comes after your hero’s journey, your tragic fall of the kings. These stories take you back to a status quo that still falls short. The arc of justice bends, but only back onto itself. And in some ways, they’re right. You can’t change the world by fetching a magic item or killing the bad guy. You beat the evil empire, but one generation later they’re back again. You take down the fascists and three generations later your grandchildren pick up where they left off. These happily ever afters are false. The promise of these stories—that all the mess and happenstance of our lives is part of something, anything—is broken.

But not all stories. Yes, making the world a better place is harder than finding a holy grail or putting the Right Guy on the throne. But that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible. All I know is that if you look at every dream of a better world and dismiss them all as naive, gauche, “unrealistic,” then it becomes impossible. If you can’t even entertain the idea of a better ending in a story, where anything is possible, what hope do we have in real life, where so much less is? The work to build a better world is difficult, but it can’t start while you’re indulging in powerlessness and despair. The point of stories is not to be “realistic” but to explore how we might take the mess and happenstance of our lives and transmute it into the strength to take us closer to our own happily ever after. If your eyes truly are open to the problems of the world, then you know, too, despair is a luxury we can ill afford.