up to the nines
nine isn't fine
A short sequel update this week: I’m having trouble with chapter nine and I’ll be getting back on with it when I’ve written this. But maybe explaining the difficulty will help me see my way through it.
As I mentioned last time, my outline for chapter 9 just said “K and A do something together”. The purpose of the chapter is to show them becoming friends and to set up the events that follow. They are both unemployed so what they do together needs to be something free.
One of the themes of the novel is the psychogeography of the Ouseburn valley as it was 30+ years ago, so I hit upon the idea that they would meet by chance and go for a walk together, discovering the Ouseburn culvert and where it goes. When I lived in Heaton in the 80s/90s I had no idea that the river which runs southwest through Jesmond Vale is the same one which meets the Tyne due south of there, and I find its history interesting (see for example Scrannin’ on the tip [external link] from Heaton History Group). Another theme of the novel is raves, and indeed there was once a rave held in the culvert (which was kitted out as an air raid shelter in WW2), so mentioning it here sets that up.
But once I got on with writing the chapter, I soon realised there’s a problem with this. Two characters just going for a walk might actually be a bit boring for the reader.
Now, as a fan of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of fiction, I don’t believe every story has to have conflict: conflict is only one of many types of story and relating and discovering are equally valid. However, as she says, what defines a story is that it relates a change, and I’m worried that the two characters knowing each other better at the end of the chapter than the start isn’t enough of a change.
I’m also a fan of John Yorke’s theory of fractal story structure in which each level of a story (at least for novels and films) has its structure determined by the level above. So I like to make sure that not only each chapter tells a story, but each scene within the chapter and each paragraph within a scene. Each part must be about things before, during or after the change (including scene-setting about the place where change happens, or state of mind of a character who changes in some way) – or better still, more than one of those things. So updating my outline for chapter 9 to frame everything in terms of change, here’s the current chapter synopsis:
June 1991: We learn a bit more about K’s past. He runs into A and they go for a walk, puzzling over the Ouseburn culvert. They meet S at the City Stadium who explains some of the history. The see the bottom end of the culvert and think about exploring it. At the pub they run into J, who updates them on his crush on D. We learn a little more of A’s past.
So it develops the themes of: change in the main characters A and K, by establishing their pasts so we understand the context of the changes; the scene-setting for the start of those changes, as the culvert will be the scene of a rave, and the raves will be transformative for both of them; the subplot about the changes that J and D will go through; and keeping minor character S in mind as he will be more important much later in the novel. The chapter starts and ends in pubs, while revealing background details of A and K, which has a pleasing symmetry.
I think that’s enough to make the chapter a satisfying piece of writing in its own right. This is how I apply the fractal approach: every chapter, every scene within it, and every paragraph within them, will ultimately need to be a piece of writing that I can be proud of. Of course, perfection never comes in the first draft, and probably a lot will change in redrafting, but the aim is to keep the story developing in the way I want it to go, and not take a wrong turn down a dead-end street, which would mean the whole chapter would end up in the bin.
I’ll let you know how it turned out next time. I hope these insights into my process are interesting – last year’s Sequel Country columns were more about the theory, and this year’s are about the practice, which is why there’s all the links back to older columns. Subscribe to see how it comes out, and please feel free to leave a comment if there’s an aspect of my sequel-writing which you’d like me to shine a light on.