Bildungsroman: My favourite kind of fiction

Have you ever been asked what type of story or novel you like best and found yourself needing to add a qualifier to it? I like fantasy, but not that kind of fantasy. I like romance, but only this kind of romance. I like drama, but only when its handled in a certain way. I prefer character driven stories to plot driven stories. In the end, your answer to the question may have transformed into something rather specific.

When I consider the stories that resonate with me most, I've always been at a bit of a loss as to how to respond. Yes, I like fantasy. But not all fantasy. I also like a good classic. And a good romance, but only when its handled in a specific way, and usually I prefer it if that romance is packaged in a bigger plot because otherwise I don't find it very convincing. Some examples of what I like, perhaps, might be more helpful than any listing of genres: Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Frank Herbert's Dune, Masashi Kishimoto's Naruto (pre-Shippuuden), Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter, the How to Train Your Dragon movie trilogy, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Jane Eyre, Natsuki Takaya's Fruits Basket, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, Hiromu Arakawa's Silver Spoon and Fullmetal Alchemist. 

But those are all so completely different, aren't they? There's fantasy, sci-fi, memoir, romantic drama, classic and even a high school slice-of-life set in an agricultural high-school! Some are novels, some are movies, some are comic books. What a mish-mash that list is! 

Or is it? There's actually a lot more that those works have in common than may be apparent at a first glance. Similarities that go beyond the trappings of genre or the tropes and cliches of each medium. A lot of them, it turns out, are some sort of coming-of-age story. But there are other coming-of-age stories I don't enjoy as much, like Looking for Alaska or The Perks of Being a Wallflower. This puzzled me for a long time. I love a good story about a youth facing hardship and learning and growing as they figure out that weird space between childhood and adulthood! But then why did so many of the movies and books about teenagers aimed at a teenage audience that seemed to cover that same ground not land for me, when certain others hit so well that I still think about them years later?  I can't quite remember when I came across the concept of the Bildungsroman, but when I did a lot of things came together in my understanding of what I like and now look for in the fiction I consume, and one day hope to write.

A what Roman?

A Bildungsroman is in some ways simply a specific kind of coming-of-age story. People smarter and more highly qualified than me have dedicated lots of brainpower and lots of words to discussing the nuance of the term and how it should be applied, but I find that the word itself, of German origin, provides a good introduction:

Bildung (Education, formation) + Roman (Novel)

So, the Bildungsroman is a novel of formation. A narrative following the formative years of an individual. That sounds just like another way of saying 'coming-of-age', doesn't it? Yes, in some ways this is true. But the Bildungsroman is perhaps best understood as a particular sub-genre of the coming-of-age narrative. It has a long history in the literature of Europe, and its origin is usually attributed to one of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's lesser known works: Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1795-1796). But to us raised in English speaking societies, it is perhaps best encapsulated in the likes of  Jane Eyre, David Copperfield and Great Expectations. All of these works are usually classified as Bildungsromans, and in the next section I will share a bit more about why.

Before getting to that, hoever, these three works are rather different in their scope and themes to something like Looking for Alaska. For one, they all follow their protagonists from a very young age up to—and sometimes past—the point of physical, emotional and spiritual maturity. Their protagonists tend to face long and arduous journeys—physically and metaphorically—and experience all manner of loss, grief and growth along the way. Over the course of the story we are likely to learn of old bonds that have broken or been lost, and to see the characters develop new bonds in the form of friendships, mentorships, rivalries and romances. We'll also see them come across new philosophies and ideas that challenge or reshape their perceptions of the world they inhabit, and we'll see how these experiences all come together to help the character find their place in life and society.

But far better than I can describe or define it in one or two paragraphs, is a little tool one can use to identify how much of a Bildungsroman something happens to be. 

