Lots of stuff here to mull over. I know when I wrote my one published novel (there are many more published ones) the publisher demanded an outline. And it was a murder mystery, so it seemed reasonable to know ahead of time who the murderer was - and yet after I wrote the outline, I changed who the murderer was! And introduced a brand new major character.
Still, it's the only novel I published, so perhaps the outline was useful.
As to story being crucial, I agree. People wanted a sequel to my novel, so I conjured up the characters - but I had nothing for them to do, so the novel withered. Like that movie The Second Best Marigold Hotel, a sequel with no story to tell.
I once did what Alison did for the 3-day contest. I was very young and read a book that said for an 80,000-word novel you should write a 10,000-word outline. I did and then when I came to write the 80,000 words it was boring, mechanical.
But perhaps there is something in between, as Alison suggests. When I write my non-fiction, I like to have not an outline, but notes: key points I might want to mention. When inspiration flags, I look at the notes and think, Oh, yes, that point, let me talk about that now.
But there are no rules. I remember what Somerset Maugham said: "There are three rules for writing the novel, but nobody knows what they are."
Sheldon, thanks for sharing your process. Ah, the in-between... why this post took days to write. There's such a line.
Your 10,000 word outline sounds much like a film "treatment"--the step between the pitch and the script--which could be another approach. But yes, for me, it killed the discovery.
It's so interesting that your mystery novel made such shift after outlining...
Yes, I had one of those moments when the character talks back: oh, wait, he wasn't going to be the murderer, he was going to be the murder victim and a blackmailer. But he said to me, You can't make me the blackmailer; I'm too nice for that. At first, I resisted, saying, Who's in charge here? But the answer seemed to be him. You have to listen to your subconscious.
It would appear that your experience with McKee's The Story is quite similar to mine. I first read it when I was writing scripts (a decade before I switch to novels) and found it quite a revelation, as long as one is willing to put in the work. What was most gratifying about the process he outlined was just how balanced the structure it produced was (and yes, I always charted my scripts, as instructed). And to this day, I still write my "controlling idea" (or "core concept") on the first page of the notebook I've designated for whatever project I'm working on and have been pleasantly surprised, on a number of occasions, when it changed partway through (the most dramatic being when I wrote my third novel and its "False hope is better than no hope at all" flipped to become "False hope is no hope at all"). As a novelist though, I've found McKee's process to be most useful when it comes to managing complexity, which I've mostly done by using (and then subverting) the conventions of genre (be they mystery, thriller, adventure, horror and even romance, often intertwined within the same work). As a side note, Peter Rabinovitch writes in “Click Of The Spring” of how Faulkner and Dostoevsky use the conventions of the mystery novel as a means of managing the complexity requisite to any serious piece of literature. It's also well worth a read, for sure.
What's particularly interesting about the Rabinovitch piece is that he classifies both Faulkner's Intruders In The Dust and Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov as examples of "discovery" fiction, which is to say the authors were posing, first and foremost, a mystery to themselves which could only be solved in the writing, very much the same as McKee's ideal.*
*My central preoccupation as a novelist has been the means by which an author might go about doing exactly this. The means, on my end, begins by creating a suitably complex and anarchic (fictional) environment which thus compels both myself, consciously and subconsciously, and my characters to strive for order by seeking out any and all patterns secreted beneath the surface of whatever book I’m writing. The best way I’ve heard such a thing described was in Small Memories where Jose Saramago likens the process by which a writer’s memory functions (and by extension, I’d say, how the creative process itself functions) to a bunch of corks submerged in a dried up river bed. With the spring flood (ie the moment of inspiration), the corks are swept into the deluge and it’s not so much the individual memories the corks represent that are important but how they bump and jostle against each other to create new meanings. The novelist’s central task, in this sense, is not to contain these corks but to allow as many of them as humanly possible to flourish in delirious chaos and there is no more thrilling feeling for this author than when the corks suddenly reveal a pattern that at once seems beyond my own capacity as a novelist (and as a person) and yet which also emerges, fully formed, solely as a result of what I have written.
