SOURCE: Aldrich, Bess Streeter. “Working Backward.” Writer 63 (November 1950): 350-53.

[In the following essay, Aldrich uses her story “Journey into Christmas” to show how she builds a story and characters.]

A number of years ago I wrote an article for The Writer titled “The Story Germ.” Several young writers were kind enough to tell me it was helpful to them. In that article I stressed the point that plots for stories seldom come to one in their entirety, but that, given some small situation or dramatic moment or distinctive human trait, one can work out a story based on that little happening or emotional period or outstanding characteristic.

With the editor asking for another article I can think of nothing more practical than to follow that lead with a detailed account of how one can work backward in developing a short story. Any similarity between this article and the former will harm no one, for those who read the other, written so long ago, no doubt have become sure-fire authors by this time or have given up the literary ghost.

People who have had no experience in writing often hold the idea that turning out a story must be the easiest thing in the world. A story reads smoothly. The people in it seem natural. Events move forward in regular and interesting sequence. It comes to a surprising or satisfactory climax. And there you are. Nothing could be easier. Or so they think. But they do not know with what knitting of brows, chewing of pencils and discarding of wordage that easily read story is constructed. For more often than not, it is the outgrowth of some little happening, too small in itself to constitute a whole story, which has become one after intensive work.

Over many years of writing I have evolved two methods for the development of short stories. For a character story—one which stresses the person rather than the plot—I begin by getting mentally acquainted with that fictitious character, dwelling on his appearance, traits, mental processes and emotional reactions, until he takes upon himself the semblance of such reality that automatically he moves into action. In this way The Man Who Caught the Weather was constructed; a story which was rejected by twenty-eight magazines before it was purchased by the old Century Magazine. It was chosen for the O. Henry Award volume of that year, has been used in several anthologies, syndicated, resold to a British magazine and read on various radio story hours. I insert that item for the benefit of young writers who lose their courage over a second or third rejection and who, like the ship wrecked brother, “hearing, may take heart again.”

The second method—which is the line this little article is taking—is the constructing of a story from some dramatic incident or interesting contrast between two settings or ideas, and working backward from that point. With fine disregard for the law of gravity, I start with the capstone of the structure, slip another stone under it, and another one under that, until solid ground is reached.

Naturally the story which I shall use as an illustration should be read in its entirety if a detailed analysis is to be understood. It was in the 1948 Christmas number of The Saturday Evening Post and titled “Star across the Tracks.” Also it is to be found in my book Journey into Christmas, a compilation of short stories. Bearing down heavily on the Christmas atmosphere, it has the simplest of plots, but even so, it entailed a great deal of planning, for the little plot grew out of a mere setting upon which this backward method was used.

Very briefly, the story is this: An old day laborer is the yard man for three families who live in a fine residential district of a midwestern city in which there is a city-wide contest for the best outdoor Christmas decorations. The old man assists his three families in putting up their elaborate decorations, but wins the first prize himself with a simple nativity scene at his own little home across the tracks.

The origin of the story was this: On a Christmas night we were taking one of my sons to his train after his holiday visit with us. Our city had gone in extensively for outdoor decorations and as we drove from our suburban section we passed any number of elaborately decorated yards. There were lights in brilliant landscaping effects, picturesque Santa Clauses, and life-sized reindeer, expansive and expensive. At the station we found the train had changed time, and there would be quite a wait, but not long enough to drive back home. It was a mild evening, in contrast to some of our midwestern holiday weather, and we drove leisurely through a section of town beyond the station where the Christmas touch was evident, if on a less extravagant scale. Then we came to it: a hayfilled manger, evidently made from packing-boxes, by the side of a small cottage, a white-robed figure bending over it and lighted with a single faint glow.

The son, who was a young newspaperman, said: “There's a story for you, Mother. That's right up your alley … elaborate decorations up town and this little manger scene here across the tracks.”

Now any incident which brings laughter or tears, or which calls forth one's sympathy, anger, admiration, in fact, anything which touches the emotions has the germ of a story in it. The sight of the crude manger and the white pasteboard figure here by the little house, far away from those brilliantly lighted ones, touched us all. And I knew, as my son had suggested, there was a story in it waiting to be developed if it could be worked out.

But a story is more than a scene and more than the contrast between two settings. There is nothing static about it. Something must happen. Characters must come to life. People must live and move across the pages of the magazine so that the reader lives and moves with them. A few days later I was starting the mental machinery by which a story could be evolved from the small germ of that little manger across the tracks. And working backward.

In other words, the climax was to be that the simple scene by the cottage would win a citywide first prize away from all that uptown splurge. But as almost all stories change from fact into fancy, even though based on reality, instead of the mere manger of boxes, I find myself visualizing a shed with open front to the street, a cow and team of horses munching on the hay, pigeons fluttering on the roof, a star overhead, and the Babe and Mother in that stable setting. (Immediately I am thinking this is a bit incongruous in a city which prohibits stock in its limits, so make a note to state casually, early in the story, that this is the only section where stock can be kept.)

Now, the people who live there—in the story, of course—who are they? What do they do? Some old man and his wife, hard working and obviously with a religious trend. Almost at once I have named them: Mr. Harm Kurtz and his wife. Pa Kurtz and Mamma. For fictitious characters immediately named come more readily to life. The rest of the family, if any, stays vague, for I may want to create characters to fit the story needs.

