Don’t be afraid to write in circles until you find your story.
Spend the necessary time with your premise.
Words from wise writing
teachers. This summer I’ve taken them to
heart. Most mornings I sit down with a
chocolate croissant, a cup of coffee, and Donald Maass’ Writing the Break Out Novel Workbook and learn something more about
my characters, their conflicts, and their building tension. It’s the middle of July, and I don’t have
many pages. You know, actual pages of
the first draft. Well, I have one I
wrote this morning. But, in six weeks,
I’ve made more progress with this story than any of my other novels.
I think it’s because I’ve
been working on the distinctions Maass makes between the protagonist’s main
problem, and what he calls complications, plot layers, and subplots. Maass uses a lot of adult novels to
demonstrate these concepts, but I’m going to use Jandy Nelson’s The Sky Is Everywhere here to illustrate
them. I think Nelson’s understanding of
how these elements work in her story account for the fully-felt reading
experience.
Warning: Spoilers Abound!
Look, The Sky Is Everywhere could easily have turned into another great
YA example of “girl must choose between Edward and Jacob.” Lennie is caught between a romance with her
recently dead sister’s boyfriend, with whom she can remember and grieve the
past, and the new musical genius in town, with whom she can imagine and
celebrate the future. But the book is so
much more than that. And here is why.
No surprise, Nelson is
crystal clear about Lennie’s MAIN
PROBLEM. And it is not just a choice
between to boys. Lennie wants to get
through her grief for sister, Bailey.
Her Uncle Big actually says, “There’s no way but through.” What that means gets complicated though. Through
means time to experience loss and pain, and through
means being on the other side of loss and pain, able to embrace life again.
Maass defines COMPLICATIONS as the obstacles that get
in the way of the protagonist’s main goal.
These not only abound in The Sky
Is Everywhere, but remain incredibly focused on Lennie’s desire to get
through her grief. Toby, the now-dead
Bailey’s boyfriend, helps Lennie remember Bailey in a way no one else can. Joe, the new boy in town, and perfect
counterpoint, enables Lennie to forget her grief. The jacket copy doesn’t lie when it reads,
“though she knows if the two of them collide her whole world will explode,”
because when Joe sees Lennis kissing Toby Lennie breaks with Toby and Joe
breaks with her. Without either boy in
her life, Lennie comes to realize that both relationships were masking her need
to face that, without her sister, she is undeniably alone. After this realization, it dawns on Lennie
she has been focused on only her own grief.
So well does Nelson understand Lennie’s main problem that the
complications can unfold and unfold.
Now Maass distinguishes
complications from PLOT LAYERS,
which he defines as additional problems the protagonist faces –not
complications to the main problem, but altogether different problems. Lennie has these too. She has avoided her clarinet talent. She writes audience-less poems which she
scatters everywhere. And Lennie learns
about her missing mother. These problems
exist separately from Lennie’s need to get through her grief, but they are both
compounded by Bailey’s death and come to inform Lennie’s journey through her
grief. The layering leaves Nelson levels
of problems to utilize in Lennie’s inner arc, but because she finds nodes of
conjunction between these layers and the main problem, the book holds
together. The layers are not random or
scattered, they are purposeful. If they
do not exist because of Bailey’s death, they become touch-points that help
Lennie make sense of things.
SUBPLOTS,
Maass says, are something else. While
plot layers are given to the protagonist, subplots are narrative lines given to
other characters. Nelson nails these as
well. Toby wants to hold on to Bailey, though he must let her go. Joe wants an all-or-nothing romance, but life
is more complicated than that. Gram
wants to talk about her own grief with Lennie, Big wants to bring the family –particularly
Lennie— back to life, and Lennie’s best friend, Sarah, just wants their
friendship back. Each character is
working to solve his/her own problem while the protagonist is working on the
main problem, though, again, the secondary character’s issues are tightly woven
to that main problem. The result is not
only a rich dynamic between characters, but also a meaning-making aesthetic.
The depth and breadth of
Nelson’s work with the protagonist’s main problem, complications, and layers,
as well as, the secondary characters’ subplots is encouraging to my work this
summer. Of course, it’s nice when the
pages start to come, the actual pages of accumulating chapters, but Nelson’s
work tells me something different. It
tells me it’s worth taking the time to understand your material with clarity.
I copied this quotation from
The Sky is Everywhere down in my journal:
Beside me, step for step, breath for
breath, is the unbearable fact that I have a future and Bailey doesn’t.
This is when I know it.
My sister will die over and over again
for the rest of my life. Grief is
forever. It doesn’t go away; it becomes
part of you, step for step, breath for breath.
I will never stop grieving Bailey because I will never stop loving
her. That’s just how it is. Grief and love are cojoined, you don’t get
one without the other. All I can do its
love her, and love the world, emulate her by living with daring and spirit and
joy.
The reason I catch my breath
when I read this passage is because Jandy Nelson earned that moment. She earned that moment because she took the
time to know her material with intense clarity.
I’m going to do that too. Thank you, Jandy!
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