Jellybean, Licorice, Vonnegut, Line

Time for the next installment of the Visual Storyboarding series! 

(Previous entries have been bookmarked for you at the end of this post.)

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KINDS OF TIMELINES: 

JELLYBEAN, LICORICE, VONNEGUT, LINE

Now that we’ve discussed (a) why we storyboard and not merely “plot”, (b) how to visualize our hooks, and (c) how to pull together the factual AND visual details for our respective novels --- the next step, then, is to craft a timeline of events that your characters must endure for the sake of the story.

The good news? 

Timelines don’t need to be ultra-specific - only enough to keep you on track with where your tale needs to go.

The challenge? 

Since this is visual storyboarding, you'll likely need at least two different kinds of timelines, and possibly all four.

Which four kinds of timelines do I mean? The ones mentioned in the blog title, of course: Jellybean, Licorice, Vonnegut, Line.

But in true Angela fashion, I’ve given you the list of timeline forms in reverse order. Let’s start with the last one, shall we?

LINE TIMELINE:

This is the form of timeline that every schoolchild knows. A basic, straightforward timeline that gives the general idea of which event happened first – you know, to show that Napoleon lived before Ronald Reagan, or that the sinking of the Titanic did NOT happen during the Third Crusade.

A basic line timeline looks something like this:

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Simple enough, yes?

So when you first sit down to work the timelines for your novel, this is usually your first step. Go ahead and get the obvious out on paper – not in paragraph form, but in this simple line form, so that you can have a quick reference to make sure your novel doesn’t jump the tracks and diverge into the opium fields somewhere.

You may have already done this part, of course. If you have, you’re ready for the next kind of timeline:

VONNEGUT TIMELINE:

This is the timeline idea that revolutionized the way I plot my stories – and, as you might have guessed from the name, the idea was given to me by the old wisecracking surrealist writer, Kurt Vonnegut himself.

More specifically, I learned about this style of time-line-ing when I first sat down to read Vonnegut’s best-known novel, Slaughterhouse Five.

I refer, of course, to the first chapter of that book, which explains how he came up with his hypnotically fractured story about time-sliding Billy Pilgrim. More specifically, he explains what aliens and a disillusioned middle-aged man have to do with Vonnegut’s own experiences during the bombing of Dresden (WWII), which he and his comrades narrowly survived by hiding out in a concrete slaughterhouse (from which the book derives its name). 

The part that changed the way I saw story-plotting was Vonnegut’s own confession on how he started to draw out the idea for Slaughterhouse Five:

I had outlined the Dresden story many times. The best outline I ever made, or anyway, the prettiest one, was on the back of a roll of wallpaper. I used my daughter’s crayons, a different color for each main character. One end of the wallpaper was the beginning of the story, and the other end was the end, and then there was all that middle part, which was the middle. And the blue line met the red line and then the yellow line, and yellow line stopped because the character represented by the yellow line was dead. And so on. The destruction of Dresden was represented by a vertical band of orange cross-hatching, and all the lines that were still alive passed through it, came out the other side.

Now – I don’t know if that description makes any sense to you, but it sent off massive amounts of light bulbs in my head. Holy crow, I thought. That makes so much sense! I could see at one whack where all the major characters are, where they fall in and out of the story, who crosses into the climactic conflicts, and so on. I could totally do this.

And when I did the serious storyboarding for Castle 8, that’s just what I did. I taped together several sheets of typing paper end to end – fourteen feet of it – and spent five solid days during a January ice storm laying out my Dresdens and colored lines and battlefields.

The result looked like this:

"The beginning of the story." First half of the behemoth 14 foot timeline, spread across 

my desperately-needs-vacuuming floor. This is how I spent the five days I was stuck 

at home during the ice storm of early 2011.

"All that middle part, which was the middle." What you see here has 

changed somewhat now; I’ve dropped some characters and shifted the timeline. 

That happens when you write, at least to a point. 

"And the other end was the end." The other end of the 14 foot timeline. The broad yellow stripe 

indicates the huge climactic scene of the series. I gave myself another foot 

or so of space afterward, to allow for adequately handling the denouement of the tale.

Some of the timeline has changed, but most of it is still structurally sound. I refer to it frequently, because this shows me at one glance where each character is in relation to the major events happening in my tale. Moreover, because my series will become increasingly complex in the overlap of characters’ lives, I will refer to it still more as the tale progresses. My fourteen foot timeline may look like overkill, but for me – it’s a lifesaver.

