Thinking about your story’s structure

When you’re thinking about your story’s structure—the way a story unfolds and why it’s so compelling —it can help to watch movies, not only because it takes less time to watch a movie than to read a book, but because sometimes you can see a story’s structure, the bones of the plot, more clearly on the screen than on the page.

Over the past few weeks I’ve searched for something to watch after finishing Season 6 of All Creatures Great and Small (which I highly recommend), and found myself watching four films that turned out to have unexpectedly similar structural elements. 

The four films are: 1) Sea of Love with Al Pacino, a murder mystery written by Richard Price set in NYC; 2) Ghosts of Mississippi with Alec Baldwin and Whoopi Goldberg, a courtroom drama produced by Rob Reiner about justice pursued for the murder of Medgar Evers; 3) Harriet Tubman with Cynthia Erivo, a story of the heroic slave who manages to escape slavery in the South and who then returns to help others escape slavery; and 4) The Marksman with Liam Neeson, a story of a decorated Marine sharpshooter who vows to help a Mexican boy seeking safety in the US. 

What do each of these films have in common?

Although each film is set in different time periods and different locations, and follows a different plot, each film’s main character must overcome challenges that life has thrust upon him or her due to circumstances beyond their control.

Pacino plays a NYC homicide detective who needs to solve a murder before he or anyone else becomes the next victim. 

Baldwin plays a prosecuting attorney in Mississippi who, despite disapproval from his wife, family, community, and colleagues, needs to right a wrong done thirty years before when civil rights activist Medgar Evers was murdered. 

Erivo plays a slave who needs to escape slavery in Maryland and then wants to return to rescue all those she loves who are still enslaved. 

And Neeson, a decorated Marine corp marksman, needs to take a boy who is wanted by the Mexican drug cartel to safety despite the threats to his own life.

And the question that I kept asking myself as I watched each film was how do these characters succeed at the seemingly impossible task they’re committed to performing?

Each film’s plot builds tension in similar ways. The higher the stakes, the more to be risked. Or, put another way, the more to lose, the higher the tension. You couldn’t help notice that the greater the possibility of failure, the greater the relief and sense of completion when success was achieved.

The basic structure of each story (at least as I saw it), regardless of the setting, whether NYC, Mississippi, Maryland, or Arizona, and regardless of the gender, age, or race of the main character, was built on the premise that the main character faced a problem. 

What was the problem? And how could the character obtain what he or she wanted or needed? 

The plot showed, step by step, how he or she overcame obstacle after obstacle to solve the problem and get what he or she wanted or needed.

(Warning: Spoiler alerts) 

Pacino’s character finds the murderer, but not before almost being killed himself. By uncovering the murderer, who turns out to be the ex-husband of the woman who Pacino suspects of the murders (the woman who he is falling in love with), he not only solves the crime, but clears the way for possible romance. 

Baldwin’s character is willing to pursue justice despite risking his legal career and losing his wife (due to her inability to understand what he’s doing). He is relentless in his efforts to overcome the lack of evidence, and ultimately he is able to discover more evidence, enough in the end to take his case to trial and win a long-sought verdict of guilty for the murderer.

Erivo’s character is willing to risk dying in order to live as a free woman. Once she escapes to the north (Philadelphia), she returns south again and again to help others escape, even as the risks grow greater and more dangerous with each return as the reward for her capture increases and as the enslavers seek more and ways to capture her.

And Neeson’s character has vowed to a dying mother to help her son after she’s gunned down on his land along the Mexican border by members of the Cartel gang seeking revenge for her cousin’s theft of money. In defending her and her son, Neeson inadvertently kills one of the gang members’ brothers and ends up with a target on his back, too. He has a choice to make. Hand over the boy to border patrol, who will send him back to Mexico where the Cartel will likely kill him, or else help him reach his family in Chicago. Neeson decides to drive him north to safety while being chased by the cartel gang members wanting to kill them both.

Each of the main characters in these four films shows courage, determination, and a fierce loyalty to solving their unique problems. 

Each is willing to risk physical harm, loss of friends, home, family, all for the sake of truth and justice.

The next time you’re thinking about your story's structure, you might consider these questions: 

1) What does your main character want or need?

2) What are the obstacles preventing her from getting what she wants?

3) What does she risk losing?

4) How does she overcome these obstacles?

5) How is she changed as a result of her journey?

Let us know the way you think about your story’s structure. Is there any advice you’d like to share with other writers struggling to understand their own story’s structure and plot? Please feel free to send us your suggestions. 

One Writer's Process: Deborah Underwood

Writing is Hard

I wrote a picture book last year. Revised, revised, had some interest, revised, revised, got to a point where it felt better, but now am at a point where to go forward I would need to revise again, and maybe remove some of what I thought the story was about (although exactly what it is about has remained elusive, even to me).

