The Widening Gyre

I know these are generalizations, but ....

Short stories and poems seem to take us inward, deeper into layers of character, motivation, memory.

Often pulp stories, or superficial melodramas* take the reader outward, through larger and larger layers, adding in more characters, more places, additional conflicts and subplots. We go out through the layers.

I suspect that in most stories longer than a few thousand words, it's difficult, if not impossible, to avoid that outward journey: the adding-on of new layers of conflict, character, etc. But isn't it also good to explore inward? If as readers we are on -- and here the metaphor shatters -- both spirals, going in to the core and out to orbit at the same time?

Story and meaning take us inward, past the surface, to the shadowy deep place of forgotten motivations, old grudges and loyalties, quiet fears and strength. It's the "why" things happen. Plot draws us out into the shining world, "where" things happen.

It's possible that in my desire for elegance I'm combining two things that need not and should not be combined. Maybe linking "story" with an inward journey and "plot" with the external journey is, well, crap.

But my point is: as hard as it is to do either of these well, imagine a book that did both. Who was it that said this: "Make no small plans."**



*To keep things safe, let's just call this category "anything you want to add to it." We all have our personal writing bugaboos: mine is superficial and unrisky prose.
** Google cites Churchill, Macchiavelli, and a 19th century urban planner named Daniel Burnham.

Pace and story

Back from a week at the beach, where I consumed mass quantities of food and books and salty ocean wind, twenty-five or thirty knots from north-north-east.

And as I struggle with the beginning of my next book I had an interesting idea. I've admitted before -- though this will come as no shock to anyone who's read one of my drafts -- that I have trouble with beginnings. It's hard to present characters, their relationships, their setting, etc. without putting readers to sleep or confusing them. My tendency is to go slow ... too slow. Thus when I trimmed 9000 words from my last draft, most of it came out of the tendentious first half.

But! Think about how many stories open with action. Then there's a pause for backstory, characterization, etc. Then back to action, but this time readers are armed with deeper knowledge of what's going on and so the action -- the sweeping movement of the story as it rolls to the climax -- can be that much more nuanced, deep, and resonant. Which is the goal.

Huh, I thought, pulling up to a light and frowning in a swashbuckling manner (Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack; iPod), could this really be right? Because it seemed like a trick or a cheat to catch readers' attention with that opening action scene -- necessarily less deep than the rest of the book -- and then, once you have them, taking a breath to introduce them to the rest of the story. It seemed ... like cheating, somehow. Like a real author shouldn't have to resort to sleight-of-hand. Or appetizers.

Okay, I thought, trying a slightly different rakish sneer in the rearview mirror, let's test this.

Raiders of the Lost Ark starts with an independent action scene that has very little to do with the rest of the story, before slowing down into the story-building of Indy at college, meeting dubious Army guys who didn't go to Sunday School, etc.

Star Wars opens with Vader's ship overtaking and capturing the smaller Rebel ship. We have no idea what's going on, and the pace then slows once the Tatooine story opens.

Master and Commander: the curtain rises and we are in a concert hall watching two people in the crowd interact. It's not visual action, but it's very strong emotional action, and we don't know what's going on or who these people are (Aubrey and Maturin) until the scene ends and O'Brien treats us to a slower series of scenes sketching out each of them.

Lord of the Rings: A bit of a cheat since many readers had already gone through The Hobbit. Except remember that LOR is deeper and more complex. Tolkien had an introduction and we
still open with the bustle of a birthday party, planning, guest lists, etc. In fact, there are a couple of chapters of action -- Bilbo leaves, Gandalf vanishes to investigate things, and years (if I recall) go by before Gandalf returns and things pick up again.

Blackbringer: Noted here because I just re-read it and it's fresh in my mind. It opens with immediate action: Magpie and her crow compadres swing down from the sky to a deserted fishing boat. Mystery and the echoes of dark violence follow. But then things slow as we travel with the character back home ... at which point mystery trickles back in again.

Hey, wait a second. Pirates of the Caribbean: A little girl is on board a ship that comes across the flaming wreckage of a pirate attack ... and a half-drowned boy! The pace slows -- briefly -- as we see scenes of life in Tortuga or wherever they were. Then things pick up again.

