Structure(d)

One of my favourite things about the alchemy of writing is how forcing something into a rigid shape makes it more itself, not less. The container allows the energy of the work to build; the stronger the shape, the stronger the energy. There is little in life more passionate than a sonnet, though the words it contains are nearly empty of emotion. Don't believe me? Consider:

My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
The uncertain sickly appetite to please.

(Yes, I memorize poetry. Norman Doidge in The Brain that Changes Itself argues that memorizing poetry makes your brain stronger and improves IQ, which was a nice validation of a trait I previously considered to be something of an embarassing tic.)

Back to the poem:

The only word in that stanza which refers to an emotion is "love." The rest of it is an extended medical metaphor. As free verse, it would never work:

"I love you so much I feel like I'm sick, and I don't want to get well."

Doesn't have quite the same punch, does it?

The apparent formlessness of free verse is something of a trick, an illusion; the truth is that a really good free verse poem is highly structured, but the structure is unique to that poem, the poem dictates the structure that most suits it. Still, the best free verse rarely whips itself up to the frenzy of a really good sonnet. The form of a sonnet is a cast-iron pot that you can stick on the hottest fire, and keep the water boiling for hours. Most free verse is a plastic bag. Try boiling water in that.

(Note: I'm not arguing that all poetry should be this passionate, or that free verse is bad because it's not; only that the rigidity reinforces the passion, rather than killing it.)

This applies to blogging, too, I've noticed. My most successful posts (from the point of view of the quality of the writing) are very structured. The structures appear to be my own--or at least I'm not aware of anyone else blogging with them. (Bracketing experiences with quotes is one; I try to use one to set off the other, whether through reinforcement or contrast. It's fun, and it works. Many of the ones I get the most recognition for follow this structure. I'm experimenting with others but most of them are not as set yet.) This in fact is one of the main values of blogging for me right now; it's a chance to experiment and practice with different sorts of structures. What happens if I include five short scenes with consecutive quotes from a piece of popular fiction between them? What happens if I start at the beginning, go all the way to the end, and then back to the beginning again? It doesn't matter if I fall flat on my face here; if the pot isn't strong enough to contain the water and take the heat, it doesn't matter.

The same is true in fiction. Really good fiction is highly structured. There is the set-up, rising tension, climax, denouement; and the climax usually takes place about 90% of the way through the book. (Try it with your favourite novel.) There is a certain balance of scenes (where things happen) to exposition (where things are described), a balance between dialogue and action, inclusion of all five senses, a main character who wants something they can't have, and a sense of inevitability. If the author's idea can't be contained within that structure, regardless of the work's other merits, it will fall flat. It will be uninteresting. Authors who have flouted those rules (James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, etc.) have been successful to the extent that they were able to replace elements of the traditional structure with a new structure. It may seem that they are free-forming their open and directionless emotions in a vast and undifferentiated soup all over the page. This is why they are geniuses: the works are highly, tightly structured. They are cast-iron pots. They only look like wickerware. (Making a cast-iron pot look like wickerware is much tougher than just using the cast-iron pot.)

That it is the structure that builds the emotion--the level of caring for the characters and their plight, the tension in seeing how it all turns out--and not the words themselves is evident in fiction's most basic rule: Show, Don't Tell. Don't tell us "he was mad." Tell us what his anger looked like, how it felt, whether he snapped or snarled or whined or slammed the door or only thought about it. Emotion without a container, in writing, is just water dripping all over the stove. Turn the heat up as high as you like. It won't boil.

And now, in the middle of drafting a novel, in the free-forming stage of flooding the page with soup, I'm beginning to grasp what the structure could be, or should be. It's going to take a lot of work to shove it into that shape when I'm done, but the book will be better for it. (Not necessarily publishable. Let's not go crazy.)

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(Yesterday evening I got home from work and made Frances her dinner while she watched Dora Saves the Mermaids, again. She ate while I heated my soup, cut the bread and cheese for topping, and while it was under the broiler I moved the books from the couch to the bookcase and cleared a spot for drinks on the coffee table, cleared the papers off the kitchen table, returned Frances's toys to their appropriate containers. In between all this I checked emails and replied. The soup was done just before seven, and I ate it while Frances talked to her father on the phone.

Then it was Frances's bedtime. Upstairs we went; she took off her clothes while I packed her suitcase for the weekend, then we got on her pyjamas and brushed her teeth. Booktime. Tucked her into bed, and time for a Princess Frances story. Time for a kiss and a hug, then I changed into my workout clothes and went downstairs.

A brief respite for reading Julian the Magician, Gwendolyn MacEwen's first novel (I already know I love her poetry). Time for a workout. Oddly, it's energizing: my brain feels cleared and I know I will not be able to sleep for two hours yet at least.

Time for dishes, to scrub the kitchen counter. My weekend is fully bracketed already: guests tonight, writing workshop Saturday, Santa Claus Parade on Sunday. Somewhere in there, laundry, groceries, cooking, cleaning, exercising must be done. So this can't be let go.

Another few minutes to relax, then it's time to write. I'll get a thousand words done at least before turning in. By then I will be drained, boiled dry. Before bed, a few minutes to light a candle; I'm working on Water. But I can't stay up too late: Frances will wake at 6:30 whether I am ready or not, and there's work to go to, income to be earned.)

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Characters are making friends and falling in love where I hadn't expected them to; it's braiding a few subplots together into a thicker, stronger material, itself suitable for braiding into the main plot. Other characters are falling apart to their own internal stresses, the structure of their lives insufficient to the tasks at hand. Meanwhile I am beginning to see how this scene can click in to that one, that dialogue can knit with that description, to make something seemingly seamless from the outside. Or that's the hope.

It still seems magical, though; or is it just me? That the very artificiality, the forcedness, the seeming falseness, makes the story more itself, allows it to build and become stronger. Invention permits truth. It makes no sense; but there it is. Focing something amorphous into a cast-iron pot makes it stronger, deeper, more authentic. It is magic--real magic, not TV magic--the spell or the ritual creates a container for the energy to build within, so that when it is directed at a task, it is equal to it.

Meanwhile, I know I said I would be writing here less while working on the novel. Strangely, the more I write my story at night, the more I can think of things to say here, during the day. Who'd have guessed?

Posted by Andrea at November 15, 2007 12:36 PM under Books , Me , Witch , Wordsmithery

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