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An Exploration of a Hypothetical Structure

June 1, 2017

Last blog, we structurally mapped a hypothetical story to see how it worked out. Let’s now look at the questions that came up.

Does the pacing look right, focusing on just a couple of days, then skimming through months?
This suggests that the author has tried to ground their characters as a means of introduction by starting with a new beginning – moving into a new house. As a device, this would probably work well.

The story itself is either about some dissonance the protagonist is experiencing and how they reconcile it in their life, or about this torrid affair that’s going to disrupt the protagonist’s present-day life. It could be a combination of the two, but weighted heavier in the rationale of the former scenario – this seems likely given that, wedding aside, the protagonist continues to reminisce about sad times in her life.

But to get to the disruption (the affair) the author skims through four months of story time. Four months. Why? Probably because the author wants to illustrate that life has become ordinary for the couple as they settle into a routine. Then the protagonist meets somebody, flirts with them, and an affair results.

Unfortunately, nothing in that present-day story of that four months seems particularly meaningful, instead existing to introduce the backstory which is giving us context about the protagonist – she has emotional issues, and these might motivate why she strays later.

So what’s happening is that the narrative becomes weighted in telling backstory, rather than sticking to the current story.

How about the digressions – particularly the one about the father’s funeral, and the parents’ divorce?
Some authors handle digressions well. Others devolve into inexorable backstory.

Exposition is always going to be a necessary evil, but we should fall back on it as a last resort. Also, it’s imperative we avoid talking at the reader, e.g. And this happened, and that happened, and that’s how we got here. Some authors unwittingly put their story on hold to do this so they can arm the reader with the information they require to move forward with the present-day narrative.

The moment you leave your current-day setting/scene, you’re probably producing exposition.

In the case of our graph, the author devolves into an unwieldy and distracting amount of exposition relating to the father’s funeral, and the parents’ divorce. I’m sure the author considers this required to show that the protagonist came from a household where the parents broke up, and the father’s death affected her deeply – possible reasons why she might risk suburban contentment for an affair.

But there really is a lot of this exposition. A lot. Is it all needed? Is there ways we can show this? How could the author show that the parents were divorced? And that her father has died? Simple suggestions are pictures of the father everywhere, which shows she’s close to him, even enshrined him. The separation could come in a single line of dialogue, e.g. ‘I don’t want to end up like my mum and dad, divorced and never moving on.’ Sixteen words, instead of twelve paragraphs – what probably amounts to 700–800 words. This also answers the question, Are there too many digressions?

Alternatively, we might learn about it in a conversation the protagonist has with her mother. E.g.

Thirteen words of dialogue and look at what it shows us: the protagonist is mindful enough of her father’s death that she remembers the anniversary. The mother doesn’t want to speak about him, so she moves onto some inane topic, like the curtains. Either the mother has been so affected by her husband’s death she doesn’t want to talk about him or, likelier, acrimony existed between them and she wants to gloss over it.

Is the timeline complicated or confused?
An interesting point is that the couple was married two years ago, but the protagonist’s miscarriage was four years ago. Did she have a miscarriage with her current partner? Was their relationship that serious then that they planned to have a baby, or was it an accident? If their relationship was that serious, why did they not get married for a further two years? Did she have a miscarriage with somebody else maybe? Or perhaps this is just a changed premise – often, when we’re beginning stories, the details are vague, and they can change as we go on. So maybe this is just an error. But it’s definitely something worth noting.

Does structural mapping help?
If you’re confused about structure, or a novice to writing and are unsure if you’re getting structure right, a structural map is invaluable. It can help identify what’s working, what’s not, and what’s being overplayed. Often, we might not realise this as we’re writing, or (not) spot it as we’re revising because we’re too immersed in the manuscript. But a simple map like the one displayed in the previous blog can chart the forward progress of our narrative, and the backward dips that slow it down, and which amount to a ship dragging an anchor behind it. Otherwise, it might help us identify incongruities.

So think about structural mapping when you revise. It might help you identify issues you otherwise have trouble seeing.

