|
Part I: Care to Revise Your Story?
Part II: Care to Revise Your Story? Opening Windows
I've written short stories aplenty: I have notebooks and hard drives packed with short fiction drafts that range across the quality spectrum from nearly decent all the way down to virulent sludge. For the moment, let's say this résumé qualifies me to attempt the thesis project I have in mind: writing a novel.  I'm taking one of those MFA, graduate-level 101 courses the administration learns to offer to students who should--but do not--know how to approach the structure of a novel. Our fearless leader is Professor Kim McLarin, ushering rookies into the big leagues. We hope. Now, here's a basic Plot Triangle, and a very simple way to think about what's supposed to happen in a novel.
At the start of your novel, you'll have a main character, the protagonist, living the sort of life that this protagonist, Bruce, let's say, has always lived. If we leave Bruce alone, he'll plod ever-onward, content with his nightly, frozen Hungry Man suppers and his guilty obsession with the Olsen Twins, until he reaches the end of his story--until, that is, he dies. However, writing is violence, as they say. We're not going to leave old Bruce to deal with reality on his own. Instead, while Bruce is sopping up his poorly defrosted mashed potatoes and watching Full House re-runs, his favorite episode is interrupted by a news bulletin: one of the Olsen Twins has been murdered. Thus begins Bruce's story, leading him on a very different path from the one he plods during the miasmic, cookie-cutter days of his normal life. Professor Kim McLarin suggests looking at your beginning idea in this way:
1. Someone kills one of the Olsen Twins--Bruce's favorite of the two, by the way--ruining the flow of his life.
QUESTION: WHY DOES IT MATTER?
-- It doesn't matter and Bruce gets over it; or
-- Bruce mourns the world's new emptiness; or
-- Bruce's brother was the murderer; or
-- Bruce was the mastermind behind her murder, but both Twins were supposed to die. Search your soul, and determine which "why it matters" matters the most to you. Then: 2. Bruce's hired thug, Giuseppe, returns, looking for his pay. In a fury over the botched double-kill, Bruce throws Giuseppe down the front stair and refuses to give him a nickel. QUESTION: WHY DOES IT MATTER?
-- It doesn't matter; or
-- Bruce feels badly for Giuseppe and wants to make amends; or
-- Giuseppe is a well-connected Mason; or
-- Giuseppe is Bruce's brother; or
-- Giuseppe was Bruce's sister before she had an "operation." So on, so forth. Every step along the story's way, the reader will wonder why it matters. If at any time, the reader feels that Bruce could simply slip back into his normal life without significant consequences, then you do not have a novel. If at any time along the way, you find yourself not caring for Bruce's obsession, then you'll have to face the possibility that you're writing the wrong novel. Every stage of your novel should raise the stakes yet again, box your character in a little tighter, until at last he snaps: he changes conclusively--or must confront the stagnation of his entire life up until this very moment. It isn't easy to change, and that's why stories matter: they explain how people can, or cannot, change. They explain why people, after years and years of couch-sitting, are moved in the end to act. Part I: Care to Revise Your Story?
Part II: Care to Revise Your Story? Opening Windows Copyright ©2004-2007 Joshua Suchman. All rights reserved.
Taboo Monkey Blue Blog
|
