In Defense of the Bathtub Story

by Fiona Adair

For those of you who don’t know, Jerome Stern is kind of a legend. He was the head of the FSU English Department’s Creative Writing Program for many years. He created The World’s Best Short Short Story Contest and wrote several books, including Making Shapely Fiction, which is the source of the content I’m discussing here. You may be more familiar with him now in relation to The Jerome Stern Reading Series, a big part of the English community here at FSU.

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In Making Shapely Fiction, Stern has a list of types of stories to avoid writing, one of them being “The Bathtub Story.” I was surprised to see the bathtub story described so negatively in Stern’s book, because I first heard the phrase used in the context of a compliment for one of my writing classes last semester. A classmate had written a short story in which the main character had dinner in her apartment and reflected on her life. Our professor spoke highly of it, informing us that it would be considered a bathtub story. So I went home, googled it, and discovered that Jerome Stern said to… not write that?

Underneath a heading of “Don’t Write the Following Stories,” he explains:

“In the bathtub story a character stays in a single, relatively confined space for the whole story. While in that space the character thinks, remembers, worries, plans, whatever. Before long, readers realize that the character is not going to do anything. Nothing is going to happen in terms of action.”
-Jerome Stern

To give him credit, he does end the section by explaining that they can be good, as long as writers are able to make up for the lack of action.

I’m writing here in defense of the bathtub story, mostly because when I read a good one, I absolutely love it. To accomplish this, I’ve put together a list of elements that, in my opinion, make the bathtub story a great genre to both read and write.

1. Deeper Connection with the Character

Typically, a bathtub story only has one character. I’m not sure if there could even be multiple characters under Stern’s definition, but I can see a story having a handful of characters and still fitting under the bathtub story label. Either way, the type of narrative that a bathtub story lends itself to is one of significant connection between character and reader. Readers learn about the character through their thoughts or small (in)actions.

What this allows is the understanding of a character through the ways they view themselves and the world around them. Maybe the bathtub story is one where the character is literally just taking a bath and thinking— there, the reader could learn about the character by thinking about why the character is contemplating those topics, what the character could be doing instead of taking a bath, when they’re taking this bath, and maybe even the water temperature they’re bathing in. All of these are small details that would likely be overlooked by the reader and probably the story itself if it wasn’t a bathtub story.

2. A More Accessible Plot

Another thing to note about bathtub stories is their accessibility to readers. Sure, maybe nothing is happening, but that’s also more realistic in many situations. A character can be listening to music in a bathtub story; they can be vacuuming their bedroom; they can be lying in bed at night, waiting and waiting to fall asleep. The seemingly boring, mundane task that a bathtub story focuses on is often one that readers are deeply familiar with. While a typical reader might not connect with a character who is somehow uncovering ancient family secrets while getting fired from their job and caught up in a love triangle, they will be able to empathize with a character who is eating dinner alone at 11 pm.

A bathtub story is also easier to follow. The plot is a lot simpler than a typical short story that may have too many twists or time skips to keep track of for its length. Having just one character and one setting to keep track of can make the surface-level story completely clear to readers, allowing them to delve deeper into the hidden meanings of the text.

3. An Excellent Demonstration of Imagination

I will go back to Stern’s words for a second here, because he says something in his book that really stands out to me. When describing why a bathtub story should be avoided, he claims that the lack of motion and action in a bathtub story is a sign of “failure of imagination.”

But is it? If a writer has successfully written a bathtub story that can indeed function as a short story and not just a diary entry, I think that alone is a demonstration of their ability to utilize imagination. It isn’t easy to write about someone doing… nothing and still make it interesting or have significance as a story that should be read by others. The writer would have to think extensively about what the character actually is doing when they seemingly aren’t doing anything at all. They must give the story meaning where there apparently isn’t a story at all. Which I guess is Stern’s point… But I argue that his point is wrong in that those challenges with a bathtub story aren’t reasons to not write one, but rather reasons that they make such great stories.

I should also make clear that I don’t think bathtub stories are the best stories ever. This article is merely meant to showcase some positive aspects of them. To further prove my point, here are a few great bathtub stories, picked out from past issues of The Kudzu Review!

“Munchies” by Tessa Germani – Issue 71
“To the Girl Running Reverse Down Pensacola Street at 7:17 A.M.” by Sophia Upshaw – Issue 68 (This one’s different from other bathtub stories, but it does revolve around thoughts of a single moment)
“Suffering From Writer’s Block In My Tallahassee Apartment” by Kirstin Soper – Issue 67
“Application” by Olivia Pulver – Issue 48

So. The bathtub story? Do write it.

If you want.

Fiona Adair is a second-year student at FSU, majoring in Editing, Writing, and Media and minoring in Linguistics and World Literature/World Film. In her free time, she loves to read, write, draw, or go hiking. Her writing has been published in Seasonal Fruits Literary Magazine and Londemere Lit. She works as an editorial assistant on the Visual Arts team for the Kudzu Review.

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