Amplify Your Story’s Power Through Groups
By Kathryn Craft | April 13, 2017 |
photo adapted / Horia Varlan
**Giveaway alert for Banishing Verona by Margot Livesey—see info at the end of this post! Now on with today’s topic…
If I set up a soapbox to read a politically charged excerpt of my novel in front of City Hall, one or two curiosity seekers might stop to listen. But if fifty thousand marched with me to City Hall, and we read in unison, not only would many more onlookers take notice, but the mayor himself would come to the window, the whole thing would be captured on television, and then become a YouTube #flashnovel sensation (hmm, promo note to self).
You know it to be true: the voice of a group is more powerful than the voice of an individual. Since the earliest staged tragedies, storytellers have made creative use of groups to comment with a collective voice on a story’s dramatic action. Known as a Greek chorus, its sole purpose was to amplify the effect of the action onstage through unison movement or speech.
Uses for a Greek chorus might be to:
- provide background information to help the audience follow the story
- comment on themes
- demonstrate how the audience might react emotionally to the drama
- express what the main characters cannot, such as hidden fears or secrets.
The technique is still alive and well. In her debut, The Lace Reader, author and WU Contributor Brunonia Barry bolstered the perspectives of individual characters through a variety of Greek choruses. My guess is, the rich “types” of characters you might expect to see in her setting of Salem Massachusetts—witches, the religious conservatives who hunted them, and tourists—were the jumping off point for her New York Times bestselling novel.
Story is internal conflict made external
One reason we love story is the way it brings internal conflict out into the light of day, where we can more easily examine its components. Each of Bru’s groups amplifies one of the warring influences within protagonist Towner Whitney.
The witches
The witches, to me, represent Towner’s attempt to own her power as a woman as well as her inheritance of the gift of lace reading (a form of fortune telling). They lend heft to a passage like this:
Ann’s evolution into “Town Witch” was gradual. To hear Eva tell it, you’d think that Ann woke up one day and realized that she was a witch. In fact, it wasn’t a decision; it was an evolution. But her family history was what made her famous. The witches of Salem—the locals who have taken up the practice or the ones who’ve been practicing and have come to Salem because it has been declared a safe haven for witches—have all rallied around Ann Chase. They wear their association like a badge of courage, one that proves that the Salem witches really did exist here all along, a kind of “Look how far we’ve come” thing.
The power of this paragraph, and the power of Ann as a character, can be found in the way that first her family, and then all the witches if Salem, wear their association with Ann in the same way.
The Calvinists
The “Calvinists,” the religious cult led by Towner’s father Calvin, are the external manifestation of Towner’s inner judge and jury, made clear in a scene in which a girl, pregnant by one of the Calvinists, is beaten as a fraud after being unable to cough up the Lord’s Prayer on demand and in public.
The tourists
When the Calvinists come after Towner and the pregnant girl, the tourists—outsiders trying to figure out what’s going on—evoke Towner’s own confused mental state as she tries to make sense of her own memories and perceptions. The tourists also do a great job of increasing the fever pitch:
I see them crossing the street, torches blazing. Traffic stops for them, creating a jam of onlookers. I see the looks of amusement from the tourists. They think they’re watching one of the pageants they’ve seen over and over again in this city.
“Get the witch!” they chant.
The tourists think it’s Bridget Bishop, or one of the other reenactments. They are trying to do their part as well, trying to engage the hysteria, to show they’re comfortable with it. Getting their children involved, too. “Get the witch! Get the witch!” they cry.
The track Bru lays with these groups puts Towner and the pregnant Angela at the center of this revelatory moment:
In this place the scene has become simple and universal. What we are seeing is history repeating itself, one scene superimposed over the other. We are both here and back in old Salem at the same time, with the real Calvinists, the first ones. There is a feeling of impending doom here, and when I look at Angela, for just a moment, I see her in the drab brown Puritan dress, her hair tied back and covered. And we are back in history in the days when they came to get you because you were a woman alone in the world, or because you were different, because your hair was red, or because you had no children of your own and no husband to protect you.
Talk about a Greek chorus: Bru is summoning the power of all of the witches and all of the Puritans (and most of the women) throughout history in order to extend and amplify her novel’s enduring conflict. Mad skills.
Abused women
Does Bru stop there? Why would she, she was on a roll! A community of abused women, given safe haven offshore on Yellow Dog Island, are a societal representation of the novel’s personal stakes.
Yellow dogs
Another Greek chorus is formed by the wild yellow dogs themselves, who emerge snarling from caves in both dreams and in story events. The pack brings forth the fierceness with which some boundaries must be defended.