LICORICE TIMELINE

So you’ve got your Vonnegut Timeline ready (or we’re pretending that you have). Now you realize that even within the overall harp of colored lifelines, there are some finer points that need their own timeline. Maybe there is a very busy three month period in your tale where a lot is going on – OR maybe your story doesn’t cross years (like mine), but a series of weeks, and a narrower range of time-line-ing is in order.

That’s where laying out a licorice timeline will help.

An incomplete licorice timeline. With very short, squat licorice strips. 

(But not quite a jellybean timeline, even so.)

I call it a “licorice” timeline because it looks like someone’s laid out those long, thin rectangular strands of Twizzlers and given them funny labels, and took away the color. I did a licorice timeline for a nine month stretch of Castle 8, and while it’s not completely finished (or accurate), the current format still helps me understand the necessary structure of those nine important months in my characters' lives.

JELLYBEAN TIMELINE

But what if you need to break events down even further? What if there are a few days in your narrative where everything is happening at once, and in several different places?

That’s where a jellybean timeline will help. It works essentially like the licorice timeline, but with shorter, fatter dollops of information on a Vonnegut trajectory. I recently had to create a jellybean timeline to get a better grasp of the opening five days of my story, and the result was this:

 See the cute little jellybean shapes? Or maybe they're more like gumdrops. 

But "gumdrop" doesn't quite catch the rhythm of the "jellybean, licorice, Vonnegut, line" jingle. 

OTHER THINGS TO REMEMBER ABOUT STORY TIMELINES:

·      I am severely OCD when it comes to timelines. Yours doesn’t need to be so neat, or so anal-retentive.

·      Not all of these timeline types will apply to your story. Most of you will need only one or two, and which ones you need may vary, depending on the project.

·      It’s always advisable to do the standard line timeline at least, just so you know where your major events fall, and what those major events are.

·      EXPERIMENT. I’m sure there’s another way of handing the timing aspect of things that I haven’t covered here. Use what works right for you.

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If you missed the earlier Visual Storyboarding episodes, you can follow the following links to catch up:

     PART ONE: Storyboarding vs Mere Plotting

     PART TWO: Building on Your Hook

     PART THREE: Chasing Down the Details

Questions? Comments? Let me know in the comment section below!

Honeymoon = GONE

This week has been extremely difficult, writing-wise. Feeling I am so close to the brink of really nailing Castle 8 rewrites in a way that I think will shine through with my original vision, and yet feeling so inadequate in making it actually happen.

Also, I am tired. Though most of my jobs have stopped for the summer, they've only been replaced with summer employment (bills must be paid in June and July, after all), which means now instead of having three jobs, I have FOUR.

But that's not the real reason for my fatigue, believe or not. Most of my weariness has stemmed from my writing, which - up to this point - I would have told you was pretty much impossible.

I had coffeehouse meetings with four different writers this week, and I detected the same fatigue in two of those four writers. At a couple times the conversation actually lagged as we just stared at each other wearily across the polished wood table, wondering what to say next.

The meetings were entirely worth it, of course - they always are. But the truth of the thing was underscored for me: the Writing Honeymoon is officially over. For me and, I think, a couple of my writer friends.

photo source

The more strained of those two bah-humbug meetings happened this afternoon; or at least, that's how the meeting started. Fortunately, we did not give up on our writing talk, or the writing date, either. We stuck around another hour after the collective depression over our projects set in, and bought another cup of coffee. And talked some more. Compared more notes. Asked more open-ended-you-couldn't-possibly-answer-this questions.

Eventually, remarkably, a "eureka" moment came - not for me, but for my friend. By the end of the session, her enthusiasm had penetrated my funk. I wasn't feeling nearly so down, but I was still feeling tired. But the kind of tired that keeps on writing.

In exchange, my friend gave me something hard to think about concerning Castle 8. So hard that it took me all evening wrestling with it to admit that she was right: One of my major characters had to go.

Nor was she the first one to point it out. Two other beta-readers whose opinion I value highly had said the same thing. I've spent the last six months trying to argue them down, explain to them how that was dead wrong. My character was witty, charming, great with a comeback, handsome, a lover of music and poetry, and a redhead goshdarnit!! So of course he's necessary!

But wit and beauty and a love of beautiful things does not a necessary character make. I sat down and considered the hard question: What would this story look like without my pet character?

The hard-to-swallow answer: A lot tighter. Much more driven. Less prone to wandering. It eliminates several plot detours. Action goes up. WAY up. Nostalgic detours drop to zilch.

