I’ve screwed up again! Started reading Shakespeare ‘s “Hamlet” and realized something about hidden structure in all novels. Apparently, there are only six types of writing in a novel:
- Descriptions
- Summaries
- Actions
- Dialog
- Transitions
- Soliloquies
That’s about it. Just stack up those bricks in an interesting and conflicting pattern and you’ve got yourself a story. Here is an example:
Description–It was a typical home office, except for the heads. Bison. Water buffalo. A middle aged woman with long blonde hair and startled grayish-blue eyes.They looked even spookier at this late hour.
Summary–He liked to tell people the head was a prop made up to look like his first wife. “Oh, she’s alive and well and living off half my income in Boca,” he would say. The truth was rather darker than that.
Action–Phil gently hung up the phone, leaned back and looked thoughtfully up at his ex.
Dialog–“Well, that’s it then,” said Phil. “They’ve called the loan.” “I told you they would,” said a voice from the corner. “So what are we going to do now, Dad?”
Action–Phil opened his desk drawer and took out a long-barreled frontier-style revolver.
Transition–It took almost 30 minutes to get back to Phil’s daughter-in-law’s house.
Summary–A long 42 minutes after that, they had reached the job site for one of Phil’s major competitors. The backhoe started on the first try. Phil clicked on the headlights. Barely 12 minutes later, she was gone without a trace. Well, almost without a trace.
Action–Phil shut off the backhoe, climbed down and stood by his son. Wordlessly, Phil took his gloves off and smacked them against his thigh.
Description–The night closed in around them. The scent of scrub pines, dust and diesel fumes hung heavy in the air. There were no lights, no sounds, no neighbors yet. That was what made the new development such a perfect body dump.
Dialog–“Where do you want me to put this?” asked the son, holding up his wife’s gold bracelet. Phil asked, “You don’t want to keep it for awhile?” “No,” said the son, “let’s do it all at once and be done with it.” “Well,” said the father, “How about under the driver’s seat?”
Soliloquie–As Phil drove them carefully back home, he thought about the small package in the trunk. He looked out the window and said quietly to himself, “I wonder if it was wrong to keep the head?”
You can see the patterns easier in a stage play because scene descriptions always come first, dialog is set off differently from action, and transitions are right justified. If you look for them, you can see the patterns in a novel as well.
Now you try it. Write something horribly good!
