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Write On! A Discussion of Story - Finishing Chapter 10 of Steering the Craft [1]
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Date: 2023-03-09
It's been a week, friends. Here, there, everywhere...
Welcome to our Thursday night series on writing. Fiction, memoir, non-fiction - whatever you write, you're welcome to join in and share your triumphs, woes, or your latest character bugaboos and/or plot thicket.
Luckily, I had plans to go back to Steering the Craft and finish going through the last chapter I brought up here. There are some particularly nice passages regarding structuring a book that I need to go over again and again for myself, and hopefully you'll find them helpful too.
From the section titled: A Discussion of Story
I define story as a narrative of events (external or psychological) which moves through time or implies the passage of time, and which involves change. I define plot as a form of story which uses action as its mode, usually in the form of conflict, and which closely and intricately connects one act to another, usually through a causal chain, ending in a climax. Climax is one kind of pleasure; plot is one kind of story. A strong, shapely plot is a pleasure in itself. It can be reused generation after generation. It provides an armature for narrative that beginning writers may find invaluable. But most serious modern fictions can’t be reduced to a plot, or retold without fatal loss except in their own words. The story is not in the plot but in the telling. It is the telling that moves. Modernist manuals of writing often conflate story with conflict. This reductionism reflects a culture that inflates aggression and competition while cultivating ignorance of other behavioral options. No narrative of any complexity can be built on or reduced to a single element. Conflict is one kind of behavior. There are others, equally important in any human life, such as relating, finding, losing, bearing, discovering, parting, Change is the universal aspect of all these sources of story. Story is something moving, something happening, something or someone changing.
She goes on to say that a story needs both a focus and a trajectory…
(snip) - not necessarily an outline or synopsis to follow, but a movement to follow: the shape of a movement, whether it be straight ahead or roundabout or recurrent or eccentric, a movement which never ceases, from which no passage departs entirely or for long, and to which all passages contribute in some way. The trajectory is the shape of the story as a whole. It moves always to its end, and its end is always implied in its beginning. Crowding and leaping have to do with the focus and the trajectory. Everything that is crowded in to enrich the story sensually, intellectually, emotionally, should be in focus — part of the central focus of the story. And every leap should be along the trajectory, following the shape and movement of the whole.
Honestly, I find this sentence to be an accurate indictment of our current state of affairs: This reductionism reflects a culture that inflates aggression and competition while cultivating ignorance of other behavioral options. I’m feeling a little more grim tonight than I usually am for Write On; writing is a ‘joyful creative’ endeavor for me. So, let’s pivot to the challenge.
Since I already used the exercise from Chapter 10 way back in January, I’m going to leap backwards and use the writing exercise from Chapter 9 on “Indirect Narration, Or What Tells” which contains this loveliness:
“Somebody asked Willie Nelson where he got his songs, and he said, ‘The air’s full of melodies, you just reach out….’ The world is full of stories, you just reach out.”
The exercise (there’s actually two, pick one or do both if you have the desire: Part 1: tell a story and present two characters through dialogue alone. Pure dialogue! Everything the reader knows about who they are, where they are, and what’s going on comes through what they say. (me: try for 250 words here) Part 2: Being the Stranger — write 200-300 words, a scene involving at least two people, and some kind of action or event. Use a single view-point character (first person or third person limited) who is involved in the event. Give us the character’s thoughts and feelings in their own words. The viewpoint character is to be somebody you dislike, or disapprove of, or hate, or feel to be extremely different from yourself. The situation might be a quarrel between neighbors, or a relative’s visit, or somebody acting weird at the checkout counter — whatever will show the viewpoint character being who they are, doing what they do.
See you in the comments.
Write On! will be a regular Thursday night diary (8 pm Eastern, 5 pm Pacific) until it isn’t. Before signing a contract with any agent or publisher, please be sure to check them out on Preditors and Editors, Absolute Write and/or Writer Beware.
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