But I think there is some danger in letting the corks fall where they may. Stephen King is a good example - in his book On Writing he essentially confesses to sitting down each day and banging out at least 2000 words, and his story goes wherever his fingers take him that day. Which is probably why so many of his books completely fall apart at the end and seem to have messy or confusing climaxes and resolutions.
Painting might form another good analogy. How many great works of art flowed from the painter's breast, and how many involved much tinkering and exploration formed upon a basic outline drawn on the canvas?
I think that's why the phrase about "bumping and jostling" stood out for me, as I see that as the process of the writer questioning--deeply--every element/detail in her/his story. I know that the longer I write, the stronger and more useful those questions are. And it really does feel like allowing story pieces to rub and push at each other, to see what they're about!
It's also why I can't plan out everything in my work--why I have to let out the story on the page, and then interrogate the poor thing until it's left limp and silly. Then build it back up. Sometimes as I'm working, people and places and objects and emotions show up "from nowhere". I don't dismiss them. I put them onto the page. Then the real work begins! (Getting "stuff on the page" truly is the easier piece!)
I do think that McKee's idea that 75%--a full three-quarters--of the writing task is the planning, the organizing. That seems like an incredible amount of time, and I am not a numbers person, BUT I have to say that that number gives me a strange peace of mind. I feel it is an accurate percentage for the work of SHAPING the ideas in my mind into what it needs to be for others to read.
Yes, I do various charts and diagrams. I keep a notebook for each project, often more than one notebook, for planning notes and research notes.
I do, too, always have SOME end in mind before I ever begin. Your notes about how King's works fall apart and your "floating around" ideas--I'm thinking about that! At times, my ending has changed, after I write. But for the most part, the end in my mind is where I end up; though it always starts out thin and ends up otherwise.
Are you thinking to take either of your long mss. and work to shape and discover the structure one needs? Is there some structure in it already? Or do you have a sense of what you need to hold it up to as a "measure"?
You might want to take a particular project, and work through McKee's book. SLOWLY. Actually working with his ideas will be the instruction/guide you are looking for, I suspect.
I am definitely going to read McKee - it sounds exactly like what I've been looking for. I'm currently in the middle of two projects, both of which I am trying to carefully research and outline, and I'm at a perfect point in both to pick something like this up given I'm heading in to the "muddled middle".
I mentioned my manuscripts in one of my other replies - one is satisfyingly structured but I do think I will do a comprehensive rewrite one day in which I'll rip it apart and put it back together. The longer un-outlined manuscript is a youthful indiscretion and will probably be something I allow some amused family member to read in 2050 or beyond after I leave this Earth and no longer have to be embarrassed by it ;)
BTW, thank you for the insight into your writing style. It's helpful to know that you do your own charts, diagrams, and note-taking. When it comes to outlining, do you have any strategy you use to guide you? In other words, to what extent do you know where you're going, and what portion would you say is exploratory?
We are writing at the same time! So much to discuss, and I'm grateful you are asking and sharing thus! I will be looking forward to hearing about what you find in McKee.
Before I begin a novel, I know the starting place, I know "something" of the end. I might have some secondary characters in mind. Then I begin to write. I only learn my questions AS I write! I keep a notebook with questions and thoughts. The "middle-muddle" is almost all exploratory... though as I work I pause at points to take stock.
There are days I want only to write; there are days where the writing is bogging down, and I use those to "plan" and mull over. I go for walks. I do my process journal-keeping. There are days I cry and toss! There are days I ignore it altogether, and visit someone. When really stuck, I do research; invariably ideas come from that piece.
It's interesting to think: when you ask it as you have: 25% "know where I'm going," and 75% "exploratory"... the inversion of McKee's 25% writing, 75% planning. I'm thinking here of first draft ratio, to ultimately-done ratio... as I move to that shift in %s.
It took me some years of writing before I came to terms with how physically exhausted I am at the close of a heavy writing day. (I come from a family of trades-people/carpenters, who cannot believe how tiring it is to sit at a desk and think for hours; I began with this thinking myself!)
