Pin Connections and the Two Journeys
By Donald Maass | October 1, 2014 |
Flickr Creative Commons: Craig Sefton
I spend a lot of time in airports. Wait around as much as I do and you begin to admire airport design. Think the TWA Terminal at JFK, Terminal B at SJC, the International Terminal at SFO, the passenger arrival canopy at PDX, or the mountain range roof of DEN.
Gorgeous. High. Open. Airy. Look up and you’re already in flight.
Look a bit closer, though, and you may also feel afraid. The structural components that support these architectural confections do not inspire confidence. What, really, is holding these buildings up?
Now, shop-welded and field-bolted shear connections I understand. These are the trustworthy plates and flanges that connect steel columns and beams, transferring the bearing load and resisting rotation and bending “moment”. They’re rigid. Strong.
Contemporary design, however, values visible structural elements. Architects want the skeletons of airports to look lightweight. Also in consideration are assembly ease and a tolerance for slightly variable element lengths. In layman terms, if you want passengers to fly before they walk across the jetway you’ve got to work with fasteners that are cooler than clunky old shear connections.
Enter the pin connection.
A pin connection is a fastener between two structural steel elements, which in airports often are tubes. Imagine an elbow joint. In building terms that means a lapped-type connection involving a U-shaped clevis through which a “pin” (a bolt) passes. It is this pin that holds two structural pieces together.
It’s the “pin” that worries me, especially when that pin supports the building’s entire bearing load as in a base connection. Stick with me here. Think about it. The whole weight of the airport is resting on the architectural equivalent of the bolt and nut like one that you keep in a glass jar on your basement workbench.
I mean, seriously? The entire weight of a roof is resting on a little bolt? Those must be some strong bolts. And, of course, they are. They have to be. I’ve yet to be in an airport when the roof collapsed. Structural engineers know what they’re doing.
Thus, I don’t really need to worry. A pin connection is as reliable a way to join steel as is the old-fashioned flange. The airport roof will stay up. I can enjoy my latte and laptop in ease. The airport is securely fastened together. It’s okay to look up. It’s safe to fly.
So what, you ask, does this have to do with writing fiction? Ah.
The columns and beams of your novel are your protagonist’s twin journeys: outer and inner. The plot holds up the novel’s structure, like columns. What lends a novel a feeling of perspective and movement across space is the protagonist’s inner journey, the beams.
But what is it that fastens those two elements together? How do the inner and outer journeys connect so that they become a sturdy building, if not an architectural wonder?
Plot events are what happen. Inner moments give those events meaning. Together they both shelter and lead the reader somewhere new. That new place is, in a sense, the gate where the reader’s true flight begins.
To continue my metaphor, the “pin” in the pin connection is the protagonist’s apprehension and understanding of what’s happening. What he or she feels is what joins together the two journeys. Feelings may seem frail compared to the mighty bearing load of a plot. But don’t worry. Feelings are stronger than they look. They can take the load.
In fact, the airport will not stay up without them.
To fasten the inner and outer journey you only need start with one element or the other of your story: a plot event or one step in the inner journey. In the first case, go inside your protagonist to identify what the outer event means. In the second case, look outside your protagonist for a way to make something “real” happen that mirrors the inner moment.
Here, I’ll make it easy:
- Pick any plot event, large or small. What does it mean to your protagonist? What does it stir inside? What worry, hope, question or wonder? What does it feel like to feel this feeling? Create a metaphor for it. What does thinking or feeling this way, by itself, reveal? Make notes. Write it up in a paragraph.
Or…
- Pick any emotionally significant moment in your story, a time when your protagonist feels himself or herself changing. Shut off inner monologue. Find a way for your protagonist to show or speak the unfolding inner change in a way that we can’t miss. Use only what we can see and hear. Write out the action and/or dialogue.
What you’re doing, simply put, is using thoughts and feelings as fasteners. What happens means something, and what means something is shown in what happens. Steel joins steel. The lightest pin holds it together. We look up and our hearts soar. Our imaginations fly.
