Life, story and the need for corsets
It’s easy to think that because life permits something, then story must too. After all, stories are allowed things like starships, unicorns and Dr Evil, so it would seem that stories are more capacious than life, holding everything life offers, and then some.
Well, yes and no.
Yes: stories get to have starships and unicorns, while life does not. But then again, life is permitted randomness, which stories basically may not have.
So let’s say you were writing a Manhattan-set rom-com. You’re getting to the denouement. Mr Lovely is racing through Central Park to greet his girlfriend, Fraulein Gorgeous, and ask her to marry him. We all anticipate that Fraulein G is going to say one ditzy thing, do one charming thing, and then say yes. We’ll laugh a little, shed a tear, then move on, happy.
But Life might have other thoughts. So, let’s say, in reality, Mr Lovely was racing through the park, when – oh, I don’t know – a subway tunnel collapses, or an ice cream truck hits him, or (why not?) an overflying airplane accidentally releases some blue ice, which falls 20,000 feet and splatters his romantically-inclined skull.
(Blue ice? Um. It comes from aircraft toilets and it shouldn’t leak, but sometimes does. In the 1970s, some blue ice struck a chapel in London and caused so much damage, the building had to be demolished.)
Now, because Life can and does release blue ice over major cities, there’s no reason in fact why the Lovely / Gorgeous romance might not be ended by a lump of falling waste. But a story can’t handle that.
Story demands a unity of logic and (ideally) a unity of theme too.
Take the logic part first. Although things can and do happen for essentially no reason, stories are our way of putting the meaning back in. That reason can operate within the boundaries of strict logic. (The detective got DNA results back from the lab, which led her to Bad Guy’s house, which allowed her to …) But it can equally well operate within almost purely metaphorical ones – ones that deliver thematic coherence to your story.
Take, for example, the war film, Bridge over the River Kwai.
In that film, Colonel Nicholson (the Alec Guinness character) is a British officer who has become a prisoner of war, held by the Japanese. The POWs are ordered to build a railway bridge to help the Japanese war effort. Nicholson – as a way to maintain his self-respect? as a way to show off the skills and resourcefulness of the British army? – becomes obsessed with building the perfect bridge. When Anglo-American commandos then prepare to sabotage the bridge, Nicholson becomes conflicted, seeking to protect ‘his’ bridge. In the concluding firefight, he is wounded and falls onto the detonator’s plunger, thereby destroying the bridge.
In one way, this is just a causally coherent explanation for how the bridge came to be built, then destroyed. But no viewer simply experiences it like that. There’s something about Nicholson’s journey – the obsession, the perfectionism, the death, the explosion – that gives a kind of coherence to everything that’s happened before. If you took out the two minutes of film around that final firefight and the destruction of the bridge, you’d have essentially nothing. Lots of prettily filmed events, but no story.
So the Lovely / Gorgeous romance + blue ice killing just doesn’t work as story. Yes, you could make that an opening scene. (The rest of the novel then becomes about Fraulein Gorgeous coming to terms with the random death of her beloved.) And indeed, life-changing random events provide the kick-off for plenty of stories.
Generally though, you are always – via strict causal logic, or metaphor – seeking to pull events into an orderly shape. In the end, you’re about creating emotional journeys and a sense of derived meaning.
Life just doesn’t offer that neatness.
Journeys don’t end until you die. And meanings come from us, and our story-making desire, more than from life itself.
The more dense you can make your storytelling – neat causal logic plus an overlay of metaphor and character journey – the stronger and richer your final story will be.
In short, life is great, but it’s baggy. If you want your story to look right, I recommend the corset. Breathe out, lace up tight – and don’t eat.
(I can see Harry is hipper-busy…) Take your time, don’t rush Harry. We’ll come back later for the content.
Actually… he just gave me an excellent idea to finish my novel in a jiff:
Placeholder text!
Why didn’t I think about this before him?
It’s an old trick. I know at least one author who uses [jargon here] a lot, to avoid having to do research on technical details, then gives it to subject-matter experts who can fill in the blanks for her.
You mean he’s intentionally making us fill in this week’s content?
That’s genius!
You could read the e-mail version while waiting…
Rick, why are you always one step ahead of me?
(I forgot my password… it was the name of my cat and it run away)
Ah… my cat just came in through the cat-flap… with a mate. It’s 1a.m. here and I think they are both drunk.