Have you ever had a fallen soufflé story? One where you've messed with it so much you're completely lost and don't even know which way is up anymore? I've set this aside for a bit, but came back to it yesterday and am just as confused and unconvinced. The revision suggestions make good sense, but I'm not sure I feel they're right for me. But I know the story could be stronger, and I want it to be as strong as it can be. Unless I want to just leave it behind and move on, which is another possibility.

I may just do a quick draft to see if the changes feel off once they're incorporated, but I'm dragging my heels even at that. I don't mind editing; I actually like it. But I really don't like looking around and saying, "What even IS this mess? And should I find an escape hatch and go write something totally new?" It's like I've entered some weird magnetic anomaly where the compass is spinning around wildly and can't be trusted.

In contrast, I had to write a synopsis of a recent work yesterday. I love this story. Self-doubt is my constant companion (for most all writers, maybe?), but this story makes me laugh every time I read it. It's funny, I love the voice, and the plot works exactly the way it should. It reads as if it poured from the assured pen of a skilled writer who doesn't question her ability or experience at all.

Being a writer is dancing between these two opposites, and boy, it can mess with your head.

Coffee will help though, right?

Deborah Underwood’s most recent release, Bearplane, illustrated by Sam Wedelich, came out last month, and Walter Had A Best Friend, illustrated by Sergio Ruzzier, is coming out this fall. She’s written for young readers as well as for older readers, including Every Little Letter, The Panda Problem, Interstellar Cinderella, and The New York Times bestsellers The Quiet Book, The Loud Book, and Here Comes the Easter Cat. (And that doesn’t include the 28 nonfiction books that she’s written for kids.) If you’d like to learn more about her and her work, visit her website: https://www.deborahunderwoodbooks.com/index.html

Editors note: Deborah shared these observations on writing with her Facebook followers and kindly granted Wordswimmer permission to reprint her words here. If you’d like to follow her on Facebook, check out her FB page: https://www.facebook.com/deborahunderwood. Thanks, Deborah!

Cause and Effect (or Choices and Consequences)

“Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“You see, too often as writers, we think in sequential events, not consequential effects.”—September C. Fawkes

Over the past few months I’ve spent a few hours each night watching episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, the popular, long-running TV medical drama (with past seasons available on Netflix) about a group of young doctors in a Seattle hospital learning how to become surgeons. 

There are a lot of reasons why I’m watching the show, not the least of which is because it’s a terrific story (thanks to its creator, Shonda Rhimes), with multiple plot-lines and characters who make mistakes and learn about each other and fall in and out of love as they try to master the challenging art of medicine (and life). But the main reason I’m watching is because, from a writer’s perspective, each episode offers a chance to study the principle of cause and effect.

Cause and effect is what drives a story forward. It’s the engine of plot. And watching Grey’s Anatomy helps me better understand the way cause and effect works as the scaffolding of a story. Once you understand how cause and effect works, you can begin to see how a plot emerges out of the choices that each character makes. Each choice means a character must act in a certain way.  And each action leads to a certain consequence. And each consequence leads to another choice… and so on. Cause and effect, or choice and consequence. It’s how a story unfolds, one choice at a time.

So I’m thinking how this idea of choice and consequence might help us craft plots for our stories. Sometimes it’s helpful to ask each of our characters what he/she/they might want. But watching Grey’s Anatomy, I’m learning that the principle of choice and consequence means asking the question slightly differently as what does our character want to do? Go right or left? Straight or backward? Climb up or down? Go in the water or stay on land? Each choice has a consequence—sometimes an intentional result, sometimes unintentional.

Here’s how cause and effect (or choice and consequence) worked in an episode that I just finished watching in season 9. One of the characters, Arizona Robbins, a pediatrics surgeon, is married to another surgeon, Callie Torres, and makes a choice to sleep with another woman, a visiting facial reconstruction surgeon. Her choice to cheat on Callie leads to a series of consequences. There’s her own remorse, of course. But there’s the waterfall of events that changes their relationship going forward. There’s Callie’s anger toward Arizona, which leads to her decision to leave the marriage and move out. For a while she stays with Derek and Meredith, and ultimately she decides to kick Arizona out of the condo they’ve shared so she can have her life back.

What’s clear in this flow of events is how much Callie wants to be happy. What does she have to do to be happy? Once she makes the decision to be happy again, she figures out it’s time to leave her marriage, and to stop helping other people and to help herself instead. These are all decisions that she acts on. Will she make another decision that will bring her back to Arizona in the end? Will Arizona decide to do something to win Callie back and atone for her mistake? I don’t know. But it’s possible. The story depends on their choices, and on the consequences that result from their choices.