An Underview of Structure

May 18, 2017

Lots of people struggle with structure, unable to conceptualise something they consider an abstract. We can point to prose. We can point to plot. We can point to characters. But outside a basic understanding of the three-act structure – and this is a foundation, rather than the framework we build on it – how can we point to structure?

The simplest dilution of structure is that it’s linear – that a story begins here and it moves forward logically and ends there. Often, it’s chronological. But is it? If you think about it, even chronological stories will digress into the past as they deliver backstory that offers context for what happens, or provides us an anecdote that gives us a greater understanding of a particular character, or event. Technically, we’re backstepping into history here.

Before we explore this further, we need a general scenario to discuss, so let’s pose a hypothetical story (the bracketed numbers are used later as reference points, so keep track of them!):

Chapter I: a newly married couple move into a house. As they move in over a period of two days, our protagonist (the wife) briefly thinks about her wedding two years ago.(1).
Chapter II: Over a period of a fortnight, the couple are settling in, when the protagonist thinks briefly about her father’s death five years ago (2).
Chapter III: over the next month as the couple dive into their new lives, the protagonist grows melancholy and has a longish digression about her father’s funeral. (3)
And then, from there, that digression devolves into a painful and long (like over twelve paragraphs-long) exploration of the protagonist’s parents separation ten years prior (4) to the funeral.
Chapter IV: over the next three months the story progresses about the couple settling into the neighbourhood and their jobs with no digressions. But then the protagonist meets somebody at work who they grow attracted to. The attraction is reciprocated. They have sex in a broom closet.
Chapter V: Over the course of a single day, the protagonist wonders how her life has come undone, and in a brief digression, traces it back to her miscarriage (5) four years ago.
when the story resumes, it picks up several days after the last digression, the protagonist trying to move forward as if nothing has happened. It’s just worth noting again that the narrative doesn’t immediately resume from wherever it left off.

An exercise that can help us conceptualise structure is to think about it diagrammatically. Imagine we could draw up a graph that would chart the following:

the forward course of a story represented by a red line moving left-to-right.
digressions and, firstly, how far into the past they dipped.
secondly, how many paragraphs these digressions took.
how many days elapsed in each chapter.

A chart plotting our hypothetical story might look like this …

Much of this is self-explanatory. The red line moves forward, charting the story’s progress. It then dips vertically to represent a digression into the past. From there, it’s new horizontal path aligns with the numbered 1–5 boxes, which shows how many paragraphs the digression uses. The red line then angles up to reconnect with the present-day story – usually picking up where it left off (bar for the exception in Chapter V). We also get to see how many days each chapter spans in story-time (in the highlighted yellow cells).

Now this is very basic diagramming of a novel’s structure. We could continue to break it down into smaller components, etc., but it gives you an idea how the story develops over the course of the narrative.

To the naked eye, how balanced is it?

Does the pacing look right, focusing on just a couple of days, then skimming through months? How about the digressions – particularly the one about the father’s funeral, and the parents’ divorce? Are there too many digressions? What do you think when you look at a simple graph like this? Does it look balanced? Or do you get a sense of unwieldiness?

Think about it. In the next blog we’ll look at what this graph suggests.

An Overview of Structure

May 4, 2017

Structure is a big issue in a lot of writing, especially among inexperienced authors. Often, inexperienced authors will spill everything on the page, and let the narrative take them – and their story – where it will. This might feel natural to them. If it feels natural, they might believe it’s justified. And, as far as they go, the narrative might be perfectly understandable, but this is only because they know their story. A reader doesn’t. A reader needs to be guided through the narrative. If there’s structural issues, they’ll be jolted. Be jolted often enough, and they’ll lose interest, finding it too hard to follow. Be jolted bad enough, and they’ll be shaken right out of the story.

This doesn’t mean structure always has to be straightforward. It can be innovative. Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow – which was shortlisted for the 1991 Booker Prize – runs backward, starting with the narrator’s death, and seeing him become younger and younger. Everything is reversed – the narrative, the dialogue, the events.

