The Details Are In The Calendar
- Posted by Essays Blog in Essays Blog |
- September 24th, 2009 |
- Comments
Like many authors, writing a novel was always an aspiration. When I finally started the process, in Spectacles of Darkness, Spectacles of Grace I had a great account that had evolved from real-life events. Allay, the majority of my experience was writing nonfiction, a communication that generally called for aboveboard facts with less emphasis on descriptive elements. Exceptional fiction requires authentic details that pull the reader into the class in which the account takes place. I discovered that one of the best distance to do this is to construct the narrative around a calendar.
Deficient feedback on the account, I conveyed an early draft of the manuscript to an editor I’d learned of finished one of my writing groups. Piece she liked the novel, she noted thither was no circumstantial timeline of years or events, and felt the account could essentially be action place at any time. The editor advisable exploitation a calendar with actual dates and circumstantial years during which the account would be set. By action this approach, it not only helped me plan the account better, but a historical reference of Jesse Ventura’s election as governor of Minnesota in 1998 or making note of the Aquatennial Festival held in Minneapolis each July could be woven into the narrative and enhance the authenticity of the book.
Implementing her advice, I constructed a five-year calendar over which the account in Spectacles of Darkness, Spectacles of Grace unfolds. The calendar not only worked advantageously as an organizational and research means, but it also served to focus the book over a definite time period. In real life, the events that inspired Spectacles of Darkness occurred over a much longer period of time, making for an awkward time frame that dragged on also long, offered no meaning of closure, and risked boring the reader. By exploitation a circumstantial calendar, those events could be compressed into a much shorter and intense motion.
Employing a real calendar also heightened the dramatic effect of the narrative. In a crucial incident near the end of book, Paul Pierson is arrested for domestic battery in a connive orchestrated by his ex-wife. Threatened with disbursal the weekend in the county jail if bail money cannot be raised, the environment takes place over the New Year’s holiday of 2000/2001. Only by exploitation a real calendar did I discover that if Paul were arrested on Saturday December 30, 2000 he could be looking at various days in jail. In 2001 New Year’s Day fell on a Monday, and banks would not have reopened until Tuesday, January 2. Utilizing real dates offered the dramatic dilemma of the Pierson family frantically pooling their financial resources to keep Paul from extended jail time.
Employed off a calendar can also combat one of the hazards many authors confront &ndash writer’s block. Once I had the basic framework of the novel laid out across a calendar, if I was having difficulty with a particular chapter or environment, I could compose another chapter and return at a later point to the problematic area with renewed inspiration. For many authors I’ve known, it can be easier to compose out-of-order when the energy strikes than to force a writer to compose a manuscript in linear fashion. A calendar not only helps an author render a vivid account, but can be a functional means in pursuit the progress and consistency of the plot.
The initial variant of the calendar was bare bones &ndash an outline of the main scenes that comprised the novel. From thither I began writing individual scenes, building on them and incorporating the crucial details, many of which were discovered finished research. Those descriptions that make a environment real might be as ordinary as the brave on Halloween or the once-in-a-lifetime occurrence of the Millennium, experiences any reader could relate to.
Details should engage the reader and connect them to the characters, background, and narrative. This editor taught me a great lesson &ndash that for fiction to truly come alive requires authentic details. For many authors, those details can often be found inside the framework of a calendar.