But looking at it, all the "work"--this must be why....
I agree wholeheartedly which is why it's vital for writers to spend so much time developing that intuitive sense during their formative years. It's like mastering any discipline really, you have to spend the time learning it so thoroughly that it becomes second nature and you don't have to consciously think about it anymore. Think of it as an internal compass and consider this question: While walking in the woods would I be more likely to step off the beaten path if I had a compass or if I didn't have one. That's where the real freedom lies (i.e. knowing that, regardless of how far you stray, you'll be able to find your way back) and Alison is right on point when she reminds us (over and over again) that it takes a lot of time and effort and patience to achieve the requisite confidence to do that every time you sit down at your laptop. In my experience, the confidence derived from developing that intuitive sense eventually becomes its own wellspring of inspiration which is not to say it makes the writer's job - or life - any easier. Battling the complacency which can plug that wellspring in an instant is, in my experience, a far greater struggle than developing one's intuition because, rather than providing us with a foreseeable goal with foreseeable outcomes, it forces us to constantly question ourselves, and realign our goals to current practice, regardless of how comfortable we've become in our habits (but then that's another discussion entirely).
Love this analogy of walking in the woods, and being with or without a compass. Getting to that point of self-trust, and trust of the story you are trying to tell, too.
I recently wrote a little piece on "direction" and self-trust, post widowhood. My sons know my horrendous sense of direction--I've lived with it for years, and it furthers the lack of self trust. But that moment of stepping out on my own, and then for a number of times realizing, "Hey, I took the right turn, on my own, listening to self!" We do that decision-making constantly in writing. But it takes time and experience to grow the listening to self. (And yes, you hear me over and over, talking about reading!)
Life and writing are pretty much the same thing; all around us we absorb, and then apply in our work. (My flamenco teacher was always on us about "application!" after learning... I hear her voice in my head.)
And solid words on "battling the complacency," John, yes--thank you!
Your comment about Rabinovitch is precisely what I had in mind when I wrote in to Alison about this topic. It seems that intuiting your way to a coherent narrative structure is not an easy thing to do, and surely most authors have some idea in their head of how their novel will actually be structured. And, it seems genre fiction provides some guidance in having proven formulas for what carries a story. But I'm curious what that looks like. For example, does Ondaatje have a three act structure in his mind when he writes? If not, how does he ensure that his books will have a flow that carries the reader without them feeling like they're just watching things happen without any narrative purpose? And if a writer is good enough, do people even care that they're just floating around the lake in an inner tube with no direction?
Andy, I'm curious: what have you done with your lengthy and completed mss.? Have you charted them out in some way? Created a table such as the one I have that points to certain questions/qualities? Diagrammed the pages in any way?
Your question keeps coming up as: "What does that look like?"
In your note about Cat Saves... you mention how she speaks of certain types of scenes occurring at certain points; Certainly McKee explains--in pages of details--the quality of such scenes. Cat Saves.... sounds like a bit of a blue-print--not a bad thing as you are learning (and we're learning all the time!)--while McKee goes deeply into detail about the nature of creating "story."
Readers want Story. I don't think they're happy "floating around"--not even with the "best" (and is someone a "good" writer if they're not telling some sort of story? There are two parts to writing: writing and story.) Most publishers will not accept a non-story... I'm tempted to write "no"... but that's not true either. And "weak" or poorly-conceived stories are published and sit on shelves. Note: "sit."
It's funny you should ask, because after reading Save the Cat I did dissect my outlined manuscript against that model. I should mention that, rightly or wrongly, Save the Cat goes to great pains to say that it doesn't provide a formula but rather provides a guide for structure that can be manipulated as needed. The thesis of the book (again, rightly or wrongly), is that culturally we have an intuitive understanding of what makes an engaging story and whether authors know it or not they are following this basic road map. The writer tries to demonstrate this by taking various contemporary and classic books and charting them against the model. In some cases it seems like a bit of a stretch, but in other cases it's hard to ignore how many of the sampled books do generally follow the structure even if some of the main benchmarks are redefined (for example, she recommends that the second tenth of the book comprise the "debate" where the protagonist decides whether to embark on the quest that is calling to them - it works well if you're talking about the Hobbit, but takes some subtle redefining if you're talking about Slaughterhouse 5).
