PLOT

From Elizabeth Bowen’s essay  “Notes on Writing a Novel” at Narrative Magazine.

My favorite:  “…it must, therefore, contain uncontradictable truth, to warrant the original lie.”

“Plot.—Essential. The Pre-Essential. Plot might seem to be a matter of choice. It is not. The particular plot is something the novelist is driven to. It is what is left after the whittling-away of alternatives. The novelist is confronted, at a moment (or at what appears to be the moment: actually its extension may be indefinite) by the impossibility of saying what is to be said in any other way.

He is forced towards his plot. By what? By the ‘what is to be said.’ What is ‘what is to be said’? A mass of subjective matter that has accumulated—impressions received, feelings about experience, distorted results of ordinary observation, and something else—x. This matter is extra matter. It is superfluous to the non-writing life of the writer. It is luggage left in the hall between two journeys, as opposed to the perpetual furniture of rooms. It is destined to be elsewhere. It cannot move till its destination is known. Plot is the knowing of destination.

Plot is diction. Action of language, language of action.

Plot is story. It is also ‘a story’ in the nursery sense = lie. The novel lies, in saying that something happened that did not. It must, therefore, contain uncontradictable truth, to warrant the original lie.”

Go Ms. Bowen.

Read the whole essay here: https://narrativemagazine.com/issues/fall-2006/notes-writing-novel

If I Could Have Written It or my hypothetical unreal post

okay, maybe this isn’t allowed, but I’m going to pick two

because one just doesn’t seem like enough

The Little Prince by St. Antoine de Saint Exupéry Yep.  There it is.  Awful sweet, but full of fantastic goodness and some real death and darkness too.  And holy aviation, what imagination.  The rose section can get a bit tedious, but he more than makes up for it with the fox and all those planets and our unforgettable hero.  Everyone who’s ever read this book, remembers something about it.  Even if it’s just the drawing of the not-hat.  That’s something I’d like to be able to do some day.

The Gold Bug Variations by Richard Powers. Not everyone considers this ’speculative fiction.’  But outstanding science, outstanding love stories, outstanding nuggets of erudition and compelling characters, and while some folks think Powers’ prose is a little cold, I’m not one of those folks.  There’s such intelligence at work in this novel–on the sentence-level as well as the more macro-level–absolutely breath-taking.  And wrapped up inside all that dazzling intelligence and deft musicality, such a heart, the novel brought me to my knees.

You?

IF I COULD HAVE WRITTEN IT

I’m going to pick a book I love, but one most people I talk to don’t care for. It’s Tehanu by Ursula K. LeGuin. It has to be one of my favorite novels ever written.

The writing is straight forward, but elegant. The story is compelling, and the setting rich. It’s a book that prides itself on exploring the little objects and connections in our lives. Yes, there are dragons and wizards, but the threat does not merely come from them. Tenar, the main character, must confront evil on the immediate scale. This is high fantasy writ humbly within the space of a lived life and crafted in the form of a rustic, suspense novel. LeGuin strikes me as one who not only writes her stories from the well of myths, but one who brings her observations of our world to this place and shapes them under myth’s shadow.

Yeah, it’s that good. And most people don’t like it because it’s not “fantastic” enough.

If you could have written it.

I thought I’d start things off with an unreal hypothetical – If you could have written one book, what would it be? It’s a rare but wonderful experience to read a book and find oneself pleasantly jealous of the writer. Either they are doing something that you can’t or would never think of, or they are doing something that you’re doing but they are doing it better.

So let’s play “what if?” And to make a little more interesting let’s take the obvious big guns off the table. No Steinbeck, no Ellison, no Tolkien, etc. Pick someone not yet canonized.

I’ll start. My pick is Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay. Kay’s writing is often excellent, but it’s his scene-craft in this novel that impresses me most. I picked this book up on a whim over twenty years ago and there are scenes that have stayed with me all this time. Just beautiful scenes so vividly rendered that I remember them as clearly as any film. I have a particular affection for high fantasy – an affection that often goes unrequited, but in this case Tigana bought me dinner and stayed to make me breakfast in the morning.

So, what’s your book?

The Saloon is open. Have a drink, but mind the dog . . .

So here is where we can play.  Feel free to post about anything writerly, weird or wonderfully both.  I see this as a blog for the blogging challenged – a conversation for those of us who suck at monologues.

Welcome!