STORYSPACE: Plotting
I’ve been working in dribs and drabs today on this, but it takes total concentration to follow a path that makes some sort of sense. Then there’s the Ahah! moments when you connect old men and shovels.
Story sometimes spilled in sips (writing spaces) unwittingly comes together in the big picture (mapview) and when you see it, you’re happily surprised. I used to be amazed by it but after a few days of working in Storyspace and a few decades in writing itself, it becomes obvious that all plots, no matter how unrelated, are coming from the same source (your brain). Just as when you suddenly remember something, these puffs of ideas are stored in some organized arrangement in memory and link to each other by more than just space or time.
Example: Kindergarten teacher (Sister Fidelis–couldn’t speak English so we did learn to sing and pray in Polish quite well, and she remembered to keep the hook off the small a for English) teaches her class about BEES and BEEHIVES and HONEY. Sometime in adolescence you’re at the grocery story picking up HONEY for mom, and sure, you know all about the bee stuff, but that comes to mind as well as maybe the story the teacher told you about how her dog got stung sniffin’ round the hives. So here’s this jar of HONEY you bring up to the counter, and you’re thinking about DOGs.
So the OLD MAN related in some way to where he originally showed up in each story, and there’s the connection: his SHOVEL.
Well I thought it was cool.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology