The Handbook / Chapter 23

The Immensity of Small Things

What size should your story be? Should you aim for an epic tale that will grab the reader and leave them gasping for air?

Photo by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash

Something small can sometimes pack a very powerful message. I know a story that illustrates this well. It was written as a personal statement some years ago by a student of mine. I would reprint it here but no copy of it remains. At some point it slipped into the digital ether. Having thought of it many times, however, I remember it well. Good stories are like that.

MEMORY OF A PERSONAL STATEMENT

A young woman lived in south Los Angeles with her mother and brother. Her school was a little more than a mile down the main boulevard. Her family did not own a car so she walked to school and back each day, passing the same storefronts, fast food restaurants, and gas stations.

One day she noticed an empty lot and wondered what had stood there. She must have passed the building hundreds of times but now her mind drew a blank. The lot was surrounded by a chain link fence and strewn with all the things that blow around in a city. Toward the back, a discarded toilet lay on its side.

On her way home from school she paused in front of the lot again. This time she saw a tree she hadn’t noticed previously. It was the only green in an otherwise colorless picture. She guessed a family’s house had once stood there.

She passed the lot week after week and couldn’t help wondering who had lived in the house and why it had been demolished. It made her a little sad but then she’d see the tree in the back. A recent rain had made the leaves greener and more lush. She imagined a back door opening on a little yard and a chair under the tree. She could almost see it.

At school, she told her friends about the place. She’d leave out the part about the toilet and the litter, but would always report on the progress of the tree. When spring came, she told them there were a few white buds visible. One day there were butterflies, she told them. At some point her friends lost interest in her updates. They began to tease her about it. Tell us all about your amazing tree, they giggled. She decided to keep it to herself from then on.

The weather grew hot. She would sweat on the walk home and empty every drop from her water bottle. One day she was surprised to see a sign displayed just over the fence. Whoever owned the land was putting it up for sale. She wondered how much it would cost to buy it. Whatever the price, she thought, it was a lot more than her mother had in her checking account.

The school year ended and she walked home one last time. When she reached the lot she saw the sign had changed. A white board with SOLD painted in red letters now blocked what was underneath.

Without thinking, she walked to the corner and turned down the fence to the back, passing just a few feet from the toppled toilet. She could see that it was cracked along the bottom. There were empty beer bottles and old newspapers scattered around. As she reached the back corner and turned again, she saw that a section of the fence was broken. The metal had curled up, leaving an opening.

Pushing the fence back, she slipped through easily and found herself standing beside the tree. There were two large oranges at exactly eye level and she didn’t hesitate. She grabbed one and began twisting its stem until it snapped off in her hand. Drawing it to her nose, she took a deep inhale of its sharp perfume and laughed. It was a perfect orange with a perfect smell. Seconds later the other was in her backpack as well. Thinking of her brother, she lifted the lower branches looking for a third.

And there it was, the biggest and ripest of all.

Her family enjoyed the fresh fruit and, of course, she had to tell them the whole story. She felt a little brave when she recounted being inside the fence, picking the oranges. She remembered thinking as she walked home that no matter how harsh the city may be, life still goes on. And so would she.

End.

There’s a lovely humility to this story. It unfolds gradually with her questions and observations. She marvels at the simple beauty of nature in a most inhospitable place. You might even believe that she isn’t trying to use the tree as a metaphor for herself. What I most admire about it is the lack of any spectacle. It relies only on her power of observation and sensitivity. If we attune ourselves well enough, there are stories all around us.

In looking through the archives of former students’ work, I came across some other examples. One told the story of a student wanting to watch himself grow. As a six year-old, he thought the transformation would take place on his birthday, and all at once. If he stayed up all night, he theorized, he could witness the moment when he sprung an inch. Having been told he was born as the sun rose, he stood in front of a tall yellow mirror waiting for daybreak. In the reflection, he made note of where the top of his head aligned with the bookshelf and waited. And waited. Until he gave up.

He compares this to the experience years later where he struggled in his first job. It began as you would expect— being totally unsure of himself. The young campers he was overseeing were impossible to control. It took weeks of adjustment to learn how to manage them. Before he left for work on the last day of summer, he stood before the yellow mirror and remembered the earlier time. He was two feet taller now and had grown in other ways as well. He wisely concluded that we witness our growth better through experience than mirrors.

Movies come in different sizes too. Some try to attract an audience with sheer spectacle. Monsters as tall as skyscrapers swat fighter jets out of the sky and massive spaceships pass just over our heads and scrape across the top of the screen. Each new film has to surpass the scale and bombast of the last or leave its audience unmoved.

I don’t often pick a Marvel movie. I aged out of the demographic some time ago. And it’s rarely the movies that employ intricate CGI that move me. These days, in fact, I feel mostly underwhelmed by the computer generated images I see in films. It’s as if we’ve been made numb by overexposure.

Simple and heartfelt stories require no spectacle. Your story, no matter its size, will affect the reader by touching on experiences common to us all. If you risk showing your vulnerability, we will see ourselves in your story and admire your courage. You will inspire us to keep going even when we feel like giving up.

What matters is showing us your intention. That comes next.