Themes: Faith and grace; love as sacrament available to all.
Premise: The heart that opens is filled.
The journey through the dark leads to the light.
Main Characters
Tom Riley wants release from grief and loneliness. He wants family. He doesn’t know if he has enough courage to love again. Can he yield to mystery?
Divina is a kind of Cinderella, held in place by lack of opportunity. She wants a castle; her dream is to be a maid in a gringo house in Texas. Never having had a father, she is drawn to Riley, though he is not old enough to be her parent. In time, she sees him as a prince and the holder of the key to what she wants. Can she win him? Is it the right thing to do?
Cruz wants her children to have a better life than she has had. She wants grandchildren. She wants her Indian blood to survive.
Minor Characters
Margaret (Riley’s sister) wants the world to stand still.
Charlotte (the American writer) wants to transcend herself as a woman and as an artist, but she has to face the truth of her mediocre talent.
The priest wants a mystical experience.
The guests at the hotel form a chorus with two songs: “Go for it, Riley!” and “Don’t be an old fool!”
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WITH ALL THESE notes, I made a sort of tree of characters and used shorthand phrases to represent scenes. Then I started writing scene sequences on index cards, arranging and rearranging their order. I spent a lot of time thinking about images: Divina with her long hair; Riley on the elephant; Charlotte at her easel; and so on. I was able to spend a couple weeks in Mexico, and I took dozens of photographs that provided small details—birds in cages, certain foods on a grill, a small band in a square, etc.
As I wrote, I had photographs taped up on the wall, as well as my index cards on strings.
Storyboarding
The first thing you want to do is choose a novel you like and know well, and that isn’t overly complicated or long, and study it as a model. Evergreen, by Rebecca Rasmussen, has an accessible structure. Evan S. Connell’s Mrs. Bridge is an interesting choice because it is written in vignettes, with numerous strands. If you write with a lot of interiority, consider Tinkers, by Paul Harding. Breathing Lessons, by Anne Tyler, lends itself well to this exercise, though any of her novels would serve. Other suggestions: any novel by Kaye Gibbons; Drowning Ruth, by Christina Schwarz; anything by Elizabeth Berg. For emphasis on themes, Breath, Eyes, Memory, by Edwidge Danticat; House of Sand and Fog, by Andre Dubus III; J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace; Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader; Ernest J. Gaines’s A Lesson Before Dying. Really, study what interests you, but start with a book that doesn’t seem overwhelming. If you are interested in a particular genre, obviously you’ll want to study a book that represents the approach you want to take for science fiction, mystery, young adult, multigenerational fiction, and so on. Work to understand the overall structure of the book. Later, you can choose favorite chapters and analyze them for structure. You could go on to look at more books by analyzing the opening chapters and then some from deeper in the story. You want to internalize the way stories are shaped.
You will need two different colors of index cards and some Post-it Notes.
Go through and write taglines for the chapters. Then write out an index card for each chapter and put the tagline on it.
You can now lay out the chapter cards horizontally on the wall, the floor, a bulletin board, a large swath of paper, etc. You will be putting more cards about each chapter below these.
For each chapter, identify the scenes. Put the number of the chapter that the scene appears in. Write an index card for each scene in the main plot: a one-sentence summary of the action of the scene; setting; characters. If the scene raises a significant question, write the question out at the bottom of the card.
If there is a significant amount of flashback or exposition or narrative summary, make a card and label it for the type of text it is: FB (flashback), EX (exposition), NS (narrative summary), and write a caption that summarizes it. For example: memories of the flood; summary of the week in the hospital; an explanation of where the father has been and why he has returned.
Put the scene cards in a string below the chapter tagline cards.
Do a separate string of cards just like this for any subplot. Use a different color for each subplot, or draw a thick colored line across the top of the card, a color for each subplot.
I have seen writers hang their storyboards with string, but having the cards on a surface means you can write on them, adding notes as things occur to you. Also, you can take a felt pen and make lines from one scene to a scene in another chapter, to show that they are connected in the plot.
Study your scene cards and decide how they “clump” into scene sequences. You can indicate this by moving the scene cards closer together, perhaps abutting one another, with some space before you move to the next scene sequence. Note that sometimes a scene sequence will “spill over” into the next chapter.
Decide which scenes matter most, which ones are major events, and with a felt pen, put a big star on the card, or draw around it like a frame. You want to be able to stand and look at the storyboard and follow different elements, depending on what you are thinking about. “Here is the line of major events.”
“There’s the subplot about the brother’s divorce.”
Identify all the ways you can that the novel connects: settings, story questions, backstory, motifs like loneliness, blood, etc.
As you work on developing your own scene sequences you will have a visual template to rely on for structure.
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THE IDEA, OBVIOUSLY, is to spend this much time taking a book apart so that you get a good idea of how it was put together. You want to see for yourself that a book is made up of components, pieces that go together in small bunches that go together in larger ones, that add up to the whole story. It’s dissection.
