In search of stolen legs…
I’ve been revisiting Michael Kimball’s craft note on plotting because I’m stuck on some work. I appreciate how he summarizes the variety of driving forces fiction can utilize:
I often tell writers that they have to make the reader want to turn the page and there are plenty of ways to do that. It can be because the reader wants to find out what happens next or because the writing is so funny that the reader wants the next laugh or because the writing is so amazing that the reader wants the next amazement. That is, there are plenty of great books that have been written without using story and plot in traditional ways—Stanley G. Crawford’s Some Instructions and David Markson’s late quartet of novels are good examples of that. That is, what is on the page can be anything, but it has to be something.
He quotes Edna O’Brien:
Well, fuck the plot! That is for precocious schoolboys. What matters is the imaginative truth, and the perfection and care with which it has been rendered. After all, you don’t say of a ballet dancer, “He jumped in the air, then he twirled around, etcetera . . .” You are just carried away by his dancing.
How do you plot your stories? Are you more intuitive, like Doctorow’s headlights at night? Like Flannery O’Connor discovering as she’s writing “Good Country People” that Hulga is going to have her leg stolen? (Sometimes my intuition is just wrong.) Maybe you’re more of planner, in charge of your galley slaves. Or do you hope something else is carrying your readers away?
TJ! This post comes at a great time for me. I wrote a story yesterday from a “we” POV, in which plot is not the driver. Today I will revise the story and tonight I will hand it to the wolves. Actually, these wolves are generous and kind. But I like the idea that a laugh can be enough to get the reader to turn the page. Or curiosity. We’ll see if I am able to pull off either of those.
Now I’m gonna check out the rest of what Michael Kimball has to say about plotting. Thanks for the links.
What are the story/plot problems you are currently grappling with and solving?
My narrative driven stories are running out of gas. Maybe I get too bored with them. That’s why I’m in search of a stolen leg, some plot turn that is equally surprising and inevitable and that has the necessary shift that includes the tension building in the rest of the piece.
I wonder if O’Connor had go back through “Good Country People” and play up the leg, or make it a more central, after she realized it would be stolen.
Someone should start a band called The Generous Wolves.
Well, Generous Wolf, what instrument do you play?
I own a keyboard. Does that count for anything? How about yourself? Wanna join a band?
I’m glad you took my invitation as an invitation. I play a little guitar and am willing to improve. We can have webcam practices.
The little delay I still get on my computer will be a unique part of our sound.
I played the tuba for years. Does a keyboard/guitar/tuba trio have a future?
YES! And the delay will really help make our sound original. Yay for computer glitches.
More curiously, what/who would a tuba/keyboard/guitar/delay group be analogous to in literature?
One of the real-life generous wolves is currently writing a story that is comprised of various made-up legal documents. There are all sorts of interesting time gaps and overlaps.
I’ve been thinking a lot of Brian Eno lately, talking about his production methods. He says the first thing he does when he goes into a new studio is to make a list of its weaknesses, then he thinks, “How can I use those to my advantage?” I think about that in my writing–what’s my weakness and how do I put it to good use (as well as computer glitch music)?
That’s the perfect state of mind for me to have as I try to start a new story. First it might take a couple days to list my weaknesses.
What do you play, Kinsey?
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by South Carolina MFA and Willow Springs, TJ Fuller. TJ Fuller said: How do you plot? http://thebarking.com/2010/05/in-search-of-stolen-legs/ [...]
For years I’ve been most interested in the prose itself. That is, I always wanted the writing to be what carried the reader through the story. (Which is not totally without irony seeing as it was Raymond Chandler’s books that really made me start writing regularly, and those books, while voicey and interesting, are also plot-driven. Sort of. But I guess not really. So maybe it’s not ironic after all.)
But in the last couple of years I’ve started relying more on plot to move things forward. This is just part of maturing as a writer, for me. I look at writers like Tobias Wolff and a story like “Powder,” where the movement is all about what’s going to happen next. Like the boy in the story, the reader keeps wondering what lies ahead. But at the same time, when I reread that story, I read it for the writing, the style, the little bits of humor, the characterization, everything except the plot.