As we’ll see in coming months, this pin connection is the secret behind what looks magical in novels. It’s what puts across dry historical or scientific information. It’s what makes small events feel big and gives big events surprising meaning. It’s what unites a novel over the long haul, even when a story spans decades. It’s what’s behind the poetry of doing the dishes.
For now, though, just get the connection. Try it out. Get the feel of it. It’s a strong fastener. (Bonus point: Can you identify the pin connector in today’s post?)
How are you using a pin connection in the scene you’re writing today? Tell us how we’ll fly!
Donald Maass (he/him) founded the Donald Maass Literary Agency. in New York in 1980. He is the author of The Career Novelist (1996), Writing the Breakout Novel (2001), Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (2004), The Fire in Fiction (2009), The Breakout Novelist (2011), Writing 21st Century Fiction (2012) and The Emotional Craft of Fiction (2019). He has presented hundreds of workshops around the world and is a past president of the American Association of Literary Agents (formerly AAR).
Love the analogy. First, as an engineer, I can promise that you’re safer in that airport than you are on the Brooklyn Bridge (especially if you’re a dumb tourist and walk into the bike path). Second, I’ve been taking greater care to make that connection of inner and outer journey with my current wip, a middle grade novel about a boy who loses his father aboard the USS Scorpion, the last Navy sub lost at sea in 1968. It’s an emotional journey and I know I have to capture that turmoil raging inside the mind of an eleven year old boy whose father is the center of his universe. No easy task. I haven’t been eleven in 36 years. But I love the challenge. I’m learning a new respect for middle grade authors. It’s not all silly humor and bullies. Thanks for the post, Don. Always helpful.
Ron-
That’s a cool story idea, one which as you say is fundamentally an emotional journey. Looking forward to it.
My father-in-law was a bridge inspector in British Columbia. When he visited New York I took him for a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. He explained that a bridge is a living thing. It’s parts must be renewed. It’s always twisting and swaying. It must stay flexible. If you feel a bridge moving under you, that’s good. It means that the bridge is healthy.
My seven year old was for a long time afraid of bridges. He was afraid they’d fall down while we drove across them. One day I told him what his grandfather had told me. A moving bridge is a healthy bridge. That morning we walked across the Williamsburg Bridge into Manhattan. He stopped mid-span to feel the sway. “That means it’s healthy,” he said.
Later that day he told me, “I’m not afraid of bridges anymore.”
Engineers are awesome. And as an engineer let me ask you, in my post today does it sound like I know what I’m talking about? If so, ha! I’m no engineer. But I can do research, another essential fiction skill.
But that’s a topic for another post. Thanks, Ron.
You did, Don. If a good engineer (or father) doesn’t have the right answer, he’s happy to make one up.
Don, can you explain how/if this “pin” differs from character arc?
Your post really got me thinking. I’ve begun something new so this last month actually putting words to a story that’s been percolating for the last year has been surreal and refreshing. Perhaps it’s all the great WU tidbits, or experience, but this time around I learned how important it is to focus on the meaning behind the plot. In fact, every event that I have in the roadmap for my story is either an external event that contributed to my protagonist’s journey or is an event in response to her trying to make sense of the difficult reality thrust on her, one which she is forced to master even though she doesn’t believe she can. My protagonist is a seamstress but she also has an uncanny ability to weave cloth at incredible speed, a talent that soon makes her the center of attention – the last thing she wants, since it means her past secret might be exposed. I connected to this, knowing where it’s going to end, and now I’m looking forward to spending the next year or so walking with her through the many moments of change to turn a doubtful, peace-loving seamstress into a formidable queen. It’s interesting how a meaningful story isn’t just about that great high moment at the end, but every single moment in between that gives a reader confidence they are heading there, much like your pin connections.
Paula-
Character arc is the change a character undergoes over the length of a novel. It’s sometimes also called and arc of transformation or the inner journey.
The pin connection I’m talking about is how we feel that change happening moment by moment in a story. It’s a way to show how plot events, large or small, provoke, reflect, mirror and connect to the long inner transformation that’s underway.