 Iversen's Bildungsroman Index

In her dissertation, Change and Continuity: The Bildungsroman in English (2009), Iversen, in seeking to define and better understand the Bildungsroman, identifies a set of features that most Bildungsromans tend to have. She compiled these features into a rubric and assigned points to each depending on their importance or significance, and so developed what she calls the Bildungsroman Index (BRI, going forward). It is, in her own explanation a tool to help "pinpoint and describe typical features of novels that are generally recognized as bildungsromans" (2009:51). 

Iversen's BRI presents Bildungsromans as existing on a continuum ranging from works which have no features of the Bildungsroman to those which have all of them. Thus, works tested against her BRI are unlikely to be simply 'Bildungsroman' or 'Not Bildungsroman', but will fall somewhere between the two on the Bildungsroman continuum.

The BRI is made up of 9 sections. Each section is broken down into a list of features, with points assigned for each feature. The sections are:

NUMBER	TITLE	MAXIMUM POINTS
1	Narrative perspective and mode	15
2	Characterization: Protagonist	15
3	Characerization: Secondary characters and their functions	17
4	Topical story elements: Affecting protagonist	26
5	Topica story elements: Affecting secondary characters	9
6	Setting	5
7	Plot and structure	28
8	Generic signals	4
9	Theme, subject matter and motifs	29

I will not detail the features of each section here, as it will make this post very long. They are very interesting features, however, and may fairly well be considered the 'tropes' of a Bildungsroman. Here's a sample of a few before looking at some example novels and their numbers:

Section 2: Characterization: Protagonist:

"Protagonist is dynamic; changes in the course of the novel" (2 points)

"Protagonist is an orphan, or fatherless, or parent dies in the course of the novel" (2 points)

"Ordinary (not particular talented or untalented)" (2 points)

Section 4: Topical story elements: Affecting protagonist

"Experiences poverty" (2 points)

"Goes to boarding school" (1 point)

Section 5: Topical story elements: Affecting secondary characters

"Dangerous or disastrous fire" (1 point)

"Family secret of other family revealed" (1 point)

Section7: Plot and structure

"Story goes from childhood to adulthood (early 20s)" (2 points)

"Returns to childhood home after many years" (1 point)

"Protagonist learns to 'see' at the end" (3 points)
 

Section 9: Theme, subject matter and motifs

"False idealism gives way to acceptance of reality" (1 point)

"Death and grief" (3 points)

"Love, relationships, and marriage" (3 points)

"Portrayal of society" (2 points)

The maximum number of points that a work can earn is 148. Anything that gets 148 points is therefore theoretically the most Bildungsroman. 0 is naturally the minimum, and would mean the work lacks any qualities of a Bildungsroman. I imagine there are very few pieces of fiction that would manage this, however.

If we take a look at our three examples from classic English literature and the original Bildungsroman itself, here's how they fit in on this continuum once the BRI has been applied to them:

Here we see that all three works come very close to achieving maximum points, with David Copperfield taking first place and even out-scoring Wilhelm Meister.

In contrast to these high scorers, in her thesis, Iversen discovered that Huckleberry Finn is not very Bildungsroman.

To add my own observations to this graph: for my undergraduate thesis I applied the BRI,—with a few adaptations to translate Section 1 to the conventions of film rather than the novel—to the Harry Potter and How to Train Your Dragon film series to find out how Bildungsroman they happened to be. They both scored fairly high, setting them both in the 'very Bildungsroman' section.

I've yet to apply the BRI to any of the other titles listed in the introduction to this post, but I am quite certain that a fair number of them will also find themselves on the far right of this graph.

After thinking about the Bildungsroman recently, and revisting Iversen's BRI, I have also come to the belief that there are two key things all Bildungsromans should have: scope and depth. Bildungsromans tend to covers quite a few years in a person's life, and also cover a vast array of human experiences. They also seem to explore their themes, emotions, and topics deeply, with a particular focus on the moral, spiritual and psychological aspects of a character's choices, experiences and conceptions. That is my super summarised understanding of them based on my own reading and experience of them, so far at least.   

Part of the reason I decided to write this very insufficient and sloppy little post about the Bildungsroman is because I want to investigate just how many of the works I enjoy actually end up with a high BRI value.

