What's Driving Your Narrative Bus?

I'm still talking about how to make your piece more literary.  Think through what drives the literary novels you've read.  I mentioned this a couple of years ago, but it is such an important topic that it ought to be revisited.  A good novel is driven by something, or it just meanders and can fall apart.  According to Orson Scott Card, the most common narratives are driven by character, plot, question, or milieu.  The writer must continue that drive until the end of the story and satisfy reader expectation with that story, or it is incomplete.  A reader will not be satisfied.  Your story bus is stalled and stuck in the mud.

When a writer begins a story, he/she makes a contract with the reader.  If the reader starts a Sherlock Holmes book or other mystery narrative, the reader knows to expect a question-driven plot wherein a story is not finished until the primary question is answered: who done it?  If this question is not answered, the story is incomplete.  If Sherlock lives happily ever after with a newly-found significant other but never finds the murderer, the reader will feel gypped.  When a reader sits down to read a Jane Austen book, the reader expects a character-driven story.  If Lizzy solves a mystery, thereby answering a question, but never solves her dissatisfaction inside through marrying Darcy, the reader will feel unfulfilled.  When a reader sits down to a Alexandre Dumas adventure story, the darkness in the world around the character must be taken care of, or d'Artagnan or Edmond Dantes is not done with his story.  This kind of story is plot-driven.  When a reader sits down to a milieu-driven story, such as Gulliver's Travels, the reader is merely along for the ride, excited to learn everything there is to know about that world.  The characters are tour guides to such a universe.  The reader subconsciously expects the question, the issue with the character, the problem with the world, or full disclosure about the rules and features of this particular world when they sit down to read, or the story will feel incomplete.

Know your story and genre.  What kind of story are you telling?  Genres are automatically associated with one of these drives.  Mysteries, are by nature, question-driven, though other stories can be as well.  You can tell a historical or fantasy mystery story in which a dragon and a prince set out to solve a mystery, but just know some readers will find that unnerving or strange.  If you are telling a fantasy, science fiction, or adventure story, most often, you will need to introduce something wrong with the world, a darkness that has crept in and needs to be fought off, a false king that has been taken over, a curse on the characters, etc.  You can also tell a fantasy story that is character-driven.  This happens frequently.  Fantasy can also be milieu. Lord of the Rings makes the land of Middle Earth the main character, while the characters are just types.  However, milieu is the most difficult to pull off as the lone driver.  Unless your land is particularly exciting, a tour-guide story line is likely to grow thin fast.

The Harry Potter series is one that manages to juggle all of these drives.  The reader no sooner gets an answer to a question or mystery than Rowling presents another.  Harry starts out lonely and looking for family, dissatisfied in his own skin, and ends up finding a place to belong and making his own family.  There's also a darkness in the world that must be resolved before his story is complete.  And readers are endlessly fascinated by the Wizarding world.

It may be an interesting challenge to employ all the drives.  But if you have at least one that is done well, your reader will be content.  What drives your story?  Do you complete your contract? 

Feeling the Rain

I have been talking about writing in a more literary fashion.  I talked a few weeks ago about when to use imagery and how to use color, but there is more to imagery than this.  One of the most important aspects of writing is helping the reader feel.  If you can get your reader to smile, to cry, to respond in a visceral and powerful way, they will likely come back for more.  One potent way to do this is through the senses. 

One of the first things you'll often notice about powerful and literary pieces is that they connect with the reader in a powerful way.  Otherwise, people don't keep reading them over the years.  If you've ever read The Great Gatsby, you'll remember that billboard of the glasses with eyes staring into the characters' corrupt souls.  When thinking of Jane Eyre, many readers will automatically bring to mind the raging fire on the bed and feel that moment.  Moby Dick brings us into the sensory imagery of the ocean, taste, smell, touch, etc.  The dust of the dust bowl invades noses and mouths as we contemplate Grapes of Wrath.  Its very title invades our senses as well. 


You, too, can capture this kind of power.  Go outside right now, at least after you finish this blog.  You can go to the woods, to the woods, to your front lawn, anywhere.  Look around.  What do you see?  Write it in as much detail as you can.  Now, close your eyes and listen to everything for a full minute or two.  Write what you heard, everything from the wind to the sound of voices, to the sounds of nature, birds or whatever there might be.  Do the same with smell.  Close your eyes to block out the most powerful image most of us experiences.  What do you smell?  Go to another area if you can.  Are there different smells?  Open your mouth.  What does the air taste like?  Touch things around you, air or the wall, or whatever.  What does it feel like?  Write it all down. 

Now, add that kind of detail to the important moments in your story.  Do a five senses check.  Count to five senses every time something important happens.  Do you have a moment of smell?  Taste?  Sight?  Touch?  Hearing?  It's better still if you can instill meaning with each image.  A red shirt can be just a red shirt.  But a red shirt can also amplify the image of the angry man shouting at his neighbor.  The image of that red shirt amplifies that anger since red is the color of passion.  Does he smell like whiskey?  That tells us what he's been doing and part of what's fueling his anger.  It may also associate something else going on in your story.  If your main character grew up getting beaten by his drunken father, that whiskey-laden man with a red shirt suddenly becomes, symbolically, his father.  If that whiskey odor is so strong, he can taste it, this moment becomes more intense.  Say the shouting man's voice sounds just like his dead, drunken father's.  Now, we're getting not just descriptive but emotionally visceral as well.  The senses tie to the meaning and emotion of the story and its protagonist. 

Now go and describe the five senses outside.  If you can take a laptop outside, figure out how to add those sensory moments into a story you've already written.  Otherwise, find key moments to do a five senses check.  Good luck.