To test this I made an excel sheet that had all of the Save the Cat plot points and percentages (meaning what at what percent of the book things happen). I then laid out all my chapters, with word count, and was unable to deny how cleanly they overlapped. And this goes to the thesis of the book - that we all have an intuitive and cultural understanding of how a rewarding story should be structured.
The Save the Cat model obviously falls apart when we get into post-modern story structures - for example, forget trying to find the mid-way "false defeat or false victory" plot point in Naked Lunch (in fact, maybe forget everything you thought you knew about what a book can look like and be about). But when she's laying out how Pride and Prejudice maps onto the model, I can't say she's entirely wrong.
The reason I'm so intrigued with this book is because I've looked at many books on outlining and this is the only one I have encountered that provided some "hard" guidance. And it left me intensely curious how the masters worked. Did they have "hard" models they followed? Soft models? Any models at all? I think that's what intrigues me about the comment re Dostoyevsky using mystery novels. He's obviously writing an elevated work about the human condition, but he's borrowing from genre fiction in deciding how to map out his own story.
Andy, this makes much sense for your own writing. Though I'm curious where this leaves you with your work: was this piece/step satisfying? Am I correct now, in understanding, that your question here really is about how others--not you--go about the process? (Obviously, creating a STORY is important to you--in which Something Happens. I'm guessing that that is what you like best to read, too.)
So often "good" writing makes it look easy. And even though E.B. White claims never to have given structure a thought during the process of Charlotte's Web... I am convinced he put the work in elsewhere, so that there was flow to this part of creating that story. Save the Cat's idea that we have "intuitively absorbed" has great truth to it. I do think it's so good that you have found a book--a way--to process and grow with. It sounds to have real value. And the work you have put in sounds solid! Even as you still have questions!
It was more interesting than satisfying. I'm still not totally sold on Save the Cat given it really focuses on the hero's journey despite not calling it that, and when dealing with other books I think the author has to engage in some creative redefining of what her plot points mean in order to demonstrate her thesis (for example, some books simply do not have a section where the protagonist debates whether to take the next step, though you may argue some other similar function occurs).
More than anything it scratched an itch by giving what I called "hard guidance" in another post. It's been useful, and I'll incorporate what I learned, but I'm still researching for the purpose of developing outlining strategies.
I bought McKee's book when I was writing both fiction and scripts and actually had deep down hopes of selling/being published. Foolish youth. I was astonished at how his words were as useful for fiction as for scriptwriting.
So much to chomp into here. I’m biffing it into Instapaper or something so I can underline stuff like you have in story. Such a crisp distillation of the writing process. So much jumps out, but yr Sontag quote is what I’m sleeping on this eve: we somehow have to know the guts of it, then the job is “to resist their own knowingness and to remystify what they do.” Thanks Alison!
I was reading the Sontag book because one of the main characters in my current WIP is a photographer, and the whole gave me much to think about.
Reading the book as a writer, though, was another experience, to think about one visual art form. I grew up without television, which often throws up a challenge for me now--especially in writing for young children.
So good to situate our writing selves somewhere to gain another perspective.
Resist. And absorb to remystify. A red line pops up under that word--a good sign.
Thank you for reading, Arthur, and taking time to jot thoughts and share!
Lots of stuff here to mull over. I know when I wrote my one published novel (there are many more published ones) the publisher demanded an outline. And it was a murder mystery, so it seemed reasonable to know ahead of time who the murderer was - and yet after I wrote the outline, I changed who the murderer was! And introduced a brand new major character.
Still, it's the only novel I published, so perhaps the outline was useful.