I have recently finished reading Sharon Kay Penman's The Sunne in Splendour and Anya Seton's Katherine, both of which I adored and have become instant favourites. I intend to make them my first test subjects in applying the BRI to the novels I read. I am working on some rather silly reviews of them now, which I hope to share here soon along with the values I get when applying the BRI to them.

Sources:

Iversen, A T. 2009. Change and Continuity: The Bildungsroman in English. Available at: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/CHANGE-AND-CONTINUITY%3A-The-Bildungsroman-in-English-Iversen/1cdf3117ac1052dbeead917d466eaee1a5c62f70 (Accessed 25 September 2023)

Are Short Stories an Acquired Taste?

When I was younger I turned my nose up at the thought of reading (much less writing) short stories for enjoyment. Short stories, I believed, were the province of English teachers and pretentious magazines. Created for no other end than to be clever and to be overanalysed by clever people. 

This conviction was only intensified by the fact that I was—and very much still am—a reader who prefers to become fully immersed in something. I love depth and detail and rich worlds and epic scale and descriptions that are not afraid to be a little flowery. I want to be able to enter into the world I'm reading about for a good chunk of real-world time. And all of these things, I was convinced, could not be satisfactorily delivered upon in the short story format. Especially with regards to fantasy! How can one possibly convey depth and detail and epic scale and build a whole new world well in the span of a few thousand words when some authors even struggle to give such things their due in a few hundred thousand words?

No, short stories were not for me, I reasoned. Reading them, or writing them

And yet, I just kept on stumbling upon them in my personal journey of developing my writing craft. Eventually, after years of gentle coaxing by the likes of Isaac Asiimov, Ray Bradbury, H.P. Lovecraft and a couple of other quirky individuals who have had more success as speculative fiction writers than I can ever hope for, I was swayed to explore this dark side in more depth.

Now, after a year and a bit of intentionally seeking out and consuming speculative fiction short stories, I think I might finally be developing a taste and an understanding for them.

The Art of the Short Story

This is where the hesitant plunge into this realm all started. I am sure most aspiring writers have at some point read or heard it said that a short story is, in a lot of ways, a harder thing to write than a novel. And yet—I always thought rather ironically—also been strongly advised to write some short stories of their own because nothing will teach you better and quicker than churning out a load of short stories will. You tell me the thing is hard and then you tell me I should go do the thing even though I'm so green and inexperienced? For years I did not give this advice the credence or the consideration it deserved.

After all, on the surface, the words 'short' and 'story' put together seem so clear and concise in their meaning. What more can there be to it beyond what those two words already reveal? It is a story, and it is short. Beyond this, the only other thing that set it apart from all other fiction was that, in my experience, short stories were all the kind of dry but insanely clever thing that English teachers make students read and then over-analyse so that by the end of their encounter with it the story is no longer clever, it is only insufferable.

Despite this shallow understanding of what a short story is, I tried a few times in university to write some. But it was difficult. Just like everyone said it would be. Especially fantasy. How in high heaven do you condense character, narrative and an entire world into something that doesn't exceed 7 000 words while giving it a satisfying, punchy ending and still enjoy the creative process all the while? I couldn't fathom it.

I only really knew novels intimately, and a novel has pages and pages to get you invested in its plot and its world and its characters, to make you care and root for its characters and their goals and world. Time and depth are its tools. You can condense a whole story, sure. But a novel story condensed into a few thousand words does not make for a short story. It makes for a summary, and most summaries are not very fun to read, or write. So, seemingly at a dead-end when it came to the matter of craft, I decided the smart thing to do was pursue a bit more theoretical knowledge about the art of writing a short story before trying my hand at writing a short story again. 

