Laying out a story's bones

I have been thinking a lot about my writing process lately. My conclusion - at least for now- is that mine is not easily described. It matches how I approach any large creative project. As soon as I can envision the finished product it is easy to define the detailed steps that it will take to arrive at the goal. The other imperative for me is to conceptualize it graphically or physically but always visually. It doesn't matter what the genre is either.

I wrote lots of serious papers in college and graduate school. Before computers or word processors when only the elite among us owned electric typewriters, I typically wrote quotes from research documents longhand on single index cards with the citation information on the back of the same card. Then I assigned a category to the quote, arranged the categories by sequencing the cards in a logical order. I didn't usually bother writing a formal outline. Instead I hand-wrote text to connect the quotes on pieces of paper to which I taped the cards where they went in the narrative. To rearrange the paper I did not rewrite sections; I used scissors to cut the document and taped it back together.

The place that best worked to do this was the Asian studies library at Washington University. It had very large tables and very few students ever used it. So I could spread out. Sometimes my paper looked like a badly designed very long kite damaged after too many collisions with trees. When I was happy with the end product I typed it in triplicate with the requisite carbon paper between the copies. It was a messy task that inevitably also required the use of those little white correction strips - also in triplicate - and don't even remind me of the agony of spacing footnotes so they displayed properly at the bottom of the same page that contained the information discussed or cited below.

The other day my office manager watched me organizing a complex set of project tasks for an important staff meeting at the museum. She described me as a visual thinker. I never would have said the same about myself but in retrospect upon reflection I think she is correct and therein lies the key to what is slowing down my progress with Stuck in the Mud. I lack both the place and the mechanism to lay out the story's bones - the cut out pages to tape back together before writing the actual story.

When I wrote Pastor's Ex-Wife the structure was clear from the start. The first and last chapters function as bookends. In the first chapter, Terry Soldan found the courage to revisit her ex-husband, Pastor Ed's church - incognito in the guise of an African American woman but really in her role as the anonymous church critic for a newspaper. The first chapter describes the service from her perspective. The last chapter is the text of the article she wrote about Abundant Love Church for the newspaper the following week. In between the first and last chapter is the chronological story of how she decided to leave Pastor Ed and how she gained the self-confidence and courage to go back (to the church for one Sunday service - not to the abusive marriage or the twisted braid of lies that had kept her trapped there for 24 years previously.)

Each chapter advances Terry's story, relies on a specific metaphor, profiles a church, a pastor, a Sunday service, and a congregation. Each chapter also contains an anecdote inspired by my work as a music teacher in an urban inner city public school system. So as soon as I decided on the particulars for a chapter I was ready to write it. I even created a chapter planning sheet for the book.

Stuck in the Mud does not rely on such symbolism. It is a murder mystery with three corpses to deal with. I have some serious themes to weave through the story and I know my cast of characters and the settings very well. I think I will get a few rolls of adding machine tape tomorrow. Then I'll visually arrange the story as it will be experienced by each character. Next I'll cut it up and rearrange it on a wall.

That should help a lot.