A vignette in literature can be loosely classified as a short literary sketch. This definition seems simple enough. More exact, a vignette is just a small composition that may or may not have anything resembling those elements we find in good fiction like character or plot. In fact, a vignette may not even be fiction at all. Hopefully the vignette itself, or the designer of a vignette has a skillfully crafted group of words for the reader to enjoy. Again, this is a hard thing to consider, to define and perhaps harder still for description.
A vignette may be a solo piece or it may be embedded inside a larger work.
A short vignette as an embedded sketch is not a far fetched thing to find. As a aspect to fiction, such a vignette works as an aside in theater might function. Not overtly furthering the plot of a story, a vignette functions as development of mood, character or setting. Chapter 4 of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row is the ideal example for the literary vignette inside a novel. This chapter, just over two pages is an incidental happening between an old Chinaman and a young boy named Andy. Everyone in Cannery Row knows of this Chinaman and the Chinaman has an incredible knack for leaving people uneasy. Andy, a young boy from Salinas, confronts the old man. What happens is this: the Chinaman and Andy share a supernatural moment where the old man represents death and the young boy, life. How it functions is not really recognizable. Reading this short chapter creates a mood, yes, and it is recognizable within the confines of the short as “these are the people of Cannery Row.” But, this clever little scene really has nothing to do with the overall plot of the story.
Likewise, many scenes within Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun functions the same way. If you have not read this depiction of survived soldiers of the Great War, please read it on a sunny day. The whole book is without punctuation. The whole book is told from the point of view of a quadriplegic, deaf, blind and mute combat soldier. The vignettes within this novel often go back to the character's childhood in Shale City, Colorado or the Bakery of L.A. before the war. In a way, these vignettes do further the plot because they oftentimes function as exposition and back story. However, they go on for several paragraphs and many times they do not include any other character. They do set the mood, they do illustrate a point.
Julio Cortazar's “The Instruction Manual,” “Unusual Occupations,” and “Unstable Stuff” are collections of vignettes. These vignettes taken as a whole do progress the reader through a train of thought which may indicate story. With or without story, these pieces have coherent threads that unite them, but they do not have plot or any sort of recognizable character. Rather, these vignettes, all very carefully crafted and designed, read like nothing else would. This is not poetry, this is not fiction, this is not anything other than what it is: a group of vignettes. Eduardo Galeano's The Book of Embraces, Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America, and even Alan Lightman's Einstein's Dreams are wonderful examples of how beautiful these groups of vignettes can mold a larger cohesive piece of writing that is not traditional fiction with a beginning, a middle and an end.
What happens when we take a single vignette and put it on its own? Well, we have just that, a small piece of writing. It's not a short story, and despite what many writers of brief fiction may say, this is not a piece of flash fiction.
Flash fiction versus the literary vignette may be as complicated as the descriptions of each. Flash fiction is a piece of fiction, a true sovereign short-short story. A flash fiction piece is generally considered a story with a beginning, a middle and an end complete with character, plot, conflict and resolution executed in less than a set number of words. Flash fiction is generally less than 2,000 words but often classified as less than 1,000 words. Flash fiction is still fiction, just brief. For instance John McManus's “Cades Cove,” Colette's “The Other Wife” tell a story with beginning, middle, end, plot, character, conflict and resolution within the confines of fiction.
Where does that leave the dancing girls?
The Fields of Dancing Girl Heaven for me, happened somewhere in the Portland-Salt Lake City-New Orleans-Denver continuum of 2001. At this time I was just starting to write. I wanted to be a writer. The lack of stability, lack of a place to sleep and a strange level of travel mixed with poverty kept me from crafting any larger pieces of fiction. At this stage of my writing life, I could only snap small moments to work. There was no plot. There were no characters. There were sentences. There were scenes. There were coffee stains on the notebooks. I learned over this period the worth and valor of the vignette. They were descriptions or things, or people, or situations. They were fun to write. They would take years for me to understand. It would take even longer for me to build them into fiction.
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