Ugly truth: I eliminate my pet, and my manuscript reaps amazing benefits. In all quadrants.

I admit I cried, a little. That's a definite a first for me. I always thought stories about writers who cried over their characters were nutzo. Now I'm one of the lunatics, I guess.

This will take a few days at least for me to get over. Won't lie about that. But after an hour of eliminating The Pet from my narrative - only an hour; he was in woefully few parts once I sat down and really looked at it - I have to admit that my narrative is already healthier, in many ways.

But you'll forgive me, I trust, if I drown my sorrows in a couple days of raging jigpunk music. Or frozen yogurt. Or maybe a good book that will remind me that I am not the first writer to realize that the Writing Honeymoon was over.....and write through it anyway.

Anyone else ever been there?

Fog and Water

Photo Source

Shortly after New Year's my hometown experienced some unseasonably warm, humid weather for January (even for Georgia). It poured rivers all day, with hardly a letup. Late in the afternoon, I made a quick run to the store, and by the time I finished the world had grown dark outside.

As I approached the exit doors I blinked my eyes, and did a double take. I thought I was seeing an odd reflection back through the sliding glass doors - but no; the world really had changed that drastically in only half an hour. What had been a damp, clear, break-between-the-clouds world when I went in had been replaced by the thickest, densest, most ghostly fog I had ever seen. Standing on the sidewalk, I could not even see the opposite side of the street.

The drive home that night was interesting, to say the least. Though I was only five miles from home, it was a winding, corkscrew five miles - alongside vast acres of rolling pastureland, down into marshy hollows, round hairpin curves and over one lane bridges. I traced the route from memory, because I could not see anything except the encroaching fog, and the eerie wells of light that punctured the mist above me. More unsettling was to see the full moon rising in a clear night sky, high above the fog embankment. Beyond the highest trees, painted like a colored wash above the goblin-gray sea of restless fog, was a band of starry sky with the moon at its heart, hung like an enormous pearl on a satin ribbon. Below, every mist-bound tree cut an imposing figure, marching out of the vagueness with the dark, stern presence of a giant at large. The last bands of sunset cut through the topmost coils of vapor, picking out the bare crowns of oak trees like the many-pronged horns of a mystical creature.

I drove about ten miles an hour all the way home, alternately watching the shrouded road before me and gaping at the glory-streaked netherworld pressing around me - above and below, near and beyond. I was full of wonder at the sight; and yet one persistent thought kept running through my mind:  This is why people believe in fairies.

Photo Source

It is small wonder why, in every high school and college literature class, teachers burden their students with lectures on symbolism and motifs. There is, after all, good reason for impressing something such as, say, the water symbol on students of western literature. In nearly every classic tome water generally represents, on the surface at least, memory. This is why we can study Galadriel's mirror from Lord of the Rings, the great river (the Mississippi) at the heart of Huck Finn, or that disastrous sheet of ice in Ethan Frome and pull from each a family resemblance, so to speak, in what those scenes communicate. Individually, the water symbol adds extra layers of peculiar meaning to the plot at large. Yet despite the disparate nature of their respective tales, Lord of the Rings, Huck Finn and Ethan Frome all contain in the water symbol the impress of memory. Events long gone that cannot be recovered, for good or ill - that is the common truth that resonates with the reader.

Fog is another such symbol. Mystery, of course, is the essence of its nature, its allure, and its danger. It is a living shroud for the natural world, a ghostly harbinger of death and portents, that rises and abates when least expected. It confuses the most level-headed guides, makes familiar terrain as foreign as a distant planet, and brings doubt where certainty once prevailed. Symbolically and in reality, fog is about obscuring the truth, covering with doubt, and taking what we thought we knew and transforming it into the unknowable and threatening.

I know several writers who eschew using "traditional" symbolism. It was quite the fad for a while to take the established symbols and motifs from classic literature and turn them all on their ear. In some circles, it is still fashionable.

Yet I maintain that we should not shy away from established symbols in our writing. True, we don't want to be cliche --- that is the fear of every writer, I think, whether published or no. But if we dismiss all of the most basic symbols that appeal to our innate senses as humans, then we risk losing that subtle anchorage every writer needs in order to give texture and familiarity to their work. Appealing to the familiar and sympathetic in your readers goes beyond merely crafting believable characters with identifiable problems; it extends even to the ordinary symbols that, like fog, chase them through their days and twist the details of familiar life into new complexities, thus layering substance with urgency, and drawing your reader yet farther into your world.