In many manuscripts the arc feels disconnected from the plot as such. It’s thin. It happens but isn’t an intimate, interwoven part of the novel. T
he pin connection technique I’m presenting here allows the reader to feel the protagonist changing all the time. It weaves what’s happening to what’s happening inside.
Does that help?
Yes, Don, I was thinking that’s what you meant but needed the specifics to be clear. Thanks!
Money, Don. I think your pin was this:
It’s the “pin” that worries me
Something happened when I read that. I pictured you. I saw you looking at the structure, a bit concerned. It was like a scene in a movie. (BTW, there’s a guy with shades just outside the men’s room watching your every move. Just a heads up).
This demonstrates exactly what you’re writing about. I connected to the essay in a new and vivid way at that point.
Nice research, BTW.
Jim-
Ka-ching! You got it. How about a bourbon rocks next time we meet?
Ps my guess is that you have two pin connections in today’s post:
1) the pin connections themselves. An external event (display of the awesome feat of engineering, created an internal event (your fascination, wonder, fear). All because of those pin connections making it possible.
2) information. You felt some fear and curiosity by what you see in all those airports. This internal event led you to so some research on airport construction. Your sense of fear and wonder changes as a result. All because of the existence of information. Perhaps it was on your laptop using the wifi connection at the airport? That would be more meaningful.
John-
Yeah, more or less. The information about airport architecture is dry. My worry is what makes it matter. I dig further, discover that I needn’t worry after all. I can look up, feel safe–and fly.
Note the shred of poetry there. Not much but it elevates this extremely minor moment. The pin connection is not exactly my worry but what I do with it. It’s the expression of the change inside me, which is the realization that I’m safe after all.
Wonderful post, Don. Saved to my writing toolbox.
I think the pin was “Ah.”
Deb-
See above, but “ah” also marks an inner change. It says, “We’re beginning to see something here…”
As the wife of an engineer who supports us on riveting airplane parts (and if you saw the process, you’d wonder why shear forces don’t rip the thing while you’re in the air), I relate to your post in a visceral way. I have the same reaction when sitting in a window seat looking at the rivets joining the wings to the fuselage.
Years ago, at Chatauqua, a bunch of us sat in on an impromptu lecture by Carolyn Coman … she talked about storyboarding and what really made a difference is that she made us draw/write not just the action, but the emotional state. That’s the pin! So I try to do this in every scene now … I love that I have a way to explain this to my husband in a language he understands.
Vijaya-
That’s the beauty of a metaphor. The best writers on engineering, woodcraft, science, psychology, neurology, physics, astronomy, sports fashion and more know that. It let’s us “see” what is hard to grasp.
This post got me really excited. I’m just at the very beginning of a new work and have only the first scene written and I used it for the first exercise. In the first scene, Eliza is chosen by her grandfather to carry on the family work of politics, but she will have to keep her lesbianism a secret. Being chosen feels like a pearl wrapped around a grain of sand, made beautiful by the worry and the hiding of the secret.
What this reveals is the incorrect conclusion she’s drawn – that it will be easy to live this way, that the result will be something beautiful of value, when in fact the opposite is true.
Thanks, Don!
Cat-
Ooo! Nice! I bet you’re going to get compliments on that passage.
An interesting and thought-provoking post. Believable inner change is one of the hardest things to pull off as a writer–two of my favorite works in this regard are Herman Wouk’s “The Caine Mutiny” and “Breaking Bad.” Walt’s transformation was almost perfectly handled, and a lot of things that would have seemed ridiculous early on in the series ended up feeling plausible and even inevitable later on.
And yet sometimes it’s interesting to see a character resolutely avoid the inner journey, clinging to their defects in spite of change and pain. Tennessee Williams had a great quote about how stasis was underused as a literary device. And it doesn’t always work out well for characters…but collapse can be as compelling as construction!
Gerald-
I will have to read The Caine Mutiny!
I take Tennessee Williams’s point about stasis, but in general I think it’s dangerous to recommend. It’s way too easy for characters to stay stuck…and for authors to believe they’re writing great literature just by wallowing in frozen anguish.
