Staircase and Plot/Story

Sometimes we are caught be a gorgeous staircase, like this one in Berlin, shot by Matthias Hederich. The colors give a feeling of excitement, dynamism and confidence, particularly placed next to the cement which is left in its natural state, mottled and grey. We feel a charge.

Let’s say we are curious, climb up a step. Looking to our right, we see things differently. We take two steps, three, four, and we not only see the below differently with each step, but we begin to see the top and walk faster.

If we pay attention, we can learn a lot about plot and story by doing this.

As we climb, our perspective changes and we’re curious about the top, but we also remember what we saw before. It accumulates and layers. Reaching the final stair, we have a vision we’ll remember the rest of our lives.

This is what we want our work to be for our reader.

I like architecture and I like stairs: The iconic, translucent stairs inside the Apple store in Union Square. The old circular staircase in Mechanics’ Institute and Library on Post Street, hidden, and fabulous. The outdoor stairs leading up to Coit Tower. The varied and astonishing staircases and handrails designed by Carlo Scarpa for Castelvecchio in Verona, Italy, the handbook in modest, self-absenting work by a world class architect, and in stairway and handrail design, to my read, the unsurpassed master.

These all teach us about writing. They all take us somewhere, which is the plot in our writing. And they take us somewhere we want to go, which is the story in our work. That combination of plot and story is key. Our work needs both.

Let’s begin….

I find that writers I work with fall into two groups. There are those who begin by listing key events and organizing them into an outline (like these cement stairs) and there are those who panic at the idea of an outline because they aren’t struck by events as much as they are by the emotional valence of events (the yellow and orange).

These are two ways of perceiving reality. They are both great. And they correspond to the difference between “plot” and “story.”

Plot is a sequence of events that are linked in a logical, causal way. A character buys ingredients and a pan, goes home, bakes a cake. Story is a sequence where the links are emotional. A character wants to honor his mother, remembers she loved cake, has never baked before but is undaunted, buys a pan, bakes a cake, feels pleasure.

We need things to happen (plot) and we need the emotional logic of why the things happen (story).

I have never worked with a writer who thinks in both of these ways at once.

So it is a crucial to work first from what comes naturally and then to work from what feels foreign. If an outline comes naturally, write it out and then in writing the text, discover the emotions of the characters that drive their actions. Go deeper. Find your story. If seemingly unrelated moments come first, write those moments out as separate fragments. Sequence them later. You will find your outline that way because the mind always seeks order. Your fragments will cohere. Your outline will emerge.

Both methods work. And both lead to discovery when we do the part that feels foreign. Start with the natural, then do the foreign. The foreign thing will become another teacher. And the part you dread will become exciting.

It is helpful to figure out which way you perceive and organize experience. The earlier you learn this and accept it, the happier you’ll be, and you won’t waste time trying a method that feels abrasive. When we try to work by a method that isn’t how we actually move in the world, we can produce a draft, but it will lack the power and beauty that we are really capable of producing.

I write in emotional fragments because this is how I think. The hardest thing, by far, for me is to sequence them. But once I have the hundreds of fragments and I start arranging and re-arranging them, I see all kinds of structure emerge from the juxtapositions. I already have the story.  And the structure I discover. It becomes the plot.  This works every time. And it is really fun!

I would never outline first because I don’t even read in a linear way. I never start at page one and plow through to the end. I jump around for a very long time. If I like the world I’m tasting, if I like the way language is used, if I feel the operation of what Frank Bidart calls a “compassionate imagination” then I go to page one and read through. But only then.

I wanted to publish my first novel as a box of cards for this reason. This is what a painting does. No painter stands next to the painting, saying where the eye should fall first.

But the ordering process, which felt so foreign and was so hard at first, ended up being deeply satisfying. To do it, I thought of music, which is always, in fact, linear. First note to last note. When I thought of this, I was home free.

I organized my thousands of fragments into piles by emotional color. Red, blue, green, white, blue and black. Then I listened like a composer. What is the first note? I pulled an appropriate fragment from the pile. In the end I had a butcher paper scroll running about 12 feet along one wall, and all of the fragments organized into chapters, reading from left to right, like a musical score.

It was great! And I loved the plot as much as the story. I loved how it started, progressed, climaxed, resolved. The thousands of fragments had become one cohesive thing. The fragments had become not just one text, but a universe.

It is for this order that we make all art. Every composer, fashion designer, architect, poet, industrial designer, choreographer aims at making some order from the chaos of experience. And this is why it is so deeply satisfying when, from either start point, plot or story, we bring them together. It is really joyful. And then we celebrate!  Because the work is ready to go out, without us, into the world.

Exercises:

#1. Visualize (you may consult the complete image on “photo credits” page)

Visualize your book’s cover. The reader reaches for it, drawn by the beautiful color and design, opens to the first page, steps onto the first stair. Immediately something happens. Drawn by the sturdiness of the steps the reader continues page after page. Why? Because things happen that are logically related (plot) and because the reader cares about what the character’s motivations are (story).

Write your answers to these questions:

-How does my finished book look? How does it feel to hold? How satisfied am I with it?

-Where is my stairway going? What is the view from the top? What do I want my reader to see and feel on the last page? What do I want my reader to feel when he or she remembers my book ten years from now?

#2. What kind of thinker am I?

Are you a plot first writer or a story first writer? Here are some ways to find out:

-Think of a favorite book. List what you remember most. Is it the shifting and drive of the action? Is it the conflict and then the resolution? Or is it the relationships of the characters themselves, their internal shifts and insights? If the former, outline first, go deep later. If the latter, write separate fragments first, order them later.

-Think of an important event you attended. A wedding, a trip. List what comes first to mind. Is it your itinerary? The guest list? Sights seen and their historical significance? Or is it the excitement, disappointment, joy, sadness or surprise you felt there?

-How do your first and second lists compare? Do you see a trend in how you think?

– Ask yourself, What comes natural to me? What seems foreign?

#3. Consider your current writing project.

– If you are naturally a plot-first person, do you have an outline? If not, sit somewhere apart from all of the writing you have already done, and list the major actions/events in your thinking about the work.

-If you are naturally a story-first person, have you written what feels like the guts of the story? Do you have these moments written in your piles of separate fragments? If not all, make a list of the key moments that you still need to write.

#4. Find a staircase you like. Visit it often.

-Walk around your city. Or walk the hills, the sandy cliffs at the sea. Take a picture of an ascent that you like. Print it out. Tape it on the wall above your writing desk. Or have it on your laptop, your phone.

-As you write, remember the ascent works in real life because it is made well, is logical. The steps or pathway delivers you to a new place. That’s plot.

-Let your photo also remind you that you wanted to climb this. And as you climbed, your feelings changed. That’s story.

-Notice that you experience the interplay of plot and story no matter how many times you go back to your staircase, to your hilly path.

-Celebrate that this will also happen to your readers! They will read and re-read your text because, among other things, they get to feel the inseparability of plot and story.

-Celebrate that in your creative process you first honored how you naturally think, and started from there. Celebrate that you also had the courage to do what felt foreign. And that you liked learning from that task too. Notice the pleasure you had doing the foreign thing. Celebrate that you’ve done your best, in terms of plot and story, to make not just more stuff, but to make art!

 

©Mary Rakow, 2019. Please do not reproduce without written permission from the author.