Rats!
And is there a better way to evoke one’s fear than a rat for company in a dark tunnel, when your only choices are to return to a smoky inferno or continue forward into deep water? Sure there is. Make it scores of rats, heading in the same direction as the characters—until even the rats sense they have met their end.
Aristotle stated in his Poetics: “The chorus too should be regarded as one of the actors; it should be an integral part of the whole, and share in the action.” Because Bru’s groups were integral to the plot, extended the story’s themes, and exemplified other than overtly explained inner emotions, this technique did not come across as overkill.
It came across as smart.
Can you think of novels in which a Greek chorus has been used to good advantage? Might it work to amplify the theme and spread the stakes of your own novel? Share in the comments!
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GIVEAWAY! [U.S. only]
After last month’s post, in which I examined (and tweeted about!) the way Margot Livesey set the hook in her novel Banishing Verona, Margot generously sent me a box of signed hardcover copies! If you’d like to enter the giveaway click this title link—The Power of Unexpected Elements—and leave a comment as to what you like about her opening, reproduced in the post. Everyone who already left a complimentary comment about the work will be automatically entered, along with all new comments on that post only. Three winners will be chosen on Friday April 14. Good luck, and many thanks to Margot Livesey for her generosity!
[coffee]
Kathryn Craft (she/her) is the author of two novels from Sourcebooks, The Art of Falling and The Far End of Happy. Her forthcoming book, Crafting Story Movement: Techniques to Engage Readers and Drive Your Novel Forward, draws from decades of experience as both a story consultant and a movement specialist/dance critic. Learn more on Kathryn’s website.
Kathryn-
Another collective voice can be found in The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides, in which the tale is narrated by all the people of Grosse Pointe, Michigan, speaking as one. (In technical terms the narrative voice is first person plural.)
I think you’re making a more comprehensive point, though, about amplifying a story by including groups of characters and making them active. The Ya-Ya Sisterhood has both a collective identity and a mission, for instance. Indeed, they set Rebecca Wells’s novel in motion.
Groups can be broken out as individuals, too. Whitney Otto’s How to Make an American Quilt weaves the stories of the eight members of a quilting circle in Grasse, California. It’s a story pattern that traces its roots back through Mary McCarthy’s The Group, all the way to Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio.
Clubs, gangs, squadrons, social classes…groups add muscle to a story, especially when they have identity and act. I wish more novels used them.
Good post, Kathryn.
Thanks Don. Great examples! Had forgotten that about the Virgin Suicides, as it’s been a long time since reading. Very powerful when a whole town speaks as one.
Thank you for the interesting post Kathryn.
I’ll argue that Ayn Rand’s novella Anthem makes use of a greek chorus, which I’m sure was intentional. The story is a dystopia made out of the author’s fears about socialism/communism to the point where the word ‘I’ is outlawed. I like it because I find it funny instead of tragic.
I haven’t read that one but it sounds like a great example. Thanks James!
Huh, now that I think about it, groups are very commonly used in speculative fiction. The first one that springs to mind: Star Wars is chock-full of groups, some of them functioning as you describe. We have the Jedi Council, the Imperial Senate, the Republic, the Resistance, the First Order, etcetera, and to various degrees they all play a part in determining the characters’ goals, motivations, and conflicts.
I just finished book two of Brandon Sanderson’s (colossal) Stormlight Saga, and his primary protagonists are part of a group–an ancient order called the Knights Radiant, thought long defunct. For much of the story they don’t realize they’re part of this group. They don’t realize they have innate powers – similar versions of a sort of magic utilizing “stormlight.” So their connection and the forming shape and coalescing power of the group are playing a major role in shaping the storyline.
Seems like there’s often a group in spec fiction serving a role among the forces of antagonism, too. For Sanderson, this group is the mysterious (and seemingly nefarious, but not so easily pinned as such) Ghostbloods.
And I just happen to be gearing up to write a scene in which my protagonist is scheming to play to (pander to, even) a group that he realizes will promote his agenda. Yep, he’s using them (such a manipulator). Great food for thought today, and perfect timing! Thanks, Kathryn!
Vaughn, My favorite part of your comment is the opening: “Huh, now that I think about it…” that points right through your own examples to your mission at the end to write about a group with new awareness. *dusts off hands* Glad I could help bring this forward for you!!
Kathryn, I had not thought of this at all. Character combos like Batman and Robin come to mind but not a whole chorus. You make it sound so cool!