Each chapter of Christos Tsiolkas’s Barracuda alternates between two timelines, using a different POV in each – first person in the present, third person in the past. Through this technique, we’re immediately aware the character has had some sort of downfall and struggling to reconcile his life, and then we get to know him as he’s younger, driven, and pursuing the goal of becoming an Olympic swimmer.

In both these examples, there’s a logic to the structure, so the reader can become comfortable and trust that the author will – ultimately – get them to their destination. If that trust isn’t built, the reader will disinvest. Using the example of Barracuda, if the first ten chapters alternated between present and past, and then there were three successive chapters in the past, the reader would query why the story has detoured. If there’s no logic to it, the reader will lose faith that the story has a purpose, and that’s one thing any author can’t afford. If a reader doesn’t believe in your ability to tell a story, they’re certainly not going to believe in your story.

But writers do battle with structure – often because they cannot filter an overflowing imagination into an articulate and purposeful journey. Instead, it’s the randomness. And in the randomness, there’s chaos, tantamount to taking a jigsaw, doing half of it, forcing one/quarter of the pieces where they don’t belong, and letting the rest fall where they may. You’ll get an idea what the whole picture is meant to be, but never really see it properly.

In the next blog in a fortnight’s time, we’ll look at mapping structure.

Get Reading

April 13, 2017

Busybird Publishing is always interested in trying to be socially conscious.

Our anthologies were initially designed to give new and emerging writers exposure. Our books will usually give a portion of proceeds to a charity and/or foundation, and/or will help to raise awareness for a cause. We run workshops on photography, writing, and publishing, and we’re always happy to answer questions – especially if it helps inexperienced authors (or authors who aren’t that knowledgeable about the publishing industry) to avoid pitfalls, such as unscrupulous businesses who’ll try to exploit that author’s inexperience for money.

We also try to be community-minded, fostering our studio – here in the heart of Montmorency, Victoria – as a creative hub. One of the ways we do that is through our monthly Open Mic Night, held the third Wednesday of every month from February – November.

Some people will frown. A number of writers will scrunch up their faces, and find nothing more distasteful than reading in public. Ewww! Why ever would you do that? Most writers think all they have to do is write, publish, and their books will march off the shelves to the adulation of the public.

Uh uh.

Maybe it works that way if you’re Stephen King, JK Rowling, or some other bestselling author with an established fan base, but if you’re just starting out, or even if you’re published but still establishing a readership, letting the world know of your existence – not to mention your writing’s existence – is a necessity. That means you’ll always be hustling: doing interviews, giving talks, and performing readings.

Now here’s what Open Mic can do for you:

Give you experience reading in public. Sure, it might be terrifying – at least at first. But the audiences at our Open Mic Nights are always friendly, nurturing, and supportive.
Show you how your material connects with an audience. You might believe something you’ve written is brilliant. But there’s no better gauge than seeing how an audience respond.
You get to network. Yes, writing is an insular vocation, but you will – at some point – need to rely on others. You could meet another writer with whom you can exchange work for feedback. You could meet an editor who can help you, or even a publisher who’s interested in looking at your work on the strength of your reading. You could meet prospective readers, who want more of your work. If you have a book (or books), you could sell copies. (We’re always happy for people to do that at our Open Mic Nights.)
You could make friends. Again: writing = insular vocation. There’s nothing more invaluable than making friends who understand your dreams and frustrations and all that.

There’s a lot to gain from Open Mic Night. So if you’re writer, think about the way reading could be beneficial to you.

Of course, Open Mic Night isn’t just for writers. We get asked that often: If I come, do I have to read? Like the moment somebody walks in, we hook a cane around their neck and haul them to the podium, a spotlight blaring in their eyes. Open Mic Night is about entertainment. It’s about fun. It’s about culture. It’s about being ‘open’. So if you just want to come along and sit in the audience, that’s perfectly fine, too. And it’s a great alternative to staying at home, watching television, or dawdling around on the net, procrastinating. Have an inexpensive night out, enjoy the readings, chat with people before and after the Open Mic section begins.

