Stressed, unstressed: Not all syllables are the same. My writing assistants model the concept.
Knowing how to work with scansion, whew, rocket fuel! Not all but many of the following examples are taken from Paul Fussell’s Poetic Meter & Poetic Form and John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction. The former is fairly technical, but serious fiction writers will find the chapter on scansion worth the price of the book. As for The Art of Fiction, the bit on scansion is an itsy bitsy bit, however, I consider Gardner required reading for any aspiring fiction writer. I read The Art of Fiction so many times that my copy fell to pieces and I had to buy another. Nonetheless, over the years, many of my writing students have told me, and oftentimes bitterly, that they found Gardner’s tone so arrogant as to induce a writing block! So you have that caveat. (But if Gardner’s arrogant tone is all it takes to induce a writing block…. hmmm… that will be another post.)
Scansion = representation of poetic rhythms by visual symbols ̆ = unstressed syllable / = stressed syllable
Because scansion marks are difficult to insert in this program, where we would expect to find a “/” above a stressed syllable, I have underlined that syllable instead and left the unstressed syllables unmarked.
Favors to none, to all she smiles extends; Oft she rejects, but never once offends.
If this is wigging you out already, trust me, there’s nothing too complicated about this. As you read a line aloud, just notice which syllables naturally sound a little stronger and maybe a little louder? Those are your stressed syllables. Everything else, those would be unstressed. And yes, sometimes some syllables can be stressed or unstressed depending on how you choose to read it. There are gray areas aplenty. La de da.
To slow down, make it heavy:
For this, following Fussell, you’ll want “a succession of stressed syllables without the expected intervening unstressed syllables” – for example:
When Ajax strives some rock’svastweight to throw The line too labours, and thewordsmoveslow
To go fast, lightly, and/or easily:
Here what works, says Fussell, is “a succession of unstressed syllables without the intervening stressed syllables” – for example:
Ripple on the surface of the water – were salmon passing under – different from the ripples caused by breezes – Gary Snyder “Ripples on the Surface”
Mirror the rhythm:
“all the waves of the billows of the sea” — H Melville, Moby Dick
To show something sudden / different / new:
Fussell: “an unanticipated reversal in rhythm”– for example:
The pig thrashed and squealed, then, panting, trembling, lay helpless. –John Gardner, The Art of Fiction
No scansion marks on the following. Try reading these aloud, listening carefully for for rhythms and the changes in rhythm– they will be obvious to your ear.
…the roller coaster’s track dips and curves like a barn swallow. Just now, a train full of flushed riders climbs, swerves, tilts on its side, then plunges on the rail’s fixed flight through the park… –Lynda McDonnell, “Veblen and the Mall of America”
I could not bear upper Madison Avenue on weekday mornings… because I would see women walking Yorkshire terriers and shopping at Gristede’s, and some Veblenesque gorge would rise in my throat. –Joan Didion, “Goodbye to All That”
Gorge! Well!
To conclude, here is an old poem with especially clear and energetic rhythms. Note the stressed and unstressed syllables:
THE FAIRIES by William Allingham W.B. Yeats, ed., Fairy & Folk Tales of Ireland
Up the airy mountain Down the rushy glen We daren’t go a-hunting For fear of little men; Wee folk, good folk, Trooping all together; Green jacket, red cap And white owl’s feather!
As you revise the draft of your short story or novel, and especially as you put your eye on crucial descriptions and/or actions, or lines of dialogue, see if by marking the stressed and unstressed syllables, you can identify where the rhythms work well and where your text might be rearranged or rewritten to make the rhythms more apt, which is to say, more congruent with what you mean to show, and thereby more vivid for your reader.
As of this year, my posts for the second Monday of the month are dedicated to my workshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing.
As those of you who follow this blog well know, I am work on a book of creative nonfiction about Far West Texas, a subject distant indeed from children’s literature. But Russell Hoban’s 1964 classic, Bread and Jam for Frances, is bright in my mind because in the recent days of my mother’s final illness, I read it to her several times.
Bread and Jam for Frances was a great favorite of ours, a book my mother read to me when I was learning to read in the early 1960s. She always appreciated children’s books, and often gave copies of her favorites as gifts. Other favorites of hers included DuBose Heyward’s The Country Bunny and the Little Golden Shoes; Margaret Wise’s The Little Fur Family; anything and everything by Beatrix Potter; and many other titles about in Hoban’s series about Frances the badger and her little sister Gloria.
From 1939… still selling faster than little bunnies can hop…
In her last days my mother was unable to do more
than listen to TV news– and it pained me to sit in that room awash with
reports of shootings, bombings, crashes, the latest tweets from POTUS,
commercials for drugs and those breathlessly chirpy recitations of ghastly side
effects, and even such absurd “news” stories as– this one still
makes me chuckle– “Robotic Dinosaur on Fire!”* So I asked my mom if,
instead, I could read to her from some of her favorite children’s books and she
said, delightedly, yes.
*(Robotic Dinosaur on Fire!-– That’s the
title of my next book of poetry.)
What brings me to mention Bread and Jam for
Frances here is that, as I appreciated for the first time, the plot is at
once simple and unusually elegant.
GROKKING PLOT
No matter whether one is writing an adult
thriller, a romance novel, or a literary tour-de-force of an historical epic,
plot is something a writer needs to grok, before writing, during drafting, and
in the editing process. Where to go, what to cut? For many writers, particularly
those working on a first novel, plot can seem more difficult to wrestle down
than a wigged-out octupus.
The best and most complete craftmans’ treatment
of plot that I have found to date is in Robert McKee’s Story,
a book aimed at screenwriters, but almost every one of his yummy
nuggets applies to novels as well. That said, it’s a big, fat, doorstopper of a
crunchily crunchwich-with-garlic- sweetpotatoes-on-the-side kind of book, not
the most appropriate for a one day workshop, as I prefer to teach them.