Story is change. I suspect that when “stasis” works it isn’t really stasis at all, not if you put it under a microscope. Interesting topic.
Agreed…stasis is terribly difficult to recommend! I don’t think many people do it right–new authors sometimes try it because they assume they (or their character proxies) are inherently interesting, and old authors sometimes lapse into it if they’ve developed a franchise character that’s a cash cow. Either way, that type of stasis is unsatisfying to the reader.
I can think of a few examples where it works, somehow. I’d say Bukowski’s “Factotum” and “Post Office” show a character more or less in stasis internally. And in some ways I think “The Stranger” shows it–while the narrator’s life circumstances change, I think part of the point is that he glimpses the possibility of change and chooses to ignore it. (Or perhaps dive more deeply into his isolation and disconnection. So that may be change after all.)
Seriously, though. “The Caine Mutiny.” For a book that won the Pulitzer, it’s strangely underappreciated. The protagonist changes in interesting ways, and his attitudes about everyone else also evolve. And setting-wise, it does what I always love in a book–it takes you away from your world and pulls you in to its own so effectively that you forget you’re reading a book.
Thanks for the post!
Don – I’m with you on the old-fashioned fasteners. I think one of the reasons I’m so enamored of the Arts and Crafts style is that exposed, and solid-looking, joinery. Beams don’t just meet posts, they bear on them—often with visible large chunks of metal to ensure the connection holds fast. Ask me to rate a cabinet or a desk, I’ll examine the connection points. I trust a dovetail over a glue-line, every time.
I’ve always been that way as a builder, too. Particularly when I first started out. One of my first large projects was our own house. While we were building it, at a time when the framing was still exposed, the local building inspector stopped by—mostly to shoot the bull over coffee. He’s a salt-of-the-earth type guy, a retired builder who reminds me of my dad. Over the brim of his coffee cup, he scanned the extensive Douglas fir beams of the framing, some of which was intended to be left exposed, and said: “What’re ya building here—a dance hall for elephants?” I saw his point. He was coming from a practicality standpoint. But I wanted not just solidity, but the charm of its exposed effect—the coziness. I was willing to work, and pay, for that feeling. So yes, I overbuilt it. And, I must admit, I’m still pretty happy with my elephant dance floor when the Lake Michigan winds shake the hundred-year-old oaks that surround it.
Several years later I undertook another large-scale (for me) framing project—our carriage-house. It functions as our garage, guest house, and the floor of the garage—sans cars—doubles as my workshop. We hired an architect to draw up my ideas. When they delivered the framing for the joists that would hold up the second floor, free of posts in my new shop, I admit it—I cringed. Engineered I-joists. Ugh. Skinny pieces of oriented-strand-board sandwiched by finger-jointed spruce. How does an old-fashioned guy trust ‘em? Twenty-six footers, they swayed as I lifted them (by myself—scrawny little things) into place. But once I nailed on that plywood flooring—oh my. Nice! Functional. And free-span below. Still solid.
When I first started writing, I wanted to build something solid—with the coziness of strong world-building. I overbuilt it, I know. It may have been solid, but it was impractical for readers. It lacked the utility you speak of. It was too rigid–needs to sway. I still need to learn to find my characters’ pins and rely on them. Rebuilding such a large project is never easy, but I know it’ll be worth it if I can achieve solidity and comfort and charm along with functional utility by doing so.
Thanks, Don, for continuing to be the flying buttress of my writerly cathedral-building efforts. (I think that sounded better in my head, but I hope you take it in the intended spirit.)
Vaughn-
Now that right thar’ is some real pretty writin’. I was gripped by every word of your comment.
The reason is that I could feel the emotion and meaning beneath your description of structure framing. You bring it all home, too, as they say in the preaching biz. Information married to meaning. An author in the process of growing.
Pin connection. Bingo. We’re attached.
“The entire weight of the roof is resting on a little bolt?”
I detected a little fear in that sentence.
Your analogy accurately describes about a year’s worth of work I have to do on my ms.
Thanks (I think!)
Deni
Deni-
You recognize here, I’m sure, development that we did at the last BONI workshop in Memphis. That means you have a head start, yeah?