When you later are working on your own novel, use elements of this exercise to build your own picture of your novel’s structure. Since you are writing on cards that can be moved around or replaced or deleted, you have lots of flexibility as you go deeper into the story and recognize things that should have happened earlier, or should have been different. Personally, I find this way of working to be a welcome change from the “sit down at the computer” approach day in and day out. It’s a lot of fun to see a story take shape, and it’s helpful to organize the skeleton of the novel.
I suggest starting with a novel that is made up of many scenes, rather than one dense with narrative summary. A short novel! Mysteries work well. But if you are working on something complex like a historical novel or a novel with multiple plotlines, you should do a storyboard for a novel like your own in structure. It will be challenging, and you will have to work out your own scheme for indicating the many different parts, but if you can do it for something already written, you’ll find it a lot easier to do it for your novel.
An illustration of storyboarding
I am working on a novel, currently called Staph. In a matter of six weeks, both parents of two adolescent sisters die, the first of a staph infection and the second of myocarditis (an infection of the lining of the heart). The girls, Mia (age fourteen) and Annika (thirteen), have been leading an unusually sheltered life and have been out of school most of the year (the book opens in March). Subtle undercurrents in the novel suggest that, really, the girls are better off; their parents lived strangely, smoked marijuana regularly, and kept their daughters too close.
The book is about how the extended family manages to bear the shock and grief of the losses, while providing a wholesome and optimistic environment for the girls. Recovery. Growth. Family love. And the blossoming of young girls into teenagers.
Of course that’s what everyone thinks is happening. The girls get th
eir own beds; they get new clothes; they are enrolled in school in the town where their father’s mother lives, and spend time with their other grandmother, too. Their aunt and cousin also live in their grandmother’s house, though the aunt, Alison, had been planning to remarry soon.
The story is really about the girls. They have been raised like twins, never apart, but in their new environment they learn more about who they are as individuals, and they make different choices about how to begin building their orphaned lives. Annika, the younger girl, is mentored by a math teacher and a track coach, and makes an unusual friendship with an immigrant family. Her older sister, Mia, however, has been yearning to be out in the world. She rushes into a circle of friendships, though her special pal is the troubled son of her aunt’s boyfriend. She doesn’t care about school; she cares about belonging, and about not being a little girl anymore.
Nobody except Annika sees that Mia isn’t doing well in school and is getting out of her league with her peers; and Annika doesn’t want to trample on her own good luck by trying to interfere with Mia’s bad behavior. Besides, she doesn’t know how to make Mia behave. And it’s not her job.
In this way, Mia—along with some of her peers—loses control, so that what was supposed to be fun becomes dangerous. And the adults—each of whom has her own story, of course—have to pay closer attention, make new decisions, and guide their children.
So I’m juggling all kinds of characters and their desires and their weaknesses; that’s what novels do. I have a lot of pages and a pretty clear structure. It’s a good time for me to figure out, step by step, just what stays, what goes, what gets newly written.
The novel is divided into four parts. What I’ve laid out here is the first part, so that I can follow the flow of the scenes. I’ve laid out four scene sequences and notes about the scenes within each sequence. These notes would be on index cards, so that I could lay them out and look at them something like I can on the page now, but also I could stack them, make additional notes, etc. Even though it’s a little awkward to present my sequences on the pages, I think you can see how I have pinned down the essentials of what, in manuscript, is about forty pages.
Staph: A Novel
Note: My chapters aren’t numbered. The book is broken into four “movements,” within which scenes or scene sequences are grouped. I have titled and numbered each scene sequence. Line rules indicate changes of scene.
First Movement:
From Britt’s Illness to Her Burial
The day of Mama’s illness and the next morning: Britt is stricken with staph infection
Near Portland, Oregon
The girls hang out with Mama: watch TV, play with QVC jewelry.
Mama (Britt) goes to bed, sick.
Girls (Mia, 14; Annika, 13) go to bed.
Mama howling in a.m.
Daddy (Nick) comes home, calls 911; ambulance.
WHAT IS WRONG WITH HER?
Girls play with jewelry and credit cards.
Daddy comes home, doesn’t talk, goes to bed.
Girls play with jewelry, lie down, arms out like angel wings.
IS MAMA DEAD?
Exposition: What life is like in the shabby apartment
Next a.m.: Nick is gone.
Girls go to McDonald’s.
Back home, they bounce volleyball against garage; encounter nosy woman asking why they’re not in school.
Nick has returned but is asleep and won’t wake.
Someone calls for him, avoids saying who it is, but it is about Mama.
Girls try to wake up Nick, finally call their grandmother Willow.
IS MAMA DEAD?
Backstory: How Nick and Britt met
Nick was a pharmacist in Frost, Britt’s hometown; they worked in a grocery store.
(scene) She came to him for help with her insomnia.
He took her out to eat and then home, and taught her how to smoke weed. It was Kismet.