One of the first pieces of advice that I remember dwelling on for a few days was this:

"The best of my short stories are the last chapters of novels I didn't write." (Neil Gaiman, possibly paraphrased, I have only heard it quoted a few times via YouTubers who took his Masterclass and just grabbed this from a cursory Google search)

(Disclaimer: I have not yet read a Neil Gaiman short story, though I do count Stardust among my favourite works of fiction). Upon first hearing this attributed to one of the modern masters of fantasy it sounded like solid and applicable advice. But when I gave it a bit more thought, and tried to actually apply it, I found it a little too vague. A last chapter is often the wrap-up for a much longer story. The final pay-off after chapters and chapters of conflict and tension and set-up and revelations. Last chapters can also vary a lot across stories and genres. I do not think, for example, that the last chapter of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows would make for a good short story (granted it's been 16 years since I read it). Of course, that's probably not exactly what Gaiman meant. While there's certainly some merit in this concept, and there are definitely a few short stories I have read that I think fit this criteria, I didn't find it particularly helpful in application. I think it is a helpful thing to keep in mind when choosing and refining ideas to explore in a short story, but last chapters are complex beasts that are determined by the nature of the rest of story they are closing off.

Shortly after this, I came across something that gave me a few more specifics to work from. I believe it was Shaelin from ShaelinWrites, who said a short story is (very wild and loose paraphrasing):

"... about a specific moment, culminating in a character having a realisation or making a choice."

This was one of the tips that helped shift my perspective on how to think of short stories and develop ideas for them. It's not about condensing a whole story, it's about finding a pivotal moment within a character's life or a larger story, and zooming in on that. But I also found it a bit limiting for how my own mind works. I tried to take it far too literally and then get stuck trying to build a story around the precise second when Character A's brain goes 'Ahah! I am a changed person, I have a new perspective now' or something along those lines, and this inevitably gets me nowhere as I start fixating far too early on in my writing process about how this moment should play out instead of letting the story take me somewhere and show me what that moment is of its own accord.

Then, I found this line and it was the real lightbulb moment for me:

"So what is a pro-level story? It's a joke." (Chasing the First Sale: Part 2 by Steven R. Stewart)

Stewart goes on to explain what he means in the paragraphs that follow, but for me that line alone made realisation dawn. In hindsight, it's one of those things that seems so utterly obvious now that I know it. But this really was just the phrasing I needed for what I had already been noticing in all of the stories that did resonate with me to click together. The setup always came back in some meaningful way at the end. The resolution or the culmination was usually introduced somewhere in the earliest paragraphs--just like with a joke. Yes, I know about Chekhov's gun. That's a fundamental writing tip if there ever was one. But just because something that was introduced earlier shows up again in a meaningful way doesn't mean it's going to be satisfying, or that it becomes the golden thread that holds the story together. The key for a short story is that it's not just got to be Chekhov's gun, it's got to be Chekhov's punchline. You have your setup, and then you have your punchline, and the punchline lives or dies based on how well the setup and the delivery are handled. 

I considered this new kernel of knowledge in relation to some of the short stories I had most enjoyed in my reading adventures up to that point and realised, Yes. Every single one of them utilised this concept in some capacity. Something was introduced early on, often quite subtly. That same something would come back towards the end, at the climatic moment, sometimes bringing a new perspective or changing its role or revealing itself to have been the solution all along. This, I felt, was the key I was missing in how I tried to compose a short story. Around the same time as this revelation, I also had a second realisation, specifically with regards to the speculative short story and its craft. Especially those taking place in fantastical worlds. 

A short story is not likely to reach the same depth and epic scale of a novel, but why should it have to? Is a short story really lesser than a longer work because of the confines of its length? No, I realised, because it can still evoke that same sense. In many ways, the best speculative short stories I have found are like appetisers for greater works. They make me believe there is a greater world and they make me want to know more about it. They may not give me that more, but the yearning and the sense of curiosity that they deliver is its own delight. They are designed to be small and delectable and eaten in one or two bites, and to leave the reader perhaps a little hungry for more and bigger portions.

