Inner Workings discussion
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Description and Forward Motion
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Mod
Forward movement in fiction is twofold: physical and emotional. Physical movement is the movement of the plot from beginning to end:
1. In a department store, mother berates child for swiping several stuffed animals from toy department; now in the hardware department, she "looks away" for a few moments; child disappears.
2. Father makes a scene, begins ordering everyone around; entire store engages in search for the child.
3. Mother searches Home section of the store, where beautiful furnishings are arranged in idealized "rooms."
4. Mother finds child asleep on canopy bed in store display, toy animals gathered tyightly around her. Mother lies down next to child.
Physical movement, as you can see, follows the plot line. First A happens, then B, then C. When your plot stalls on you, the story stops moving.
Mod
1. Mother's irritation with child stems from a succession of inconsequential fights with her husband. He's with her now because he can't "trust her" to pick out the right kind of porch light by herself. Mother's inattention occurs when she becomes fascinated with another couple and their child. She contemplates their beauty and peacefulness. When she turns around, her own child is missing.
2. Father's tirade makes mother feel eerily calm. She begins her own search, awed by her composure. She thinks of it as "competence."
3. Mother searches among home furnishings. The beauty and implied family harmony of the displays devastate her. She imagines her husband raging through a different part of the store, and begins to imagine all the ways he will blame her when the child is found.
4. Mother finds child in bed display; recognizes her own need for refuge from her husband's harsh judgment. Succumbs to the temptation of the beautiful canopy bed and all the peace and safety it implies.
(personally, I think this would be even more interesting if the mother and father's roles were reversed...)
In this example, plot and character are inextricable: the physical content moves with the emotional. One can exist without the other, but both are enriched by the other's presence.
Thanks for posting this. Will check it out now and then.
ooooh.Food for thought.
Thanks for posting it.
Good stories move. Find a balance between physical and emotional movement.
Without forward movement, even good characters can find themselves in dull stories. Characters can't just sit around ruminating; they have to do things, say thing, go places, interact with people and institutions and their own impulses.
A man thinking about death is not a story; a man building his own coffin is... don't ask who your character is, ask what your character does.
(Bear with me, I'm trying to pick out some good stuff. All this is from Monica Wood's book on Description... )
Good stories are often psychological in nature - character-driven as opposed to plot-driven. Even so, when people ask, "What's the story about?" we tend to describe the plot: A woman loses her child in a store. A man blows up his father's car. A child catches his parents making love. In a very real sense, this physical information is what the story "is about."
What turns plot into story, however, is the emotional information that we convey to the readers. (Some writers prefer the word "psychological" to "emotional." I prefer "emotional" because it implies conflicts of the heart as well as the mind.)
Emotional information reflects a character's inner landscape: A woman discovers the melancholy of her marriage. A man discovers his hatred for his father. A child discovers his separateness from his parents. These are the same emotional discoveries that make a real life so interesting and horrifying and beautiful and compelling.
More to follow