Every art form has a structure. We know that about music: there are sonatas and symphonies, concertos and zarzuelas. Classical art has structure: it may be one in which design elements flow from upper right to lower left on a diagonal, or in which a painting’s composition is organized around that three-pronged focus called “The Golden Triangle.”
But, although most of us accept the fact that other art forms are built with specific formulas, sometimes writers resist the idea that good writing, too, requires structures for putting the material together. Perhaps this is because it’s easier to fool ourselves about what skillful writing is, and isn’t, than about what skilled music—for example—is, or isn’t. If we can do little more than play a few notes on the piano, we don’t convince ourselves that we are Carnegie Hall material. Yet the writing parallel to piano key-pounding—just letting those words “flow out” any which way—often convinces the uninitiated that he or she can write.
I think I’ve made my point. Writing needs specific organizational strategies, just like any other art. Over the next several weeks, I’m going to introduce you to six of those strategies. Here are the first two:
- Straight chronology. We start at a certain point in the story, and tell it straight through to the end. No flashbacks, no deviation from forward movement through the years, months, days, or hours. Just straight through from whatever point of the story we choose as the starting point. Margaret Mitchell’s Civil War novel, Gone With The Wind, is told in straight chronology. So was Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary.
- Revised chronology. We start at a point other than the beginning of the story. We will eventually tell the tale’s beginning—we just don’t start building our story there. Watching 1940s film noir is a great exercise for learning revised chronology. A film may start with a dramatic final scene—the beautiful and brave heroine played by Joan Crawford, for example, has a touching deathbed performance. Then the storyline fades back to an earlier time, after which the story progresses steadily back to the beginning scene—which happens to be the end.
Or we may have our story start with a scene in our 30-year-old character’s life, jump back to when that character was five years old, then move forward to age 15, then age 20, then 25. The story revisits the original age-30 scene, then continues to the end. Biographies are often organized this way. The writer starts at the most famous part of the protagonist’s life, takes us back to the formative influences, revisits the famous scene again, then takes the reader to the character’s mature years.
That’s Straight Chronology and Revised Chronology. Next week we’ll be examining “Flashback” and “The Trip” as ways to organize your stories.
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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
Sorry, comments are closed.
Comment by
Dan at Pan Historia
21 Apr 2009
Good topic and one oft overlooked. Can't wait to read the rest in the series.
Comment by
Kampanye Damai
25 Apr 2009
thanks for this usefull informations..
now i find what i want to know..
thanks so much..
Comment by
Mbah Gendeng
8 Dec 2009
Some very interesting points but i think your research and bias leaves a lot to be desired.