I met a guy in San Miguel de Allende’s Berlin Bar a couple of months ago. When he found out I’m a writer and a writing coach, he wanted to talk about his novel. OK, I’ll be honest. This sort of a situation is a groaner. But I slipped into mode, and asked him how he was organizing his novel.
“Organizing!” he said. “Novels don’t need organization!” Ah, but he was wrong, I softly informed him. Everything one writes needs organization. Organization, after all, is about the story’s ordering of time. And writing, among other things, is about time. But like many beginning writers, my new acquaintance thought that fiction had special rules—or, in truth, special non-rules—meaning: Just start writing, and see where the story goes.
Not so. The rules for writing fiction are as tight as those for writing the most exacting nonfiction. And, interestingly enough, at least when one is talking about literary nonfiction, the rules, or forms, of organization are the same for both genres.
Organization is a big subject, and I’m going to divide that discussion into a couple of articles over the weeks to come. In short, though, here are some literary organizations in use today: chronology, revised chronology, flashback, converging narrative, the trip, function as form, collage. Don’t worry if you don’t recognize them all: I’ll explain later.
But there’s an important step that comes before deciding on a story’s organization. That is defining conflict, resolution, and the equal or greater force.
A story’s conflict is: A person wants something. It may be love, it may be money, it may be self-knowledge. The resolution is: the person gets what he or she wants, or doesn’t get it. The equal or greater force is the thing, or things, that can keep that person from getting what he or she wants. Those things can be either tangible or intangible.
Here’s an example. I am a speaker at a conference. During my presentation, I become thirsty. I want water to quench my thirst. A glass of water is on a table five feet away. The conflict is: I am thirsty, and I want to quench my thirst. A possible resolution is: I drink the water. But an alternate resolution is: I don’t drink the water, and thus don’t get what I want—the abatement of my thirst.
What equal or greater forces might keep me from getting what I want? Here are a few ideas: I take a sip, and the water is rancid, so I don’t drink it, and don’t quench my thirst. I try to walk the five feet, but fall over and break my leg, and thus can’t reach the water. Someone else drinks the water. I trip and fall into the table and the water spills. I am embarrassed to drink water in front of an audience, so my own inhibitions keep me from reaching resolution.
You get the idea.
Story is built from these three elements. The presentation of conflict is the beginning; the resolution is the end; and the middle of your story is the progress from conflict to resolution, using a series of scenes—or other story-development devices—that illustrate the protagonist’s journey from conflict to resolution. Sometimes he or she travels in a straight path toward what is wanted; sometimes there are setbacks. Sometimes the story ends with the protagonist getting what he or she wants; sometimes it ends with the protagonist not getting it.
So here’s a little exercise for you. Identify the conflict, resolution, and equal or greater forces in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind . They’re the same in the film as in the novel. Drop me a comment, if you’d like, and we’ll discuss it together.
Meanwhile, put your red boots on, and get ready for next week’s discussion about organization, the “Big O,” the creative options you have for putting your story together.
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Eva Hunter is a professional writer and writing coach and is the founder of The Writers Workshop: San Miguel in Mexico
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