Oh…not again! They are eating the password to my email: SARDINES!
Ha, ha! I totally forgot I’d just popped the post up without actually giving you the text. Whoopsadaisy!
Life, story, and the need for corsets. There you go. What more content do you need? Interesting Zen approach. Or just outing his writer’s block….in all it’s naked, icy terror. Here, the intrepid Jericho team, with Harry out front, set off in pursuit of the adverb-free paragraph.
What do you mean, Harry’s got writer’s block?
Nah… not him. Just wait and see. He’s just typing away furiously before he heads off to the pub for a well-deserved drink.
Or, more likely, the crew are taking the captain out to shoot him. He’d told them that there was a shortcut to the ‘new world’ that way and they’d be back to watch the start of the new football season.
Good enough reason to get the captain shot, I second that! Nothing should come between a bloke and his footy.
It certainly keeps them out from underfoot!
That’s a freaky image! I’m working on a very quirky, literary WIP at the moment that has just such an arctic / old school / maritime setting.
S T R A N G E
That is from the scary TV series THE TERROR about awful goings on in the Arctic, but the real-life photos of Scott in the Antarctic are incredible. I bought a book of them a few years ago – and this gallery shows more I hadn’t seen. https://www.elliotthalls.com/exhibitions/2013/3/9/terra-nova-captain-scotts-antarctic-expedition-1910-1913
I knew it! I knew it! Corsets are a must-have accessory.
I’ve got a subtle joke in my WIP about a padded push-up bra. Does that count as a corset?
What did the Corset say to the Hat?
You go on a head, while I give a lift to these two.
(I’ve got a better one in my WIP, wait till you read it)
That’s the best corset joke I ever heard. Love it.
But speaking of chapels and blue ice, I believe that’s just some god pissing on religion.
Can’t beat a good corset — it’s the whalebone and steel that gives it the strength.
I bet he’s going to tell us we need to put some whalebones into our writing for strength. Uhmm… now… how do we do that? Any guesses?
His blog story is up in email form already. Alas, it seems the train track through the jungle to which he refers has yet to reach these shores.
Cohesive writing, and making sure there aren’t too many imponderables or fluke accidents that save the day or ruin it. Harry does write detective stories after all.
Scrimshaw of course! Each slender whalebone concealed in the corset carries a poem from her beloved. Or interestingly, each bone carries a scrimshawed poem from a different lover in her life. Whoever captures the corset will unearth the fabulous history of a coastal village. The big central one at the back recounts the tale of the errant vicar!
Interesting – though what you describe is almost exactly what happens (sorry, spoiler alert) in David Nicholls’ One Day. Fraulein Wunderbar goes cycling off and gets run over by a bus. In the movie, because Anne Hathaway was so bad, her untimely death came as a great relief but in the book it was a complete shock. You thought the book was heading towards a Yes, they will get together ending and, lo and behold, it became another book altogether. A better one, I think.
I thought I hadn’t received the email this week but there it was in my spam folder! I can only assume the filter noticed that last line advising me to avoid too much cake! Clearly a dangerous and evil piece of advice.🍰
Well actually the blog version of this email just says “Don’t eat”. It’s not cake I’m opposed to, it’s all food.
oh dear! so I’ll have to just live on wine then!
Excuse me, but what the hell is this? I see a title but there doesn’t seem to be any text…or have I missed something crucial on how to manipulate this website? Where is the post? I see some comments, but I am also having a TERRIBLE time trying to read them, as they don’t appear to be linearly arranged. I TRY to start at the beginning, but just when I think I’ve found the first comment, the timeline whips around on me. It’s exhausting. Of course it doesn’t help that I am blind in one eye. Can someone please assist?
The sites chieftain posts up a great blog every week, but he’s managed to mess up the post this week and just left us with a picture. Hence the hilarity.
The front page of the site is a running commentary of every post as they’re added to random forums, so it can be confusing. If you want to follow a thread try clicking on the main title at the top of a comment, and this will take you to a conversation. Or go to the forums section where you can see the subjects. Good luck and welcome.
Thanks, Kate. I’m blind in one eye, so this will be a challenge – especially since much of the signifying information is in light blue, which is hard to see, but I’ll experiment with it all and see what I can do about making it more readable for me.