dramatic structure

TWOL IS BACK!! Packing a Punch—Works that Deliver at the End

/ The Women of Letters / Leave a comment

Hello, dear readers and apologies for the unexpectedly-long hiatus. It’s good to be back and I hope you will enjoy this post. As always, thanks for reading! (SPOILER ALERT for the two works discussed, Lucy Gayheart and “Saltburn.”)

I had a conversation with a writer friend about my own novel revision and how I am trying to cut down on length. I told her that one solution I’m thinking of is to make the final part shorter but very impactful. And I cited two examples that did this. One is a novel, and one is a film; they both seem a bit slow in the beginning and don’t have so much dramatic tension throughout (especially the film). But toward the end, both hit you with surprises that put everything that came before in context.

This spring, I read a novel by my favorite author Willa Cather called Lucy Gayheart. Tripartite in structure, Book I addresses the developing romance between young pianist Lucy Gayheart and renowned opera singer Clement Sebastian. Briefly, we see Lucy spending time with her community in her Nebraska town, ice skating with a young man named Harry Gordon who likes her and that she seems to like as well, and then her departure for Chicago. We wonder why there is not so much background, and why certain details and characters are highlighted. A talented accompanist, she begins playing for Sebastian, and it is not long before she falls in love. Granted, there are some weaknesses in the first part of the novel, namely, the development of their love affair and Sebastian’s dialogue, which seems a bit stilted and formal. Harry Gordon comes to visit and proposes marriage, but she rejects him since she is in love with the opera singer. Sebastian dies in a tragic boating accident, leaving Lucy in utter devastation. This first section of the novel is 114 pages long.

Lucy returns to Nebraska in Book II (which is shorter than Book I). We see the connections with her community that got the short shrift in Book I. The seemingly minor characters that were mentioned in the beginning of part one play a more important role. Harry has married someone else on the rebound, and barely gives her the time of day when they see each other. Not a whole lot happens here, as Lucy is grieving and detached. However, after some time passes, Lucy decides to go back to Chicago and begin accompanying again. She has seen a visiting opera singer, and her love of music is rekindled. We assume she can emerge from her tragedy and build a happy life again. Lucy comes out of her shell slowly and in an echo of the opening of the novel, chooses to go ice skating on a bitterly cold day. She changes her mind. Harry Gordon happens to be driving by, and she begs him to stop and give her a ride, but he refuses, as he has an appointment out of town. Lucy proceeds to skate and drowns. All of this is accomplished in 48 pages, which is significantly shorter than Book I. We wonder how all this tragedy can ever be resolved: Sebastian’s death, Lucy’s death, and Harry’s guilt for marrying someone else and not having helped her in a time of need. What can really come of this, given that two of the protagonists are dead?

Book III is the shortest of all, clocking in at only 22 pages, and in it, Harry Gordon has tried to assuage his guilt by developing a decades-long friendship with Lucy’s father Jacob and bearing with a pleasant but loveless marriage. After Mr. Gayheart dies, the Gayhearts’ house goes to Harry, as he was the banker who had made loans to Jacob. The novel concludes with an extremely powerful, poignant scene where Harry enters the Gayhearts’ house, goes up to Lucy’s room, looks at all her things, and takes the small, framed photograph of Clement Sebastian with him. This small gesture hits the reader with such emotion and power that one can forgive Cather of some underdeveloped characters and prose. The structure of the novel has been building up to Book III and its conclusion, and it is completely powerful and unexpected. The chain of events that had led to both Lucy’s and Harry’s unhappiness had started with Clement Sebastian; it seems only fitting that the story come full circle with Sebastian and Harry “meeting” at the end, as they are the two men who were prominent in Lucy’s life.

Emerald Fennell’s brilliant film “Saltburn” seems superficially a modern take on Brideshead Revisited. The poor, socially awkward Oliver befriends the handsome, charismatic aristocrat Felix Catton. Felix invites Oliver to stay with him over the summer when Oliver explains that his home life is very dysfunctional. Oliver is a Dickensian waif: poor, outcast, getting by solely on his wits and talents. We believe this is going to be a story of pity, the handsome rich man and his impoverished, tagalong friend. The classic trope of the plucky young lower-class person who climbs their way up the social ladder.

And indeed, Oliver is a fish out of water, unfamiliar with upper class way and sensing the taint of condescension under the Cattons’ kindness. Slowly, we get small signs that something is not quite right with Oliver, such as a few sexual acts that aren’t quite motivated out of genuine desire, but a twisted form of resentment against the aristocratic Cattons and lust for Felix. (Of course, the bathtub scene!) However, as viewers, we chalk it up to class differences, and suppressed homosexuality. It is only when they go, upon Felix’s insistence, to visit Oliver’s parents that we find he is not a poor orphan but a young man from a stable, happy, middle-class family. Oliver is a liar! The dynamic shifts, for the film is not just about class differences, but about psychological disturbance–it is now more “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” After Felix dies (we begin to wonder if Oliver was involved, but the “can’t unsee it” masturbation scene on Felix’s grave still suggests a twisted, deep love that Oliver has for his friend), things rapidly become darker, as his sister Venetia apparently commits suicide in the bathtub. Oliver is asked to leave Saltburn.

