So I’ve spent the summer
exploring the premise for a new manuscript, and this has included a lot of
plotting. Plotting for me is a
combination of note-taking alternated with exploratory writing. But plotting before a first draft can only go
so far. There are some anchor points,
like the climax, which I can already visualize, but there are others, like my
protagonist and antagonist’s momentous turning point. A moment like this I am sure should be
realized through an overt action, but I just don’t know what it should be
yet. So I thought I’d reread the crown
jewel of YA novels which realize important plot moments through overt actions
–Jandy Nelson’s The Sky Is Everywhere.
As always, this post is full of spoiler
alerts, but if you haven’t read TSIE, you should stop reading this and go get
the book immediately anyway!
I could write a doctoral
thesis on the countless ways Nelson uses characters’ overt actions to realize
key plot moments. The characters’
interactions with plants, Lennie’s poem-writing, Gram’s box of letters to
Lennie’s mother, and, of course, Lennie’s relationship with her clarinet are
just a few. Notably, each time a character
executes an overt action, it is attached to a motif like the plants, poems,
letters, or clarinet. So much so that
I’ve come to think of them as motif-actions.
For this post, I’ll focus on what Lennie does with her beloved copy of Wuthering Heights. Interestingly enough, this is also a turning
point scene.
After her ploy to cut a
bouquet of Gram’s prized roses fails to win Joe back, Lennie is finally having
her heart to heart with Gram. Lennie
realizes how foolish choices, including her own, prevent us from experiencing
great big love while we can (Life is short.
For Bailey, it is already too late.)
But Lennie and Gram don’t just talk about it; Nelson realizes this
turning point by having Lennie execute an overt action. Lennie uses Gram’s garden shears to chop up
her copy of Wuthering Heights. This is Lennie’s favorite book, annotated and
dog-eared over twenty-three readings! Here is what I learned by
highlighting all of Jandy Nelson’s references to Lennie’s doomed novel.
First, when it comes to big
motif-actions like this, Nelson seeds them almost from page one. The first reference to Lennie’s Wuthering Heights is right at the top of
page two where she is scribbling a poem in the margin as Gram and Big worry
over the Lennie plant.
Second, Nelson’s use of
Wuthering Heights is never forced because she takes the time to establish
Lennie’s relationship with this book.
Lately, a lot of YA characters seem to have favorite classic books
guiding them, but Nelson’s use is by far the most believable because she
establishes Lennie as a literary person.
On only page seven, Lennie describes her best friend, Sarah, as a
literary fanatic like her, delving into Sarah’s darker reading tastes.
Third, Nelson uses Lennie’s
interactions with her copy of Wuthering
Heights to create an arc of development.
Early on, Nelson uses road-reading to establish Lennie’s starting point:
“I like love safe between the covers of my novel.” As Lennie’s experiences with Joe and Toby
compound, her comparisons of real-life erections and kisses with the Wuthering Heights world are funny. The book also becomes a vehicle for Lennie
and Joe to get to know each other over lunch in a tree. Later “Heathcliff and Cathy have nothing on
us.”
Fourth, I learned that once
you find that motif-action for your big moment, extend it further than you
imagine you can. After Lennie chops up
her Wuthering Heights, she rakes her
fingers through the remains while ruminating on her regrets. As the conversation with Gram continues, she
wants to scoop a fistful of book scraps to throw at Gram. She also rearranges the words into new
sentences, reflecting the mood of the moment: under that benign sky and so
eternally excluded. Then she wishes
she could put the words back together so Cathy and Heathcliff could make
different choices. Finally, as her
understanding of life and love has evolved far beyond the novel, Lennie sweeps
the whole thing into the trash.
Fifth, by watching Nelson I
learned to look for ways motif-actions can cross subplots. After Lennie chops up her book, she hands the
shears to Gram, and Lennie sees Gram has her own reasons to be angry. Gram also has her own reasons to be ashamed,
which we see as she sweeps the book scraps toward herself. The pile of scraps jumps when Gram pounds the
table with her fist forcing Lennie to hear her reality. Later, Lennie writes a poem in which Cathy
and Heathcliff’s stronger-than-death love becomes about Lennie and Bailey. So as motif-related actions cross subplots,
their meaning reverberates out across the story.
The last thing I learned may
be the most important of all. I’ve
written enough to imagine Nelson developing Lennie’s growing relationship with
her copy of Wuthering Heights. I’d bet Wuthering Heights popped up in a
freewrite about Lennie, maybe just a matter of characterization. As Nelson continued drafting maybe she saw
opportunities to draw Wuthering Heights
through. Maybe she even took a break
from the story to write about what Wuthering
Heights meant to Lennie. Maybe the
image of the shredded pages occurred to her then. Maybe during revision, she played around with
the remains of the book left on the table.
Maybe she went back and reread Wuthering
Heights, wrote about Lennie’s favorite book some more, and realized how it
applied to her relationship with Bailey.
Whatever the case, as long as I keep looking for the motif-action that
could become my turning point, as long as I keep mining my current draft for
accidental gems, as long as I keep journaling about my characters, it’s okay to
proceed without knowing exactly what that turning point’s overt action will be.
Observing
Nelson’s use of Wuthering Heights has
taught me something about the nature of the overt motif-action. Like any seed, you can’t force it to grow,
you have to keep nurturing the soil, and it’s definitely worth waiting for. So thanks, Jandy, for freeing Lennie and for
freeing me!
No comments:
Post a Comment