Yes, Master! My toe is creeping over the starting line! I finally have my ‘working’ computer back (I told you it crashed the day I got home with all of the notes from BONI-MEM on it), so the gun can go off now.
Speaking of weaponry — I think a pen-knife. (For some reason I had a Bowie in my head when we spoke.)
TOEP!
Deni
I’m working on some memoir right now, but the pin connection is how the events of my childhood shaped who I am today, how my family made me who I am in this moment.
Brianna-
I’d say that’s your overall arc. The pin connections in your manuscript will be how you show that discovery happening moment by moment right through your story.
Master Don:
Clevis — wasn’t he the son of Noah who invented the corncob pipe?
As a former math major, I’m in awe of your knowledge. As I’m sure you know, mathematicians and engineers regard each other with considerable skepticism. The mathematician always asks, “Is it rigorous? Is it elegant?” To which the engineer replies, “Elegance is the designer’s job. And it’s rigorous if the damn thing stays up.”
My favorite line: Shut off inner monologue. One of the hardest things to teach is how to stage inner life, i.e., how to exteriorize it. And though novelists enjoy the gift of inner life and shouldn’t shun it, learning from playwrights and screenwriters and how to render on the exterior what’s taking place on the interior is invaluable.
Sometimes this is also accomplished by the scene weave — using just the right scene BEFORE the one in question to set it up (or using the right one immediately after).
Two examples:
In THE PLAYER, Griffin Mills has killed a screenwriter in a fit of rage, and is trying to skirt the consequences. He’s managed to escape the clutches of the law so far, but it’s clear he’s their number one focus — not least because he’s now involved with the dead man’s girlfriend. He wants to take her to Puerto Vallarta but sees one of the detectives at the airport, so instead he takes her off to this exotic, exclusive spa/resort in Desert Hot Springs. They dine, they dance, they make love. In the intimacy of passion he haltingly confesses to her his blame for her boyfriend’s death, even as she tells him not to say it. It’s one of the weirdest but most powerful sex scenes you’ll ever find — because it’s also a key revelation between these two characters about who they are and what they know about each other. Cut to the next morning — they’re getting mud baths. An attendant comes in, tells Griffin he has a phone call. “It sounds urgent. It’s your lawyer.” Griffin, slathered in muck, lifts himself out of the ooze, wraps a towel around his midriff and goes to the phone — where he learns the police want him in Pasadena that afternoon for a line-up. They have an eye witness.
The sequencing of those events — the aborted escape to Mexico because of the detective, the escape to the spa, the lovemaking and confession, followed by the sense of peace and pampering of the mud bath — we don’t need to have Griffin tell us how he’s feeling as he takes that call. We know.
CHINATOWN: One of the most overlooked scenes in the film is a very quiet one, but without it the ending wouldn’t work. It’s exactly a “pin” scene as you describe it. Jake and Evelyn have just had their my-sister-my-daughter moment. Evelyn has revealed she had an affair with her father and Catherine, the girl in the house, is her daughter from that relationship. The violence of that scene is brutal, the revelation shocking. Clearly Jake intellectually gets how deeply he’s misunderstood what’s going on. He tells Evelyn to get the girl and leave as soon as possible, he’ll deal with the police.
Then Evelyn drops a bombshell: She tells Jake that the glasses Jake discovered and which he considered proof Evelyn had killed Hollis couldn’t belong to Hollis. Hollis didn’t wear bifocals.
Jake is stunned by that, and is still puzzling over it, unable to make sense of it, when Evelyn returns from upstairs with Catherine. She’s quiet, angelic. Evelyn says, “Say hello to Mr. Gittes, sweetheart.” The girl and Jake exchange quiet hellos — the girl tentative, Jake sincere. It’s the first time we’ve seen Jake this open, this quiet, this gentle. He’s not scheming or battling or figuring things out. He’s simply saying hello. But it’s incredibly powerful given the heat of the previous scene and the sudden vulnerability of his puzzlement. And it conveys beautifully the interior nature of his transformation — without which, we wouldn’t feel the devastation of the ending so viscerally.