These are two kernels of knowledge about the art and craft of the short story which I have gleaned from all my reading thus far. They probably sound exceedingly obvious to someone reading this, but I can be quite a slow learner who tends to work on intuition and lets understanding come later (big source of frustration, would not recommend. Made mathematics and science unbearable subjects in high school). So these were both pretty big eureka moments for me, and they have made the task of figuring out how to turn an idea into a short story feel much more attainable, as well as giving me a bit of a framework for analysing the short stories I read. 

So, it turns out there's more to short stories than I previously believed. They have their own unique quirks and characteristics that set them apart from the novel in more than just word count and academic value. This appreciation, alas, has only begun to come recently to me. I think this is partly because, as it seems for many people, short stories can really be kind of hit-and-miss, and that is it's own mystery which I am still trying to make sense of.

The Appreciation

How, and why, would someone ever want to be a gardener if they don't enjoy gardens? Why are you gardening if not for the joy of the garden? Is it for the accolades? The money? You're unlikely to get either of those as a run-of-the-mill gardener. Unless you happen to be good enough to manage the gardens of Versailles or something. Should it not be the same way with writing? I am a firm believer that you can't—or shouldn't—be a writer if you aren't a reader. But I digress and I won't go into more detail on that here, only to say that since I started reading short stories I find writing them much more approachable and enjoyable.

On top of my teenage biases and assumptions about short stories, I also thought I knew quite a lot of what there was to know about high fantasy because I had read The Lord of the Rings and its adjacent works, Harry Potter, Narnia, a handful of the Discworld novels, the first three books of the Inheritance Cycle, half of Magician, a few volumes of the Wheel of Time, and had thoroughly perused David Pringle's The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy from cover to cover. I knew all about swords and sorcery and dragons and quests and quasi-medieval cultures, and I knew that the genre was over-saturated with them and their assorted spin-offs.

But where, I wondered in my naivety, were all the cool experimental new ideas? Sure, some of them were in novels here and there, few and far between. But most of them, it turns out, were hiding in short stories the whole time. 

In a year and a bit of concentrated short story consumption I have encountered more unique concepts and worlds than I would manage to find the time to experience in novels. And this, in itself, is one of the biggest arguments that won me over to the short story. It is much easier and quicker to experiment and tinker in a short story than to waste months, years possibly, on a novel only to realise the experimental thing doesn't work at all. This, I think, is true for both writers and readers. Nothing is more dismaying than to invest lots of time and care in something, and only come out with disappointment in the end. 

This is truly one of the beauties of the short story format. Writers can experiment on a smaller, quicker scale, and readers can consume a huge array of ideas and writing styles in far less time than a novel takes. Four stories from a fantasy shorts magazine like Beneath Ceaseless Skies can present four entirely unique writing styles and worlds and narratives, and can be read two in an evening if desired.

I'm not saying this efficiency makes short stories a superior means of consuming fiction, not at all. I'd still pick a novel over a short story any day, for the reasons previously mentioned, but there is really something freeing about how small the commitment is when you approach a short story. If it brings you delight it was half an hour well spent. If it doesn't, it's not that big of a deal because you only lost half an hour of your time. And was it even really lost? You might have been able to identify what you didn't like about it, and that's still some kind of gain.

On that, there are a lot of short stories that just don't land for me. Even with all the reading I've been doing, I'd say that about two fifths—even from collections and magazines I really enjoy—just make me go "huh?". I reach the end, and the world was not enticing, sometimes not even pleasant or interesting to me, and I didn't get the 'joke'. Perhaps the punchline didn't arrive, or I just didn't understand it well enough when it did come. Then, there's about two fifths that I feel neutral about. I can see what the author was doing, there are some moments I liked, some things I can glean from them, but overall they—to use that phrasing editors love to include in their rejection letters—weren't quite right for me. But then, there's that final one fifth, and that batch of short stories makes the other four fifths well worth it. These are the stories where the world is enticing and the punchline lands, and they are always an absolute delight to find. They usually linger with me for a few days, and leave me feeling a little elated after I finish them. 

