Image: We face a deserted platform at the Freiburg railway station. At the very bottom, we see gravel and part of the railway track. Behind the station, there’s a row of eclectic houses with tall windows, through which someone may be observing us.
In April, when I was knee-deep in murder mystery woes, I woke up one morning and discovered I had accidentally created a plot paradox. It looked something like this:
A woman (who is clearly alive) confronts her husband, believing that he has framed her young nephew. A few pages before, her nephew was arrested on charges of murdering her.
Since ghosts don’t exist in this world, I fixed the timeline, wrote a draft, and broke it again. These days I’m mostly looking for spare parts and hammers to fix the mess I made in the first draft. Ah the joys of writing.
Of course, it’s not enough to have a well-behaved chronology. See here's a thing that happens in novels. You have a 'set up' which introduces the story elements, and then you have the 'pay off', where you get the ending of the arc, the conclusion, the fun part.
So early on in This is How You Lose the Time War, one of the characters mentions something that happened in her childhood, and partly because this is a book about time-travelling, it is foreshadowed that the narrative will return to this event and explain some secrets. And as a reader, I noticed this, and began to anticipate the promised payoff (it was very very cool).
Anyway, I bring this is up because I want to make a point about life, which is really a kind of book*. I mean, it’s not literally a book (especially in the way you cannot flip to the last page to peek at the ending), but life is peculiarly like a book in the sense that things always lead to other things.
Sophie Madeline Dess replied to my fan mail because I sent her fan mail. I got my Pol Sci LOA this summer because I applied to be journal sub-editor back in 2017. You have to write a set-up to make the pay-off meaningful. You have to plant seeds before you can harvest, which is like the most obvious thing I could say, but there it is.
This is not to say that you’ll always get the payoff you expect—Kara Cutruzzula says
I took an online playwriting class last year. I failed at that. I got bogged down and didn’t complete my assignments. But what I did finish gave me the shell of a story to submit to a play development series. That was another failure: I was a finalist but didn’t make the cut. But that got me to finish the first draft of a full-length play, which I now have sitting on my desktop and will work on next.
—but taking the first step is the only way to the get to the end of the story.
The corollary is that nothing will happen unless you do something. If you’re hesitating to plant a seed, if you’re scared of failure, please go do it anyway. You will not regret it. Unless you’re planting a man-eating sentient tree which can only be killed by a shot to the brain**, in which case I have to ask, why??
Anyone who’s tried to write a novel knows how impossible it feels to keep track of all the story threads, to place all the set-up and foreshadowing in the right place, to artfully create a sense of progression. But a writer can always do another draft. Life is a badly plotted novel because you really do have to plot as you go. You can’t go back and ret-con the chances you didn’t take. You will never be able to control everything, to chart your course on a map, or even know your destination. Antonio Machado writes, “Caminante no hay camino / se hace camino al andar.” It means, “Walker, there is no path / the path is made by walking.”
Go plant seeds, is the point.
*Of course I would say that.
**This was the actual plot of a sci-fi/horror short story I read as a child.
Image: Johanna Rabindran
"You have to write a set-up to make the pay-off meaningful. You have to plant seeds before you can harvest, which is like the most obvious thing I could say, but there it is." YESS!
Overwhelmed, confused, delighted, inspired -This is the sequence of what hit me post reading your post. When I read the title in my inbox. I was confused! Why is she talking about this weird plot. I decided to quickly open the post to decipher the plot of this novel. Thank you for writing this! I am jealous and happy on Sophie Madeline Dess' reply to your mail. I guess I am happier than jealous as I really love the way she writes. Kara is just on point and her newsletters kind of keep you grounded. It is not just about success stories but about trying even if you fail miserably. I think it is a reminder call to everyone that "Not yet buddy, not so soon, do not give up". I think your post served as that reminder call. That pleasant encouraging reminder that " Life is a badly plotted novel because you really do have to plot as you go. You can’t go back and ret-con the chances you didn’t take. You will never be able to control everything, to chart your course on a map, or even know your destination." Wow! I am pinning this to my table. We still have miles to go I guess!