Writing Metaphors

Sometimes writing can be like driving in the dark without a map. Sometimes writing can be like rock climbing. And sometimes writing can be like stringing beads.

I’ve written several books (though not recently) where I simply took what I thought was a good idea and just started writing. I didn’t do a lot of character analysis, I maybe didn’t even have a set endpoint in mind, I just launched myself into my writing and thought I’d figure things out as I went, à la E.L. Doctorow’s quote comparing writing to driving at night in the fog. “You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” Writing in the dark, in the fog, is okay until you make a wrong turn and then you find yourself driving down a dead-end road without a turnaround spot. And it’s snowing. And your cell phone has lost its charge. I’ve started perfectly good stories that never got finished simply because I got rimrocked at a crucial point in the story and couldn’t figure out any alternative routes to take the story.

I’ve written a couple stories where I had a good idea and I’d done a decent amount of character analysis and had an endpoint in mind, only I hadn’t put a lot of thought into how I was going to get from the first sentence to the last. More than once, I found myself halfway up a steep cliff trying to figure out how to get to the top. Could I grab that small nub of a rock there and hoist myself up another couple of feet, enough to get to easier climbing? Should I look for a different, safer route to the right or left, or should I rappel down and start all over again? Sometimes I was able to take an alternate route that turned out to be a good idea in the end, and a couple times I’ve had to cut out a couple of difficult chapters and try to find a better narrative path to take.

The last time I wrote a complete novel, it felt like stringing beads. I had a good, linear idea for the story. I did full character analyses of the two protagonists—what were their backgrounds, where had they come from, what made them tick? I researched and brainstormed and made notes of all the things I wanted to have happen to my characters as they went through the story, and I had a definite end-point in mind. Once I’d done most of the hard work up front, the writing of the story went quite quickly. I lined up the experiences I wanted my characters to have and started threading them onto a narrative string. It felt easy. Occasionally I’d add in a chapter “bead” that wasn’t in my original plans if I found something in my continued research that struck me as interesting. Sometimes that worked; sometimes it didn’t. For the most part, however, the bead-stringing method worked well for me. Can I write another story using that method? I hope so.