So
that was nice, using the mobile metaphor to take one thing at a time in my
first chapter. It really worked, but
sometimes all my over-analysis of how a story’s working can rein things in so
tightly the story doesn’t get a chance to run.
So I have to swing back and forth from one metaphor to another depending
on what my story needs. Mapping mobiles
and covering my dining room table with color-coded indexes cards helped me get
a handle on things.
However,
I’m feeling uncomfortable about the way I ended up dividing my story into
chapters. I ended up with ten, long
chapters that group elements of my story thematically –Emergency, Boundaries,
Mothers, etc. For a while that was
working for me; it helped me see how theme was holding the story together. But readers confirmed my nagging fear that
these hulking chapters are not agile enough.
They are beautiful and they make an aesthetic mobile, and for a while
they really helped me, but when it comes down to it I need to loosen the reins
and let the forward motion of the story carry it forward.
What I’m
getting at is what makes a story a story is that is moves forward. Each thing that happens causes the next
thing, or it should. Even if I build a
beautiful mobile, at some point, I have to hang it up and let the wind blow
through it.
I
remember one of my best writing teachers saying, a poem is not an essay. And as prettily as I can structure a story,
it is not a poem. A story has to move
forward. As E. M. Forster memorably put
it: if we write, “The king died, and the queen died,” we have a narrative, but
if we write instead, “The king died and the queen died of grief,” then we have
a plot.
Right
now, I’m reading Laini Taylor’s new book, Daughter
of Smoke and Bone. I am literally propelled
through the story. Her chapters are
fairly short, they’re lean and nimble, each chapter causes the next one. And though Laini titles each with a
meaningful phrase from that chapter, she merely numbers the chapters and lets
the story go as it must. She has 60
chapters. Sixty! How freeing!
(She also groups her chapters into three or four large sections, the way
you would group scenes in a play into the major acts. She does this by slipping in a page with a
changing refrain to introduce each act.)
But by and large, she lets each scene emerge from the one before, and I
turn the pages like I’m slapping the story-horse I’m riding to go, go, go as
fast as it can!
So
I am inspired to loosen my reins on this next draft. Now that I understand the structure of my
story (thanks to mobiles), I’m going to try something different. Instead of guiding my horse through a tightly
designed equestrian jumping course, I’m going to loosen the reins and just let
the story run, run, run. One short
chapter causing the next. Yee-hah!
Are
you still struggling with chapter division and its effect on the story? I’d love to here what you’re trying!
