Approaching Draft Three

            I knew I wanted to come out of the week with a visual representation of the story, like a web, or the mobile discussed in prior posts.  It helps me hold the whole story in my head, and I suspected I’d see where things were out of balance and needed adjustment.  Even though I had out my big paper, I felt leery of making a mark.  What bothered me was I didn’t want to make a drawing of what Draft Two looked like –that felt like making a tedious record; I wanted to make a drawing of what Draft Three should look like.

            So I backed off of the drawing and did something I always do when I start to study a young adult novel.  I made a chapter outline.  I noted the chapter and then just jotted down the major events.  Whereas this is sometime a tedious way to begin the study of a young adult novel, I’d never done it for my own novel, and it was kind of amazing to see what it revealed.  In four typed pages I had the whole thing in front of me, and I could see right off why my readers kept saying the relationship between the two main characters moved too quickly –almost all the scenes where their relationship develops where stuck in Chapter Three!  Did I do that?  Apparently.  So I got out my trusty notecards, jotted down the scenes of the relationship’s progression and started sorting.  I learned the second half of the book was fine; I just needed to focus on the first half.  I got away from the demands of plot and theme and just let myself be with those two kids and how they would see each other.  (In the book I just read called Dark Water, Laura MacNeil does a fantastic job of parsing out the development of the main characters' relationship.)  Then I went back to see if I could insert the new relationship progression into the Chapter Outline, and it fell in place pretty easily!  I had to make a few adjustments for plot logistics, but this revealed that switching the focus of Chapter Three and Four would help and give more space where things were crowded before.  I was grooving on this success!

            Then I drew a picture of how Draft Three should look:

In designing this web or mobile, I was interested not only in mentally holding onto the big picture, but also examining the cause-effect drive from event to event and section to section.  I realized that back during Draft Two revisions I had organized things thematically, and that helped me in the right direction.  But now the connective tissue or the wires that hold the parts of my mobile together needed to be of cause and effect, problem and solution.  I need be able to draw the wire that connects section one to section two and write along that wire the question in the character’s / reader’s mind that is driving him to turn the page.  I also realized that I didn’t want to impose questions like that onto my drawing and write to them.  I want to go back into the scene, where the magic happens, and, aware of where I am in the structure, be present with the characters and hyper-aware of the questions that are driving them forward.  I think I can do this best back in the scenes, in the writing.  I think it will be most organic.  And I’m excited about the balance between having a visual grip on my structure and trusting the discovery of the words coming down on the page where the magic happens!
             While we're talking about revision, I HAVE to pass on to you the following fabulous discoveries.  Check out the following links where YA authors dissect their drafts!
http://maggiestiefvater.blogspot.com/2012/01/from-rough-to-final-ten-dissections.html
And don't miss my favorite, added later by Gayle Forman:
http://www.gayleforman.com/blog/2012/02/29/before-and-after/

Causality & Chapters

             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!