Does Your Novel Behave like a Story or like a Sestina?

Even if you’re unsure what a sestina is, you don’t want your novel resembling one. Novels must thrust forward, rather than circling around plot, theme, or character emotions.

What’s a sestina? A complex 39-line poem dating back to 12^th century France. Since novels can be 390 pages, the two forms illuminate in distinctly different ways.

The sestina takes the last word of the first six lines (123456) and creates this pattern from those six words: 615243, 364125, 532614, 451362, 246531. The six words reappear one last time in the final three-line verse. By repeating and revisiting, the sestina reveals different conclusions about the same idea, which—ceases to be the same idea.

Though this might seem excessive, each recurrence changes the word’s context, even its meaning. If you’re curious about the sestina, check out what Elizabeth Bishop does with the simple words “house,” “grandmother,” “child,” “stove,” “almanac,” and “tears.”

The technique is not only terrific for poets but an excellent exercise for deepening a novel. You might quite usefully compose a sestina about dilemma, subplot, or backstory. But it’s no way to structure the book itself.

Here’s why. Lauren Groff liked Joshua Ferris’s “To Rise Again at a Decent Hour,” but said of the protagonist’s arc: “If I never found the novel an ‘opera of bracing suspense,’ it may be because I was so worn down by O’Rourke’s incessant circling around his self-hatred and fear and inability to make a substantive effort, that when change does in fact come to him, it feels a bit limp and clammy.”

Novels generally trace the journey from weakness or difficulty to strength and power. Progress won’t be steady. There’ll be set-backs, wrong turns, resurrection of self-destructive habits, and worship of false truths.

This doesn’t mean you get to repeat as sestinas do. How can you avoid that?

~ A scene goal outline.

Check how often the protagonist progresses or retraces.

~ Physical/emotional balance.

The more characters ruminate, worry, and plan, then the more static your novel will feel.

~ Motivated dialogue.

Do conversations actually advance plot, or exist only to break up the narration?

~ A character arc.

Do events cause the character to grow, or is success sudden and inexplicable?

Tip: Life often seems to go in circles, but readers don’t want novels imitating that.

Who’s Got the Plot?

Writers often ask what makes a novel “literary.” Emphasis on character? On voice? On improbability of making a sale? Jay Parini called the literary novel one that teaches you how to read it as you go.  Mark Twain hadn’t heard of the literary novel, but he did call a classic “something everybody wants to have read, but no one wants to read.” That’s about plot, or lack thereof.

Nathan Bransford’s blog on “What Makes Literary Fiction Literary?” observes that “Good literary fiction has a plot.” In fact, if you want people to buy your literary fiction, a plot is just the ticket.

For example, Ian McEwan’s Solar traces the dangerous consequences of the rivalry/incompetence intersection in academia. The Lowland (Jhumpa Lahiri) illustrates the life-changing consequences of every seemingly trivial decision about love or politics.  Sara Gruen’s Ape House reveals who gets loved or rescued, while Janet Burroway’s Bridge of Sand follows who gets to survive the rotten hands that fate often deals.

Bransford’s blog offers this insightful distinction: “genre novels are really about how a character interacts with the outer world.” In contrast, “literary fiction… requires the reader to infer a great deal of the plot…and thus the climax might be something as small as a decision or a new conviction.”

Let’s unpack that by differentiating not only the subtlety of the plot, but the distinction between plot and tension. In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, the plot consists of who gets married. The first romance novel! That observation probably outrages some and thrills others. But what differentiates Austen’s romance from others? It’s the source of tension, which comes less from the events that befall characters than the way characters learn and mature because of those events. The theme that “pride” or “prejudice” impede happiness matters at least as much those wedding bells.

What has this to do with your novel, literary or not?

• Every novel needs a plot, preferably one where each event causes the next.
• Every novel needs character decisions that produce clear consequences.
• Every novel needs tension—on every single page.
• Every novel needs characters forced to choose between unacceptable outcomes.
• Every novel needs tension from both what characters do and what they think.
• Every novel needs subplots interwoven with the central plot.
• Every novel needs a plot climaxing in a revelation about human nature.

Tip: The best novels integrate the best attributes of both genre and literary fiction.

Who’s Doing the Heavy Lifting?

People read fiction for various reasons—escape, entertainment, and illumination, information, or insight. But probably not one reader would add “enduring an exhausting workout” to that list. That’s what the gym—and the job—are for.

Tip: The less hard the writer works, the harder the readers have to.

Novelists can fatigue readers with what they put in or leave out. Here’s a partial list:

• Picturing context for the characters.
• Transitioning between moments, places, and external/internal realms.
• Shifting point of view.
• Including numerous characters.
• Assigning distracting character names.
• Introducing ambiguous metaphors.
• Isolating images, subplots, and themes.
• Composing lengthy sentences with multiple phrases and clauses.

Many readers enjoy ambiguity; that isn’t on the list. Readers don’t enjoy having to guess and compute. Sometimes that’s unvoidable. Attempt to make everything clear and easy, and you could wind up sounding graceless and boring. As often applies to the craft of fiction, balance is the key. These questions help test whether you make readers cope with something they needn’t.

• Do you ground your characters in physical space?
• Do you avoid unnecessary shifts, especially of short duration?
• Do you transition whenever you change time, place, point of view, etc.?
• Do you include the smallest number of characters you can get away with?
• Do your characters have accessible names, i.e. as close to familiar as credibly possible?
• Do taglines help identify characters, i.e. the one with green eyes or that oversized purse?
• Do character names start with the same letter or sound similar?
• Does every symbolic reference make complete sense on the literal level?
• Do you weave imagery into motifs, or recurrent patterns?
• Does every single subplot link to the central one?
• Are your themes tied both to the protagonist and to each other?
• Do you divide sentences for rhythm, variety, and clarity?

 Responding to all these questions sounds like a lot of work. It sure is. Novelists are supposed to work hard so readers don’t have to. Occasionally, you’ll have no choice: The plot or theme or psychological exploration simply demands a certain amount not of obscurity, but of complexity. Just be able to honestly justify asking your readers to “work.” And never put them on duty more often than you can help. 

“Downton Abbey’s” Back

When last Sunday’s episode ended, it seemed that it’d only just begun. How did fifty + minutes fly like that? Again, there’s food for novelist thought here.

·         Rich characters. An impractical earl, a questionably charming new footman, and a morally impeccable convict defy every stereotype. These characters—and all characters—emotionally engage us by transcending type. In this episode, every character, however minor, is both individual and representative, both specific and universal. That’s every storyteller’s goal.

·         Interwoven subplots. Each character’s tribulations must impinge on every other character’s. This weaves not a series of brief, tangentially related stories but one gorgeously unified tapestry with no visible evidence of the separate threads that produced it.

·         Moral dilemma. This has driven story since the origin of the form. The classic conflict is a character passionately loving someone with a different ethical code. Whether the moral center is how to run the estate, maintain honor, or treat the employees, there’s genuine trouble if the beloved does not agree. This is in fact the very worst trouble of all, because how can the protagonist choose between love and morality. What terrible trouble! And trouble drives stories. Otherwise, there’s no point in telling them.

·         Cultural upheaval. Context for individual dilemma not only adds a layer of texture but deepens understanding of the characters inhabiting a world. No one ever lives in a vacuum. Culture impinges on everyone—and always has.

Novelists can find much to gnaw on in the unfolding of this story—not to mention the bliss of following “Downton Abbey’s” characters through the twists and turns of their lives.

Tip: Train yourself to study the machinery of story in everything you watch and read.