These three and many more recommended books on craft are listed on my workshop page.
Gardner’s On the Art of Fiction is the
best introductory book on craft I know– over the past 30-odd years I have read
it and reread it more times than I can count (and bought new copies when the
old ones fell to pieces). However, on many an occasion, before I learned to
first give ’em ye olde cold fish of a caveat, the more sensitive among my
students would complain bitterly about Gardner’s arrogant tone. And to those of
you not in my workshop but who who have read and loathed Gardner, I say unto
you: Buck up, kiddos, or consider that Gardner did you a favor so you can quit
now because the literary world, like the whole big wide rest of it, makes
snowflakes sweat blood! Then flash-fries ’em to a crisp! Anyway, Gardner died
in a motorcycle accident years ago so you’re unlikely to ruffle his feathers
with your cranky review on Goodreads– which only makes you sound like a
flaming snowflake. SSSSsssss.
Seriously, have a laugh, shake off Gardner’s tone
like the peacocking silliness that it is; if you want to understand the art of
fiction, I urge you to read what he has to say. (Also, by the way, you can
ignore the subtitle, Notes on Craft for Young Writers. It’s for anyone
writing fiction, at any age.)
Of course, in a workshop it is necessary to talk about plot in reference to one or more specific novels. But one of the gnarliest challenges for a workshop is that reading a novel requires many hours– no time for that in a one day format– and even the most well-read writers may not have read the same books, nor share the same taste. Perhaps we have all read Edith Wharton, but for you it was Ethan Fromm, for me, The Custom of the Country. Willa Cather? Perhaps you read My Antonia and I read Death Comes for the Archbishop. And, Lord knows, there are perfectly intelligent and talented workshop students who have not heard of either Cather or Wharton. Lord also knows that, much as we may recommend our favorite novels to each other, even we roaringly avid readers may work but a fraction of the way down our towering to-read piles.
Edith Wharton and Willa Cather, masters of American literature– and plot. My uberly-uber faves. In an ideal workshop I would dissect the plot in any one or or more of their novels (I should like to think that these ladies would have been charmed by Bread and Jam.)
What a fine thing then to have found a little
book, so short and sweet, with such an expertly wrought plot as Bread and
Jam for Frances.
But I cannot bring myself to do taxidermy, that is to say, a synopsis. For those of you looking to learn about plot (and/or find a worthy children’s book as a gift for your favorite young reader), may I suggest that you buy a copy of Bread and Jam for Frances, then read it, which won’t take you more than about 10 to fifteen minutes. Then return here, just below the ampersand.
~ & ~
Bread and Jam through the FICHTEAN CURVE
Think of this as a triangle (curvy if you wish)
where your story travels, episode-of-conflict by episode -of-conflict, up the
hypotenuse to the big pointy CLIMAX. Then, with your denouement– pronounced,
raising your nose oh so slightly, day-noo-mahn— slidey-slide down
to…The End!
Episode o’ conflict: At breakfast Frances does
not want an egg; she only wants bread and jam.
E o’ c: She admits she traded yesterday’s chicken
salad sandwich for bread and jam
E o’ c: At lunch she offers to trade her bread and
jam for a sandwich, is refused
E o’ c: At snack time her mother gives her not a
special snack but bread and jam
E o’ c: For dinner there are veal cutlets but
Frances gets… bread and jam
Climax: At the next dinner Frances cries and asks
for spaghetti and meatballs!
Denouement: For lunch the next day Frances enjoys
a lunch of a lobster salad sandwich and much more. She agrees with her friend
Albert that it is good to eat many different things.
Bread and Jam
through Syd Field’s THREE ACT PARADIGM
I SET UP Breakfast at home: Frances does not want her egg, only bread and jam. She admits she traded yesterday’s lunch of a chicken salad sandwich for bread and jam
Plot point (what takes us to Act II): It’s time
for Frances to go to school
II CONFRONTATION Lunch with Albert, Albert has a nice lunch while Frances has only bread and jam.
Snack time, it’s still bread and jam.
Dinner, still bread and jam.
Dinner again, bread and jam
Plot point (what takes us to Act III): Frances cries
and asks for meatballs and spaghetti
III RESOLUTION Frances enjoys her meatballs and spaghetti
The next day, Frances opens her lunch box to find
a very nice lunch with a lobster salad sandwich and, with her friend Albert,
discusses how nice it is to eat many things
#
Perchance this sounds silly. Am I saying that we
can compare the simple little plot in Bread and Jam for Frances with
that of such literary heavyweights as say, The Custom of the Country? Death
Comes for the Archbishop? Or, for that matter, The Great Gatsby? Yes,
dear writerly readers, that is what I am saying– and moreover, that because
the plot of Bread and Jam for Frances is so compact and simple, it is
easier to see. And having seen it so clearly, you should then be better able to
see plot in your own work.
What does your plot look like through the
paradigm of the Fichtean curve? And of the three-acts?
Now your wigged-out octopus just might shed a few limbs, or at least, braid them together and sit up nicely and accept a cup of tea– and in between sips, calmly inform you, in his bubbly French accent, what’s to happen next. (Never a dull moment writing fiction.)
“What’s in the Kitchen Drawer?” This is a vocabulary expanding exercise— not about using new words, but rather words you already know but seldom use. List the objects in your kitchen drawer(s)— from the spatula to the grapefruit knife to the soup ladle.
Ellen Prentiss Campbell writes: “Love those books, and your essay! Hoban was featured in a display at Beinecke at Yale. I often think of Frances’s difficult experience with Thelma, the bad friend, who trades for her tea set.”
