Short Takes: How to rejuvenate a well-worn trope
Occasional Thoughts on Short Fiction
“Beggars May Ride” — by Val Howlett
Featured in: Ab(solutely) Normal: Short Stories That Smash Mental Health Stereotypes
If your best friend offered you the chance to make a wish in her family’s secret wishing well, what would you wish for?
That's the premise of Val Howlett’s beautiful, intelligent, and haunting short story, “Beggars Would Ride,” which is featured in the fantastic new young adult anthology, Ab(solutely) Normal: Short Stories That Smash Mental Health Stereotypes, edited by Nora Shalaway Carpenter and Rocky Callen.
The wisher in question is Kayla, a queer and non-binary teen still wrestling with what gender means to her1 while contending with pretty severe ADHD and PTSD brought on by an unexplained trauma from her childhood. When her best friend and secret crush, Larkin, offers Kayla (and their mutual friend Emma) the chance to make a single wish in the family wishing well, rather than feeling thrilled by the prospect, Kayla is overwhelmed with the responsibility of choosing the right one.
Like all good wish-fulfillment stories, there are well thought-out rules here. You’re only granted a single wish, and that wish can only change something about you or your own life (so, no wishing for world peace). Larkin’s family keeps a handbook that contains “[all] the things they had learned about wishing over four centuries—which wishes worked and which didn’t and which had disastrous consequences.” Though Larkin insists that her friends read this handbook before they make their wish, no amount of study can prepare these girls for the inherent pitfalls of being granted their heart’s desire.
From a craft perspective, the trickiest part of writing a successful wish-fulfillment story is figuring out the wishes themselves and how they will inevitably blow up in your protagonist’s face in surprising and interesting ways. Because this is such a well-worn trope, it can be especially challenging to bring something fresh and original to the material. Howlett achieves this feat by ensuring that the wishes her characters make (or do not make) are deeply embedded in who they are as individuals, reflecting their unconscious desires, and their unspoken fears and resentments. This is very much a character-driven story in the best sense, and well before the first wish is granted, we come to know these teens quite well and see the cracks already forming in their friendship. By the time Emma finally makes the first wish, though it comes as a surprise to the reader, it also immediately evokes her personality and insecurities and sets in motion a destabilizing chain of events that will ultimately lead to disaster.
Key to the success of this story is the sensitive way Howlett portrays Kayla’s mental health challenges and how they interfere with her ability to choose her own wish. Her ADHD makes it difficult to focus on reading the handbook, while her secret crush on Larkin only adds to her distraction. Her experience of trauma and ongoing PTSD paralyze her with the fear of making the wrong choice. Her inner conflict throughout the story feels relatable and authentic and adds tremendous depth and compassion to the otherwise creaky wish-fulfillment plot device that in lesser hands could easily read as trite, shallow, and even exploitative.
The lesson for writers here is simple: If you want to add new life to an overused trope, make sure to focus on creating original and complex characters.
While I won’t spoil the ending of this brilliant and achingly poignant story, I will say I found the ambiguity that Howlett leaves the reader to contend with feels true and earned and extremely wise—if also heartbreaking. There are no happily-ever-afters here. Though wishes do come true in “Beggars Would Ride” they don’t arrive without a terrible, terrible cost.
In community,
Rob
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I chose to use she/her pronouns to refer to Kayla in this essay because she still hasn’t figured out how she wishes to be identified.