As to story being crucial, I agree. People wanted a sequel to my novel, so I conjured up the characters - but I had nothing for them to do, so the novel withered. Like that movie The Second Best Marigold Hotel, a sequel with no story to tell.
I once did what Alison did for the 3-day contest. I was very young and read a book that said for an 80,000-word novel you should write a 10,000-word outline. I did and then when I came to write the 80,000 words it was boring, mechanical.
But perhaps there is something in between, as Alison suggests. When I write my non-fiction, I like to have not an outline, but notes: key points I might want to mention. When inspiration flags, I look at the notes and think, Oh, yes, that point, let me talk about that now.
But there are no rules. I remember what Somerset Maugham said: "There are three rules for writing the novel, but nobody knows what they are."
I meant to say many more unpublished ones in my first para
Sheldon, thanks for sharing your process. Ah, the in-between... why this post took days to write. There's such a line.
Your 10,000 word outline sounds much like a film "treatment"--the step between the pitch and the script--which could be another approach. But yes, for me, it killed the discovery.
It's so interesting that your mystery novel made such shift after outlining...
Yes, I had one of those moments when the character talks back: oh, wait, he wasn't going to be the murderer, he was going to be the murder victim and a blackmailer. But he said to me, You can't make me the blackmailer; I'm too nice for that. At first, I resisted, saying, Who's in charge here? But the answer seemed to be him. You have to listen to your subconscious.
Okay... this made me laugh out loud: it is so true!
It would appear that your experience with McKee's The Story is quite similar to mine. I first read it when I was writing scripts (a decade before I switch to novels) and found it quite a revelation, as long as one is willing to put in the work. What was most gratifying about the process he outlined was just how balanced the structure it produced was (and yes, I always charted my scripts, as instructed). And to this day, I still write my "controlling idea" (or "core concept") on the first page of the notebook I've designated for whatever project I'm working on and have been pleasantly surprised, on a number of occasions, when it changed partway through (the most dramatic being when I wrote my third novel and its "False hope is better than no hope at all" flipped to become "False hope is no hope at all"). As a novelist though, I've found McKee's process to be most useful when it comes to managing complexity, which I've mostly done by using (and then subverting) the conventions of genre (be they mystery, thriller, adventure, horror and even romance, often intertwined within the same work). As a side note, Peter Rabinovitch writes in “Click Of The Spring” of how Faulkner and Dostoevsky use the conventions of the mystery novel as a means of managing the complexity requisite to any serious piece of literature. It's also well worth a read, for sure.
For the subscriber's question: there's something gratifying in knowing the greats have used "conventions" for complexity, yes! Thanks for this, John.
What's particularly interesting about the Rabinovitch piece is that he classifies both Faulkner's Intruders In The Dust and Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov as examples of "discovery" fiction, which is to say the authors were posing, first and foremost, a mystery to themselves which could only be solved in the writing, very much the same as McKee's ideal.*
*My central preoccupation as a novelist has been the means by which an author might go about doing exactly this. The means, on my end, begins by creating a suitably complex and anarchic (fictional) environment which thus compels both myself, consciously and subconsciously, and my characters to strive for order by seeking out any and all patterns secreted beneath the surface of whatever book I’m writing. The best way I’ve heard such a thing described was in Small Memories where Jose Saramago likens the process by which a writer’s memory functions (and by extension, I’d say, how the creative process itself functions) to a bunch of corks submerged in a dried up river bed. With the spring flood (ie the moment of inspiration), the corks are swept into the deluge and it’s not so much the individual memories the corks represent that are important but how they bump and jostle against each other to create new meanings. The novelist’s central task, in this sense, is not to contain these corks but to allow as many of them as humanly possible to flourish in delirious chaos and there is no more thrilling feeling for this author than when the corks suddenly reveal a pattern that at once seems beyond my own capacity as a novelist (and as a person) and yet which also emerges, fully formed, solely as a result of what I have written.
John, that is so very good--glad you shared this! That is quite the image, an sensation of thought--bump and jostle. And pattern. Emerging.