The grandmothers appear and move the family out of the apartment
Southern Oregon and Then Portland
Willow (Nick’s mother) has to go tell Johanna (Britt’s mother) that Britt is dead. Johanna slaps Willow in shock.
They have coffee and talk about what to do. Johanna wants to manage the burial in her family plot. Willow calls the funeral director.
The women drive to Portland, no conversation.
Backstory: Johanna thinks about Britt’s illness last fall when she was bitten by a bat
They arrive at the apartment. It is dirty, fetid, trashy. Nick in bed, girls on couch. Johanna falls to her knees; Willow kneels beside her. The girls stand up and watch, curious.
Willow goes into motion: She wakes Nick. She tells him he has to tell the children their mother is dead. She makes ice water.
The girls are sitting beside Johanna.
Nick comes out and tries to explain Britt’s death.
Willow takes over and says how things are going to go: Nick and Johanna have to go to make arrangements with the funeral home. Willow will get food. Everyone but Nick will go to a motel for the night.
Willow helps the girls sort some clothes, leaving a lot behind. They pack their mother’s jewelry.
At the motel the girls sleep in Johanna’s room. Willow tries to reassure the girls: They are all going to Willow’s home. They will all be together.
WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO THE FAMILY NOW?
In the apt Nick sleeps and dreams.
Backstory: The time at the coast when they got stoned and imagined aliens would come for them
Nick and Willow clear out the apartment and pay the manager to dispose of all the trash. Nick finds a shoebox with the family’s important papers.
Willow and her daughter Alison make their way to Britt’s burial, stopping to leave Alison’s daughter at her dad’s
Nick had left early to go to Johanna’s place. (The grave is on Sunderson property.) The girls are already there, with their grandmother.
Willow and Alison eat breakfast and discuss what will become of Nick without Britt. Willow worries about fitting everybody in her house. Alison is optimistic and practical. Things will work out.
Her daughter Fiona, age 6, appears.
Exposition: Fiona’s father, Ben, is a doctor who lives in the next town. Her parents so far have done okay with the back and forth. Alison isn’t crazy about her ex’s religious wife and the family’s Baby Jesus talk.
Willow bemoans her son’s lack of ambition.
At Ben’s house, he starts an argument with Alison over her tardiness and her general attitude about his parental rights. Alison, who is surprised, reminds him they are going to a funeral. But now she’s worried.
Ben says, “Nick should have asked for an autopsy.”
IS TROUBLE BREWING FOR BEN AND ALISON?
The burial and its aftermath
Simple gravesite ceremony: Johanna, her brother, and her sister-in-law; Nick and the girls; Willow and Alison; a neighbor; and a friend of Britt’s from high school. The Lutheran minister speaks briefly.
At Johanna’s house her brother tells some stories about Britt and his boys as kids. There is simple food. People leave. Mia collapses, pounding the floor.
Nick sends his mother and sister home; he will stay at Johanna’s.
Nick takes the girls to a miniature golf course in the nearby town. They play. Then they go to a park and shoot baskets.
They drive back to Frost, on to a small park near Sunderson property. They are so tired, they all fall asleep. At twilight, Nick wakes up and takes them to Johanna’s.
HOW WILL THEY SURVIVE BRITT’S DEATH? CAN THEY HOLD ONE ANOTHER UP AND TOGETHER?
Scene Template
ADAPTED FROM THE Scene Book: A Primer for the Fiction Writer
I.
Start by asking yourself these fundamental questions:
What is the event in the scene, and what emotions are connected to it? Does it merit a scene or could it just be summarized?
What did you want the scene to accomplish for the story, and does it reach this goal? Caption the function of the scene with a word from this list: Revelation, Confrontation, Decision, Information, Recognition, Catalyst, Reflection, Turning Point, Capitulation, Resolution.
Is it clear where the scene begins and ends?
What is the pulse of the scene; is it sufficient to drive the action? Does it accelerate in the scene?
If you think your scene has a problem and you don’t see what it is, below are more questions for you to consider.
II.
Is the event clear? Try framing it as an aboutness statement. Look for the reason for the scene’s drama.
Are the beats of action clear? Write them out, one after the other, to check for stammers or repetitions.
Does the protagonist have a clear intention in the scene? Does it drive the drama?
Does the scene lack subtlety? Maybe you give it all away too soon. Think of the scene as having a question in the first part, with the answer after that.
Is the grounding sufficient? Can we tell where your characters are, what’s around them? Integrate description and activity without overstating either.
How’s the dialogue? Try writing it out like a play without action or description so that the voices are isolated. Can you “hear” the difference in characters? Is one personality stronger than another?
Does the scene have a strong focal point? This is the place where the scene merges its meaning. If a scene adds up, we are in a different place at the end from where we were when it started. Are we?
If you work hard to make your scenes strong, you’ll give your novel muscle. And scene writing will get easier.
The Last Draft Page 24
