Storytelling: Backwards
"How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?" -- E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (1927)
Writing a first draft is fairly linear: start at the beginning and move to the end. But lately I'm discovering that subsequent drafts require writing backwards.
Events that occur later in the story end up influencing what comes before it. In Dead Hungry, it wasn't until I knew that Joyce would become an Amazon that I could construct the trajectory of her story.
In my play, A Careful Wish, the climax involves a comic reenactment of "The Monkey's Paw." In the middle of the night, there's a knock on the door. Frances is panicked that it's her dead son returned. Her husband, Edgar, says, "Calm yourself, Frances. What the hell's the matter with you? It's not the Monkey's Paw."
In the first draft of the play, that was the only reference to W. W. Jacobs' story. I realized I had to set up the reference earlier, so I put in a scene in which Kyle tells his nephew a bowdlerized version of the tale.
Right now I'm working on Reston Peace. To figure out Kenny Reston's trajectory through self-destructive behavior and near-suicide (and, thankfully, recovery) requires me to work backwards to the origins of the sexual abuse he suffered as a child.
In the middle of the book, when Kenny is in college, he tries to protect a friend in an abusive relationship. I realized that this protective quality must have been there in his childhood; it was the piece he wanted for himself -- someone to protect him. That quality becomes the fulcrum of his character.
So, knowing those later key points help inform the beginning of the story. The craft of storytelling, I'm discovering, is rarely linear.
Writing a first draft is fairly linear: start at the beginning and move to the end. But lately I'm discovering that subsequent drafts require writing backwards.
Events that occur later in the story end up influencing what comes before it. In Dead Hungry, it wasn't until I knew that Joyce would become an Amazon that I could construct the trajectory of her story.
In my play, A Careful Wish, the climax involves a comic reenactment of "The Monkey's Paw." In the middle of the night, there's a knock on the door. Frances is panicked that it's her dead son returned. Her husband, Edgar, says, "Calm yourself, Frances. What the hell's the matter with you? It's not the Monkey's Paw."
In the first draft of the play, that was the only reference to W. W. Jacobs' story. I realized I had to set up the reference earlier, so I put in a scene in which Kyle tells his nephew a bowdlerized version of the tale.
Right now I'm working on Reston Peace. To figure out Kenny Reston's trajectory through self-destructive behavior and near-suicide (and, thankfully, recovery) requires me to work backwards to the origins of the sexual abuse he suffered as a child.
In the middle of the book, when Kenny is in college, he tries to protect a friend in an abusive relationship. I realized that this protective quality must have been there in his childhood; it was the piece he wanted for himself -- someone to protect him. That quality becomes the fulcrum of his character.
So, knowing those later key points help inform the beginning of the story. The craft of storytelling, I'm discovering, is rarely linear.
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