Of course, I could offer other examples of cause and effect. But you get the idea. Stories are based on cause and effect, choice and consequence. Whether you’re reading a novel or watching a show, you can study each character and note the different actions that he or she makes and then follow the consequences of those decisions. There will be actions and re-actions. And you’ll see, I suspect, how each character‘s decisions impacts their lives as well as the lives of whoever they come into contact with. 

Choices and decisions. Cause and effect. These are the essential ingredients for a story to capture a reader’s attention (and heart). 

For more info on cause and effect, visit:

https://www.writersdigest.com/there-are-no-rules/cause-effect-telling-story-right-order

https://www.septembercfawkes.com/2020/04/why-story-cause-and-effect-and-how-to_13.html

https://storygrid.com/cause-and-effect/

For more info on Grey’s Anatomy, check out: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey's_Anatomy

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0413573/

The Beauty of a Quiet Book

One of the beauties of a quiet book is that life unfolds more slowly in its pages, unlike the rush of plot-driven adventure novels, which are so popular in the minds of editors and agents these days (and in readers’ minds, too, I suppose) because of that rush.

Quiet stories tend to explore a character’s inner world rather than build a fast-paced action plot that can feel like a rapidly shifting maze or a series of bigger (or smaller) hoops through which a character has to jump.

A quiet book may not have much in the way of a plot, and it may examine characters who don't seem to have many flaws or who lack a significant problem altogether, which means that the story may lack sufficient conflict for some readers to stay interested in what happens next.

And yet ... a quiet book can give readers an opportunity to savor the richness and natural rhythms of life, as well as its mysteries, in much the same way sitting on the edge of a still lake or calm sea can offer moments of true insights into the mysteries of life surrounding us.

These thoughts about quiet books were prompted by Patricia MacLachlan's The Poet’s Dog, which I found the other day while browsing through the shelves of our local library. 

One of the mysteries that MacLachlan, the Newberry Medal winning author of Sarah, Plain and Tall and a host of other books, explores in The Poet’s Dog is a what if question: what if a dog could understand language and speak in order to be understood? (MacLachlan performs this same magic trick in Waiting for the Magic, another middle grade reader with more than one dog that can understand and speak English.)

Maybe this idea—that dogs can speak and understand English—is what makes The Poet’s Dog more than a “quiet” book, I don't know. Maybe it even gives it a step up into fantasy. But however you might want to label it, it’s a book as much about the value of words—and how words have the power to connect us to one another, human to human as well as human to animal—as it is about plot and character.

MacClachlan moves her readers inside the thoughts of each of her characters (even if one of the characters is a dog), and I suspect readers are able to hear these thoughts precisely because of the “quietness” of the story.

And maybe that’s another reason why I love quiet stories. In quiet stories you can hear the inner voices of the characters as clearly as you can hear your own. By opening a window into her characters’ interior worlds, MacLachlan gives readers a chance to savor this inside-out view in ways that are impossible when the story rushes by like an out-of-control roller coaster.

Time seems to slow down in quiet stories, and I treasure the chance to slow down, to take my time reading each word, turning details of the story over on the tip of my tongue without feeling rushed or forced to go faster than the pace that I feel comfortable with.

Yes, I admit there are times when I enjoy fast-paced, action-adventure stories and the roller-coaster feeling of falling and rising and falling again so quickly that the world is a blur of pure fear.

But it’s inevitably the quiet stories that take me deeper into life’s mysteries. Or maybe it’s just that quiet stories give me a chance to simply sit with the mystery of life.

At the heart of The Poet's Dog is the mystery of how human beings and animals recover from loss—a dog’s recovery from grief, a child’s recovery from fear, a mother and father’s recovery of their lost children.

It’s a story about restoring balance to the world, about waiting out a storm—whether that storm forms from the weather or grief or loss—and finding faith that life will regain its balance.

It’s also a story about passing on values of kindness, of courage, of hope and trust.

Editors, agents, and teachers may disagree, but I believe the world needs more “quiet” stories that give young readers space to think and to dream, stories that let us pause and appreciate what’s right in front of us, that help us learn how to live in the moment.

Disarming the Plot Monster

On our beach walk this morning we were lucky to find Judy Irvin Kuns, the author of the middle grade novel, While You Were Out, (Dutton Children's Books), just coming out of the water.

She was kind enough to stop and share some thoughts on how she's learning to swim past what she calls the "plot monster."

Her guide? Jane Vandenburgh's Architecture of the Novel.

With any luck, Judy's thoughts on plot will help you swim past the plot monster, too:

As a child, I was certain there was something lurking under my bed at night--a big hairy beast of a thing--that was just waiting for an arm or a leg to dangle over the edge so it could snatch a limb and pull me under and I would never be seen again.

