When writing a linked set of stories, I think it’s hard to figure out what perspective you’re going to come from. Several very serious questions arise before you even start writing:
1. Whose story are you writing?
2. Who is telling it?
3. What is your overreaching theme? What’s the point?
These three questions are at the basis of every story. without a solid base, even the best constructed story falls to pieces in your hands.
When I got this particular assignment, it took me a decent amount of time to decide how I was going to approach it, how I was going to link three separate (yet, not, obviously) stories together. I knew that I wanted it to be about Cristiani ( see previous entry) and about the musician who would be playing her. But that was about it.
For about a week, I dabbled with the concept. I tried a female muscian narrator, a male muscian narrator, Cristiani herself narrating. I tried it in first and third, once, in second ( that was a giant will-not-happen-again) voice. I tried an outside perspective, which went a little better, but still didn’t have what I was looking for. At the end of the week, I was about ready to pull my hair out in clumps. Why couldn’t I figure this out? Perspective and voice had never been a problem for me. Why was this particular story misbehaving so badly?
I went with a good friend of mine, a fellow writer, to drown my frustration in a grande cafe latte and huge chocolate cookie. She asked me about my story. I went on at great length about the cello and the original musician and the current musician , and all this that and the other. Finally, I wound down to morose silence, occasionally slurping my drink and completely ignoring the chocoately goodness at my right hand.
She eyed me for about a minute. Then , casually, she said, “Well, that’s all cool and interesting, but what is it actually about?”
I looked up, affronted, ready to tell her straight out that it was about…..I opened my mouth and nothing came out. Well, crap. I spent the next 1 hour enmeshed in the concept. What was my theme? Where was this going?
I left that little cafe table with a new lease on my story. I ran my original questions through my mind over and over again, examining them from as many angles as I could. I kept coming back to what effect would such an intense relationship between instrument and musician have on the people around them. How would those people (mothers, fathers, siblings, friends, lovers, etc.) see and deal with it?
It was while traveling along this line of thought that I decided to write the story from a variety of perspectives. To create the story around the main characters, not from them. It would happen backwards but not in any specific order. Track the life of a genius and his muse from end to beginning. Watching what prices everyone else has to pay for their madness.
This is the second in the trilogy, “Do You Carry Every Sadness With You?” The title is taken from the song Half Acre, by Hem.
