STORY

Ask myself---WHERE is the story? Where do I see stories?

Plotting

Today I continued to struggle with plot. My original plan, devised this morning, was that Robert Davis's day would unfold in short snippets chronologically throughout the novel. His backstory would form the meat around those snippets and inform the snippets. His problem and then solution or character arc would reveal itself over the course of the day. However, this just wasn't working. I was not compelled by his character arc, which in short, was to have him recognize that his son had a different dream for the son's life than his dream for his son. I don't know what it's like to be a father. I don't know what it's like to wrestle with that --- though I could have taken the imaginative leap.
I think that truly moved me to shift gears though was that if the day was about his character arc, it would take the story out of the hands of my adolescent great-grandmother (whose hands I originally intended the story to be in) and into the hands of an old man, and move the novel from a middle grade novel to an adult novel. This story originally compelled me because it was about a girl going after her dreams to go to college at a time when few women pursued higher education. It wasn't about a girl's recognition that she had to claim her own adventure and follow her own dreams. Just as her grandfather did, her father could not … and she had to figure out what that dream was … I'm still sorting through the symbolism of the burning tower. It is not clear to me. Originally, I had her recognizing that the tower was ego and when built to ego, would burn. But I have discovered this tower wasn't about ego to her grandfather. It represented his hard work coming to the land. So what realization will she have with it burning down. And what does it's burning down symbolize? This is a new struggle I will encounter, but one for another day. I've sunk time into this story, and now, I read Louise Penny's A Fatal Grace, and thank God for other writers to read.
I ordered The Plot Whisperer to help me learn how to plot. Looking forward to it arriving!

gigg~

Childbirth in 1854

I read this article about it:

Bogdan, Janet. “Care or Cure? Childbirth Practices in Nineteenth Century America.” Feminist Studies, vol. 4, no. 2, 1978, pp. 92–99. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3177452.

Which led me to:

Dewees, A Compendious System of Midwifery

On wiriting today - 2.27.2019

I've spent about two hours here at Sweet Donkey working on my novel. It's been work. I've had some thinking, incubating time -- not a lot of output but thinking through some questions I have about the novel.

First, one thing I needed to think through was how to add tension and a sense of urgency to the novel. I described the novel to some friendly strangers on vacation last week, and I bored myself telling them the story.

I realized I was bored with my story. So I needed to do the work of finding the emotional heart of the story. And the fire or nucleus of the story, is the fire itself. The burning down of that silo still calls me as its emotional center.

Why? The tower at first, when anchored in my own constellation, represented ego. And the burning of the fire represents the burning of the ego, and the birth of the soul. But, here is the question. Is that what the tower represents for Robert Davis, my protagonist? And is the metaphor as powerful if it's not about the burning of ego but the burning/death of one man's dream for his life, and the birth of his son's dream for his life. Does the burning of the silo also represent the death of one man's dream for his son's life and his role orchestrating the son's dream, and the birth of his new understanding of his son's life and his role in it?

Since Robert experiences the fire at the end of his life, and this story is Robert's story, it now moves the work out of the territory of the middle grade or young adult novel. My protagonist is neither middle grade or young adult. Pickles. I am in a writer's group where we write and critique children's through young adult work. So, this makes it a little tricky submitting this manuscript to my co-writers. But in truth, I thought this story was going to be about Marjorie when I first started writing it. And it was going to be about her deciding to go to college. But the novel took a new direction and Robert's voice came to the fore.

I am submitting a manuscript where the protagonist is an old man to a children's writer's group. The irony. I hope they take mercy on me and have some understanding.

What I think I will do is try to weave in the day of the fire through the novel. Through that day, Robert will come to an understanding, while through the years, the readers will come to an understanding of Robert and the significance of that day. Perhaps.

I find it rather nonsensical and mysterious that this has turned into a father/son story. What do I know about being a father or being a son? I know what it is like to be a child. And I have a father. But the gendered nature of that relationship is not something I have experienced as the participant in the relationship. So … I will have to make some imaginative leaps and remember that my protagonist's voice is going to be gendered … it will be in that male gender binary, and to be aware of how men, rather than women, communicate and express themselves, and some of their attitudes toward goals, self-fulfillment, fatherhood, sons. And this is not at all what I thought I'd be writing about, fyi!

Some father-son relationships to explore in film and story:

Beautiful Boy

The Kid (Charlie Chaplin)

Steamboat Bill Jr.

The Champ

I Was Born, But...

It's a Wonderful Life

Bicycle Thieves

Shane

To Kill a Mockingbird

The Godfather

Kramer vs. Kramer

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Paris, Texas

In the Name of the Father

Life is Beautiful

Road to Perdition

Big Fish

There Will Be Blood

http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2015/the-25-best-movies-about-father-son-relationships/2/



Some father-son relationships in the Bible....

um God and Jesus

Abraham and Isaac

Noah and

Moses and

Adam … and Cain and Abel

Jacob and Joseph

David and Solomon

Joseph and Jesus

Verbs

rousing
rend

The Welsh in America: Letter's from Immigrants

It has a green cover. Atop the cover is the Welsh dragon. And it is now mine to read. Letters written by Welsh immigrants in the 1800s. A treasure trove for my novel.

Costs of Items
p.

Crossing the Atlantic

Civil War

Character Arcs

So: character arcs. Taking a character and moving them from vantage point to another vantage point. How is the character seeing things differently at the end of the story?

Character Arcs in Literature

Pip/Great Expectations
Beginning vantage point
Ending vantage point
How he got there.