Today, that’s pretty much how I feel about plot. The only difference is that the plot monster doesn’t confine itself to the narrow space beneath my bed. The plot monster follows me everywhere I go.

So I decided to try and vanquish my dread and face the plot monster head on. I would read every book and article I could find on plot and I would disarm him once and for all. But my plan only managed to further confuse, confound and overwhelm me until I felt completely incapable of attempting even the briefest, simplest of stories.

Enter Jane Vandenburgh. With her casual tone and sense of humor, Vandenburgh immediately felt like someone I could trust. “We need only to think about plot in order to feel lost,” she says in her book, Architecture of the Novel.

Vandenburgh maintains that my story is not something I have to create. It already exits. It has chosen me, not the other way around. All I have to do is uncover it, expose it to the light, and I can do this by the simple act of writing scenes. That’s all. Just scenes. Oh joy! I can do that.

But wait. What about that oft repeated “rule” that says, in novel writing, the whole must be greater than the sum of its parts?

Vandenburgh assures us that we can learn the whole by creating the smallest of its parts.

And for right now, that’s enough. If it’s not meaningful yet, it will be when you make it that way. And you will do this only after observing all the other scenes you have written prior and subsequent to this particular one. Be patient. “Nothing will be as random as it might first appear.”

“There will always be a reason your story has asked you here,” she says, “as the scene contains something it needs for you to find.” I love the treasure hunt feel of this statement, not to mention the challenge put forth. All of a sudden it feels like a game rather than a chore. Reading this, I felt as if a huge weight had been lifted off of me and placed on the story itself.

So as your simple little scenes accumulate, they start bumping into each other and begin talking amongst themselves. Just leave them alone. They’re making their own plans.

And just when I felt I couldn’t get any giddier at the simple doableness of this, Vandenburgh adds, (in not so many words) oh and by the way, forget about any kind of organization. No chapters, no outline (“Keep the blueprints in the tube.”), no back story. Scenes only. And don’t try tucking memories into scenes, either. Memories are back story and back story is a plot concern. We’re not going there, remember? When a memory presents itself, just write it as a scene and worry about where it will go later. (I LOVE this woman.)

“Background, if ignored, will almost always take care of itself,” she says. Which sounds very similar to what one of my beloved Vermont College mentors, Brock Cole, told me so many years ago. “Take care of the small stuff and the big stuff will take care of itself.”

And as if all of this good news wasn’t enough, Vandenburgh explains that writing in scenes removes the need to explain things. But don’t think you can get away with just gazing at your scenes as if looking in through a window. Oh, no. You must “go to the door, turn the handle, open that door and step into your story.”

Exposed to the light and confronted by you advancing one scene at a time, the plot monster shrinks to a dust bunny.

For more information on Jane Vandenburgh, visit: http://janevandenburgh.com/about

And to learn more about Architecture of the Novel, take a look at: http://www.amazon.com/Architecture-Novel-Handbook-Jane-Vandenburgh/dp/1582435979

Judy Irvin Kuns is a graduate of the MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her first middle grade novel, While You Were Out, (Dutton Children's Books), was a Junior Library Guild Selection and winner of the Paterson Prize for Books for Young Readers. An excerpt of her middle grade novel, The Family of Things, was selected as a finalist in the Katherine Paterson Prize for Young Adults and Children’s Writing sponsored by Hunger Mountain Journal of the Arts. She lives in Sandusky, Ohio.

Diving Deeper

In response to last week’s post, J. Irvin Kuns, the author of While You Were Out (Dutton, 2004, a Junior Library Guild selection), wrote:

As so often happens when following the links offered on wordswimmer, I find myself diving deeper and deeper into the various related articles, interviews and exercises provided at the end of each post. It happened again with last week's link to storyfix.com. After doing the exercise recommended by author Larry Brooks, I noticed an e-book he wrote called Story Structure - Demystified. Since structure has always been my nemesis, I took the bait and ordered the book. I always suspected there was a book on structure out there somewhere that was different from all the rest. For me, this is that book.

Normally, whenever I pick up a book on structure and see those jagged mountain graphics that are supposed to represent rising and falling action, with the peaks growing taller and steeper and looking more and more ominous as they cross the plain of the page, I immediately shelve the book and run. I just cannot get my right-brained head around that kind of approach. Also with most books on structure there seems to be this underlying assumption that all writers understand what such things as plot points, turning points, midpoints, and pinch points (what are pinch points?!?!) represent and how they all relate to each other. I will readily admit I am not one of those people.