Thanks for this post. Great stuff. Really looking forward to meeting you finally in Vancouver.
Clevis
David-
Yes, very much looking forward to meeting in a few weeks at SIWC near Vancouver. Canadian brews are in order.
Interesting point you’re making about the juxtaposition of scenes. If I may simplify, the space right after a cathartic explosion is ripe. Plant a plot bomb, human moment or a change of direction or of heart in that space and, wow, it forcefully externalizes an internal transformation.
Do I have that right?
My summary sounds a bit technical, so maybe: After your hero is blows up or is beaten up, have him do something to show us the new condition of his heart.
Better, maybe.
David–
I’m familiar with both films, and your examples make a lot of sense to me. Thanks.
It’s often called the Validation Scene — the scene that shows us the character’s transformation.
Thank you, Don. Today I will work on my pin connections.
Donald,
Piling on . . . without negating any of the previous “engineering.”
As a one-time builder of post and beam houses, I got to thinking about your metaphor. Columns (plot) create one dimension. They need beams (emotions) for the second and third dimensions to create viable space (absorbing fiction.) But . . the third essential element in building is the triangle or brace, the stable line between columns and/or beams, which we never “see.” (In building we call it the skin.) The reason the pins hold without snapping is that the bracing neutralizes the lateral vectors, protects the pins. That’s what keeps the architecture in the air.
In fiction, what are the diagonal lines between columns or beams? I’ll take a stab at it. Accessible voice. Theme and moral argument. Symbols web. Dialogue matching character. Pacing and climaxes. Consistency of these elements with story world. Others?
Thanks as always for you thoughtful posts.
Tom-
Ah! Thanks for that clear explanation of bracing. A building, I guess, stays up because the forces pulling at it are balanced. Interesting, too, that in post and beam houses the bracing is invisible–like in many a novel.
Perhaps that’s why we don’t notice the bracing in fiction as much. We certainly talk about it less than the columns or beams. In many novels there’s not enough of that bracing, and so the house wobbles and makes us insecure.
What I like about airport architecture is that you can see all the structural elements. They are, in a very real sense, the building itself. They’re beautiful.
I think that voice, symbols, theme and all the rest of the “extras” in a novel can be as visible and beautiful. Why hide them? Let’s see the pin connections. They’re all over airports and yet even while anchored to the ground we feel as if we fly.
Donald,
Thanks for the go round.
The beauty of metaphor is how it can cut to the heart of things. Today, it’s architecture and writing.
You write: “What I like about airport architecture is that you can see all the structural elements. They are, in a very real sense, the building itself. They’re beautiful.
I think that voice, symbols, theme and all the rest of the “extras” in a novel can be as visible and beautiful.”
More often than not, the “bracing” of a novel is visible because it is poorly done. Oddities stop the reader, they break the magic of story. When darlings aren’t strangled we get a wobbly house.
In contrast, what we love about great writing is that we never know we are reading. Authors and good readers may reflect and analyze to tease out these “extras” but–just checking–you’re not saying a good piece of work should be waving the elements of craft, are you? I guess my question is: What do you mean by visible? Who sees and when? Is the visibility of these elements apart of from the integrity of the structure?
I strive for authentic voice, lasting and deep symbols, a moral and thematic heart etc., but if I catch myself at “writing them,” I redraft.
Tom-
When I say “visible” what I really mean is felt by the reader. Some of the most heart-tugging passages I’ve ever read are terribly obvious. Others are subtle.
I don’t really care which. What matters to me is that throughout a novel I feel a sense of the human heart in flux. It’s those moments when I am attached to a story with steel pins.
This post deserves to be in a book. I move that you publish a book entitled “The WU Posts — Wisdom Unboxed.”
Carmel-
Wisdom Unboxed! Love that.
I am working on a new book of fiction craft and this is indeed part of it. Stayed tuned in the months ahead for more.
