Story and Plot

Every now and then I pull off the shelf one of my favorite books on writing. Recently I've been thinking about John Gardner's observation that it's better to be a little slow in making up your mind if you're going to be a novelist. Don't rush to find an answer or fill in a blank in the story line. Slower is better than speed when it comes to letting ideas develop. When I first read this, I was relieved because my mind does take a while to bring all the threads of a narrative together.

 

One of my bad habits is thinking a story is done before it is. The original idea excites me, so I rush to get it down on paper, but near the end I tend to falter and wonder about the ending I've come up with. Instead of setting the story aside at once, I tend to tinker a little and then write to the end. Sometimes that works, but often not. I'm liable to come up with a much better ending if I set the story aside for a couple of weeks or wait until a better idea comes along. That can take months. This is a lesson I have to remind myself of every time I think I've finished something.

 

Katherine Anne Porter said she didn't begin a story with intent for its meaning or significance, but discovered it at the end. She's talking about finding the organic wholeness of a story rather than imposing one on it. Some call this theme or "meaning" of a story, but whatever the term, it is the vision we see when we step back and see the whole. I too hang out in the camp of the discoverers, waiting to hoist my binoculars for the grand view after I've reached the top of the mountain.

 

My copy of Stephen King's book On Writing is dog-eared (and don't complain to me about marring a book by turning down corners; a book is to be read and used and loved). I especially like his discussion on the difference between plot and story. "Story is honorable and trustworthy; plot is shifty, and best kept under house arrest." He goes on to describe an exercise that is designed to force the writer to be as honest as she or he can be, knowing that without honesty no story is worth the time.

 

When I'm working on the final draft of a novel I have to ask myself how honest have my characters been? Have they admitted, if not to others, then to themselves what their deeper motivations are, their goals and what they're willing to do to get there? Have they admitted to something unattractive, even offensive in themselves? Have I shown them in every aspect, letting the reader decide how to feel about them? We are heavily socialized in this society, and sometimes getting to the truth is harder than we imagine. We're not used to it in daily life. But we have to find it in fiction if our stories are not going to fall flat.

 

These are my thoughts as I contemplate 312 pages of my current WIP. I know the whole "plot" is there, and that all the threads come together. What I'm wondering about is something deeper, more organic. Have I captured a vision of an authentic life, and will readers recognize it? This morning I'm standing on the top of the mountain, binoculars raised, scanning the landscape.

"Resting" as Part of Writing and Editing

Writers share lots of practices and habits without thinking they have anything in common with each other. As practitioners of a solitary profession, we tend to think we’re entirely on our own. But we do share practices that help us develop and complete our work.

I’m a strong advocate of writing a fairly complete rough draft, working on that until it is nearly polished, and then setting it aside for one to three months, depending on the length of the work (a short story or novel, for example). I leave myself enough time to become “unfamiliar” with the work so that when I return to it I will read something with a fresh perspective, discover ideas I didn’t know I was including and characters who surprised me, and I will notice where the writing gets mushy and the story line is rushed. I will see the flaws, and I hope the occasional successful passage.

But what will I do during this waiting period? Sometimes I like to alternate between an Anita Ray story and a Joe Silva mystery. I could start another writing project, perhaps another novel, but that might interfere with my ability to return to the original mss, the one that is settling and aging nicely on the corner of my desk. I could work on book reviews or short blog posts, but I do that anyway throughout the week. I could begin another short story, something that won’t take the entire waiting time but enough of it. Or I could resurrect an earlier story started and abandoned. 

This time around I’m resurrecting a forgotten Anita Ray short story, one that I abandoned and forgot about. As I read it over I can see where I went wrong—three terrific murder suspects but no murder. Instead I originally wanted to concentrate on a different sort of crime, something akin to espionage, but that meant the story would meander for a while and lose its coherence. Perhaps the idea is better suited to a novel or novella rather than a short story. But now I want to use the setting and characters and set-up for a story, so I have begun reworking it. As I trim dialogue, insert a murder scene, and recast one or two characters, I find I have a much better, tighter story.

The story has been sitting forgotten for over two years, but the lovely thing about computers is that it’s still there, easily accessible and readable. I’ve been working on this story for a week now, rethinking and rewriting. Meanwhile, my unconscious has been sending me snippets of dialogue to incorporate into the “resting” novel when I return to it, and problems I had left unsolved or solved awkwardly now seem to have ready and elegant solutions.

The period of “resting” a story or novel is also a different way of working on them. By the end of the month I’ll have a reworked and nearly finished Anita Ray short story and be several steps ahead in completing the novel I set aside a few weeks ago.

John Gardner, author of The Art of Fiction and other books on writing as well as several novels, once commented that novelists can be slow thinkers, slow to come to solutions, by which he meant writers should be willing to wait for the right solution to come along rather than jumping at the first idea they have. Don’t grab the first idea, the first twist. Let the story rest and see what rises to the surface over time. After a period of time away from the work, I find it easier to see what needs to be reworked and where I can strengthen the story.