Overall Format - Ladder
Chapter 8 of 'Ladder' just posted to TPP:
Chapter 8
and this means I can waffle on about the format of the story without spoiling anything.
It’s time for more swotty over-thinking. Another question a few readers have about ‘Ladder’ is, “What does she mean by ‘acts’ and being influenced by drama?”
Short answer - oops, there is no short answer.
Hmm, when I said drama, it’s hard for me to tell how much I was influenced by actual plays and how much I was influenced by one-hour TV shows (but, strangely, not films).
What happened initially was I wrote the first six chapters. I made the decision for them to be split into six chapters instead of three or one based on issues discussed in my post on the chapter format. I then thought about where I wanted the story to go next and realized I wanted it to jump two months in time to the beginning of term at Hogwarts. So, I envisioned the next set of chapters, and thought about keeping them to six to make another block. Finally, liking threes, I decided I’d finish the story off with a concluding set of six chapters. I thought about it and realized this mimicked the format of a three-act play.
I began writing the second block of chapters and hit a snag. I wanted to show that over the previous two months since the ladder incident that problems had cropped up in both relationships. Doing it after the fact was leading to more exposition than I wanted. So I stopped and came up with the idea of inserting an interlude chapter between the first and second act. This would allow me to ‘show’ what was happening in the relationships instead of ‘telling’ about it (I could have used flashbacks, but they would have been too long). Chapter 7 was born, and I realized I wanted to do something similar with Chapter 14. Chapter 21 will function as an epilogue, but have a similar format to the interlude chapters.
So the overall layout of ‘Ladder’ is that of a three-act play with two interludes and an epilogue - 21 chapters total.
How does the format of TV shows fit into all of this? The six chapter acts feel like a long TV show to me, with the breaks between chapters the equivalent of commercial breaks. The use of a traditional cliffhanger - where you stop right in the middle of the action or right after a teasing reveal - is used constantly on Veronica Mars, for example (and this also serves to underline the plot-driven, private detective focus of the show). This type of cliffhanger leaves the watcher desperate to find out what happens next. Other shows use a slightly different type of hook at the end of a scene. Gilmore Girls tends to wrap up a scene with partial resolution, but with enough questions raised that you want to keep watching (reinforcing that it’s a more character-driven show). I think I ended the first two chapters of ‘Ladder’ with a traditional cliffhanger - the better to hook people (though it wasn’t thought out at the time). Subsequent chapters use partial cliffhangers - the scenes function as a whole in and of themselves, but hopefully leave you still wanting to know what happens next. The ending of chapters five and six also try to wrap up the first act.
Why do I feel I take my cue on how to do cliffhangers from TV? After all, fiction used them long before TV existed. First off, they’re more obvious in TV because a good one leaves you anxious for an entire week. In novels, you just flip the page. (Mainstream publishing used to offer novels as serials - most of Dickens’s work came out chapter by chapter in magazine/newspapers - but not anymore.) Secondly, TV taught me the importance of creating a final sentence/moment that hopefully stands apart and resonates in the mind of the reader. I’ve attempted to do this for chapters 1, 2, 5, and 6; I am trying to continue to do it for a majority of chapters as ‘Ladder’ progresses.
[Some of this I’ve picked up by watching a few well-written shows for years (e.g.: Buffy, Gilmore Girls, and Veronica Mars - whether you like these shows or not, their writing is critically acclaimed for a reason). But I’ve also tried to keep up with the tips script writers have to offer, the best and most detailed of which are provided by Jane Espenson (I’ve added a link to her blog on the front page of my lj). Her specialty is comedy, so she usually blogs on how to write jokes, but other things, such as how to break a scene, are also discussed. She’s written for Buffy, Gilmore Girls, Firefly, and Battlestar Galactica to name a few. Going through her blog is amazingly informative.]
Having written all of this, I also realize that my attempt to be clever with structure also constrains the story in some ways. I’m currently waffling between the three acts described above or a more drawn-out ending that runs to four acts. Each has its appeal. It also means that the optimal ending for the story may have been something in between 21 and 27 chapters. Oh, well.
