Hello.
It is a lovely autumnal day in Cornwall, sunny and windy. The kennel (a man-made stream by the road) outside my office window is trickling along, which dulls the traffic noise, the air is fresh and I am wearing my second favourite jumper, about to drink my coffee. I absolutely love this time of year, especially in Cornwall.
Since my last post, I have been outlining the plot for “Myrghes”. I’ve used lot’s of different structures in the past, mostly for scripts during my time at university. I did the John Yorke course for the Five Act Structure in 2017 and I’ve gone plan-less for ‘The Atlas’, and we all know how that’s gone (I’m going to structure it properly before the rewrite).
This time, I used an incredibly detailed plan that I came across while looking at the Nanowrimo prep documents. It sent me to this video by youtuber Katytastic and is more 3 act than five act.
It said nothing I didn’t already know, but the cues that she uses make it so much easier to help organise scenes within the acts, and fill in gaps in the parts of the narratives I don’t quite know what to do with. I’ve started with each of my narratives individually, and laid them all out in this “27 chapter” format. What I aim to do this afternoon is to chop the plans up and move them around so that I can structure the novel as a whole thing. The endings of each narrative will be staggered, because the ‘resolutions’ happen in different ones (there is a time difference between them).
I don’t want to solely rely on rigid structure, or make it obviously that that’s what I’ve used. Sometimes there is no “new world” etc, so I have to be careful not to inject one just because thats what the structure says. When a story is too formulaic it’s really obvious, and I find it a bit frustrating. I think this is particularly obvious with films: 12 minute mark = inciting incident. I always strive to move stuff around a bit, but every story follows the same structure, just with different names and different theorists who write them out.
I always struggled with this when I was studying. My work seems to be really strong at the beginning and at the end, but the middle tends to be weak. Like a cake that looks perfect on the outside but is still raw in the middle. I am finding that with each of the narratives too, my second narrative is the one I seem to be working the most on but it’s difficult for me to see it as a story in it’s own right rather than backstory for the third. This has been less the case since Maria (that character who approached me and said she was in the story) appeared, but I worry that there is too much going on elsewhere in the story. I could always change the narrator of course, Violet (current narrator) doesn’t seem to be doing much other than be paranoid she’d going to be found out. Perhaps in Maria is the narrator then she can document her wife suddenly being paranoid, and the investigation that Maria conducts into finding out why. And it’s Maria’s mistake that gets Violet in trouble. I think that would actually make for a much more interesting narrative, the guilt she carries, the attempts she makes to fix it that make it worse, working with the antagonist to stay in her step daughters life (by donning a false identity, making it a circular narrative). Also it means that we get to see Violet from two different perspectives, Bette’s in narrative one, and Maria’s in narrative two. We can see how she’s changed everything and she holds herself back, how she becomes something she never wanted to be, something she used to look down on. And it can add a plot twist at the end, one which the audience will be surprised at too (hopefully).
Wow I have rambled. But I also fixed a massive problem with my story, so I’m not even sorry. Also I ramble in every post so you should be used to it by now.
I’m going to go and rewrite that plot outline.
Don’t tread on the flowers.
F x.
Froshie Evans 