Still, all of this is speculation; we don’t know if these deaths are causation or correlation, if Oliver is simply shady or a sociopath. We are near the end of the film, the ending has to pack a punch, or else this whole film is a waste, simmering but never coming to a climax. Emerald Fennell delivers. Oliver meets Felix’s mother Elspeth in a café and rekindles their connection. As she is dying, Oliver confesses he was responsible for the murders of her son and daughter, that he manipulated her and got her to bequeath Saltburn and all her money to him. As if this isn’t stunning enough, Fennell gives us the gut punch, jaw-dropping ending: Oliver kills Elspeth by taking her off life-support and celebrates by dancing naked around Saltburn. These confessions and the final murder bring everything to a dramatic, disturbing, and delicious conclusion.

Emerald Fennell has paced the film so that, just as in Willa Cather’s novel, the last act is the most compressed but the most dramatic. There are three acts, roughly, as in the novel related to time and place: Oxford as students, Saltburn in the summer, and Saltburn years later. Without knowing that Oliver is a horrific murderer, we might read the film as social commentary, the eternal English theme of class differences, albeit with a 21st century twist and more compassion.

In sum, these two works show that the conventional structure of a novel or film can be reconsidered; though the stakes are increasing throughout, it is the ending that makes the difference, due to the compression of emotional intensity and plot events. Having the last part be the briefest and most dramatic gives the reader or viewer something to reflect on, helps put what occurred before in perspective. It allows for a lack of development or backstory in the earlier part of the work. This is a very interesting strategy, structurally. It’s something that writers of any genre may like to incorporate in their future works.

Serial Thriller

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I have been greatly enjoying, as I wrote last week, the television series “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” This has gotten me thinking about the pleasure of serial forms of art–namely what we find in literature and television. Many great works by canonical authors were serialized in newspapers, such as those by Dickens or Tolstoy. A neuroscientist or psychologist could explain the psycho-physiological processes in the brain, but I’d like to take a literary stab at explaining why we like episodic entertainment. Why is this such an important, time-tested way of engaging with an audience? 

-A premise that hooks us in. There is something that grabs the reader from the get-go. The stakes are high, there is something about the situation that makes us want to know more.

-Investment in the characters. How else do we get into a story if not through the characters? Is the character an underdog or victim? Hero(ine)? Or is it an ensemble cast, perhaps a family that has some sort of a crisis? We need to feel allied with these persons immediately, or at least one, so that it is enough for us to want to follow her/his/their journey(s).

-An intriguing plot. This is very crucial. How does the writer unfold the story neatly, little by little, with expert pacing? How does each episode or chapter or section deliver just the right amount of drama at the right time? It takes extreme skill as a writer to know exactly how much to give the reader or viewer, the right “dose,” so to speak.

-An engaging story. This is closely tied to the premise, but even if the premise is strong, if the story doesn’t deliver and hook us in, we will lose interest.

-Knowing when to cut us off. I almost feel that the writer has to take us up to the top of a mountain to the point where we could fall over the cliff, and then to stop that particular episode or chapter. That way, we are completely hooked and the greatest amount of dramatic tension is generated.

-Multiple plot lines, most often. We are reading character A’s journey toward getting married, but also about character B’s illness and impending death. Alternating A’s and B’s plot lines keeps us very intrigued, so that way when the episode drops off with A, the writer picks up with B.

-Playing with our anticipation and expectations. We are waiting for next week’s installment, wondering if Mr. X will be sentenced to jail or if Mrs. Y will get the opportunity she has been longing for. The wait gives us a chance to reflect on the various possible outcomes, and when we get the next installment, we might be completely surprised as to what happens.

What could we criticize about this kind of art? Well, one could easily say it is formulaic, and that would be very true. Make sure the right amount of dramatic tension happens in each part of the series, a classic Freytag’s Triangle. Some might argue that it is teasing the reader or viewer, and perhaps even a weakness on the writer’s part, not being able to continue with the story or plot line, but having to break it up. It also relies on very traditional narrative forms, and so metafiction or non-traditional narratives would not work well. Finally, each segment or episode has to fit a particular length or time limit, and this might not always be useful. Sometimes a particular scene has to be drawn out to give it more emotional weight. So this serial/episodic manner of telling a story relies heavily on structure. 

There is room for both, the traditional and nontraditional narratives. We like both for different reasons. In the modern world, we see serialization globally, be it in telenovelas, Hindu myths made into TV series, or dramas on Netflix. Traditional narratives and serials give us a deep-rooted sense of familiarity, the artistic equivalent of comfort food, be it macaroni and cheese, rice and lentils, or kimchi jjigae.