Kristin Burcham | November 2021

Volume 54 Number 1, September 2021

Topic

I. EDUCATIONAL SETTING

This essay and corresponding teaching guide are appropriate for academic and community-based creative writing classes. Callanan explains that “gravity itself is invisible, but its effects are not. Bodies in space, on earth, in literature, pull mightily and constantly.” This force is so pervasive that as Callanan analyzes James’s and Evans’s stories, he sees its impact on practically every choice the authors make, including: sentence level construction, illuminating theme, how a story teaches the reader how to read it, and the relative power of an absent character. This wide array, in addition to the considerations in this guide, makes the essay highly adaptable for writers at all workshop levels.

Is it appropriate for use in multiple educational settings?

Because of the focus on choices of
(in)visibility of characters and resulting scenes, this essay would work for fiction or creative nonfiction classes, as well as those in screenwriting.

II. LESSON OBJECTIVE

Most plainly, the goal is for students to recognize the power of an absent character. Then, to use close reading to understand the craft moves James and Evans make to capitalize on this power, and to practice them in drafting and/or revision.

III. CONTEXTUAL INTRODUCTION OR LEAD-IN

Challenge students with Callanan’s thesis. How can something we can’t see be more powerful than what we can see? When/where/how does this happen? What gives invisibility its power?

Callanan states that absent characters come in many forms and gives specific examples, then adds that “There are many more branches to this taxonomy.” Where else have students encountered absent characters? What effect did they have on the story? What are the “branches” to which Callanan refers?

IV. BROADER DISCUSSION POINTS AND QUESTIONS FOR STUDENTS

What main points from the article do you want to draw students’
particular attention to?

Generating Story Ideas

Callanan says that Saeed, the character who dies in James’s story, “haunts every page” for Lori and Haider, who survive him, as well as for the reader. Rena, the protagonist of Evans’s story, says that the house where her sister was shot and irrevocably damaged is “always the first thing that comes to mind.” These reactions reveal how absence can result in obsession—how absent characters inhabit a story through their effect on the characters who remain and whom the readers see. Charles Baxter suggests in The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot, “Anytime someone, real or imaginary, stands shivering in the fever of obsessive fixation, that figure serves as a possible source for a story.” Death will likely come first to students’ minds as a reason for an absent character and for the present characters’ fixations; pushing beyond to other reasons for absent characters will serve as a rich vein to mine for more subject matter.

Characterization/Point of View

Once a writer has an absent character in mind, how does she make that character visible to the reader?

Callanan points to the same way any character becomes fully dimensional—which details the author chooses to present—and then connects to point of view: an invisible character can be created from what another character sees and assumes. “The Liberator” begins in Saeed’s point of view with Lori as the absent character who is “visible” to the reader through the description of her bike and Saeed’s interpretation of what he sees. The second scene is loaded with details that confirm Saeed’s thoughts, but Lori becomes the point of view character and remains so as the two are brought together, even as the story ends in Haider’s point of view. Close study of which details James chooses to present guides students toward greater specificity and freshness in characterization, while examples of shifting points of view invite them to open up their stories to scenes they may not have initially envisioned.

Scene Choice/Which Characters Will Inhabit a Scene

Students are prompted to explore what can be gained by rejecting a “visible” scene that “would only tell us what we already know” and to examine when, or whether, to make a character present in the scene. Evans creates two absent characters, JT and Elizabeth, and in the plot, JT goes from absent to present to absent again, while Elizabeth is never “seen” on the page. Callanan says, “It would have been easy to give either one of them a larger onscreen role” and points out the way Evans chooses to end the story, avoiding the “easy...saccharine” conclusion “by keeping Elizabeth invisible” and thus able “to exert a much stronger pull.” Similarly, throughout James’s story, Saeed is a powerful presence, but once he dies, he never returns to the page via flashbacks; instead he permeates the story through Lori and Haider’s actions and interior monologues. In describing James’s ending, Callanan argues, “This story is so much more powerful for rendering Saeed invisible in these final moments. It would have been so easy, even obvious, to draft this scene with Lori visiting the family in broad daylight, in a living room, pictures large and small of Saeed all around. But [James instead makes] the risky decision to keep the story’s most admirable character offscreen.” Models of how authors subvert the obvious lead students to follow their stories to unexpected places, and the results of these more difficult choices may surprise them and the reader.

V. POTENTIAL ACTIVITIES (TO BE COMPLETED IN CLASS AND/OR AS ASSIGNMENTS)

A. Brainstorm causes of absence besides death: What might cause an important character to be alive but absent? Who would be haunted? How would that manifest?

B. Callanan identifies the connection between “inventorying details, creating character.” Choose specific details to create an absent character. How will a visible character note these details? Which details presented on the page will create a character the reader can “see” without having to be told?

C. In discussing the conclusion of “The Liberator,” Callanan adopts a refrain: What is it like...? Ask this question to each of the present characters in the situation to create an unexpected ending for the story. Alternatively, as a revision exercise, read the penultimate scene of a story that has already been drafted and ask each character in that scene What is it like...? to experiment with a different ending for the story.

 

VI. RELATED READING

A. “The Liberator,” by Tania James, Freeman’s: The Future of New Writing

B. “Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain,” by Danielle Evans, Best American Short Stories of 2017

C. The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot, by Charles Baxter

D. “The Gravity of the Invisible: Absent Characters and the Physics of Fiction,” by Liam Callanan, The Writer’s Chronicle, September 2021

VII. CONCLUSION

Writers regularly employ absence, whether they choose the compact form of flash over a full length narrative, consider white space on a page, or utilize subtext and the impact of what is not said in dialogue.

But Callanan concludes his thoughts on absence by going beyond all craft considerations. Importantly, he notes the social ramifications of invisibility due to racism and bigotry, and the critical need for authors to make marginalized populations visible. He urges all of us to read, listen, and truly see what prejudice and discrimination have concealed—a vital call to writers, yes, and for the world at large.

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Kristin Burcham’s short stories have appeared in The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts and Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose. Her essay “Auto-Fictional Short Stories and Choices in Craft: A Close Look at the Work of Mary Lavin” appeared in the April 2020 edition of The Writer’s Chronicle. She received her MFA in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and currently teaches in Beverly Hills, California