Writing as a Logical Series of Steps

The inevitability of plot is one of the easiest aspects of writing. As a storyteller you shove a metal key into your characters, wind them up like a toy, and watch them perform series of proscribed motions. Many of the stories which adhere rigidly to the rules are easy to identify. They it within well-known genre categories, such as westerns, adventures, and romances. The stories which rail against, which deform the boundaries of those rules, are those for which narrative is an examination of reality, and how reality is malleable when it confronts our story of its existence.

When I think of the characters’ agency, or rather lack of it, I am reminded of the toys of my youth. Although I never had one of the little cars myself, I was able to see how the key, once wound, would push a spring to drive a series of gears. The real genius of the self-driving car—which would drive straight and turn and reverse depending on its programming, was the programming chip. The chip in those early days was not computer driven, any more than the cars were electric. Instead, a shaft moved against a shaped piece of plastic and its instructions were directed to the wheels. Leonardo da Vinci designed exactly the same device, and in later years we credit him with creating the first programmable machine. The genius of the device, at least in terms of writing, is in the limited possibilities offered by the shaped plastic. Narrative operates the same way.

In much the same way that a person’s life is shaped by their social and economic background, their access to education and privilege, and their relative mental and physical health, the toy car’s behavior is influenced by the blunt instrument of the plastic cog.

A storyteller is in the same situation as the toymaker who produced the plastic cog. They must decide what direction they want the toy to go, backward or forward, turning to one side or another, and then reversing at the end of its travel, and the writer is faced with the same decisions. There is a ripple effect which informs the entire life of a person born with a physical disability. Likewise gender influences whether someone can hold certain jobs in some societies, or even be taken seriously in a meeting. The writer takes those uneasy truths about society and makes those the tracks their characters must travel. How well the character stays on the pre-programmed path defines the character’s independence or how the writer thinks about the choices offered to their character if the society of the novel resembles their own.

If I assume that my protagonist is a girl born into a wealthy upper class medieval home, then the contemporaneous notions of propriety and a woman’s place in society become either a foil to her desires or a straitjacket which she must endure. The writer can choose to stretch those boundaries, and therefore tell a modern story in the trappings of the past, or future as far as that goes, but they are both bound by—in the sense that such rules are what they are working against—and freed into the possibilities of the narrative.

In my first novel, https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/Y4BopRBZP289CEvhH4q_YhnF-_HtVsU4Vq3Posdh9O1MtCbOF8FJObyswReoyROcv5aeC10ZQkqHqWjjp7LAQ4mLkKeUMbCp7iqnp_SDzuqkl4Q5FxwNaked in the Road, I imagined a man who had decided to eschew society and its consumer waste and strike off on his own. He removes all his clothing, and with that symbolic gesture he leaves his house and walks down the rural road. Once I set my character on this path, there were some inevitable realities that he had to deal with. He needed to eat, drink and sleep, and before long he would need clothing for warmth even if he didn’t need it for modesty alone in the woods. The first chapters of the novel wrote themselves, as the man scavenged for food and clothing on the margins of society. Once he went deeper into the woods, then he was limited in what he could do by what tools he could make and the resources at hand. If he met someone, there were a series of options in terms of where the interaction might go, and once that other person reacted, he was also limited in how he might respond.

The patterned way that people behave is both complex, in that we daily choose from a bewildering array of options—and simple—in that those options are confined by what is allowed by the physics of our locale, limited to behaviour that is coherent in terms of our past decisions, and accepted by society. Characters face the same constrictions. If they pick up a hammer they are likely going to strike something, and if they hit a nail the world around them changes, and if another being, then their world changes even more.

Once a character marries, then divorce is a possibility, and once they have a child they can lose them. Each choice a writer makes both opens up the story, in that it inspires another whole range of options, and closes the story, for there are a million roads not taken for the one chosen.

The story doesn’t lie so much in these societally dictated choices, however, but rather interesting narrative is influenced by the tension between what the character does and the reader’s and society’s expectations. Once Huck set off with Tom and Jim down the river in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the current draws them farther into the deep south of Jim’s slavery. This allows the characters to have adventures along the way, but the river cannot reverse and take Jim north to freedom. Twain was bound by the phenomenological world just as much as the boys on the river. Likewise, Huck’s limited educational background, however enhanced by Twain’s voice speaking through him, makes him a product of his background and place. He cannot talk about space exploration or universal human suffrage, so he is confined to asking questions. The cleverness and subtlety of his character lies in the questions he asks, however, and that creates the tension between what is possible for him in his society and the ways he pushes the boundary through his indomitable will.

Writers live mostly on the borders between these two options. They are confined by the possibilities of their textual ethos, the physics they have chosen to inform their story’s foundation, and their characters either chafing under those confines or striving to break through the boundary to some other possibility.

About Barry Pomeroy

I had an English teacher in high school many years ago who talked about writing as something that people do, rather than something that died with Shakespeare. I began writing soon after, maudlin poetry followed by short prose pieces, but finally, after years of academic training, I learned something about the magic of the manipulated word.
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