So maybe there are times when the plot is the first thing that grabs you, but isn’t the ultimate thing. Or when it’s something that’s always underlying the story and comes up to take charge when the prose is no longer able to carry thing further. Then you move the plot forward and slowly move away from the plotline as the voice does interesting things.
I guess to me plot works hand in hand (or should) with voice, complementing each other rather than one having totalitarian control. And I have started to rely more heavily on understanding the whole story before I get done writing it. Or, rather, I understand that’s necessary but still have a hard time doing it. I think it’s helpful to have a solid understanding of where you want to go, and if something comes up along the way, you run with it. Maybe it works and gets you where you wanted. Maybe it works and gets you somewhere else. Maybe it gets you where you wanted but doesn’t work. Maybe it blows up the story. But I think that discovery, that ability for the writer to still be surprised by where his/her stories turn, is very important not only to keeping the work fresh, but to keeping the writer sane.
And of course this is how I think it should work, but whether I can pull it off is a whole other story. But this seems like an ideal way to compromise, because you retain the strengths of both approaches and don’t lose anything.
There are definitely multiple drivers in every piece, and the best ones do have a turn, a moment, a realization. They complicate as they move. But I think for the sake of a piece’s unity certain elements are going to pull you all the way through. Meaning, for me, I can’t abandon the narrative in the last third of the piece (or the voice or the whatever). If I’m using it to drive in the beginning, it has to carry through to the end.
Right, but at what volume? Because I think that is the key. You can’t just have trumpets going all the time over the top of the strings. Sometimes in different movements you need different features, even though those trumpets are not being put back in their cases. They’re just moving to the background. So maybe you come back and finish with the brass sound, and maybe you find out that there was this incredible woodwind thing going on all along that you weren’t totally aware of but is really the best way to finish.
Unity is a strange thing; a book like Cloud Atlas, which has those huge different sections, feels totally unified to me. But a book like The Known World, which also has multiple sections/voices, for some reason is just disjointed to me. Why? Don’t know, exactly. What unifies a story? What can? What must? I feel like these are all different questions, and all important, and I have no answers. Give me answers, TJ!
I’m thinking more in terms of short stories, and maybe that’s the difference. I’m looking for a single horn, maybe just some brushes on the drums. I’m not comfortable with a lot of free form soloing. We’re talking about The Generous Wolves album, right?
Keep the dream alive.
I was talking about onion rings.
I like what Francois Truffaut once said about Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes. I’ll paraphrase since I don’t have a direct quote, but he says that he always sits down to watch the movie and examine how it’s put together, but 10 minutes into it, he tends to get so lost in the work as a piece of film and storytelling that he forgets that he was watching it for the technical aspects.
Then there’s Howard Hawks’ explanation of what made a good movie: “I like it, and I’m a pretty regular guy, so I figure if I like it someone else is going to like it too.” Okay, that’s not a direct quote either, but a paraphrase.
Even though these two quotes are about movies, I think they work for any form of art. For me, when I’m writing a story, I try to focus on creating a scenario that gets me really excited and then doing whatever I feel works within that scenario, whether it’s creating a decent plot, a compelling character or working within experimental parameters be it adding multi-genre elements, etc. As with the Hawks quote, though he is talking about film, I think writer’s should have confidence that if you’re excited about something, that’s going to come through in the writing. But as with the Truffaut quote about Hitchcock, you should essentially try to mask craft while also paying extremely close attention to it. Not avoid it, but make it so that it isn’t the first thing that comes into your audience’s mind.
In the end, do you want to limit yourself and say, I’m writing a plot driven story or I’m writing a character driven story or I’m writing a story driven by the nature of the prose on the page? Or do you want to create a work that is enjoyable to read, fits the ideas you’re trying to convey and communicates something meaningful to your reader? If you’re answering no to the first and yes to the second, you have to just do whatever seems right for that particular story at the time, and kind of screw definition or rules.
