When you lose your pants

A new thought on drafting and narrative structure

Photo by Félix Prado on Unsplash

When I was querying my first novel, an agent who requested the full manuscript (though ultimately passed) commented on the strength of the structure in Correction Line. She said it was better than a lot she usually sees from young writers. I look back on that time (when I had a book on submission in NY) both fondly and sadly—I also remember thinking I didn’t really know a lot about structure.
But actually I did. I’ll explain.

As a reader and a writer, I’ve always been fascinated by how a story is told—not just what it’s about, but how it’s put together and rolled out for the reader. Before I knew the term post-modern fiction, I was drawn to stories told in an unconventional way. I don’t mean experimental, or metafiction, the traditional form is still there in these novels… but it’s being played with. The examples that jump to mind are writers like Don DeLillo, whose Underworld moves back and forward through both time and characters. Or Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, with its first person narrators changing in each chapter, and leaving it up to the reader to follow. At first it was annoying—dammit, William, just tell us who’s talking! But then it got really intriguing. I’ll add to the list Michael Ondaatje’s novels, especially In the Skin of Lion, and then of course Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow, where not only the narrative goes backwards, but everything the characters do: meals are vomited and formed onto plates, conversations start at the end and move to the beginning. In terms of classics, I love Shelley’s Frankenstein and its envelope structure (stories within stories). Finally, because I’ve been on a Vonnegut kick lately, I can add Slaughterhouse Five and Billy Pilgrim becoming unstuck in time. Hmm, so maybe I am talking metafiction.

Faulkner being cagey about who’s talking… in any of his books, really. And geez, maybe I should get a pipe!

Moving forward…

My list of writers playing with structure is moving back and forth in my reading history… and I’ll probably end up talking about George Saunders (again!), but I’ll resist. Because I want to talk about how my novels are put together, and something new I’ve been trying out thanks to a writer friend on Twitter.

Now, I’m a born pantser—in writing terms, this is the opposite of the planners, or outliners. Add to this my own experimentation with how a story gets told, and I’m right back thinking about how Correction Line came together, and the structure that elicited the comment from the agent. That novel really defined the great baggy monster, and those who read it now often comment on its strangeness. In my defence, I was reading a LOT of South American fiction at the time. Moreover, I did have a resistance to linear storytelling. It drove my agent at the time crazy. He wanted me to write a novel where one thing happened, followed by another thing happening, until you write: The End. But like a sullen 14-year-old, I’d yell, “BORING”, and then go write some more weird shit.

Enter Luke Fischer.

At some point I’ll do a post about the history of how that character came to be—but for the purpose of this writing, the Fischer novels was when I began to challenge myself with a linear, very linear, straight-as-fuck, timeline. My goal was to keep moving forward, like I was slowly pushing down the accelerator, and I was driving down a one-way road… no off-ramps allowed!

Staying linear was harder than I thought. I fought the urge to dip into flashback and backstory, or slip another POV in there. Some readers have commented on how we don’t know a lot about Luke in Surf City Acid Drop. This was a side effect of pushing the structure in this way. To note, here when I’m talking about structure, it’s more about storytelling, and moving though time. I can also talk about structure in terms of acts, along with rising action, climax, denouement, and all that great stuff your high school English teacher tried to jam down your throat.

Working on Manistique, the second Luke book, I allowed myself to stray somewhat from the one-way street, and meander down a bit of back story… but just enough to flesh out the character. I was writing, and finished, another novel at the same time I was working on Manistique. In that novel I let my freak flag fly (oh, Lord, I’m old), and linear be damned. More on that time-travelling novel another time.

So here’s the thing. I know that pantsers like me can get stuck. Even when you’re trying to drive a linear story, you can lose your way, or your pants. Where the hell did they go? I just had them on a minute ago.

I’ve been working on Luke 3, and while the story has been progressing, and I allowed myself one significant change from the first two (adding another POV), I was starting to slow down. It wasn’t writer’s block, and it wasn’t really getting stuck. But if I had a speedometer on my writing and thinking process, the needle was going down. A question began to arise in my writing sessions, maybe you’ve experienced this: “What the hell is this book about?”

Around this time, a couple of things happened. The writer David Morrell, who wrote First Blood, was a guest in a film class that I have attended in the past. Sad to miss his guest appearance, as I wasn’t enrolled in that class, I watched one of his lectures on his website. I’d read his book on writing, and liked what he had to say about storytelling. In the lecture, he talked about writing a letter to yourself—or if you want, taking a self-interview. In the letter or interview, the writer (me) was to ask a number of question to probe what the book I was writing was about. I found this really helpful and would suggest others to try it.

Question: So what is Luke really searching for?

The second thing that happened was my writer friend Mark Atley, talked about his method of drafting where he got to a certain part in the book, either the halfway mark, or a bit deeper, and then he went back to the beginning. Several old school lightbulb flashes went off in my head when he said that. Huh. Why have I never tried that before? Maybe some of you writers have done this. (If you have please add a comment or give a me shout on twitter.)

While this isn’t rocket science, or even advanced algebra, this was brand new to me. I was worried that if I did this I’d have to hand in my pantser badge. Aren’t you supposed to just write to the end, and then see what the hell you’ve written? Well, at the risk of getting kicked out of the club, I said fuck it, I need to do something different.
So 41k into the novel, I hit the brakes.

Actual photo of me hitting 41k and slamming on the metaphorical brakes.

I went back to page one… and started going through the novel. I didn’t edit a lot, it wasn’t really a rewrite. But I noticed things. I took notes, kept them in another folder (thank-you Scrivener). I filled in some things that needed filling. I thought about characters motivations—actually wrote a few pages of back story for a character and threw it in a folder. I don’t plan on using the back story, but it helped me understand the character. To add here: I never ever write those character traits sheets. To me those are akin to dental work without freezing. My purpose here was not to think how the last half of the book was going to go—and I still have no idea how the novel will end. But as I approach the point where I hit the brakes, I see how valuable this has been. I feel much more rooted in the narrative. I feel like now I can keep driving the car, the needle will go up, and I can more confidently point it toward End Town.

I highly recommend this process to other writers. In fact, I think I might do this from now on. If memory serves, I think Mark said this is also what Elmore Leonard did in his novels. And anything that works for EL, has got to at least work for me… and you.

So put your pants back on. Go back to the beginning. And take a look at where your book is going.
Drop me a line and let me know how it goes.

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Here’s a link to Mark Atley’s amazon page - click and buy my friends :)
And here’s a link to David Morrell’s website - with links to the lecture I mentioned, and a helluva lot of good stuff. Including Five Rules for Writing Thrillers.