A PLEA FOR UNITY

by Rob Lopresti

I have written here before, probably too often, about my series of stories about mystery writer Leopold Longshanks. My least favorite of the bunch is "Shanks Gets Mugged".

It isn’t a bad story, I think, but it lacks unity, and worse, the whole series lacks unity because of it.

The concept of unity goes back to that noted critic Aristotle. (I think he worked for Kirkus Reviews, but they don’t reveal their reviewers’ names). He said that drama needed three unities:

• time (action all takes place within 24 hours)
• place (the stage only represents one place)
• action (no subplots)

I’m not writing plays and I don’t much care whether Ari likes my stuff, but I do feel that certain kinds of unity are important, especially in a short story. Let’s start with time.

Ticking by

Here are the times covered by some of my Shanks stories (including some as yet unpublished):

• A long lunch
• Over drinks
• A day
• A weekend
• After dinner
• A taxi ride

As you can see, these stories don’t take very long. The weekend-long story is the only one that doesn’t meet Aristotle’s rule (and it is also the longest story (in words) I have ever sold). But "Shanks Gets Mugged" is the exception. It covers:

About two months.

Quite a difference, right? And while it was necessary for the story, it bugs me.

The view depends upon the point of view

All the Shanks stories are told in the third person, by a narrator who is very much tied to Shanks’ point of view. We often hear what’s going on in his head, but never in anyone else’s. The exception is — you guessed it — "Shanks Gets Mugged." In order to make the story work I had to show the important phone conversation between our hero and the bad guy from the bad guy’s point of view. I wrestled with this decision, didn’t like it a bit, but it was the only way that worked.

But it damaged the unity of the story, and the series.

Does any of this matter? Does the average reader notice it? I don’t imagine they do, even if they have read the other stories in the series, and retain some vague memory of them. But, boy, I sure notice them.

It all depends

But the key point is that each story (or series) needs its own consistent unity, and what works for one is not necessarily relevant to another. One of the best stories I have read in the last few years was "How Wendy Tudhope Was Saved from Sure and Certain Death" by Rob Kantner. In one way this story is the very opposite of unity. It consists of a lot of small chapters, each featuring a different character. In the first a lawyer chases away an immigration officer who is flirting with his client. In the second the immigration man decides to check a motel for illegal workers. In the third an illegal maid is frightened into hiding in a car trunk. In the fourth the driver… but you get the idea.

The story has perfect unity because all the crazy little segments resemble each other and build on each other (and end up, full circle, with the lawyer). 

The big question I have on this subject involves twist endings. If you spend nine-tenths of a story thinking Joe is the bad guy and then find he’s the hero, that seems like a major violation of unity, doesn’t it? But if the story is well-done there will be foreshadowing, so that the reader gets to the end and thinks "I should have seen it coming." And maybe that provides the hidden unity of structure. What do you think?

Note: Thanks to Phil Stephensen-Payne at Galactic Central Publications for magazine archive information.