In this book, Brooks kindly, gently, and patiently leads us, using helpful analogies, towards a real understanding of what it is a writer must do to make a manuscript work. In the storyfix.com exercise that got me into all of this in the first place, Brooks suggests listening to three specific songs as a sort of meditation and inspiration to help draw you back to the page. One of those songs is "Hallelujah" by Jeff Buckley. It is a beautiful and haunting song and I have listened to it several times over the last couple of days. But it was Brooks' book on structure that really drew me back to my work-in-progress, this time feeling cautiously optimistic that I finally (finally, finally!) have a clue about how to approach it. Hallelujah, indeed!

For more information about Brooks’ book on structure, visit:
http://storyfix.com/infusing-your-fiction-with-heart-and-soul-an-exercise

And to read more on writing from J. Irvins Kuns, visit:
http://wordswimmer.blogspot.com/2006/01/one-writers-process-j-irvin-kuns.html

Beachtalk with Donald Maass: On Creating Micro-tension

“Great storytelling is the key to success as a novelist,” says Donald Maass, the legendary literary agent who founded his own firm in 1980 and now sells more than 150 novels a year in the US and abroad, including work by Stuart Kaminsky, Thomas H. Cook, Anne Perry, Diane Duane, Todd McCaffrey, and David Zindell.

It was while Maass was writing his own novels under various pen names in the 1980s that he learned how to plot a compelling story. “Ninety-nine percent of a story’s success,” Maass says, “is in the manuscript. Everything else flows from that.”

Much of the knowledge about writing stories that he learned on his own (and from working with hundreds of authors at his agency and in the writing workshops that he offers around the country) Maass shares in his enormously well-received books on writing–The Career Novelist (1996), Writing the Breakout Novel (2001), and Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (2004).

Now Maass has written another book on writing, The Fire in Fiction: Passion, Purpose, and Techniques to Make Your Novel Great, which writers are likely to consider just as indispensable to their understanding of their craft as his earlier work.

The Fire in Fiction is scheduled for release next month, and Maas was kind enough to chat with us on the beach and offer Wordswimmer readers a brief (non-exclusive) excerpt from the book on creating micro-tension in stories.

Micro-Tension

Conflict is story. We hardly need discuss that any further. Every novelist who’s gotten beyond the beginner stage knows it. What many do not grasp, though, including many published novelists, is that what keeps us turning hundreds of pages is not a central conflict, main problem or primary goal.

Think about it. If that was all it took to get keep readers involved to the end, then all you would have to do is set a principal plot problem at the outset. Then you could indulge yourself however you like for hundreds of pages.

Imagine.

Of course it is not like that. Conflict must be present in smaller ways throughout. Most novelists understand that too, or say they do. Despite that I am able to skim vast swaths of virtually all manuscripts and portions of many published novels.

What is it, then, that keeps us reading all the way? Is it conflict within each scene; a character in every chapter who has a clearly stated goal? Is it avoiding low-tension traps such as back story, aftermath, landscape and weather openings, empty exposition and unneeded dialogue? Is it keeping the action moving? Is it throwing in sex and violence for occasional jolts of adrenalin and allure? Is it luck?

What keeps us reading every word on every page of a novel is none of that. Consider the page turners on your shelves that do open with weather or scenery, or quickly dump in back story, or linger in aftermath and indulge in exposition. How do those authors get away with it?

Conversely, think about those highly-plotted, action-packed novels that didn’t hold your attention. Think about the violence that moved you not at all and the sex scenes that you skipped. Weren’t those novelists doing it right, writing by the rules? How come, then, you set those novels aside?

Holding a reader’s attention every word of the way is a function not of the type of novel you’re writing, a good premise, tight writing, quick pace, showing not telling or any of the other conventionally understood and frequently taught principles of storytelling.

Keeping readers constantly in your grip comes from the steady application of something else altogether: Micro-tension. That is the tension that constantly keeps your reader wondering what will happen—not in the story, but in the next few seconds.

As Maass suggests, micro-tension is essential to keeping a reader’s attention firmly fixed on the page, and you’ll have to read his new book to understand what he means by micro-tension and how to establish it in your work.

But I’d like to explore the idea of micro-tension a bit more here to try and understand how it might operate to hold a reader’s attention.

First off, the term alone–micro-tension–implies a larger tension in a story, say, macro-tension, which in turn suggests two levels operating within the story simultaneously.

On the macro level, you have to establish the main character’s ultimate goal–the thing that he or she is striving for with all his or her being, and on which the success or failure of his or her quest or journey will rest.

On the micro level, though, you have to create a series of steps which lead your character toward that ultimate goal, and each step must contain tension or conflict in order to satisfy the principle of micro-tension.

What Maass doesn’t say in this excerpt is that tension on the micro or macro level cannot be sustained at full intensity through the course of the story.