Busybird’s Open Mic Night costs just $5.00 entry. That covers a raffle door prize, the refreshments that are provided (a great assortment of nibblies and beverages), with a small amount going to the pool that constitutes the Busybird Creative Fellowship – a fellowship we award an inexperienced writer, designed to help with their development, and nurture and guide their formative steps into the industry.

The next Open Mic Night is Wednesday night, 19th April, beginning at 7.00pm and running until 9.00pm. No bookings are required. If you want to read or perform, just come in and write your name on the booking sheet – a warning, though: the final order is randomised by our emcee Blaise, so don’t think putting your name last means you’ll read last. We also randomise the order to mix up what you get.

If you have any queries, feel free to email us or call us on (03) 9434 6365.

We hope to see you all there!

The Story YOU Want to Tell

April 6, 2017

Lots of people are interested in writing memoir. And, because it’s memoir, they think it’s going to be easy. The whole story’s there, isn’t it? You just have to now put it down on the page.

But memoir doesn’t work like that – and this applies if you’re writing autobiography, a biography of somebody else, or a family, community, or business history. Yes, the facts are all there. But that doesn’t make for story – at least not usually.

If you’re going to write memoir, you need to work out what your story is. No, it can’t just be everything that’s happened to you in your life, no matter how interesting and exciting that is, e.g. you might’ve been born in a warzone, raised by wolves, educated by poachers, escaped to be brought up by nuns, recruited from tertiary education by MI6, foiled terrorist plans time and time again, got married, had a kid, donated a lung, became a teacher, grew old, planted a rose garden, and in a nursing home wrote your memoirs.

Amazing, right? It’s the story of your life.

Well, no. It is your life but that doesn’t make for story. It makes for a bunch of stuff that happened.

You need to find what your story is going to be.

Recently, I watched the Hoges miniseries – about iconic Australian comic and actor Paul Hogan – and I was struck by how aimless it was. Yes, it seemed all the important bits in Hogan’s life were documented. And some of it was interesting. But it went nowhere, just following Hogan from one episode in his life to the next. The makers of the miniseries must’ve been aware of this issue structurally, as they bookended the miniseries with Hogan performing a routine for loved ones, looking back at his life, and being at peace with what he’d done. This was meant to give it a sense of completion, but it was artificially contrived – particularly since Hogan never really sought completion as a goal, and always seemed relatively content with where he was at pretty much every stage of his life. So how can you find something you’re neither looking for, or need?

Compare that to, for example, Never Tear Us Apart: The Untold Story of INXS. Here, we saw how INXS struggled playing pub gigs, grew to become the biggest rock band in the world, how it began to unravel, before culminating with Michael Hutchence’s death. There’s a clear journey there – the rise and fall of this great Australian band, and what each of the band members went through on that journey. We have a clear, beginning, middle, and end, a clear direction the story has taken and a logical completion to the story of this band’s life (or, at least, a completion of this chapter).

Open, the autobiography of tennis champion Andre Agassi, doesn’t have a rise and fall. It looks at how much of Agassi’s life was about people making his decisions for him – his father decided he’d play tennis and drove him; social status compelled him to try and maintain this glamorous image; his trainer nurtured him and took care of him. But Agassi ended the story by growing up, learning to be his own person, reconciling tennis’s place in his life, and using his experiences and resources philanthropically. It is effectively the story of Agassi growing comfortable in himself, and becoming his own person, rather than the one everybody else wanted him to be.

Your story has to be about something. If you’re coming out of a bad relationship and now working as a life coach, it might be about how you married thinking it would be for life, how it unravelled, and how you emerged from the hardship and learned to coach others. If you’re somebody who’s suffered from neurosis for a lifetime, it might be how you learned to deal with neurosis and come to a point you can now cope. If you’re a business owner, it might be about how you’ve run businesses, your successes and failures, and how those experiences have qualified you now to help others with their business.

With all these examples, there’s a beginning, middle, and end, rather than just a rambling discourse that goes on indefinitely.

So, if you’re writing memoir, think about the story you want to tell.