The desire at the start is not to say anything, not to make meanings, but to create for the unwary reader a sudden experience of reality. This is a definition of purpose I think few writers would dispute. It's a laudable goal, rendering justice, and should be distinguished from passing judgment, which is not the fiction writer's province. A second requirement of the developing story is a sense of free play. Most of us can claim to have been visited by an image like John Fowles's woman on the quay, but few of us have any idea how to make her turn her face to us so we can make out more about her.
Characters sometimes reject all the possibilities one offers.
Their notion is that writers have set out to create something ''meaningful,'' and that to do so they must lace the work with clues to its meaning, usually symbols that have to do with colors or nature, the location of a river or a train track. Many students want to believe that writing is a kind of craft, a superior form of cooking or tapestry weaving, in which the writer is in total control from start to finish. No amount of denial is sufficient to obviate this notion. Nevertheless,'' she declares, ''art happens. I think the resistance to this notion of surprise is caused by the fact that good stories just don't seem to be accidental.