Structures
sonets & sonatas & oceans & branches
I've been thinking about how structures persist across different forms. While I was re-reading The Making of a Sonnet by Ed Hirsch and Eavan Boland, I was reminded of how the volta, or turn, that occurs at the end of a Petrarchan sonnet might be aligned with the recapitulation section of a musical sonata or the crisis, falling action and denouement that are the back end of Freytag's pyramid, a classic approach to analyzing dramatic structure which is often used by both screenwriters and novelists. Given how much time people spend with dramatic narratives — primarily, these days, streaming television and watching movies — it's important to remind oneself that the undeniably phallocentric Freytagian pyramid (with it's climax at the tip of the volcano) is not the only structure out there.
The poetic form of the sonnet is traditionally defined as a 14 line poem of rhymed couplets. The Italian (or Petrarchan) Sonnet can be divided into two sections: the first 8 lines (or octave), in which exposition of the ideas and images occurs, and the last 6 lines (or sestet), also known as the volta or turn, because this is where change occurs, where a new idea, interpretation or twist is introduced. In the Shakespearean sonnet, the final couplet is generally where the major turn occurs.
Against the sonnet, consider the musical form of the sonata, which has certain similar technical constraints.
Introduction
Exposition — Major themes laid out, each in a different key or tone
Development — Variations on the themes
Recapitulation — Repetition of Exposition material, incorporating the variations
Coda — The ideas are taken in a new direction, often open-ended
“Song of Roland” by Jamaica Kincaid can be read not just as a song but a sonata, complete with all the parts laid out above and one of the most unusual descriptions of the face of a beloved to be found in modern English. Despite following the simple, familiar sonata structure rather closely, its story arc is unusual and unexpected.
One of the things I love about using the form of the sonnet or the sonata as a shape for writing narrative prose is its outrageous abstraction. This is not your prescriptive plot formula! And yet, it can provide the architecture that makes a work coherent. It demands change and experimentation throughout, but dumps a great deal of its most important work right at the end.
So, if you’re ever looking for a shape for a story, consider taking on a known form, such as a sonnet or sonata, but how does one go about finding one that is well suited to a particular story? Look around your library or your mind for a favorite text or object that seems to belong. It could be any text in any format, from the Bible to a comic book, or a different sort of object, not a text — say, a tree, a star, a wave form, a bottle, a wheel. The point here is to lean on a meaningful text or cultural or natural object for the larger structure that will guide you as you write.
One terrific example of a structure that has both formal and symbolic relevance to the story it scaffolds occurs in Beloved by Toni Morrison. The image at the heart of this Civil War era Medea reimagining is a scar in the shape of a chokecherry tree, the result of a brutal whipping by an overseer, the critical trigger for the central incident of the book, the infanticide of Beloved. The scar’s shape is echoed by the budding branches that define the landscape and also the fractal structure of the novel itself, in which each major story element is repeated tocscale, in micro- or macrocosm, a branchlet or a trunk, in every section. Fractals are exquisite and challenging structures to use in writing, and give rise to narratives that deny conventional linearity.
In her illuminating book Meander, Spiral, Explode, Jane Alison describes a number of intriguing and infrequently deployed narrative shapes for novels. You can glean many of these from her title, but my favorite is her structural analysis of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, which she sees as not just a palindrome (the section structure is 12345654321, with the outer five stories divided in two and the central one told all in one) but a set of hands in the prayer position that is also used to hold a book (or the orison, a recording and projection device that figures centrally in storyline 6). She reads his book as a kind of prayer for the peace that so eludes the characters in the text.
I, lately, have been dwelling on Moby-Dick, a major inspiration for a novel I'm working on. When we read it aloud in The 24-Hour Room in 2020, I happened to choose a favorite woodcut of the ocean by Vija Celmins as the imagery for the Moby-Dick page. Of course it’s a book about whaling, but the Celmins image made me realize that my main interest in the story has little to do with the sea-faring adventure and everything to do with its shape, which I perceive as a series of narrative waves.
PROMPT: Go off into your library and your mind in search of shapes to steal, borrow, bend or otherwise bring to bear on your project. Look for narrative, symbolic, and structural potential, refrains or patterns that can be repeated with variation.
Make a chart, outline, drawing or graph of your piece, in light of this structural reference. Consider the length of each part. How can you mold your story to this form? If you chose a sonnet, you might want to ask where your volta, climax, or recapitulation and coda sections would fall. If you chose a palindrome or a fractal, you could where your halfway point lay or your branchings diverged. Consider, whatever form you chose, whether the scale of the formal structure is right for the story you're trying to tell?
Once you've adopted a structure, don't let it enslave you. Play around with it. Use it loosely or strictly, as best inspires you.