In Raven’s Wing, the upcoming sequel to my urban fantasy Raven’s Wing, the protagonist is struggling to come to terms with his ancestry (he is the last of a long line of dark mages) and trying to find his place in the society he rejoined after winning a pardon at the end of Ravensblood. If I understand your post, the pin for the first would involve an unplanned pregnancy (continuing the bloodline) as well as a moment in the climax where he resorts to a spell favored by his late and unlamented father. The pin for the first would involve his answer to an invitation to join the Guardians (magical law enforcement) in an official capacity. . .yes, I’m being kind of vague, but I don’t want to include *too* many spoilers.
The main plot line of the outer journey also ties into the inner journey. The Ravensblood, the powerful artifact he is accused of stealing and that he must recover to prove his innocence, is intimately tied to his family history
Shawna-
Cool story! You mention pin connections at the beginning and end, great. But look up in the airport. There are hundreds of those pin connections up there. In your manuscript, make more!
Also, I notice that in describing your protagonist’s inner journey you describe it in terms of outward (family, social, magical) circumstances. To dig into the inner journey you may want to think less about what’s external to your protagonist and more about what’s wholly internal.
How would you express his inner struggle, his deepest need, even if he were not the last in a line, a policeman of magic, or if any of the events of your story weren’t happening? The inner journey is in his heart, ask me, not in his bloodline.
Thanks for the reply.
There are more pins; I just mentioned the main ones for brevity. Suppose I can look into adding more for safety. Don’t want that bridge to fall down (I tend to get panicky still when I’m in a traffic jam on a bridge and I think I can feel it move ever so slightly. . .)
Will think more about better expressing the inner journey. . .was trying to avoid too much inner monologue per a former writer’s group and too much angst/wallowing per my previous freelance editor.
But you’re all about challenging us, aren’t you? Which, I suppose, is why I buy your books.
Well said. These ‘pins’ you mention are precisely what I am working to create in my WIP. The story revolves around three plot lines that join to for whole arc of the story. Husband, Wife, and Sons all separated the day a war begins.
The husband believes his wife is dead. He knows his sons escaped, but he is unsure of their later fate. The sons have become leaders of a guerrilla group involved in very hard fighting. They’re motivated by stories of ‘Ice Hammer’, the figurehead of the resistance, unaware he is their father. The wife has been forced to be the enemy general’s mistress, and becomes involved in deep espionage to save her husband and sons at risk to her life.
The pins between them all, what strengthens the beams and pillars so that together they can support the roof of the story arc, are the emotions that drive them to suffer and risk everything to save what they love.
Oh…and a lot of stuff gets blown up too.
…and there’s a moose.
Basil-
A moose? I was already sold but now I’m intrigued. Write on!
Donald-
Now you’ve got me a little worried about going into airports.
Because your “pin” story reminded me of an experience long ago. One Friday night, stopping by a dance while on a date – the next Friday night getting called to go to the same place, because “sky walk” walkways across the dance floor in the hotel’s six-story atrium had collapsed with people on them and under them. More than 100 dead, over 200 injured and ambulances lined up outside like cabs at JFK.
A slight design change during construction to the rods and steel c-channels that hung the walkways from the ceiling, miscommunication between the designer and steel fabricator. Tiny things. And the walkways my date and I had been on to look down on the dance a week earlier, came down. No warning.
People had been up there watching the dancers every Friday night for months. It was a popular place to be.
Hadn’t before thought about how much current airport designs resemble that hotel atrium, but they’re more similar than not.
Don’t think I can scrounge a metaphor out of all of that. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought it up. But your pins were a little emotional for me too.
Jim-
That’s some brush with death. I remember that collapse.
Were the bolts on that pedestrian bridge threaded? In my research I read that when pin connections fail, it’s often due to the threading which weakens them.
I went to the top of the World Trade Center a number of times, mostly with visiting out-of-town guests. Most New York folk had done the same. That (plus the one degree of separation we all had to victims) made 9/11 doubly traumatic.
So what do we do with that? I’d say work to make pin connections in our manuscripts strong–which is to say as emotional as the experiences we’ve been through.
Thanks for sharing that.
Don, A small thank you for your immensely helpful post:
The haunting call of
wild geese and I, too, fly
without their knowing.