Rather, that tension must rise and fall and rise again in a series of undulating, wave-like scenes that draw the reader into the conflict and spin him out of that conflict into another new (more difficult or dangerous) situation ... in which he faces yet another conflict.

In other words, micro tension is based on scenes, and the scenes are built around conflict, and the conflict must rise in tension within the scene itself... and then must rise again as scene A flows into scene B and so forth... so that the tension on the micro and macro levels can build toward a climax.

Imagine each scene like the rung of a ladder that the character must climb in order to reach the next rung and the next.

Plot then becomes the melding together of character and action, with each action the character takes bringing him into greater conflict or danger... always closer to his ultimate goal... which he is constantly in danger of losing by virtue of the greater and greater conflict that he must face.

What I find helpful about Maass’ description of micro-tension is the way it helps break down the plot into subsections or segments (like rungs of a ladder), each segment filled with an increasing level of tension that the character must make his way through in order to fulfill his destiny.

Anyway, thanks to Maass for raising these questions and for suggesting that we look closer at micro-tension as a way of strengthening our stories.

For more information about The Fire in Fiction, visit:
http://www.writersdigest.com/article/fire_in_fiction/

For more on how Maass helps writers find the micro-tension in their work, visit:
http://wetnoodleposse.blogspot.com/2008/04/toss-that-manuscript.html

If you’d like to read more about Maass and his agency, visit his website:
http://www.maassagency.com/index.html

And if you’re interested in reading interviews with Maass, visit:
http://writerunboxed.com/2007/11/30/interview-donald-maass-part-1/
http://writerunboxed.com/2007/12/07/interview-donald-maass-part-2/#more-757
http://www.webdelsol.com/Algonkian/Classes/interview-DonaldMaass.htm
http://www.maassagency.com/lookfor.html
http://www.sfcanada.ca/summer2004/maassinterview.htm
http://writingraw.com/files/7%20Question%20Interview%20with%20Donald%20Maass.pdf
http://www.micheleacker.com/blog/?p=7

The Arc of a Story

The arc of a story points in one of two directions: upward, lifting your spirits as the characters struggle toward a particular goal, or downward, your spirits drawn into an abyss with the characters as they try to keep their footing while falling ever closer toward disaster.

In Francine Prose’s After, a dark harbinger of the future, you can see this downward arc play out in the aftermath of a deadly shooting at Pleasant Valley High School as the main character, Tom, and his friends at nearby Central High School begin to lose their freedom, one liberty after another.

At first, they lose the freedom to walk into school without having to suffer the torment of invasive searches and metal detectors.

Then, they lose the freedom to wear the color red and use cell phones and act or speak freely on their school bus after new video cameras are installed to monitor their behavior.

The grief and crisis counselor who takes over Central High after the shooting removes more and more of the students' freedom, curtailing their ability to act in ways that he deems threatening to others and themselves.

Little by little, with the loss of yet another liberty, the characters begin to feel as if they're locked in an air-tight room, and the room keeps shrinking as the arc of the story plunges downward.

What's interesting is how this downward arc creates its own momentum, compelling readers to turn page after page to find out what happens next to Tom and his friends.

How will the characters respond to the increasingly stressful obstacles placed in front of them? That's the question which Prose plants in her reader's mind to sustain the story's suspense and carry the reader forward.

Until the very end of the story, Prose keeps the reader wondering if these characters will come to their senses and attempt to escape from the downward plunge before they hit bottom.

If you're looking for ways to create suspense in your story, push your characters off a cliff... and watch as they cling for any handhold that they can find as they plummet toward disaster.

For more on plotting and raising the stakes, read:
http://kayedacus.com/2007/10/25/plot-or-plod-part-4-raise-those-stakes/
http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Rec/rec.arts.sf.composition/2006-03/msg00416.html
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-plot-point.htm
http://justinhillauthor.blogspot.com/2007/09/tolkien-writing-and-raising-stakes.html
http://writing.fsu.edu/?q=node/512

For more on After, read:
http://januarymagazine.com/kidsbooks/after.html
http://www.epinions.com/review/After_by_Francine_Prose/content_100886482564
http://thebookpedler.wordpress.com/2007/02/28/after-by-francine-prose/

And for more on Prose, read:
http://www.blueflowerarts.com/fprose.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/factfict/ff9803.htm

Catching Your Breath Underwater

You can barely stop to catch your breath when reading Alex Flinn's Breathing Underwater

It's not just her pacing that keeps you turning the pages. It's the deft way that she interweaves scenes from the main character's past and present, as well as offers multiple perspectives into his character, that draws you underwater, deeper into the story and into the character's dilemma.

Flinn grabs her readers from the start with present-tense scenes of sixteen-year-old Nick Andreas as he enters the juvenile justice system, faces the judge, and finds himself sentenced to community service. He's also required to attend anger-management classes with Mario and keep a journal to better understand himself and the violent way that he mistreated Caitlin, his former girlfriend.

