In our effort to understand the making (writing) if fiction, awareness of various strategies can enhance our understanding of one of the most difficult creative processes. Story, Narrative, plot, setting and dialogue have been discussed to some extent in my earlier posts. However one keeps coming across the word ‘structure’ in literary discussion, theory and analysis.
From the vast amount of material, storylines, stuff that ultimately becomes a part of the novel, how does the novelist sift and select to create a work that fits into the scheme of things with a taut structure. When a novel is not structured, it could sink under its own weight or be so diffuse as to have everything and say nothing. Thrilling, engrossing, eminently readable as it might be, the final version that one has in the form of a novel, must go through several edits, revisions, rewriting to cut the flab and to arrive at a structure that gives what the readers deserve and enjoy to read.
All great novels could go through this by making drafts, edits and restructuring. Therefore it is said; the art of writing fiction is no easy task. Novelists under pressure to produce or not careful enough to scrutinize their work may consent to send out mediocre or unverified work. But serious practitioners of the craft will deploy all available strategies to structure the work. Hence, what is it in structure that lends beauty to a work of fiction? If the Novel is a body of work, structure is that which decides what goes where or what follows after something. The example of Ezra Pound applying his surgical scissors to T.S. Elliot’s ‘Waste Land’ to make it the poem that it is today is suffice to convey the importance of structure to a work of art.
Broadly can we say structure is something which gives, form, beauty, grace and rhythm to a work of art? (at the risk of being called parochial, one has to arrive at an expression) The importance given to structure and form could be dubbed as classicist and conservative. Modern literary theory, to some extent, the likes of Russian Formalism and New Criticism has attached a great deal of importance to structure.
Part of the question relates to the core of the creative consciousness and the creative process. Words Worth calls poetry a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. Yet the spontaneous overflow has to be moderated to give it a fullness or form. The great odes of John Keats are the best examples of attention to structure and they are nearly flawless in their attainment of perfect form. The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner is another example, where the poet has made use of material from various sources to create a masterpiece.
Post modern or Post structural readings of literature, hold that all meaning is fluid rather than universal and predictable. Further it proposes that there is no reality external to the language we use. As the idea of single ‘self’ is put into a crisis or question, (the self itself is not a single entity but a construct of different entities, divisions and tensions) form or structure too is a point of debate. A monolithic form or structure or a desired form or structure, denotes a tendency towards a logos, a tenet or a pre-established canon. The analogy has been extended by Philosophers to include all accepted notions such as Religion, God, Science and Reason.
I don’t propose to look at the relevance of these different streams of thought for a budding novelist. But it is only to suggest that even the apparent non presence (not absence) of form or structure, cannot be classified as chaotic, diffuse and cumbersome. Rather the chaotic nature of a literary work could be an attempt to mock the need for a structure or simply a difference, which defies discipline or formality. Twentieth century novel has given us many examples which highlight the importance of structure. James Joyce’s Ulysses, a novel which defies all conventional notions of a story has 18 books. The 18 books nearly correspond to the 24 books of Homer’s epic poem ‘Odyssey.’ in theme, style and episodic importance. Although it appears unstructured and evanescent, the novel does converge with the epic in terms of its form. However the chronological time of the novel is fractured and disjointed, by the cyclical and psychological frames into which the novel keeps delving constantly.
Modern thinkers argue that the yearning for a structure or a form is a yearning for the absolute. As such is there anything called ‘A perfect form?’ Relatively, the form and the meaning of a novel is in question when different readings and a profusion of interpretations are at work. My earlier point about beauty and grace certainly gives away my preference for novels with an eminent readability where the reader’s phenomenological experience paraphrases the most satisfying or cathartic meaning. But it would be apt to conclude that one has to recognize the need for a structure in a novel as a writer but also welcome the absence of form or structure in a novel as a reader. ( To be continued)