The Anecdote

Confession: I correctly guessed that someone had been dismissed based on a single use of the past tense. And who says grammar never gets you anywhere?

Reading:

• "L. DeBard and Aliette: A Love Story," by Lauren Groff
  
• The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton
  

Writing:

• "Ferian Fetlock Hitches a Ride" - 1,520 words (Estimated completion 17%)
• "Ferian Fetlock Catches a Cold" - Outline 100%
  

Revising:

• "The Revenant"
  
• "Cora and the Sea" - Third draft 50%

Well, still nothing from the Tea lady. I'm beginning to think that she just signed me up on a bunch of telemarketing lists as a prank.

In the mean time, I started thinking today about anecdotes, the little stories you tell about your life and the people around you. So what is an anecdote?

It comes from the Greek word ανέκδοτα, meaning "unpublished account." (But of course you already knew that.) It's used to refer to a story that someone tells in conversation, or an eyewitness account of an event. It can also mean circumstantial or substantiated through experience but not testing, as in "anecdotal evidence."

As people, we talk. We talk a lot, to each other, to ourselves, to friends or to strangers. I haven't studied conversational theory, but it seems to me that natural language takes several forms. There are questions as a request for information, and the corresponding answers. You have questions after health and well being, which form the tapestry of politeness. You have negotiation of meaning, to achieve the same mental construct of a concept between two individuals. No doubt there are many others.

And buried in there, somewhere, is the humble anecdote. Its purpose is mainly to entertain. Possibly to educate, but mainly to entertain those around you. It follows a narrative structure, first setting up the scene and then moving to action, dialogue, and finally a climax--the "point" of the anecdote. And in most cases, this all occurs in only a few minutes.

Wow! That, right there, is narrative structure, being created on the fly by someone speaking aloud. That's amazing! If there is an ancestor to the modern novel and short story, I believe it comes from the anecdote.

And there are two different kinds of anecdotes too. There are things that happened to you, which you tell in the first person. But you may also be talking about something that happened to a friend, in which case it is told in the third person. See that? The roots of POV, buried inside the anecdote.

Here's another example. What tense are anecdotes told in? The past tense, of course! You can't tell a story about the present. (Well, you can if you're on a cell phone and describing a scene as you witness it. And there may be other examples. But you get the point.)

I'm going to give myself a homework assignment. Tomorrow at work, I'm going to listen to the stories told around me, and break down the anecdotes into their narrative components. Also, it will be easier to make it through a work day when I can think of office chatter as stories being created all around me.

Publication Status:

• Submitted: 5
  
• Accepted: 1.35?
• Rejected: 2
• Pending: 1.65?