Elementary Fiction
Oral narratives are as old as human society. Then, with the advent of the printing press, books entered the mix. By the 20th century, downstream ripples from the industrial revolution had brought easy access to narrative/dramatic entertainment thanks to radio and television. In some households, TV assumed the role of a storytelling babysitter.
But I didn’t grow up in such a household. As a young child, I was an outsider to TV culture because my parents restricted our screen time. While I didn’t feel lucky then, in
hindsight it may have been their greatest gift. I lived in a private world of books and imagination, writing my own stories as soon as I learned the alphabet. And once I learned cursive and my hand had a better chance of keeping up with my brain, I started writing my first novel.
Portrait of the Novelist as an Eight-Year-Old
George’s Adventures was, of course, an adventure novel. What child doesn’t dream of adventures? So I gave George plenty of ‘em. He was a suburban kid with a wooden character: an observer, a barely reactive POV, a passenger in his own life. Yet thanks to sheer bad luck, he and his friends attracted dire events that usually involved getting kidnapped by globe-trotting criminals. But the boys always got themselves out of trouble. And when things weren’t happening to George and his many friends, it was George and his many siblings. Clearly, he needed a supporting cast.
The novel’s story arc wasn’t terribly sophisticated. It could have stopped at many points along the way. When I finally wrapped this great work in sixth grade, my narrative style and writing skills had evolved so much that I felt compelled to rewrite it from the beginning. But that effort didn’t get very far, because I’d lost interest. It was easy to lose interest in George.
And anyway, in fifth and sixth grade, I’d already started George in France and George in Time, the second and third novels in this series. I never finished those, either, because other than adding a network of sewers and caves under Paris, a time machine stolen directly from TV, and dinosaurs as bad guys, the stories were essentially the same. Poor George!
My First Prolific Period
That said, I had some big distractions from my aspiration as an elementary-school novelist. During fifth grade, I became a short-story machine. I trapped my speeding imagination inside the 3/4" margins of white 6x8 composition paper. I turned every possible assignment into a story. Sometimes I thought in complete pictures, beginning, middle, and end falling smoothly into place. Sometimes I got inspired by only part of the picture and forced myself artlessly onward from that single scene. I read enough fiction to make writerly gestures, little moments of characterization or dialog that seemed well beyond my years and wowed my teacher. But these nuggets mostly drowned in stories with vague plots or simplistic ideas.
Socially inept, I sometimes wrote my stories to please other kids, incorporating classroom jokes and the few pop culture references that I knew. The overcompensation was so cringe, as we’d say these days. If there was any positive takeaway, it was learning that my classmates would rather hear original stories than fan fiction.
Here’s a telling snapshot from my fifth-grade literary renaissance. The assignment: write a Christmas story. My response: a plot-free epic about a criminal gang sabotaging the bridges, docks, and airports of an island city at Christmas time. This ambitious disaster kept getting longer and more directionless. Finally, panicking about the due date, I gave up and just cranked out "The Day Santa Got Sick." Amazingly, I pulled it off. My classmates assumed I’d spent the whole time writing that stupid tale and would never know about my failed first attempt.
From Elementary to Intermediate
In seventh grade, I trapped myself in a diary to report the daily hell of my so-called social life. As a break from that oppressive structure, I would branch out with categories and catalogs on certain subjects, or with personal essays, dreadful poetry, and vivid dreams reframed as surreal, nonsensical short stories.
But we were talking about serious fiction. The summer before junior high, I’d made friends in a Scout troop from another town. I admired these kids enough to write them into a story, modeled on the classic juvenile format in which underdogs become heroes. I was deep into the mystery series about Alfred Hitchcock’s Three Investigators, so my story would have been along those lines. Didn’t get far, although I’d already ingeniously clued the big solution to the mystery into the early pages. My takeaways here: solid narrative strategy and realistic characters based on real people.
That autumn, I began my first work of intentionally commercial fiction after resolving to earn airfare for a cross-country flight to visit my cousins during winter break. This was another kid-having-a-dangerous-adventure story, possibly inspired by a dream, and the gimmick was a five-word phrase that began each new scene/situation and was also the story title. There wasn’t much of a plot beyond pursuit and escape, and I’m pretty sure that my surprise ending would have been killing off the protagonist. Um… okay. I have no idea at all where I would have sold that story, much less sold it soon enough to fund a plane ticket.
The Mission Statement
My own story goes on from here, like most stories do, with further triumphant or painful lessons to learn and further wise conclusions to draw from the perspective of hindsight. But closing the curtain on this chapter, I would note that my efforts as an 8- to 12-year-old were foundational for the later versions of me. I had clearly identified myself as a writer. My skills were limited and I had almost no understanding of the craft, yet I knew the role I would play. I might even have thought that writing was my career choice. However, I lacked any real concept of artistry to call narrative fiction my art. That would come later.
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