But I think there is some danger in letting the corks fall where they may. Stephen King is a good example - in his book On Writing he essentially confesses to sitting down each day and banging out at least 2000 words, and his story goes wherever his fingers take him that day. Which is probably why so many of his books completely fall apart at the end and seem to have messy or confusing climaxes and resolutions.
Painting might form another good analogy. How many great works of art flowed from the painter's breast, and how many involved much tinkering and exploration formed upon a basic outline drawn on the canvas?
I think that's why the phrase about "bumping and jostling" stood out for me, as I see that as the process of the writer questioning--deeply--every element/detail in her/his story. I know that the longer I write, the stronger and more useful those questions are. And it really does feel like allowing story pieces to rub and push at each other, to see what they're about!
It's also why I can't plan out everything in my work--why I have to let out the story on the page, and then interrogate the poor thing until it's left limp and silly. Then build it back up. Sometimes as I'm working, people and places and objects and emotions show up "from nowhere". I don't dismiss them. I put them onto the page. Then the real work begins! (Getting "stuff on the page" truly is the easier piece!)
I do think that McKee's idea that 75%--a full three-quarters--of the writing task is the planning, the organizing. That seems like an incredible amount of time, and I am not a numbers person, BUT I have to say that that number gives me a strange peace of mind. I feel it is an accurate percentage for the work of SHAPING the ideas in my mind into what it needs to be for others to read.
Yes, I do various charts and diagrams. I keep a notebook for each project, often more than one notebook, for planning notes and research notes.
I do, too, always have SOME end in mind before I ever begin. Your notes about how King's works fall apart and your "floating around" ideas--I'm thinking about that! At times, my ending has changed, after I write. But for the most part, the end in my mind is where I end up; though it always starts out thin and ends up otherwise.
Are you thinking to take either of your long mss. and work to shape and discover the structure one needs? Is there some structure in it already? Or do you have a sense of what you need to hold it up to as a "measure"?
You might want to take a particular project, and work through McKee's book. SLOWLY. Actually working with his ideas will be the instruction/guide you are looking for, I suspect.
I am definitely going to read McKee - it sounds exactly like what I've been looking for. I'm currently in the middle of two projects, both of which I am trying to carefully research and outline, and I'm at a perfect point in both to pick something like this up given I'm heading in to the "muddled middle".
I mentioned my manuscripts in one of my other replies - one is satisfyingly structured but I do think I will do a comprehensive rewrite one day in which I'll rip it apart and put it back together. The longer un-outlined manuscript is a youthful indiscretion and will probably be something I allow some amused family member to read in 2050 or beyond after I leave this Earth and no longer have to be embarrassed by it ;)
BTW, thank you for the insight into your writing style. It's helpful to know that you do your own charts, diagrams, and note-taking. When it comes to outlining, do you have any strategy you use to guide you? In other words, to what extent do you know where you're going, and what portion would you say is exploratory?
We are writing at the same time! So much to discuss, and I'm grateful you are asking and sharing thus! I will be looking forward to hearing about what you find in McKee.
Before I begin a novel, I know the starting place, I know "something" of the end. I might have some secondary characters in mind. Then I begin to write. I only learn my questions AS I write! I keep a notebook with questions and thoughts. The "middle-muddle" is almost all exploratory... though as I work I pause at points to take stock.
There are days I want only to write; there are days where the writing is bogging down, and I use those to "plan" and mull over. I go for walks. I do my process journal-keeping. There are days I cry and toss! There are days I ignore it altogether, and visit someone. When really stuck, I do research; invariably ideas come from that piece.
It's interesting to think: when you ask it as you have: 25% "know where I'm going," and 75% "exploratory"... the inversion of McKee's 25% writing, 75% planning. I'm thinking here of first draft ratio, to ultimately-done ratio... as I move to that shift in %s.
It took me some years of writing before I came to terms with how physically exhausted I am at the close of a heavy writing day. (I come from a family of trades-people/carpenters, who cannot believe how tiring it is to sit at a desk and think for hours; I began with this thinking myself!)