Feel free to disagree…
I totally agree, but I find myself writing three pages of a character driven piece and then getting enamored with the language and letting that move the piece for a while and then wanting to focus on something else in the last part, and that kind of piece, at least for me, lacks a necessary wholeness. It’s also difficult to find the conclusion of those kinds of pieces.
I like that Truffaut quote. My favorite short stories are that way. I sit down to try and notice how their working and just end up being carried away again.
I honestly think it’s a matter of gaining confidence, letting yourself go, and not caring too much what anyone else thinks, which is a tough combination.
I have considered myself a serious writer for a while (since 1999), but in actuality, I haven’t been. What I’ve been is a serious reader, watcher and looker, ingesting paintings, short stories, novels, movies and anything else that has crossed my path. I started submitting in January 2008, with a goal of having at least one publication by the end of the year (goal met), and I’ve learned a bit in the years of observation vs. the years of rejection (with an acceptance or two here or there).
1. Doubt is good, tempered by confidence. Do you honestly believe you have talent? Good. But even the most talented people have flaws and write badly. I’ve recently been reading Olive Ketteridge, which won the Pulitzer. In “The Piano Player,” there is a sentence that stood out to me, “She winked, a tiny gesture; you would have thought it was a blink except she did it with one eye.” And I wondered, how does a sentence this bad get into a Pulitzer Prize winning book?
Well, read the rest of the book, it’s nice, pleasant, at times moving and beautiful and so what? One bad sentence…(okay there are a few more, but this is the worst). Doubt does help you edit these sentences out; but without confidence, the story/book never gets finished.
(PS. Thanks Elizabeth Strout for defining a wink. I didn’t know what one was until you explained it’s like a blink only using one eye…and the first story “The Pharmacy” is absolutely wonderful).
2. If you’re a serious fan of literature and you actually spend time writing, you will develop without really noticing.
Everything I finish seems supremely important when I finish it, then I submit, I get rejected, sometimes it’s accepted, sometimes it keeps getting rejected and I stop because I realize it’s not good. Sometimes it gets rejected and I still think its good so I continue and it eventually gets accepted. But overall, every piece is pretty much better than the last. And because of this I gain confidence. Still, the thing you realize is that as you write and develop tools, you become more free to break that necessary wholeness if necessary.
I’ve learned more, but I’m ranting and don’t know if I’m making any sense so I’m going to stop. All I know is whenever I see another writer grasping for assurance and inspiration, my general advice is just keep going, and try to get excited about what you’re doing. If you’re blocked, go for a walk or see a movie, and just keep thinking about how you can make what you want to make work, work…
It’s a good rant, Jason. I appreciate the thoughts.
In other words, I really like Michael Kimball and agree whole-heartedly with the quote above.
I like the questions you pose, Jason, and think they can be key in helping a writer distill her purpose. Or his.
I feel that plot is there in some respects in almost all cases, and that “fuck the plot” attitude has to do with rejecting an ascendency or dominance of plot. But i don’t know if I even believe in the possibility of plotlessness. Even Beckett’s novels, in which seemingly nothing of any sense happens at all — are working on the plot level, at least as i understand plot — a series of events in which the character and language are intertwined, and through which meaning and emotional experience are conveyed. In Beckett’s case, if you want to convey meaninglessless and absurdity, you do it in part through a series of meaningless and absurd and logically disconnected events.
If nothing happens, then i think that nothingness is working against the expectations of eventfulness. There’s almost no such thing as true stasis if you’re writing about people in the world — just the absence of generic ideas of plot.
I want something to happen. And i sometimes feel that dismissiveness toward plot — this isn’t aimed at you, TJ, or anyone else here — can be used to excuse work that isn’t doing enough for the reader. I am a precocious schoolboy…
Plot alone, however, is a meager meal.
I don’t think there’s such a thing as true stasis, but it seems like there’s eventlessness, pieces where I experience a movement or revelation, but I couldn’t summarize for you what happened. Mostly, I’m thinking of short, lyrical work.
Also, one of the things missed, I think, but those who are too dismissive of plot is how difficult it is to create a story where interesting things happen, that genuinely surprises without heading into M. Night Shyamalan’s territory.