Last month, I wrote here about chiastic structures and framing techniques used by Mark to construct his Gospel. While maintaining a more-or-less chronological narrative made of succeeding scenes of action, as in any story, Mark also adds meaning to the incidents by arranging them strategically so that they comment on each other and interpret each other. One example is the feeding of the 5,000 which is deliberately juxtaposed to Herod’s birthday banquet. Here we have contrasted two feasts, two kings, two kingdoms. King Herod’s party is drunken, violent, characterized by power struggles and leads to death. King Jesus’ party is peaceful, fully satisfying, characterized by compassion and leads to life.
What can we storytellers learn from this? Writers of memoir, biography or ‘the essay’ might benefit the most by taking note of how real-life material must be selected and sequenced to make a point, not merely to record ‘what happened.’ Incidents and scenes can be paired to echo each other or offer commentary on each other (without explicitly telling the reader what ‘meaning’ you intend, since the incidents themselves ought to do that). Poets know well that the structure, the architecture of the poem is a subtle way to communicate meaning – it isn’t just the words, but the choice of structure – such as a sonnet, ghazal, ‘free verse’ or, of course, the concrete poem – add meaning and tone. In a similar way, ‘the essay’ – being closer to poetry than story even if it reads like story – pays attention to structural juxtapositions. Study any essay by EB White to see how it’s done.
But what about fiction, especially ‘genre fiction,’ where the aim is to entertain, meet certain expectations of the category (eg, romances and detective stories have conventions and ‘rules’ to follow), and maybe make a point?
Novels are built of scenes, and so any discussion of a story’s ‘architecture’ will involve the types and placement of scenes. There are three ways that fiction writers employ different kinds of scenes as a way to make those juxtaposed scenes comment on each other. They are: strategic use of flashbacks, interwoven subplots, and multiple points of view. A fourth is ‘the dream’ but it must be very carefully used and most writers who use it abuse it.
I’ll consider these in turn next time.
I’ll probably refer to paired and juxtaposed scenes in my mysteries BLEEDER and VIPER so you’d better get your copies in the meantime! Ha! Blatant self-promotion! Sorry…
Grace and peace,
John
