Elegance in Isolation

NEW YORK — There has been a lot of talk this year about elegance and isolation.

Watching the New York Knicks play with their smooth new superstar Melo, basketball commentators here and across the country have been as unified as a chorus in proclaiming that Melo's individual genius for scoring against any opposition kills the teamwork that is needed on the court to win games against good opponents.

In basketball language, what Melo does is called isolation. In everyday talk, it's called everyone walk away to a corner of the floor and watch Melo score.

You don't need to know any basketball language to know about the poetry of motion and execution. And you don't need to know a thing about poetry to know that writing that does not pass the ball to the reader is selfish.

What they say about Melo when he gets the ball is that the movement on the court stops. When Melo gets the ball and makes it clear that he is going to score, it freezes the other nine guys on the floor.

The ball sticks.

All season long I have been saying so what? So what if the ball sticks if Melo hits? Eventually, I have been saying to myself after each Knicks loss, poetry is going to conquer.

Well today I noticed as I was writing that the narrator's voice I was using in the story was pulling an isolation. In fact, my narrator has been pulling a lot of isolation.

Check it out – the narrator has a great voice. Beautiful, even. He's not a $100 million dollar superstar like Melo playing to wild crowds in Madison Square Garden, but he knows how to make words sing.

And today here was my narrator with the "ball" preparing to go to the "basket." And I noticed, just like the commentators have been saying all along about the Knicks, that the characters in my story were standing around watching.

The story was sticking.

Even when I saw the flow had stopped, it was tempting to say 'So what?' Let the other character's watch. Maybe they will learn something about grit and grace.

But I know enough about storytelling to know that stories have to move in order to be stories.

Next time my narrator wants to pull an isolation, I may have to force one of my characters into the lane and make my narrator pass.