Story as garden

But first, your help wanted. Please. I've sprouted doubts about the opening chapter of one of my novels...I'm thinking maybe I should cut it and start with Chapter 2. But then, I had good reasons for Chapter 1. So.... if you could spare a few minutes, how about reading the first 4 chapters (posted on my editing website) and giving me your opinion? Should I keep Chapter 1? Lose Chapter 1? Keep it but find a way to do it later? Any other feedback will, of course, be entirely welcome. To help out, please go here when done with today’s post. Thanks.

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Enjoying one of my favorite films the other night -- The Abyss -- I was reminded of the need for effective "seeding" of character and other actions. The film does it very well.

For example, at one point one of the roughnecks in the crew holds up a massive fist and tells a buddy that "they used to call this the hammer." That so nicely set up a time much later in the film when he knocks the bad guy head over keister with one mighty punch. Because of the setup, it was absolutely credible.

Another fine setup had to do with Bud's (the hero) wedding ring. After a spat between him and Lindsey, his about-to-be-divorced wife (and heroine), he throws his wedding band in a toilet. Leaves. Comes back and fishes the ring out. Cut to extreme close-up of wedding band going back on his finger.

While this seems all pointed at characterizing him and his feelings about her -- and it is -- that's not everything it does. Much later in the film the hull is breached and the hold he is in is flooding. He dashes for an already-closing hatch door and manages to put a hand into the gap. Ordinarily his hand would have been crushed by the hydraulic door, but it's not. Yep, his wedding ring stops the door from closing all the way. Rescuers come and the door is opened.

Without the previous setup, the ring-stopping-the-door trick would have been a mini deus ex machina and a laughable coincidence. Both of these "seedlings," and others in the film, worked so well because they didn't call attention to themselves and just seemed like normal parts of what was happening. Thank you, excellent screenwriter, for making things work so well.

Of course a mystery writer must plant clues -- interesting how even the language for doing this kind of thing is from gardening -- but the rest of us need to pay attention to our seeding as well, for both action and characterization.

In a romance novel I just finished editing, almost at the end of the book the heroine is groped in a public place by a man (her previous lover) whom she assumes to be her current love (her back is turned). She goes along with it because they've made love in risky places before (that part has been set up just fine). As bad luck would have it, her guy bursts in on the scene. Despite her sincere explanations, he goes into a jealous snit and declares that the relationship won't work. Goodbye.

All good grist for the romance mill…but for one thing. The guy has been Mister Adoring Puppy the whole way. He has accepted her dalliance with a celebrity in the beginning of the relationship, including a hot sleepover. He has been accommodating in every way, constantly declaring his love with words and actions. That's another thing I'm going to talk to the writer about -- the guy is just too perfect. No flaws. No character arc, really. No contention between he and she except for the before-mentioned snit.

The problem with how he reacted to this incident was that the motivation for a strong jealous reaction had never been set up. To do so was out of character for this guy. Luckily, it doesn't have to be, and I was able to suggest to the writer how to fix it by drawing on other material already in the story. It seems that her first love was jealous and would, whenever she even spoke to another man, come to her, put his arm around her, and interfere. If the writer has Mr. Perfect do something similar (an action to which she can react, thereby inserting even more characterization for her) and exhibit a bit of jealousy, then his motive for the later scene will be established and it will be credible.

Allow me to cite an example of "post-seeding" from a work in progress. About a third of the way into the novel the female protagonist needs to be pulled out of a suicidal dive caused by the tragic death of her once-in-a-lifetime love. She encounters a small boy who seems to suffer from autism. She is a healer, and is sympathetic, but when I got to that scene his condition and innocence didn't seem like motive enough to stir her from her depression.

So what would? How about if the child reminded her in a very specific, powerful way of the man she loved and lost? So I went back to the scene leading to the lover's death and gave him a "little-boy-lost" look that always melted the heart of my protagonist. Then I had her see that same look in the eyes of the boy. She was done for, and that stimulus started her on the path of helping the child, which ultimately brought her back to emotional life.

So seed your novel with small things early on that grow to be significant, even if still in small ways. And don't hesitate to go back and plow up early ground already covered to plant the antecedents of characters and events.

For what it's worth.

RR

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© 2005 Ray Rhamey

Comments

[Margaret Fisk]

Good post. I'm lucky in that a lot of my seeding comes subconsciously, but not all of it and that's one thing I've very sensitive to in my writing and in that of others. If it is supported by the text, the impossible becomes probable. If not, you just lost me as a reader :).