VanderMeer's Wonderbook, Chapter Four: Narrative Design (Continued)

While it is true that a story must be coherent and sensible to readers, it is also true that a story which does not have surprises of one form or another will be rather dull and boring.  For a story to work, their must be some agitation to the plot: if everything happens as one would anticipate, there is no point in the piece.  Towards that end, VanderMeer presents the concepts of interruption and contamination.  These both present ways of imbuing a work with unexpected elements in a way that will shake up the story in exciting and intriguing ways.

Interruption is the simpler of the two concepts to understand, and it is largely focused upon the action of the plot itself, as it refers to a moment in the story when an unexpected event intrudes upon the narrative.  This can be something unexpected and disconnected from the plot up to this point, such as the arrival of an unexpected guest in the middle of a dinner party, or a sudden accident that shifts the focus.  Remember, though it can be jarring to have, say, an alien spaceship drop down two thirds of the way through a so far realistic narrative.  

Interruption can also be achieved by deforming the plot through shifting the sequence of an event.  This, of course, requires that the writer already have a sequence in mind, and is, to my mind, more a way of getting out a rut while working on a story.  While writing, it is often true that a writer will come to a point where they aren't certain how to move forwards.  Even if you are aware what needs to come next, creating the bridges and transitions between the events may cause a problem.  Or it might just be that it feels like the story isn't working at this moment, that the plan for the plot needs to be reconsidered.  In those moments, it can be useful to throw in a major event or revelation that had been originally conceived for later in the piece.  For instance, a character might have a secret that wasn't supposed to come out until the climax.  Revealing the secret early changes the story, interrupting the planned progression in a way that can free up the story.  This is, to me, more about the writer's perspective of events, as it is rare that a reader will recognize that something has been moved forwards in this way.  Still, by so doing, the energy of the unexpected is brought to the process in a way that does communicate to the reader.

Interruptions in a story serve to keep it from being too flat.  In life, we can rarely say with certainty what events will happen next, let alone their specific order over a sequence of time.  A story should reflect this, despite it being organized and plotted.  The reader will often pick up on it if the events are too controlled, too neatly plotted.  Often, this can come off as manipulative, if the story has a strong thematic meaning, or as just boring and bad, if it is less directed at a specific interpretation.  In the case of such stories, it may be that after the first draft, it becomes necessary to go back and add some interruptions to disrupt things and make them more interesting.

It can also be useful to consider how interruptions can make a story from ideas that were not working.  I've certainly had times when I was working on an idea and it only comes to life when it is interrupted by a character or idea out of another story.  Let us suppose a fairly simple narrative about a woman who is working in coffee shop, but last night she had an audition and she thinks she might get her big break.  In writing that story, it becomes obvious that it isn't working, so what happens if we throw in something to interrupt this narrative.  Suppose we consider interrupting with a character coming to the coffee shop with a gun and robs the store.

That event, then, changes the story, obviously.  Even if it is a minor robbery, no one gets hurt, and it does not take too much of the story, it will alter the feel of events.  It also creates a new set of understandings for the context.  Does the robbery make the woman even more eager to leave?  Does it make her reassess her life, recognizing that she might die any day?  What can be revealed about her in that event, and how does what happens change her?  I do not mean that it will necessarily be a defining moment that makes a permanent change in her, but certainly it would alter how she felt today, and would create a context shift for the other action of the plot.  While the interruption is not intended to derail the plot, it will complicate things and allow the reader a deeper understanding of the woman.

Interrupting the story serves to create an opportunity for showing more of the character.  It  need not be as extreme as a robbery, though.  Suppose that we decided that was too much, and instead we had a homeless man walk in to the store.  He comes in and the other people in the location respond immediately to his presence.  Does the woman have to kick him out, or will she serve him, though it is putting off other customers to have him in the store?   How does she relate to him, to his presence and condition?  This is not as intense, or as unexpected, as the robbery, but it can be just as impacting on the story.  As well, since the story deals already with the woman's desire for success, the homeless man and her response to him are thematically resonant.  Does the character contextualize her desire in contrast to this man and his reality?  

Interruptions provide an opportunity for a writer to throw something unexpected into the plot and see how it changes things.  This can be a way of disrupting the writing process itself, so as to spur new ideas, and it can also work to make certain that the plot of the story is not overly predictable.  It is possible, of course, to completely derail a story with an interruption (though that can be quite effective.  Consider Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveller, a book that is almost entirely built from interruptions of one plot by another), but, if one intends to use an interruption within the narrative and without shifting the entire focus, the new elements can bring energy and context, working to deepen and clarify what already existed in the story.  A character may reveal a new facet i response, or the reader may get an insight into what they are really like.  Interruptions throw the unexpected into the story, and that creates new challenges for the writer, the characters, and even the reader.  

I'll be back later with a discussion of the more complex and somewhat nebulous concept of contamination in fiction.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Writer's Notebook, Day Three-Hundred-And-Sixty-Five

One of my teachers, the late poet Thomas Lux, was fond of pointing out that writing and publishing are two different things.  He stressed the need for a writer to focus on the work itself, not on the building of a career or the accumulation of publishing credits and other accolades.  Those things are not what a writer should be working towards, he would say, but instead the focus needs to be upon the craft.  He once expressed to me his belief that great work will always find a way into the world, even if it is after the artist has died.  Emily Dickinson is, of course, a prime example of this, though far from the only one.  That is a fine way to think about these things, but, and Lux also acknowledged this, to have a career as a writer requires doing all that other work. I tend to think that the writing itself is an important act on its own, having nothing to do with whether the work finds an audience immediately or not, and the publishing aspect as more of an ...
Read more

A Writer's Notebook, Two-Thousand-And-Forty-Five

I have been thinking about narrative point of view quite a bit lately.  One thing that always fascinates me is considering how the early novels were all written such that the narrative was diegetic to the text.  That is to say, the text that conveyed the story was something which was said to exist within the world of the story itself in some form.  In  Pamela, for example, Richardson employs the use of an epistolary form, allowing the reader to see the existence of the text itself as an artifact of the tale.  Now, this is very different than many modern stories in which we accept reading words that reflect the mind of a character as it exists in the moment.  Faulkner's stream of consciousness is a clear example of this distinction, but even many works of genre fiction rely on our accepting reading a narrative that by its nature cannot and does not exist within the text.  I think there is a great deal more to consider in this, but I am just beginning my...
Read more

A Writer's Notebook, Two-Thousand-And-Fifty-Nine

I have been thinking about how I can discuss certain aspects of my poetry and the choices I make as a writer.  In particular, I tend to write without as much reliance on sensory details and descriptions, instead choosing more abstract depictions.  This is something that I know many writers would call an odd choice, as specificity seems inherently to demand the application of detail, but I tend to be a bit hesitant about relying on depictions that utilize the senses, as I find that approach somewhat problematic.  For one thing, sensory description is always going to be less than universal, and not only because of the reality that there are individuals who lack one or more sense.  In many ways, for me, the deeper problem is one related to language itself.  Our use of language creates our experiences in a very real way, though I can't necessarily offer a full explanation of what I mean by that right here, but using a word for an object bestows qualities on it....
Read more