This is a chart I made while revising my novel. It encompasses the first two-thirds of the book. Along the top of the page are chapter numbers, and each post-it note represents one or two scenes. You’ll notice that I cleverly placed them along an incline, thus indicating rising action.

Yup. I’m liking it. Because even when there are chapters with absolutely NO tension, conflict, or general reason for existence, they still appear — on this particular chart — to be increasing the stakes. It’s a nice trick, no?

Next time, I think I’ll take a shortcut, and simply write my scenes on a slant.

Grant writing season approacheth. The blue-faced narrator from here and here is being reborn, hopefully in more coherent form.

I was thinking it must be easier for film-makers to prepare grant applications. They can always slip subliminal messages between frames. You’re getting very sleepy. You love this protagonist. You don’t care about plot. Send money…

As a writer, I have to rely on my grammatical knowledge and sense of humor. And as there are only three or four people in the world who think I’m funny, this could be a problem.

I think our Saturday was best summarized by my daughter:

“We went to the beach, we dug up a clam, then a big hovercraft came right up on shore, then we got invited inside, then we had a delicious lunch. How much better could a day be?”

In between digging for clams and hoping the enormous hovercraft wasn’t going to actually run over our beach blanket (which seemed entirely possible for a while), I was attempting to read Jane Vandenburgh’s Architecture of the Novel. I wasn’t too successful (did I mention the hovercraft?), but I did come across this wonderful line about narrative:

“…it wants to be believed in, as story — that is, taken up as reality in the listener’s mind. It doesn’t want to dress up and go flouncing around as art.”