Monster Blood Tattoo: Foundling. We first meet Rossamund literally in the middle of a fight. The names of weapons and moves, even of characters pass by in the blur of hand-to-hand combat. Never mind that it's a sparring session in school: the immediacy of the action hooks us and convinces us that it'll be okay to take a breath in the following section, where we more slowly learn the beginnings of the story.

What else? I 'll check the Odyssey and the Iliad when I get home. And for some reason -- post vacation mind-blank, most likely -- I can't remember any other books or movies. Any other instances of this?

Oops, I win. That was easy.

There are lots of wonderful things about Patrick O'Brian's superb Aubrey-Maturin series, and when I try to explain them to someone who hasn't read them it feels like introducing Christmas or the idea of kissing or cookie dough to someone for the first time. O the riches that await you!

Once of the most interesting things about the plotting of the books is that sometimes things just don't work out. People try things and fail, or they guess wrong, or something goes awry and they have to improvise.

Note: These are not O'Brian spoilers; the plot below is made-up.

For example, say the characters are onboard a British ship of War (in 1802 or thereabouts) slanting downwind toward the French coast, on a mission to close with the shore, slip in under the coastal artillery fire, and take, sink, or burn the French ships in the port. The main characters are gathered in the captain's room at the stern of the ship, a low-ceilinged space of curved lines and small windows. A fresh breeze keeps them tearing ahead across the English channel. The captain and his aides are walking dividers across a chart, studying the shape of the harbor, likely tides, the accuracy of French cannon fire.

Everything is ready; everything is progressing, and as readers we are swept ahead of them, inexorably it seems, to France and the waiting battle.

Now, pause. Remember that these are the heroes of the book, the British are the good guys, and we even know that Napoleon was ultimately defeated. So we (or I did, at least) expect a swashbuckling fight scene, certainly some hardship, but ultimately victory. Our heroes must prevail, after all. And so much is at stake: they must defeat the French!

In Star Wars Luke must use all of his training, all of his patience and willpower and ability to bullseye womp rats in his T-16 back home to destroy the Death Star. There is only one way to destroy it, and he is the only person who can do it. And SURPRISE, he's successful.

Was it really that surprising?

Back to our British frigate coursing towards the French coast. The land draws near. The men run out the guns and rig the ship for battle. The smoke of burning slowmatch drifts along the deck. Closer. The captain orders the sails re-set to slow the ship.

They round the point of land and find the harbor empty. They run aground on an uncharted rock. The French ships slip around a distant point and the battle is over without firing a shot. Our heroes are captured and placed into French prison. They escape and face a dangerous overland journey to a port, where they are smuggled back to England in the dead of night.

SURPRISE: the mission to attack the French was a complete failure, and the result of a series of misjudgement so severe that our heroes were lucky to escape with their lives.

To me this seems to be a richer, deeper plot, more reflective of actual life and the choices we make that -- like it or not -- are sometimes wrong. When the characters are forced to live through the consequences of their own occasional bad judgement, the story feels more real.

Now. There are many, many reasons why comparing O'Brian's books to Star Wars is a bad idea. And certainly I'm not suggesting that characters should get to the climax of the story and then fail. But think about it: was Luke really ever going to do anything else than destroy the Death Star?

Flawed characters are more interesting than flatly perfect ones. Flawed ideas are more interesting too. It's not just a matter of avoiding situations that are "too easy" for characters, I think there should be occasional ... let's call them "diversions from immediate success."

Another example. China Mieville's Un Lun Dun, a wonderfully odd book about an "Un-London" that exists below/alongside London. Two girls discover UnLondon and learn that one of them is The Chosen One who must -- you guessed it -- save the world from evil. Sound familiar?

But instead of slipping into the rut of a traditional fantasy story, Mieville throws us a curve. The Chosen One is knocked out in a fight and returns to our world, defeated and, frankly, pretty useless. It's her friend, Deeba, until now the sidekick, who ends up returning to UnLondon and ultimately saving it.

The story doesn't just slide past the issue of The Chosen One, it catapults past it and in doing so, gives us the message that who you are or what a "prophecy" says are less important than what you do. "Forget the prophecy, we have work to do."

[Edited to add:] Sarah Rees Brennan brings up a very similar point on her blog. It as actually her posting that got me to read UnLunDun in the first place.