But looking at it, all the "work"--this must be why....
I agree wholeheartedly which is why it's vital for writers to spend so much time developing that intuitive sense during their formative years. It's like mastering any discipline really, you have to spend the time learning it so thoroughly that it becomes second nature and you don't have to consciously think about it anymore. Think of it as an internal compass and consider this question: While walking in the woods would I be more likely to step off the beaten path if I had a compass or if I didn't have one. That's where the real freedom lies (i.e. knowing that, regardless of how far you stray, you'll be able to find your way back) and Alison is right on point when she reminds us (over and over again) that it takes a lot of time and effort and patience to achieve the requisite confidence to do that every time you sit down at your laptop. In my experience, the confidence derived from developing that intuitive sense eventually becomes its own wellspring of inspiration which is not to say it makes the writer's job - or life - any easier. Battling the complacency which can plug that wellspring in an instant is, in my experience, a far greater struggle than developing one's intuition because, rather than providing us with a foreseeable goal with foreseeable outcomes, it forces us to constantly question ourselves, and realign our goals to current practice, regardless of how comfortable we've become in our habits (but then that's another discussion entirely).
Foundation. Reading. Thinking. Writing.
Love this analogy of walking in the woods, and being with or without a compass. Getting to that point of self-trust, and trust of the story you are trying to tell, too.
I recently wrote a little piece on "direction" and self-trust, post widowhood. My sons know my horrendous sense of direction--I've lived with it for years, and it furthers the lack of self trust. But that moment of stepping out on my own, and then for a number of times realizing, "Hey, I took the right turn, on my own, listening to self!" We do that decision-making constantly in writing. But it takes time and experience to grow the listening to self. (And yes, you hear me over and over, talking about reading!)
Life and writing are pretty much the same thing; all around us we absorb, and then apply in our work. (My flamenco teacher was always on us about "application!" after learning... I hear her voice in my head.)
And solid words on "battling the complacency," John, yes--thank you!
Your comment about Rabinovitch is precisely what I had in mind when I wrote in to Alison about this topic. It seems that intuiting your way to a coherent narrative structure is not an easy thing to do, and surely most authors have some idea in their head of how their novel will actually be structured. And, it seems genre fiction provides some guidance in having proven formulas for what carries a story. But I'm curious what that looks like. For example, does Ondaatje have a three act structure in his mind when he writes? If not, how does he ensure that his books will have a flow that carries the reader without them feeling like they're just watching things happen without any narrative purpose? And if a writer is good enough, do people even care that they're just floating around the lake in an inner tube with no direction?
Andy, I'm curious: what have you done with your lengthy and completed mss.? Have you charted them out in some way? Created a table such as the one I have that points to certain questions/qualities? Diagrammed the pages in any way?
Your question keeps coming up as: "What does that look like?"
In your note about Cat Saves... you mention how she speaks of certain types of scenes occurring at certain points; Certainly McKee explains--in pages of details--the quality of such scenes. Cat Saves.... sounds like a bit of a blue-print--not a bad thing as you are learning (and we're learning all the time!)--while McKee goes deeply into detail about the nature of creating "story."
Readers want Story. I don't think they're happy "floating around"--not even with the "best" (and is someone a "good" writer if they're not telling some sort of story? There are two parts to writing: writing and story.) Most publishers will not accept a non-story... I'm tempted to write "no"... but that's not true either. And "weak" or poorly-conceived stories are published and sit on shelves. Note: "sit."
I'll move on to your next comment below... :)
It's funny you should ask, because after reading Save the Cat I did dissect my outlined manuscript against that model. I should mention that, rightly or wrongly, Save the Cat goes to great pains to say that it doesn't provide a formula but rather provides a guide for structure that can be manipulated as needed. The thesis of the book (again, rightly or wrongly), is that culturally we have an intuitive understanding of what makes an engaging story and whether authors know it or not they are following this basic road map. The writer tries to demonstrate this by taking various contemporary and classic books and charting them against the model. In some cases it seems like a bit of a stretch, but in other cases it's hard to ignore how many of the sampled books do generally follow the structure even if some of the main benchmarks are redefined (for example, she recommends that the second tenth of the book comprise the "debate" where the protagonist decides whether to embark on the quest that is calling to them - it works well if you're talking about the Hobbit, but takes some subtle redefining if you're talking about Slaughterhouse 5).
