The Intricate Art of Consecution

Simplifying a complex teaching from Gordon Lish for contemporary writers

An exclusive writing lab post on how consecution is a logical dance of ideas and can equip writers to construct a more harmonious and meaningful story structure.

In this essay, Jason Lucarelli who does a commendable job turning a nearly inaccessible teaching into something understandable. But, after reading, I knew I needed to break it down a little more for my own writers at the Studio.

Last year, I cobbled together a Consecution-For-Dummies method (though I didn’t call it that) as if felt important we all understand. Now it’s your turn here at Flight School. Let’s go.

Consecution Defined

According to two dictionary sources, American Heritage and Collins, consecution is a sequence or a succession (of events or things). Consecution can also mean “the relation of the consequent to antecedent; deduction.” And, “a logical sequence of deductions; inferences.”

When you think of consecution, think succession, or sequence, and then think about the logic of that flow.

Using the mountain climbing metaphor, let’s begin our trek upward:

“Consecution [is a] re-describing [of] the compositional process, how the repetition of words and sequences of events progress toward a naturally developed story with a coherent plot structure…[which is not]…different from the advice of the classicists — …good writing is, after all, good writing. Lish’s genius is in making it strange that we might see it better.”

Other sources for earlier references include, Viktor Shklovsky, History of Prose, early Greek and Roman writers...  ~ The Consecution of Gordon Lish: An Essay on Form and Influence — Jason Lucarelli

An example of consecution at work can be found here, in Awaiting Orders by Tobias Wolff.

The way I look for consecution, or the opportunity for it, is to call out the strong descriptive images and repetitions that hold the essence of the story.

Taking inventory of what I underlined in blue, you’ll see I’m fishing for images, images that evolve, and repetitions.

Immediate repetitions: Billy Hart or Hart: 8x

Location: Orderly room progresses to barracks progresses to a meaty gray moth thwacking against a screen (which is a stand in for Hart, I would suggest…or Morse but it’s too soon to tell).

Location in relation to time of day: Pulling night duty progresses to the night was sullenly hot and still: just past eleven (the 11th hour)

With this list you can start to see what Wolff has done, intentionally or unintentionally. These patterns take Awaiting Orders from being a particular story about a particular person to be about the heart (Hart) at the 11th hour which is also a time of contemplation vs. action. Imagistically you are also in the presence of a reflective story from the perspective of the narrator, Morse (which is another image: of Morse code or the interpretation of symbols).

I mean, come on, this is why Wolff is one of the brilliant writers of our time who “goes the distance” meaning that he is a wondrous word-smith but also goes to the very depths of the human experience to bring back gems that are disquieting rather than annoyingly simplistic or easily questioned.

There are deep writers. And there are great word-smiths. But, very few writers do both at the same time.

Now, let’s apply the same inventory to the work of a less brilliant writer (me). I want to look into the story I wrote about “Amber” in this post: Flipping Out on the Antagonist.

Going Home

It’s a hot day for the coast, hot enough that Amber peels off her hoodie and ties it around her waist. This is not easy when in a squat, but she manages, feet set wide in the sandy dirt.

Amber’s deep in the tall wild grass that grows under the rusty mailboxes that she and her brothers used to whack at with sticks when they rode their bikes this way. Long time ago, Amber thinks, tugging at the knot at her waist.

She’s nearly fifty years old but looks thirty, wears a wife-beater tank. Faded Levi’s torn at the knees. Leather hiking boots laced to her ankles. These she picked up for a fiver at a re-sale store in Portland where she was hanging out with her kid just a couple days earlier.

“Why are you going back there, Mom?” her kid asked when they were at the Formica table in the kitchen. The kid was drinking coffee. Amber was lacing up her boots and taking inventory of all she had packed in her two oversized bags.

“Mom!” her kid said, voice raised.

Amber looked across the table at her kid who wasn’t a kid anymore but grown up with a kid of her own (a little toe-headed two-year-old asleep in the playpen), but the kid—her own daughter— looked young there in her baby blue bathrobe and her pale hair pulled back in a pony. Tired eyes from working the night shift at Pancake Heaven where she served rich drunk kids bacon, eggs, hash browns, and stacks of fluffy pancakes.

“You can’t go back,” her kid said. “You know that, don’t you? You can’t go home. It don’t belong to us anymore. That’s done.”

Amber flinched and her mind flashed into white emptiness.

“I’m serious,” the kid said, patting her hand on the table. “I can’t bail you out this time. I don’t have the cash.”

Amber tasted something in her mouth, something metallic. She looked around at the room, at the bags, the boots. She was lost for a moment, gone, but then it all slid back into place. Her plan. She reached across the table and rested a hand on her daughter’s thin arm.

“I’ve got this,” Amber told the kid. “Don’t worry about me.”

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