Chapter 8
and this means I can waffle on about the format of the story without spoiling anything.
It’s time for more swotty over-thinking. Another question a few readers have about ‘Ladder’ is, “What does she mean by ‘acts’ and being influenced by drama?”
Short answer - oops, there is no short answer.
Hmm, when I said drama, it’s hard for me to tell how much I was influenced by actual plays and how much I was influenced by one-hour TV shows (but, strangely, not films).
What happened initially was I wrote the first six chapters. I made the decision for them to be split into six chapters instead of three or one based on issues discussed in my post on the chapter format. I then thought about where I wanted the story to go next and realized I wanted it to jump two months in time to the beginning of term at Hogwarts. So, I envisioned the next set of chapters, and thought about keeping them to six to make another block. Finally, liking threes, I decided I’d finish the story off with a concluding set of six chapters. I thought about it and realized this mimicked the format of a three-act play.
I began writing the second block of chapters and hit a snag. I wanted to show that over the previous two months since the ladder incident that problems had cropped up in both relationships. Doing it after the fact was leading to more exposition than I wanted. So I stopped and came up with the idea of inserting an interlude chapter between the first and second act. This would allow me to ‘show’ what was happening in the relationships instead of ‘telling’ about it (I could have used flashbacks, but they would have been too long). Chapter 7 was born, and I realized I wanted to do something similar with Chapter 14. Chapter 21 will function as an epilogue, but have a similar format to the interlude chapters.
So the overall layout of ‘Ladder’ is that of a three-act play with two interludes and an epilogue - 21 chapters total.
How does the format of TV shows fit into all of this? The six chapter acts feel like a long TV show to me, with the breaks between chapters the equivalent of commercial breaks. The use of a traditional cliffhanger - where you stop right in the middle of the action or right after a teasing reveal - is used constantly on Veronica Mars, for example (and this also serves to underline the plot-driven, private detective focus of the show). This type of cliffhanger leaves the watcher desperate to find out what happens next. Other shows use a slightly different type of hook at the end of a scene. Gilmore Girls tends to wrap up a scene with partial resolution, but with enough questions raised that you want to keep watching (reinforcing that it’s a more character-driven show). I think I ended the first two chapters of ‘Ladder’ with a traditional cliffhanger - the better to hook people (though it wasn’t thought out at the time). Subsequent chapters use partial cliffhangers - the scenes function as a whole in and of themselves, but hopefully leave you still wanting to know what happens next. The ending of chapters five and six also try to wrap up the first act.
Why do I feel I take my cue on how to do cliffhangers from TV? After all, fiction used them long before TV existed. First off, they’re more obvious in TV because a good one leaves you anxious for an entire week. In novels, you just flip the page. (Mainstream publishing used to offer novels as serials - most of Dickens’s work came out chapter by chapter in magazine/newspapers - but not anymore.) Secondly, TV taught me the importance of creating a final sentence/moment that hopefully stands apart and resonates in the mind of the reader. I’ve attempted to do this for chapters 1, 2, 5, and 6; I am trying to continue to do it for a majority of chapters as ‘Ladder’ progresses.
[Some of this I’ve picked up by watching a few well-written shows for years (e.g.: Buffy, Gilmore Girls, and Veronica Mars - whether you like these shows or not, their writing is critically acclaimed for a reason). But I’ve also tried to keep up with the tips script writers have to offer, the best and most detailed of which are provided by Jane Espenson (I’ve added a link to her blog on the front page of my lj). Her specialty is comedy, so she usually blogs on how to write jokes, but other things, such as how to break a scene, are also discussed. She’s written for Buffy, Gilmore Girls, Firefly, and Battlestar Galactica to name a few. Going through her blog is amazingly informative.]
Having written all of this, I also realize that my attempt to be clever with structure also constrains the story in some ways. I’m currently waffling between the three acts described above or a more drawn-out ending that runs to four acts. Each has its appeal. It also means that the optimal ending for the story may have been something in between 21 and 27 chapters. Oh, well.