Thanks Paula. I love the scenes in superhero movies where the entire city is on hand—usually rush hour traffic when the menace is unleashed, right? What fun would it be if it happened on a Sunday afternoon when half the population was at home in the suburbs? Their collective horror makes us realize how important the hero’s cause really is. I bet you’ll see many more examples now that you’re aware of it.
I wonder if a chorus could extend to the workplace. My character’s occupation is a major part of my novel and there are “spoke persons” that move from “the group” to comment on her work and how she lives her life, deals with her crisis. Not all are complementary. The expansion of that “group” might form a chorus. Great post. Interesting ideas. Beth
Sure, Beth. Because there was no need for individuation, the Greek choruses on stage often wore masks. To be perceived as a chorus, the “spokesperson” might be named, but not the others. “Everyone from the newsroom gathered round” sort of thing. Glad this offers something for you to chew on!
Kathryn, I’ve always loved the idea of the Greek chorus, but I didn’t realize until we spoke at your book club meeting how much I had used it in The Lace Reader. You have a great way of breaking down the elements of story and discovering its essence and craft, which is probably one of the things that makes you such a wonderful writer. Thank you for taking the time to do this with The Lace Reader. Now I’m looking at my latest book to see if the chorus continues. It does.
I think we need to give our subconscious a lot of credit for the things we do right. Those of us lucky enough to have grown up at the knee of great storytellers just “get” some things without needing it broken down. When I read, I like to look for those elements, figure out how and why they work, then slip the technique into my toolbox. Thanks for offering up this one, Bru!
Thank you, Kathryn. This highlighting of the parts to the whole is exactly why Writer Unboxed is THE best place for writers to learn, share, and strategize.
Why is it we trust the collective more than a single voice? Maybe it’s evidence, safety? Yet, the hero always stands alone. Oh, the tension…
Thanks for your comment Janna. Not sure if I “trust” the collective more, but it’s sure harder to ignore them!
Thanks for a post that really made me think, Kathryn.
My first reaction was, “Gee, I’ve never thought about doing that.”
Then I realized I HAD indeed done just that with a crowd scene set at a political rally in my YA historical fiction. Thanks for opening my eyes.
Haha cool, Rita! If we can make what we do subconsciously conscious, we can work with it more readily. Glad it worked for you today!
I have trouble seeing any of those sampled passages as Greek Choruses. I would expect a Greek Chorus to amplify a situation by talking about it, like the voices of Hell talking to itself in Tanya Huff’s novel Summon the Keeper, commenting on everything the other characters are doing.
That is certainly one use for a Greek chorus, Marc, thanks for your comment. I can’t point to specific Greek tragedies that used them in the other ways cited in the definition I found, as I am not that kind of a scholar. But the fact that these groups speak as one to amplify the inner conflict of the character—the suspect femininity exemplified by the witches vs. the more fundamentalist view of a woman’s subservience put forth by the Calvinists, for instance—seemed well within the definition. Whether scholar-approved “Greek choruses” or just groups, I hope you can see their value in writing dynamic fiction.
Kathryn,
Seeing it was you up, I jumped in gladly. I have NEVER thought about the Greek Chorus technique for writing a novel. Of course your dissection of Brunonia’s work made me say, yes, and cheer for its brilliance.
Then it dawned on me the climax of my WIP builds with the gathering over days of a huge crowd–disparate groups in alliance and tension–coming to see what my protagonist will do in her last performance.
You can be sure I will exploit all the threads of Bru’s and your work that I’m able. Giddy!!
Yes, yes! Spread those stakes across the shoulders of many and your work will grow from the personal to the societal. I’m excited for you Tom!
Kathryn, you and Brunonia, have just helped me solve a writing problem I’ve been struggling with recently. The Greek chorus concept for writing fiction is a tool I need and had no idea. I see how it can give me a picture that needs little revisiting or talking through when I see it. When I am searching I can listen for my Greek chorus. Thank you. Really, thank you.
If it weren’t for Brunonia, and the fact that I dove deep into her novel for my book club, I may not have brought the power of using groups to the fore in my mind either. So I too want to thank Bru for this great discussion thread!
Recently I used the power of the crowd in a short story, in which a motorcycle gang, their helmets festooned with silk butterflies, roars into a gated community where the HOA president has taken a stance against milkweed. It was intuitive and, I think, fun.
Sounds like a great use, Dana, and fun!
I hadn’t thought about this concept either, Kathryn. Thanks! Although a little different from what you’re talking about, Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came to the End makes a group the protagonist. It’s written in first person plural and the collective consciousness makes for a powerful story.