To test this I made an excel sheet that had all of the Save the Cat plot points and percentages (meaning what at what percent of the book things happen). I then laid out all my chapters, with word count, and was unable to deny how cleanly they overlapped. And this goes to the thesis of the book - that we all have an intuitive and cultural understanding of how a rewarding story should be structured.
The Save the Cat model obviously falls apart when we get into post-modern story structures - for example, forget trying to find the mid-way "false defeat or false victory" plot point in Naked Lunch (in fact, maybe forget everything you thought you knew about what a book can look like and be about). But when she's laying out how Pride and Prejudice maps onto the model, I can't say she's entirely wrong.
The reason I'm so intrigued with this book is because I've looked at many books on outlining and this is the only one I have encountered that provided some "hard" guidance. And it left me intensely curious how the masters worked. Did they have "hard" models they followed? Soft models? Any models at all? I think that's what intrigues me about the comment re Dostoyevsky using mystery novels. He's obviously writing an elevated work about the human condition, but he's borrowing from genre fiction in deciding how to map out his own story.
Oh yeah, and a big thumbs down to substack for not allowing edits to comments! Please excuse the typos.
I know! I pass that on, as I grumble about this, too!
Andy, this makes much sense for your own writing. Though I'm curious where this leaves you with your work: was this piece/step satisfying? Am I correct now, in understanding, that your question here really is about how others--not you--go about the process? (Obviously, creating a STORY is important to you--in which Something Happens. I'm guessing that that is what you like best to read, too.)
So often "good" writing makes it look easy. And even though E.B. White claims never to have given structure a thought during the process of Charlotte's Web... I am convinced he put the work in elsewhere, so that there was flow to this part of creating that story. Save the Cat's idea that we have "intuitively absorbed" has great truth to it. I do think it's so good that you have found a book--a way--to process and grow with. It sounds to have real value. And the work you have put in sounds solid! Even as you still have questions!
It was more interesting than satisfying. I'm still not totally sold on Save the Cat given it really focuses on the hero's journey despite not calling it that, and when dealing with other books I think the author has to engage in some creative redefining of what her plot points mean in order to demonstrate her thesis (for example, some books simply do not have a section where the protagonist debates whether to take the next step, though you may argue some other similar function occurs).
More than anything it scratched an itch by giving what I called "hard guidance" in another post. It's been useful, and I'll incorporate what I learned, but I'm still researching for the purpose of developing outlining strategies.
I bought McKee's book when I was writing both fiction and scripts and actually had deep down hopes of selling/being published. Foolish youth. I was astonished at how his words were as useful for fiction as for scriptwriting.
Yes, so true-story is story! Thanks, Amy!
So much to chomp into here. I’m biffing it into Instapaper or something so I can underline stuff like you have in story. Such a crisp distillation of the writing process. So much jumps out, but yr Sontag quote is what I’m sleeping on this eve: we somehow have to know the guts of it, then the job is “to resist their own knowingness and to remystify what they do.” Thanks Alison!
I was reading the Sontag book because one of the main characters in my current WIP is a photographer, and the whole gave me much to think about.
Reading the book as a writer, though, was another experience, to think about one visual art form. I grew up without television, which often throws up a challenge for me now--especially in writing for young children.
So good to situate our writing selves somewhere to gain another perspective.
Resist. And absorb to remystify. A red line pops up under that word--a good sign.
Thank you for reading, Arthur, and taking time to jot thoughts and share!
Evening here, and time to mull. Wondering--a number of you have responded to this post--how do you "remystify"? How do you resist knowingness?