I just took a trip for my vacation, and that set me to thinking about how trips function in novels. See what you think: One Sojourn Too Many Everyone has favorite vocabulary words, and “dilly-dally” is one of mine. Besides enjoying the acerbic British wit behind its origin, I have found it applies to certain manuscripts I edit. That is not to say the author intends for the reader to wait around until his indulgence, which can last as long as 50 pages, is played out, but the overall effect is the same. This problem occurs especially in novels that involve travel. While we all enjoy being on the road to somewhere new, you are advised to keep an eye out for the effect a journey can have on your plotting. Another interesting word might be kept in mind: “unmoored.” A foreign locale by its very nature involves elements of a travelogue: descriptions of exotica, impressions of the travelers, and usually some altercation that makes the backdrop come to life. Because the author has usually gone to that place, she wants to evoke what she found special about it for the reader, somewhat like a photo slideshow for the folks back home. The danger of such a stopover in a novel is also analogous to boring said folks with too many photos—“and there’s Jimmy, and there’s little Patty . . . “ When viewed structurally, any scene functions best when it builds from previous material in a plot line. Therein lies the danger of placing a dramatic episode on the way to somewhere else. Usually a novel builds up its original base of conflict in a particular locale, let’s say London. The protagonist emerges from whatever background surroundings have been created, and he encounters new forces in the City that necessitate his travels. Yet look what happens the moment he walks up that gangway. He is leaving behind the theater of former conflicts. As a reader, I was enjoying those conflicts, and I had already formed allegiances for and against known quantities that the protagonist was facing. Once the character is traveling, he generally is encountering new, foreign faces, people I don’t know. Although a new enemy may have a startling scimitar, metaphorically, I still don’t really care that much what happens—because I don’t know the guy. A part of me is secretly hoping we get back to England, so I can root against that guy I know I really hate. He may only have a common dirk, but I am moved by the reasons he’s pulling it out. That weirdo with the scimitar? What was his weird name again? If you have created two main locales that host a series of scenes before the journey, the reader may feel another pull: the desire to see what the heroine is going to do in Shanghai. In that case, we already can guess which characters she is going to encounter, and because we’ve already starting rooting for and against them, the anticipation creates its own gravity. When I was younger, I traveled quite a lot, and I noticed a curious phenomenon. While I was on the road, I found incidental conversations with other travelers fascinating. They would have news of a place I was about to visit, or would relate some anecdote about the charming customs of the natives. Yet when I returned home and read about these conversations, recorded in my travel diary, I found them trivial. I developed a name for them: travel talk. So the next time you think a remote locale is going to deliver a big impact on your story, beware that you’re not mistaking travel talk for real meaning. Exercise: If you really need to tell us about the stopover in Sri Lanka, consider the structure of the tale at that point. Say you had already planned a future scene in Bangkok, and another in Hong Kong. Could you instead focus on only one, and insert a key character that will also play an ongoing role once the heroine gets to Shanghai? In other words, the reader not only meets the exotic newcomer, but there’s a payoff—the beginning of a new plot thread. “Facts are the enemy of truth.” —Miguel de Cervantes Copyright @ 2013, John Paine
Posted on: Thu, 18 Jul 2013 11:56:37 +0000
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