What an Engineer Taught Me About Story Building
How to build a structure.
Plan the structure. Test the soil, dig a foundation, assign the appropriate foundation, build it from the bottom up and make sure what you’re using on the bottom contributes to the top. Close it in, get it watertight and add the details. If you can incorporate artistic flair, make it part of the whole, don’t just stick it on for flourish.
I usually sit down and write in a flurry, knowing where I want to end up, and instinctively get to the end. This might work on a blog article, an interview, even a long-form personal essay. But a book? Nope.
Pantsing (flying by the seat of your pants) is not something my brain can sustain. Sure I’ll come along and find surprises along the way but I can’t let my characters completely take the reins. I did that and am on the third rewrite of such a disaster. In fact I might overplay next time I sit down to write something over 30,000 words.
Maybe it gets easier with time, but for a newbie novel writer, nope. Funny cause I could tell you the order of operations in putting a building together no problem. It’s obvious to me - bottom up, really, we all know the metaphor of building a good foundation. The foundation being the outline in the book - Act 1, 2, 3, in that order - get it right before you start messing with it.
I need to build a book blueprint before I start the thing. My materials - characters, setting, plot - need to be on order before I put them to work. Or I don’t really know what I’m working with.
My partner (an engineer) and I sat down to write essays together for a class. I sat there, had a vague bubble of an idea, wrote it out in a vomit of typing, and then I was ready to edit.
I looked over at his page, he was finishing his paragraph by paragraph layout. He linked one to the next and developed his idea through the piece. But he hadn’t even started to write yet! I went back and read through mine.
I had a general meandering pathway but it needed the proper beginning, middle, and end. I sat to work editing. I was copying and pasting paragraphs around, adding and subtracting, really playing in the mud of my piece.
Methodically, he wrote one paragraph then the next then the next.
Being the ever-impatient person that I am, I was astonished. Wasn’t he dying to get it done? I was. I thought I was done but it was only a first draft. I played and edited and moved and rewrote.
The comments in our workshop. Mine: get description but take us on a predictable route. His: great structure.
We both got to a finished piece but I felt chaotic. And now that I’m taking on larger works I’m remembering this, and telling myself to slow down and make a plan.
