WRITING: How Story May Come

Dumb title of a post, but that’s what I mean.

For me, it begins with opening lines, needs a bit of editing, but basically the words come before the story.  I don’t think I’ve ever been able to start with a concept and sit down and start writing about it except when writing an essay or those miserable in-class exercises we were asked to do that almost everyone else in the room had no problem with doing as I struggled and shushed the teacher so I could think.  This is possibly (and hopefully) not an indication of a slow thinker, but of a learned pattern of thought process that can be overcome.

This strategy, albeit unplanned, inhibits story.  While I may say that the story flows from there, without asking and thinking about the paths the story can take, there is another part of the brain at work that stops the story from developing or opening up to possibilities.  I would liken it perhaps to repairing a stone wall with whatever materials are at hand (words) rather than building a wall, where the layers are set upon a solid foundation and can extend any level up to the sky or wander down the hill and dale and become a cohesive structure. 

In a prior post I mentioned asking Why? instead of What?  Why? is only mortar, patching together with explanation.  What? is a new pile of rocks to play with and use to their best individual advantages; the round one can lay on top but needs two flat-sided buddies to support it.  What? seeks a path, a goal; Why? is only the reason.  What? becomes the "fact" of the story, leaving the reader to his own perception, but limited to a degree by the statement.  i.e., He picked up the rock.  It’s a rock, can’t be argued with; but open to heavy, large, small, veined through with mica, etc. but that’s about all.

It’s the writer’s job to provide the What?  What happened then becomes the story in a planned narrative structure that presents the story, and then is taken as "fact."  Paz’s entity in The Wave exists, whether it be a fantasy, a metaphor, or a real globule of water.  In 100 Years of Solitude, Marquez’s Remedios the Beauty ascends into the heavens, in full view of three other women while outside folding sheets off the line.  That’s what happened, according to Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  He doesn’t tell us why.  Make of it what you will, even to the extreme of thinking Marquez’s narrator is lying. 

Why? on the other hand, need not be addressed by the writer; it is a better question for the reader.  Although the writer may ask it certainly, he needn’t answer it except to himself if he’s curious, and then, he is looking at it as a reader in that instance. Why? gives the reader full control over the story, makes it enjoyable, thought-provoking, or if shocking, shock at one’s one realization of where one’s own mind can travel.

So, Why? looks back; What? looks forward.

I think.  What the hell do I know.  I know how to write it, but I don’t know what to put down, and what to hold back and what to let out because I haven’t yet learned to ask the right questions, not of myself but of my character.  But I’m going to concentrate on method of writing, stop that flow of words so eloquently pushing themselves on the page merely to take up space.  Interesting concept to explore and put into practice.  Maybe I should e-mail myself an idea, a What? question scenario, each morning that requires a brief paragraph of answer within minutes of opening the mail or the laptop will explode.  If, that is, I can come up with the scenario. 

This could be a lot of fun.  Anything to do with writing could be; even if it’s painful, there’s pleasure that suits the true masochistic tendencies of some writers.