Mr. Kurtz will be a day laborer. Why not connect him in some way with one of those big highly decorated homes? At once he becomes the yard man for three of the well-to-do families, and they are named, too, so they will begin to seem real: the Scotts, the Dillinghams and the Porters. I see them in their homes with Pa Kurtz helping to put up all those brilliant lights, then see Pa going home to his small house across the tracks on an unpaved street, telling the day's happenings to Mamma and fixing up his own shed, with its cow and horses, for the nativity scene. But something there doesn't ring true,—the incongruity of Pa Kurtz, tired to death of the whole thing, coming home and entering into the decorative contest. No, it will be Mamma with the religious bent who arranges the stable scene.

And here is a knotty problem: our midwestern climate so cold at times, and a shed for stock standing open toward the street? One can't state an incongruity and let it go at that, if one's stories are to ring true. Each step must be the natural outgrowth of that which has gone before. So for some reason the one side of the shed has to come off temporarily. Why not have Pa Kurtz yank off the boards in anger? Mamma has chided him for the old shed looking so decrepit. She is expecting Christmas company and her pride will be hurt. Immediately, I am creating a daughter coming home with her little boys, and Mamma is saying: “Just as plain as I'm standing here I can remember your telling Carrie you'd have the new lumber on that old shed by next time she comes.” At that, Pa flares up with: “I'll have that new lumber on by the time Carrie comes if it's the last thing I do.” And he begins yanking off the siding, exposing the manger, the cow, the horses, the hay. That problem over, I'm trying to think what can be used for the Mother Mary. A mannikin from a store would be just right, but one doesn't simply go into a house and bring out a mannikin.

I digress here to say that nothing is so irritating in a story as the parenthetical statement. As a judge for one of the monthly reading club's books, I recently read a submitted manuscript which was rather good, had it not been for that amateurish dragging in by the hair of the head, so to speak, of properties and people which never had been presented to the reader until the moment they became useful. So, to have a mannikin handily in the house, I create another daughter, Lillie, who works in a department store, and immediately the store belongs to one of those well-to-do families, thus making the little plot more compact.

In order that it will not escape me, I write that part at once, even though the story is not under construction. “Lillie was a whiz with the needle. She made her own dresses at home and tried them on Maisie the mannikin. That was one of the store's moronic-looking models which had lost an arm and sundry other features and Lillie had asked for it when she found they were going to discard it. Now she hung her own skirts on Maisie to get their length. That was about all the good the mannikin did her, for Lillie's circumference was fully three times that of the model.”

So, early in the story I plant the mannikin and when the time comes for Mamma to want something for the figure of the Madonna, there is no incongruous break.

There must be a star above the shed, and because Pa is only a grouchy onlooker, not entering into the decorative scheme at all, I create a son, Ernie, who is a mechanic. Lillie says to him: “Mamma wants you to fix a star up over the stable. Mrs. Dillingham gave an old one to Pa.” I am writing this also before starting the real construction of the story: “Ernie had been a fixer ever since he was a little boy. Not for his looks had the River City Body and Fender Wreck Company hired Ernie Kurtz. So, after his warmed over supper, he got his tools and a coil of wire and fixed the yellow bauble high over the stable, the wire and the slim rod almost invisible, so that it seemed a star hung there by itself.”

And now I have the causes and effects of several movements in the story to come: Pa home from helping with all those elaborate decorations … Mamma chiding him about the dilapidated shed … his yanking off the boards in anger … Mamma seeing how like the Bethlehem scene the old stable looks … going into the house to get Lillie's mannikin, draping it with sheets into the form of the Mother Mary, saying: “I ain't doin' this for show like Pa's families he's been helpin'. I'm doin' it for Carrie's little boys. Something they can see when they drive in … something they'll never forget, like's not, as long as they live.”

This much will suffice to show the working backward method sometimes used by writers. By working that way I have created a substantial reason for every stone which is going into the structure. Now I can begin to work from the first, putting in the atmospheric descriptive matter, conversation, all the human touches a story needs: the arrival of the children for Christmas … the drive up through the fine residential sections of town … the family's utter enjoyment of the elaborate lighting effects there, with no thought that their own scene is more effective … their wagering among themselves as to which of the big houses will get the prize … hearing over the radio the next day that their own has won it … the hundreds of cars driving down the little unpaved street on Christmas night … the open shed … the horses pulling at the hay … the cow gazing moodily into space … the pigeons on the ridgepole in a long feathery group … white Mary bending over the manger … and overhead the star.

And then to end on some substantial Christmas thought. With Mamma asking Pa why he can't get to sleep and his saying: “Keep thinkin' of everything. All that prize money comin' to us. Attention from so many folks. Children all home. Folks I work for all here and not a bit mad. You'd think I'd feel good. But I don't. Somethin' hangs over me. Like they'd been somebody real out there in the shed all this time. Like we'd been leavin' 'em stay out there when we ought to had 'em come in. Fool notion … but keeps botherin' me.”

And then Mamma gave her answer. Comforting, too, just as he knew it would be. “I got the same feelin'. I guess people's been like that ever since it happened. Their consciences always hurtin' 'em a little because there wasn't no room for Him in the inn.”

This resumé of the constructing of a story plot has been written for beginning writers, as experienced ones will have worked out their own methods. There is little enough one can do to assist another in the writing line, for it is a lone wolf business if ever there was one. But sometimes a frank personal experience from one who has been at work in it for a long time will strike a helpful note. I know, for thirty-five years ago I was a beginner, avidly searching for all the helps in constructing, and advice for short cuts I could read. Occasionally I ran across some of the helps. But never a short cut could I find.