Some stories from that one-fifth-of-delight

Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Bourbon Penn have quickly become two of my favourites short story magazines just for the creativity and variety they offer, and their tendency to exhibit a more literary style. And they're both free to read online, which is amazing!

Here are some favourites I have collected in my readings so far:

A Happy Family by Nathanial Towers (Bourbon Penn Issue #1): Just entertained me way too much.

Redbark and Ambergris by Kate Alice Marshall (Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #232): Beautiful description and world-building and story.

How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub by P. Djèlí Clark (Uncanny Issue #50): Delightful and really well executed.

The Triumph by Robin Hobb (in Warriors, edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois): A wonderful historical tale of friendship with a fantasy twist.

Whatever Knight Comes by Ryan Row (Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #226): Loved the concept and the way it was written. I understand what the author was trying to do with the ending, but it didn't quite land for me. Still enjoyed the whole journey leading up to it, though.

The Wind Shall Blow by Gregory Norman Bossert (Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #209): I just found the atmosphere and tone of this whole story to be so beautiful in a melancholic way. The Scottish border war seeming setting was also fresh and unusual for me.

But my absolute favourite short story so far is without a doubt Half-Spent Was the Night by Gretchen Tessmer (Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #371): I love everything about this story! I love it so much I think I might make a whole entire blogpost about it one day just so I can spend a few hundred words gushing about it. Reading this over a few times also really emphasised the two points I have picked up about short stories in all my reading so far.

I've gathered a nice little stack of favourites from that one fifth, but I'm not planning to stop reading short stories anytime soon. I'm part way through an issue of Uncanny and have still got an untouched issue of Clarkesworld and Apex Magazine on my e-reader, and plan to follow those with Andromeda Spaceways and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction very soon.

I've also got a stack of speculative fiction short story collections I still need to get to and hope to report back on sometime soon (many of them are pictured in the image at the top of this post):

At the Edge of the World by Lord Dunsany

The Mammoth Book of Fantasy, edited by Mike Ashley

Nine Tomorrows by Isaac Asiimov

The Martian Way by Isaac Asiimov

Quicker Than the Eye by Ray Bradbury

Year's Best Fantasy Volume 5, edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer 

This all on top of my regular non-fiction and novel reading. Will I ever get through them all? Certainly not in the course of the next few months, but I live in hope.

I'm still trying to identify exactly why some stories work for me and others don't. I have a few ideas, but so far a lot of it seems to come down to personal preference and imagery or themes that resonate with me.This is perhaps one of the weaknesses of the short story. Because it has to be so focused and is so short, it cannot capture as many aspects of life and the human experience as a novel can. I know most people don't enjoy every aspect of a novel in equal measure, no matter how much they like it or the author behind it. Some like the magic system and the world-building most of all, others enjoy the characters more, some are propelled through books by the romance subplots. The short story can't rely on these things. It has only time and focus for one or two things, and if those things don't fulfill a reader's subjective preferences from the start, they certainly aren't likely to suddenly deliver on them at the end. 

Overall, though, I am very glad to have had my eyes opened to the world of speculative short fiction. It took some time, and though many stories still don't land for me half of the joy is looking for the next one that does. And those that do land have often landed so well that I find myself revisiting them and thinking about them long after they have ended.  These little realisations I have had so far are but the tip of a complex and bewildering iceberg that is full of many unique and fascinating pieces and techniques and also years and years of careful craft-honing.

I do think that short stories can be a bit of an acquired taste, but, unlike wine, I seem to be developing a palate for them the more I consume them.

I am also quite proud to say that I have gathered up 7 short story rejections of my own thus far for a 2 400 word piece I wrote in August 2022. 

By the end of this year I hope for it to be an even higher number, and to have a second short story in circulation to collect even more rejections alongside it. For now I am only two scenes in with that second short story, but am confident that I'm building on some of the lessons learnt from that first story and that it will be a functional piece very soon 🤞

I hope that one day I can write a short story that delights and lingers with someone the way some of them have delighted and lingered with me.