Once a week, I have a conference
call with a handful of other writers. We
confer, commiserate, and otherwise encourage each other in the pursuit of our
passion for words and the possibility of eking out a living by stringing them
together in new and interesting ways. This week, while discussing beta-readers,
critique groups and editors, a comparison to music was made. That got me
thinking about the parallels between an excellent musical arrangement and superior
writing.
Just like orchestral composers,
writers have a lot of instruments at their disposal. In addition to different
characters with diverse voices, we can call on location, weather, historical
timeframe, and a host of other factors to breathe life into a narrative.
Environmental factors are the
foundation of the performance. Location is like the percussion section, setting
things in motion. Weather is the brass and strings, painting the mood and
giving things color. And the woodwinds? Those are the secondary characters we use
to fill the empty spaces and tell the full story. They also play pieces of the
melody, moving the story along.
That brings us to the soloists—the
main protagonists and antagonists. Sometimes they play in harmony, other times
they fight for the spotlight, creating conflict and tension. In the end, only
one can be the star.
Then there’s always that one guy
who’s a little out of tune and out of time. He’s the plot twist—the one that
throws a monkey wrench into the gears. Everyone else in the band has to figure
out how to work together to recover from his missed beats and bring the score
back into balance.
The whole arrangement is brought
together by the conductor—the narrator. He’s the one standing between the players
and audience, signaling each movement of the group and dictating the pace. When
we write in the first person, the conductor might be one of the soloists. Then
again, he could be the reporter sitting the wings watching the whole concert
unfold.
My point is, why just sit and strum
the same three cords on the guitar when we have so many instruments at our
disposal? By carefully combining all of these elements in just the right mix,
we as writers can take our stories from a single voice in the dark to the full
throttle symphony of a crowded city street.
