"Break Me In and Out" by Kindall Gray

A: Kindall Gray

T: “Break Me In and Out”

B: One Story, Issue No. 174, Jan. 23, 2013

Q:  This is a study of the plot formula Gray so expertly employs, what Janet Burroway calls the “story form as a check mark” (Writing Fiction, 6^th edition, 2002, p. 40).  There’s a whole level of abstract desire, excellent dialogue, rendering, and plot complications around secondary characters in Gray’s story that I haven’t touched on in this brief breakdown of the story structure. 

“Break Me In and Out” by Kindall Gray is a model short story for several concepts teachers tried to instill in me during my intro to fiction workshops.  First, as my notes to one workshop have it, “The protagonist’s desires drive the plot.”  In the first three pages of Gray’s story we learn that the narrator has a chance to see her favorite animal, the monitor lizard and that she has a bike that she likes and a lock that was her only birthday gift the previous year.  The desire to see the monitor lizard is the main journey the protagonist undertakes and it’s introduced by the second paragraph.  The intensity of the desire is ratcheted up immediately: she’s been wanting this for over a year, it’s her favorite animal, she knows everything about them (showing, not telling, that she is somewhat obsessed with monitor lizards).

The other side to “the character’s desires drive the plot” is the obstacles that they have to overcome in order to achieve their desires.  The main obstacle introduced in the first few paragraphs of “Break Me In and Out” is poverty.  The other, related obstacle hinted at in the first section and developed throughout is the negligence of the mother.

Another teacher once said that a story needs a Thing, and another thing.  The Thing in this case is the desire to see the monitor lizard.  The other thing in Gray’s story is the protagonist’s neighbor, Edilio.  He’s the subplot, if you will, and he’s introduced on the third page.  Gray does an excellent job of using dialogue and in-scene interaction to demonstrate the bond between Edilio and the protagonist, but I won’t dwell on that here.

The desire and the obstacles are ratcheted up, until finally the mother agrees to take the protagonist to see the monitor lizard if she will give up seeing Edilio.  It’s a model example of merging subplots, on the one hand, and the character having to give up something meaningful in order to achieve her goal, on the other hand. 

Using F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Babylon Revisited” as an example, my first fiction instructor once said that it is very effective to give your character what she desires then take it away.  That’s precisely what happens in “Break Me In and Out.”  The mom promises to take the protagonist and then fails to follow through on her promise.

The ratcheting up of the stakes of seeing the monitor lizard, the play of desire and obstacles, and tensions in the subplot (which I’m neglecting) continues for 17 pages.  On page 18, everything is taken away from the protagonist, all is lost, and we have a model crisis.  The mom has forgotten to take her to see the lizard, her bike and lock have been stolen, and Edilio is not at home.  My first instructor called this moment, the “all is lost” moment in a story.  All is lost indeed.

The story continues for 4 more pages, which are a satisfying bit of “unknotting” and the character obtains her epiphany (or anti-epiphany, I’m not sure).  The abstract meaning of the lost objects, and the monitor lizard, are developed.  It’s an ending that reminded me of Joyce’s “Araby,” if that means anything to you.  It’s a model ending.

P is for Postscript: There’s an interview with Kindall Gray at One Story, here’s the link, that’s fascinating to me for two reasons.  The first is that Karen Friedman, the interviewer, describes the “heart of the story” as Edilio’s journey—I see what she means, but it’s something I completely neglected in my unpacking of the plot structure.  It makes me wonder about the relationship between a “heart of the story” and a story’s structure in general.  The second is that in response to a question about the most challenging aspect of writing the story, Gray said that the “structure was very difficult.  I found it hard to organize the events in the story in a way that increased tension and suspense but didn’t feel gimmicky.”  I think she succeeded in a model way.  Furthermore, she also ends the interview by saying that the best bit of writing advice she received was that “plot is only part of the equation.”  Indeed, and perhaps not even the equation’s heart.