Structural Integrity

Who doesn't love competing notions?

If you already follow Chuck Palahniuk’s Plot Spoilers, this will tread familar ground because I’m learning a lot from what he’s got to pass along. The lessons in minimalism from Lish and Spanbauer that Chuck offers compete for bandwidth against some of the lessons I’ve learned from writers I’ve sat with in person at my local critique group. More of this, less of that; one style instead of another.

For a while, I followed lessons from Stephen King’s writing advice memoir on the recommendation of the group facilitator Rodney Richards. He prefers grammatically correct prose since his background is technical writing and his pleasure is poetry. Put together, technical writing and poetry make a good basis for an editor. And Rod’s a pro at that. A pro bono critique group run by a professional editor is a dream come true for an upstart. Of all the things I’ve learned from it, the one which keeps reinforcing itself time and again is about structure. Grammatical and narrative. It shows through in my work.

I wrote and published See Through Darkness (available through my site) before I knew what I was doing. I had mom edit that one. A bad idea and a learning experience by it’s own right. Why? Because boundaries. But I never heard a peep of judgement for the spicy, violent, or otherwise fucked-up content I put into that book. Only that she didn’t want to edit another one like it.

I knew Darkness had serious flaws because the process had been an argumentative one. (Never about scene content. Free of judgement.) The closest she got was “how does it serve the story?” and “Do we need it?” Her head was in the project, but not her heart (in so far as loving the characters and story like I once did) but it was (in so far as she wanted me to succeed at it) but not committed to perfecting the story beats. A better author would have molded the novel into a denser volume, perhaps. A better author would have made less drastic edits and kept the campy and ludicrous bits and gone bigger with the ending instead of altering it last minute on a whim. A better author would have saved his novel from himself (his own insecurities). The book would have been up the alley of Divergent, The Hunger Games, the Darkest Minds or one of those moody YA books which don’t do all their homework but still endear the masses. A better author wouldn’t have surrendered five years of work (2013-2018) to become dragged down by realism. A better writer. A writer gets better with experience.

A recently retired teacher (with family ties) will do a good job at editing. I can’t speak for using a professional editor on a one-to-one client basis. Crit group is something I’ve been around long enough to know.

See Through Darkness published as a first edition in 2018. I gave it to family and never heard a peep. Apart from “Are you still writing?” and “Working on a new book?” It’s enough. But my memory has just been jogged after a working shift at the day job that there was one bit of feedback I ought not forget: My cousin Katie’s mother-in-law said of, Bud, the father-in-law-to-be (whatever relation that is to me/ highly tangential)—to me, Suzy, Katie’s mother-in-law-to-be (at-the-time). Suzy says to me: '‘Bud read your book.” She’s brimming with glee and hinting toward a punchline.

What’s so funny about that? You may ask. We sure did.

“He doesn’t read,” she says and clarifies that though he knows how and buys magazines like Poular Mechanics, he’ll do so for the occasional article. The man’s just not a reader, but he read mine. If that’s not good feedback, what is? In recent years, though, it’s the courteous “are you still at it?” encouragement. I do wonder if I should be more forthcoming, vulnerable, and/or generous and enthusiastic about my own subversive imaginings.

Shortly after, I started a regular job at a steakhouse and discovered Rodney’s group. So, off I went with the starting pages of War Gone Cold which I honed, week by week, sample by sample between shifts bussing tables, at Nicole Homer’s college level creative writing class, I honed it reading aloud through a KN-95, over Zoom calls as a novelist among poets. A mismatch made in heaven. Another quirk surfaced in Rod’s group (as he became inundated with responsibilities regarding his wife’s health), I took Prometheus chronicles through its paces. The hiccup was: nobody could keep the events in order or the story straight in their head. A lot of them sat bewildered after my samples and did their best with the pages at hand. The irony being: Prometheus Chronicles has the least complex narrative structure and the most intuitive set of chapter headings I’ve ever done. At least as far as the final product is concerned. Nor did it have the Globe-trotting ping-pong of War Gone Cold. What tripped them up was likely factors beyond my control. The concerns of the outside world outweighing my spaceship story.

To rope it all back around to minimalism and structural integrity, I’ll start with the confession that I read my own books after publication. The real confession is though: I enjoy it immensely. It stands to reason that a writer ought to be their own biggest fan. Why not? Their the books he wished hard enough for and willed into existence. Gotta write the book you’d want to read.

This time, See Through Darkness hit different. I’m not just seeing the flaws. I’m seeing the shudder-worthy-almost-physically-painful to lay eyes on stuff. From the dialog choices, characterization, info dumps; the convoluted and spotty narrative structure of how the chapters proceed is best taken as an indication of just how wrong things can go (and i take full responsibility for these systemic failures) when structure is an afterthought.

As for minialism, with me, it’s a case of discernment of what’s relavant from what’s not. Some of my favorite world class writers (Haruki Murakami, Neal Stephenson, Michael Crichton, Clive Cussler, Palahniuk, and (recently added to my list) Iain M. Banks are world class for different reasons. So, if you got a style, if it works, if you have some core structure; be it minimalist like Chuck’s or something chunkier like what Stephenson did with the Baroque Cycle, be what you are. Who cares about the page count? If it’s organized in a way which has what you’re going for, love it, do it, let it blossom.

Enjoy Walpurgisnacht!