Something I often visualize, at the back of my mind, and each time I approach the blank page, is a picture of the world as a flat plane, sitting on top of four elephants, astride the shell of a giant turtle. Why? you may ask. Because of something that Mary Shelley, the 18th century author of the quintessential gothic horror novel Frankenstein, was once quoted as saying:
Everything must have a beginning, to speak in the Sanchean phrase; and that beginning must be linked to something that went before. The Hindus gave the world an elephant to support it, but they make the elephant stand upon a tortoise.
Like the elephants astride the turtle, the process of writing – putting one word painstakingly after another – creates worlds, fleshing them out, making them all the more tangible, offering more and more realism with each successive piece of description. Detail upon detail. What comes before giving credibility to its adjunct.
Scheherazade, the principal character and story teller of One Thousand and One Nights fame, for example, would finish a story and then begin a second, more exciting tale, each night, so that the King would continue to spare her life.
Red Smith, the Pulitzer Prize winning American sports writer, said, “Writing is very much like bricklaying. You learn to put one brick on top of another and spread the mortar so thick.”
And, you perhaps may be familiar with the popular campfire-side children’s game of collectively telling stories, each boy and girl contributing, a few twists and turns. Stephen King in his novel Misery referred to the game as “Can You?” as in “Can you finish the story?”
It is common writerly vernacular to talk about Architects versus Gardeners, Plotters versus Pantsers – those that construct Plots, perhaps arriving at their stories conclusion before setting out; and Pantsers who fly by the proverbial seat of their pants.
If the above concept shows us anything, it is that there is more than one way to write a story: a cumulative approach to story writing. And, those of us who are plotters would do well to experiment, and from time-to-time think of Mary Shelley’s Elephants.
