Claire Keegan, Brevity, and Breaking Convention

As noted in a previous post, I am very hopeful that publishers will soon be more willing to take risks on fiction that breaks convention. Primarily, that a publishable fiction story must be at least 70,000 words and be meticulously plotted.

What gives me hope is recent attention given to the Novella by the New York Times and the success of writers such as Claire Keegan.

In the New York Times today, they profiled Keegan and her latest tow books Foster and Small Things Like These. Both are brief, both have received quite a bit of praise, both defy the convention of relying on plot, and both are published by Grove Press. Golf clap to them for doing this. Please let more follow.

One passage in the Times’ piece that stuck out is the following:

Keegan says her work is often described as pared down, when in fact, she writes stories as they come to her, without giving a thought to length.

“What pleases me,” Keegan said, “is brevity.”

Stories often begin as a single image that gets lodged in her head. “Foster,” for example, grew out of an image a girl staring down a well at her reflection. Keegan said she revises obsessively, sometimes going through as many as 50 drafts, but never maps out a plot.

“I don’t believe in plot and I’ve never plotted anything,” she said. “I don’t think you can be in the paragraph if you’ve already decided where you need to be.”

She writes out notes and scenes in longhand, until she settles into a character’s point of view, then switches to a computer. The note-taking stage can last years, Keegan said.

She avoids lengthy dialogue and exposition out of respect for her characters, who tend to be reticent types, unwilling to divulge what’s eating at them.

Very happy to read this.