the Arc of the Story

March 14th, 2010

A while back, I went to the open mike at Amazing Things in Framingham, where, as is typical, I misheard/mangled/stole a line from someone, which led to frantic scribbling in the dark, which, in the car on the way home, turned into this, set to a slow country waltz:

When I told you
My boss has an illness
That causes vivid hallucinations
Of people stealing the pencils
And making ill-advised comments
To the company chairman
About his daughter’s appearance
It was not quite the truth

It’s preposterous, and the pacing is excellent. Not a bad start. And in years past, it might have almost been enough – I may have just gone on to finish the song in the same vein and been done with it. But annoyingly, it is no longer enough. Who is this guy? Is he really this much of a schmuck? What’s his story? What’s the twist at the end? I didn’t know the answer to these questions, and I felt like I need them.

Maybe it’s all these years of having lived with a novelist. The arc of the story is vastly more important to me that it used to be. It may sound odd, coming from someone who wrote “I Wanna Be Your Henchman”. But I think if you listen to that song, you’ll know the singer – where he was, where he’s going, and why. Go and read the lyrics: there’s an arc.

It’s something of a challenge, I’ll tell you that much – because few of my protagonists are normal. They say, “write what you know”; but I don’t know any henchmen. Nor do I know any preposterous liars (at least, I don’t think I do). But the beauty of a lot of the things I’ve written in the last several years is that these people are universal in their own bizarre way. The henchman yearns for fulfillment. The person who sings “Baby Let Me Make Your Dreams Come True” really does want to make her dreams come true – he just has no idea how to do it.

So over the next couple days, I studied my preposterous liar as you might study Shakespeare, or Dostoyevsky. I needed to know what makes him tick. In fact, I asked my wife, She Who Must Be Taunted, about what techniques I might use to learn more about him. Apparently, I’m told, some authors actually interview their characters to figure out what makes them tick. Fortunately, I didn’t need to do that – I’m not sure I would have enjoyed the conversation.

And in the end, I understood him a good deal more than I did in the beginning. I now know how self-aware he is (not quite enough), how determined (not very), and how lazy (pretty). I know that he isn’t malicious, just venal and feckless; and I know that the chances of his reforming are pretty much zero. I don’t really want to spend any time with this guy, but in the end, I didn’t have to – I just needed to think about him really, really hard.

So the next time you encounter one of my preposterous characters, just remember: he’s not just a product of my fevered imagination. He has a rich inner life that those three or four minutes barely touch on, and we’re visiting him at a particularly interesting moment. It’s like being on a roller-coaster at the very top of the track; it may look like you’re standing still, but the story is all about how you got there, and where you’re going next.

Comments are closed.