Right from the opening scene Flinn provides strong clues that Nick poses a danger:

I've never been in a courthouse before. But then, I've never been in such deep shit before, either. The metal detector screams when I walk through, and a security woman tries to check my pockets. I pull away.

"These what you want?" I dangle my keys an inch from her nose, getting in her face. She backs off, scowling. I throw them into her yellow plastic basket and walk through again.

This guy is trouble... and Flinn shows him not only in trouble but causing more trouble before he even makes it to the courtroom at the start of the story.

Second, Flinn includes telling details from Nick's journal entries. It's through his journal that Flinn shares the back-story leading up to the present story, with Nick describing his infatuation with Caitlin, exploring their relationship, trying to understand his anger, his controlling behavior, his jealousy, his self-esteem issues.

The journal entries reveal a more vulnerable side of Nick and allow us as readers to feel sympathy for him as he lets his guard down. With each entry, we begin to move past Nick's anger and discover the emotional wound that serves as the source of his current crisis:

When we were kids, Tom and I used to tell people we were twins. I wished it was true. My father would go on the warpath, and I'd head for Tom's. Did his family wonder why I came over so often? I tried not to care.

Third, Flinn shifts the focus (just slightly) to Nick's relationship with his father, a man who abuses him emotionally and physically. In this journal entry you can feel the tension between father and son:

The sound of ice cubes greeted me. In my father's house, ice cubes are air-raid sirens that send me diving for cover. I searched for an exit. There was none. Usually, I missed happy hour, my father's version of dinner at home, but he was early, I was late, and worlds collided. My father swirled his glass. I tried to look casual--impossible--and walked past him.

Fourth, Flinn develops Nick's new relationship with Mario, the leader of the anger-management class, as a way of revealing the first hints of his tentative growth toward a new understanding of himself:

After class, I gather my stuff, hanging back so I'm the last to go. When everyone's gone, I approach Mario. The fluorescent lights buzz overhead.
"That day on the bridge, when I slapped Caitlin..."
"Yeah?" He turns to give me his full attention.
"I was afraid, okay? I was afraid she'd leave me."
Mario nods. "I know you were." He starts to reach his hand out, then takes it back when he sees my face. "It's okay to be afraid, Nick."

And Flinn develops, as well, his new relationships with others in the class, especially Leo, who serves as a foil to show how much Nick has changed since he was with Caitlin... and who lets him finally see and understand how badly he had mistreated her:

At five after, I'm still waiting. I remember when we discussed lateness in class. I'm annoyed with Leo but not furious. Would I be madder at Cat? Losing it, maybe? No. Not really.
Maybe.
Probably.
No time to consider. Leo's black Trans Am cruises to a stop. When I get in, he says, "Sorry we're late. Someone got held up at the drugstore." He turns to the guilty party, Neysa, sitting beside him. "That's your story, right?"
"Leo..." she says.
"Leo..." he imitates, gunning the motor.
"Why are you acting this way in front of--"
"What way?" Leo demands over the tires' squeal. "You're the problem, not me."
"I'm sorry," Neysa examines the floor mat.
"I'm sorry," Leo mocks. "I'm sorry I'm always late. I'm sorry I'm a lying slut. I'm sorry I--"
"It's okay," I tell Neysa. "I don't think it matters if we're late." Leo, I ignore. Why is he acting like this? Why is it so familiar?

And, last, Flinn shows Nick finally coming to terms with his feelings for Caitlin, feelings so strong that by the end of the book they prompt him to violate the court's restraining order to speak to her so that he can finally apologize for his earlier behavior:

"Caitlin?"
"Who's this?"
"It's me." Then, quickly at her intake of breath, "Don't worry. I'm not trying to get you to take me back."
"Will you stop calling me?" she says, over my words. "Please. I could tell--"
"Go ahead. Call the police. Have your boyfriend amputate my face. I deserve it. I deserve it. Just listen a sec, okay?"
I take her silence as agreement. Out front, someone's mowing the lawn, and I say, "Look, I know you couldn't like me anymore, not after what I did. I know that now. I just..." Why is this so hard? "I'm just sorry. I thought I meant it before, but I didn't know. I mean, it's like apologizing for stepping on someone's foot. You say you're sorry, but you don't really understand how bad you hurt them."

As you can see, Flinn juggles these multiple scenes and shifting perspectives in dramatic ways, offering different angles into the story and generating mounting suspense in the reader's mind in the form of the all-important question: how will all of these different perspectives connect and resolve themselves?

If you haven't taken a look at Breathing Underwater, try to find a copy... and study Flinn's work closely for how to craft a multi-layered character as well as a fast-paced, satisfying story.

