Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

The Basic Idea Expanded into the Levels of Writing

After this term of the Exploratory Writing Workshop ends next week, I'll be redoing Lessons Seven and Eight. These two lessons come at the end of the Workshop and involve writing two outlines.

The first is taking the six vignettes and placing them in a context of between twenty and thirty chapter names. The student takes their vignettes and pokes them into a surrounding story space. Then, the student names the empty chapter spaces. This is what I call the Operational level of writing, which is stringing together the chapters.

The second outline is the final lesson and expands the previous one to include all the Strategic Components. Under each chapter bullets are written which show a synopsis and the components learned in the Favorite Author Chapter Template (FACT) done at the beginning of the class. These components are what I consider to be the Strategic Ingredients for the novel. Perhaps I need to define more clearly what the three levels of writing are.

The first is the Tactical Level. Here a writer needs to be able to demonstrate that they can write a short piece. The evidence of the skill level is the ability of the student to demonstrate writing basics as they write their vignettes. These vignettes are designed to show some of the Operational and Strategic considerations that a novel should include. They also demonstrate a student’s grasp of fundamentals such as grammar, spelling, the ability to write a coherent sentence with a subject object and verb, being able to introduce a chapter that sets up a framework for the scenes and then shows them to the reader in a logical sequence that flows from beginning to end and leads to a conclusion. This is not something that is remedial but is an art form in itself and one that many writers at WDC have mastered well.

However, when a writer attempts to go from a short to a longer work the other two levels take on an ever-greater importance. Even if the writer has exceptional talent in writing shorter pieces and a high powered bio processor, exceeding the scope of a chapter sized chunk tends to use up most of the available “Computer Space” (Room in the human mind) and the results are often disappointing and can lead to gridlock, commonly referred to as “Writer’s Block.” Thus a writer, once they have an idea in mind, needs to break it into bite sized chunks in order to be able to limit the scope of a writing exercise to something their minds are capable of doing. The Operational level is the stringing together of chapters that lead the writer through the complexities that unwind and flow from beginning to end of a story. In the military “Tactics” is what it takes to win a battle and “Operations” is the ability to string some successful battles together into a victorious campaign. Strategy is what it takes to win the war, and in a writer's case turn out a successful novel.

The highest level is what I call Strategic Writing. This is introduced to the student in the beginning when they do their FACT template. They take a chapter from their favorite novel and examine it critically. Here are some strategic considerations.

1. Does the novel begin on the cusp of a Life Changing Event?
2. Do we see a gradual metering of the story world?
3. Is the Central Character (CC) introduced?
4. Do we see the Want Need and Desire of the CC?
5. Is the POV of the CC third person?
6. Do we get a “Before Snapshot” of the CC?
7. Does the story begin to reveal the Dramatic Premise?
8. Does the story have recurring themes?
9. Is there a mix in the exposition weighed towards “Showing?”
10. Is the Author showing “Dialogue?”
11. Is there Foreshadowing?
12. Repetition?
13. Humor?
14. Are the transitions smooth and natural?
15. Are the supporting characters contributing to the flow of the story.
16. Is there an antagonistic force?
17. Does the LCE cause the CC to break from the box that life has put him/her into?
18. Does the reader feel the CC’s pain?
19. As the CC resolves to break from the box what is the first crisis that presents itself.
20. What is the second big crisis?
21. Does the momentum build from the beginning leading to the third and final crisis (Climax)?
22. Can the reader begin to see change in the CC’s character?

There are many more that present themselves in the workshop and it isn’t enough to simply know what they are. The writer needs to demonstrate this understanding by plugging them into each chapter in the outline in order to to make sure they will be developed when each chapter segment is written. The Operational and Strategic thinking should come in the developmental phase of writing a novel and once captured leave the writer free to simply write in those bite sized chunks knowing that when the last chapter is finished the manuscript will flow structurally from beginning to end.