Narrative Design

Despite all my good intentions, I haven’t done much writing on my thesis as of late. I have, however, been doing a pasel of reading and pre-writing. Today, for example, I spent part of the day rereading “Double Indemnity” by James M. Cain (most people are more familiar with the movie—Barbara Stanwyck remains one of the great femme fatales of all time) and breaking it down using Madison Smartt Bell’s analysis techniques and the Freitag triangle. One of the member’s of my advisory committee teaches Bell’s Narrative Design in class, so I think it is a good approach to take. After the breakdown is complete, I will write some scenes of Lancelot and Guinevere to mirror the structure. I hope it is effective. My goal is not to copy Cain, but to capture the essence of his design to tell this part of the story in a very specific way.

Boring, you say? Perhaps to some. To me it’s interesting and really challenging. For the first time I feel like I am really stepping outside my comfort zone as a writer and experimenting with things. Now, it could all be a dismal failure that ends in a rewrite, but I’m hoping something wonderful will come from it. In working with Cain’s writing I have already made some changes to my original plan regarding point of view. Initially I planned to only write in the first person as Mordred, but after looking at the narrative design, I have added two more points of view. Now the challenge is to get really specific with each character so that their voices are distinct.

One of my weakest points has always been dialogue. I hate writing it because tags annoy me. With the exception of JK Rowling, I despise tags that just repeat “he said” “she said,” coloring them only with the occasional adverb. So I have really been studying dialogue that appeals to me. Cain does really well as does JD Salinger in his short stories.

I know much of this is meaningless to most people (save perhaps Marty, my aunt Lynn, and my cousin Jim—all three of whom could humble me in my mediocrity), but I really feel that I am going to come out of this thesis much stronger and both a writer and an analyzer. Fingers crossed.