For more information about Alex Flinn, visit her website: http://www.alexflinn.com/

P.S. - Wordswimmer will be taking a break until June 10th in search of new sources of inspiration. You're invited to leave comments to this and other posts, and I'll post them on my return. Thanks for stopping by... and keep swimming!

When the Sea Cries

If you stand listening at the edge of the sea long enough, you can hear the cry of injustice echoing from its depths.

That's the cry that rises out of Patricia McCormick's novel, Sold, a heart-breaking tale about 13- year-old Lakshmi who is sold into sexual slavery and taken from her Nepali village to work in a brothel in India.

Her story, which unfolds in brief poem-like vignettes, is a cry for justice in a deaf world. And it's thanks to McCormick's remarkable skills as a writer that the reader, rather than turn away from the painful truth of this village girl's life, is willing to enter the dark, prison-like brothel that becomes her home, and where for the next year, despite the horrors of her new life, she manages to hold onto the slenderest thread of her own humanity.

Lakshmi's fate is all the more painful because McCormick shows us the simple life that she led in her village before tragedy befell her. As the story opens, Lakshmi is a child playing hopscotch with Gita, her best friend, bestowing affection on her little black-and-white speckled goat, Tali, and sharing secret sweets with her mother, Ama.

But it isn't a perfect childhood. Her family is poor and food is scarce, especially after a drought dries up the spring that brings water to the village. And her step-father gambles away whatever savings the family has collected. Yet Lakshmi is happy in the way that children manage to find happiness even in poor circumstances.

As the noose of poverty tightens around the family, however, the need for money (and a solid tin roof to protect the family from the heavy monsoon rains) becomes more acute, and Lakshmi's step-father decides to send her away to work. Lakshmi, a devoted daughter, goes willingly with her new Auntie, unaware of the fate that awaits her. She thinks that she's going to work as a maid in a rich woman's house like her best friend, Gita.

But Auntie isn't to be trusted any more than Lakshmi's step-father or her new Uncle-Husband, the stranger who takes her over the border and, finally, to the brothel where her life turns into a hellish nightmare with no end. Locked in a room for days without food or water, Lakshmi refuses to "work" until the brothel's madame, Mumtaz, slips a drug into her drink so that Lakshmi can no longer resist the men who force themselves upon her.

Each day takes Lakshmi further from her memories of childhood and her village and the innocent girl who once played with a goat in the clear mountain air. Each day that she spends in her room with bars on the window, a privy hole by her bed, and rats nibbling on the crusts of bread that she saves for breakfast, Lakshmi grows old beyond her years, knowing each night she must allow men to use her body... if she ever hopes to buy her freedom from Mumtaz.

But hope is like freedom ... a dream that she's not sure she can believe in:

This ache in my chest is a relentless thing, worse than any fever.
A fever is gone with a few of Mumtaz's white pills.
But this illness has had me in its grip for a week now.
This affliction--hope--is so cruel and stubborn, I believe it will kill me.

In the end, hope doesn't kill Lakshmi. It keeps her spirit--and soul--alive long enough for her to save herself... with the help of a shy, admiring boy who feels compassion for her as he wheels his tea caddy through the brothel every afternoon, and with the kind assistance of a well-meaning American.

In Sold, McCormick has written a searing, stirring account of one girl's tragedy, a girl brought to the edge of despair, only to be spared at the last moment from the agony of losing her sanity... and her soul.

What will become of Lakshmi once she escapes the brothel? Will her family welcome her return, assuming that she can find her way back to the village, or will they find her "fate" too shameful to deal with and shun her? And will Lakshmi, given the loss of her childhood and the memories of what she experienced, ever live a "normal" life again ?

We learn in the afterward that Lakshmi isn't alone in her fate. McCormick writes that "nearly 12,000 Nepali girls are sold by their families, intentionally or unwittingly, into a life of sexual slavery in the brothels of India."

With help, according to McCormick, some of these girls are rescued by aid workers who provide them with medical care and job training.

Perhaps that's what will happen to Lakshmi now that she's free. Perhaps she, too, can become one of the girls who are reintegrated into society.

As long as such injustice exists in the world, though, the sea will cry out in protest.

And sometimes that cry of protest will find a writer with the heart and soul of a Patricia McCormick, a writer who has shaped that cry into a story that magnifies an innocent girl's plea for help a thousand-fold... so that the world might wake up and listen.

For more about Patricia McCormick and her work, visit her website:

http://www.pattymccormick.com/index.php?mode=home

For interviews with McCormick, visit these sites:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6369325.html?nid=2788

http://pdfs.voya.com/VO/YA2/VOYA200612AuthorTalk.pdf