Any story well-told is worth the telling.

I read this sentence today and was struck by its pithiness (it's by Dorothy Parker). It set me thinking mightily with its implication that plot and events are not as important as the way they are related.

Pete

I think this is true, but I'm ruminating about why.

I suppose there are two components to any story: what you're telling, and how you're telling it. You can get away with bad or dull telling if the subject is new and interesting: the first ever decently-researched novel set among the last inhabitants of Easter Island will not have to be a work of literary genius to be worth reading. Equally, you can get away an over-exposed and therefore dull subject if you tell it well enough: see what Altman did with the country house mystery in Gosford Park, for instance.

Parker, I suppose, is making the case for the latter: that a subject that doesn't inherently sound interesting, either because of over-exposure, or because someone thinks, 'who cares about a day in the life of two adolescent boys in small-town America?', can in the right hands (like Carver's) still be the stuff of fictional magic.

People often criticise fiction because of its subject, and writers get rejections because of it, and I often think, 'no, it's not because no one wants to read about X any more, it's because the story isn't well enough told. If it were - and 'well-told' might mean a pretty radical re-think of the subject - then no one would quarrel with the it.

Emma

It set me thinking that any story worth telling is worth telling well. ;-)

The more I've thought about this the more it seems self-evident. I think of the raconteur especially, who can weave from the thinnest material a hilarious and entertaining half hour just through the skill and magic of technique...

Pete

Tell that to the taxi driver that spent twenty minutes telling me about his car he took into the garage. Oh the glee. I was on the edge of my proverbial seat with excitement. All the time being irritated while trying to sound like I 'cared'. Worst journey of my life. I should have kicked out the back windscreen and crawled to freedom.

Ste

I think story telling itself is an artform. Be it the written word or image (moving and still). The subject might be weak but get the perception and pace fused together and the results speak for themselves. So in that repect any story well told is worth telling.

Ste

I love a good 'took my car to the garage' story. What happened to the car? What was the problem? What kind of car was it? How much did it cost? Where was the garage? What was the mechanic's name? Was it a bit of a ripoff?

Steve?

Steve...?

Pete

Pete, I had to take a taxi. As you know, someone stole my horse... anyway, he just started talking like he was building up to the greatest punch line in the history of phonetics. And lots... of ... ummming... and... aahing... like... he ... had ... Alzheimer’s... and... did... not... know... why... he... was... driving... a... taxi…

It was horrible. I remember nothing he said. It went through me like shit through a straw. I don't know the first thing about cars. He took his car into the garage to have some sort of... wings or something fitted to the back ??? When it came back, there was a funny vibration noise - a bit like my brain felt listening to his monotonous voice - he was in the car with his wife. His wife had to get out. He kept driving the car. It still made a noise. He got out the car. Checked the car. Oil leaked. He took the car back...

Fifteen minutes later and I'm nearly in a coma. He got the car back days later... and by that point I'd lost all sense of humanity. I should have taken his seatbelt and garrotted him with it while he was at the lights.

The most humble people in the world can write masterpieces. Yet some of them can't convey a simple story with conviction.

Ste

I think that some people are just born storytellers. I have a close friend who can make the most mundane story come alive. Yet I have another friend (not as close) who did a round the world trip last year and bored me silly with his recounting of it. And his powerpoint presentation of his photos. As has been mentioned above, even the most humdrum of events can come alive in the right hands. It's all about the details, and how they are communicated. Our job is to take these small things and talk about the big things through them. Look at Six Feet Under, for example. Who'd have thought a drama set in a funeral parlour could run to five series? I've all the first four (ah, the wonders of DVD box sets...) and each episode is a gem.

Darren

Ps Gosford Park - a film of two halves. Until it turns into Cluedo with Steven Fry, it's brilliant.

Ps Gosford Park - a film of two halves. Until it turns into Cluedo with Steven Fry, it's brilliant.

Good, someone else who agrees with me about that. Though the non-Stephen Fry bits go on being good. Now there's an actor who's become mired in his own self-indulgence.

Emma

He's the Queen of Quaff, is our Stephen. Anyone read any of his books? I've avoided.

JB

Never even occurred to me to try, not my cup of tea at all. Though he's bright enough, and Fry and Laurie was funny. Pity it's all rather gone to seed.

Emma

Forget Stephen Fry, go and find a copy of Hugh Laurie's The Gun Seller instead. A marvelous debut novel which manages to be a enjoyable thriller with the right amount of comic elements to stop it being a parody. If Hugh decided to stop playing House, he should really do us all a favour and resume a writing career.


<Added>

I mean..which manages to be an enjoyable thriller

Did anyone catch Fry on the family tree programme. I don't usually watch tv but I was gripped. S

Praising 'Gosford Park' and knocking Stephen Fry? I'm on the wrong thread . . . ! (although his performance in GP was dire). Julian Fellowes, for me, has too many characters and too many sub-plots that don't firm up into anything that really interests me. Had to stop watching 'Downton Abbey' for the same reasons. Matter of taste, I suppose.

The more I've thought about this the more it seems self-evident. I think of the raconteur especially, who can weave from the thinnest material a hilarious and entertaining half hour just through the skill and magic of technique...

Tell that to the taxi driver that spent twenty minutes telling me about his car he took into the garage.

The two quotes above both reminded me of a piece by Alan Coren, 'Some Enchanted Evening'. Based, as his pieces so often were, around a snippet in the paper (in this case the Radio Times) that read 'Alan Coren, editor of Punch, raconteur and wit, wants his sitting room to be a background for lively conversation amongst his journalist and cartoonist friends.

It begins:

'I nearly got the car back this morning,' I began.
They settled in their chairs.
'This morning?' enquired a cartoonist.
'Before lunch, as it were?' asked the literary editor.
'Quite,' I riposted, swishing the Hine around its balloon. 'I'm talking about - what? - somewhere between eleven and eleven-thirty.'
Nobody said anything; there were one or two sharp intakes of breath, though.
'Yes,' I continued, 'I went up to Malvern Road, and I nearly got it back. When I say nearly, what I mean is they'd managed to get the bell-housing out, but the part they'd back-ordered from the stores at Brentford hadn't come in.'
'Typical!' said the features editor.
Everyone roared.
'A cog, as I understand it,' I said.

And so it goes on. An 'everyday' story can certainly be made rivetting by fine writing, but I thought this might make you smile.

Jan