Trapezes: the plot action

[vcmw]

Elizabeth Bear is talking in her livejournal about what makes a breakout novel, and I decided my thoughts were too long to inflict on her comments field, so I'm putting them here instead.

Here's my current theory on story (It's also sort of a theory of life):

First, visualize an enormous circus, a circus big top as big as the world, with an infinite number of swinging trapezes high above the ground, and no net.

Next, visualize a young person walking around on the circus floor.
In this metaphor, a Young Adult novel's typical plot goes like this:
"What am I doing here on the floor?  What are these ladder things?  Could I climb one?  Wow, I have to climb a ladder to get up there and it's exhausting.  Holy smokes, now I'm at the top of this ladder, what comes next?  I see a trapeze, can I grab it?  Do I dare?  Wow, I better step off the platform now!  Swoosh."
The credits roll as the YA protagonist steps off the platform for the first time. 

Now, once you're up there and you step off the platform, in this metaphor you never reach the other side.  You don't get to touch down on a platform again until you die (and that's if you're lucky - lots of people will end up on the circus floor, not a platform at all).  You're up there in a world of infinite trapezes, all of them swinging with different timing and different trajectory.   You have no control over the timing or trajectory of the other trapezes.  You can try to pick a goal, a platform you'd like to head towards (but will never reach) and try to guess which trapezes will carry you to it.  All of these decisions have to be made in the split second timing of the swinging trapeze.

In this metaphor, the plot of an adult novel is all about the choice of trapeze-sequencing.  The worldbuilding dictates what types of trapezes will be out there, swinging away.  The action of other characters affects the speed and swing of the other trapezes.  It is possible for characters to collaborate together in order to reach a trapeze that one person wouldn't be able to grab on their own.  Sometimes a strong person on a luckily passing trapeze might be able to rescue a faller - but will they do it and risk falling off the trapeze themselves?  etc.

Now narrow in on one moment - You, the protagonist, are on that trapeze.  You've identified a trapeze swinging towards you that you want to catch.  You've focused your muscles.  Your hands might be sweaty on the bar.  Your shoulder muscles might be tired, and your back might be strained.  Maybe someone just shot you and you're bleeding which adversely affects your trapeze ability.  You concentrate on that trapeze across from you - at some point, you let go of the first trapeze and try to catch the second trapeze.
Once you've caught the second trapeze, there's the struggle to hold on.  Sweaty palms might lose their grip on the trapeze bar.  Tired shoulder muscles might give out.  Someone else might have just fallen off their trapeze and tried to grab your ankle on their way down.  You're still bleeding from that damn gunshot wound.  The odds are against you but you have resources.  You manage to hold on to that second trapeze.  You might have time for a half second of congratulation, or you might not.  Already impinging on your consciousness is the quickly impending need to launch yourself to that next trapeze.

But the grim need to move from trapeze to trapeze towards a platform that we never reach with the constant consciousness of the fact that THERE IS NO NET is not the whole story.  It's not why you're up there on the trapeze in the first place.  The choice of platform that you're aiming at is arbitrary, and anyway before you get there they might chop that platform down or you might choose a different platform, or...  or you could fall on the third or seventh or twentieth trapeze.

None of that is the reason you're up there.  The reason you're up there is that, just for a moment, between trapezes, you were flying.  You were more than yourself, and purely yourself.  While you're on the first trapeze you have to hold on.  You have to watch out for other trapezes.  You have to worry whether you'll be able to grab that next trapeze.  And once you grab that next trapeze there's the struggle to hold on, to adjust grip and balance and legs and back and spine to that sudden weight and drag and different momentum.  Even between trapezes you have to watch and calculate (is it still swinging my way?  Do I need to twist in air, change my momentum?)  But there's this tiny tiny bit of a second right after you let go of the first trapeze where you just let go of it all.  You've done the best you can and you're moving forward.

I studied Aikido a tiny bit, and this was what I loved about it - that tiny piece of a minute when the body and the mind have done their thing and made their decision and now you're in motion.  You're twisting or flying or rolling and sure, part of your mind is trying to race ahead to the next thing, but part of your mind is just here.  It's a tiny piece of a second.

I think that one of the best things that fiction and poetry give us is that they draw our attention to that piece of a second.  The second where we're flying.  In our own lives we so often spend so much time sweating over the past (I messed up my launch off that last trapeze, I didn't tuck my neck right before this shoulder roll and it's going to hurt, I didn't stretch enough, I didn't do the laundry) and over the future (I don't think I can hold on to the next trapeze, I'm not sure I know where I'm going, will anyone ever grab my feet if I launch myself into space at the height of this arc?) that we don't let ourselves enjoy those tiny tiny instants when we're flying.  Poetry and fiction can bring us face to face with that instant and make us pause there.

Now, Ms. Bear has often spoken in her LJ somewhat derogatorily about what she calls "consolatory fiction."  I think what she means by this is the kind of story that tells us "eventually you get to stop grabbing on to the next trapeze" or "there is absolutely someone out there in life who will make sure you never fall off the trapeze again" or "some force out there is a net that will make it be not fatal if you fall".  Now, I think as readers we mostly now that these statements are lies.  They're comforting lies.  They are, as she puts it, consolatory.  Personally I don't think this is a bad thing.  It's a kind of meditation.  (I always come back to the bit in John Barnes Mother of Storms about how the feelie star had to do everything amped up way past normal because only half the sensation came through to her audience - like if her boyfriend was tearing bloody tracks in her back then the feelie audience would feel it as nice scratches.  I think of consolatory stories the same way - experiencing it through reading is more diffuse than through direct contact, so the idea has to be amped up.  A real person would just have to tell us they care and listen, but a consolatory book tells us that it can be FIXED.)

A book can be made better by putting in cooler trapezes, more death-defying stunts, by creating impeccable timing and giving us heroes on the trapezes who we really root for.  By creating a more meaningful sequence of trapeze maneuvers.

But a book is made more lovable when it gives us that instant between trapezes with more beauty.  I don't think it is a lying kind of consolation to point out that that moment between trapezes is beautiful.  That part of our soul really wanted to fly between the trapezes.  That of course gravity is still there, of course we do have to grab the next trapeze.  Of course other people are clinging to our ankles and we have to trust that they're heading to the next trapeze too, or we have to try and kick them off and STILL grab the next trapeze.  Maybe some people have dropped off the trapeze and are trying to shoot us on their way down before they hit the circus floor.

Still, the best reason for climbing up there and jumping out with that first trapeze is that heady sensation of flight.  The split second between trapezes.
The way that books focus our attention on that instant is their gift to us as readers.  Ms. Bear's books have awesome trapezes, and I'm totally with her on the ideas that a) there is no net, and b) we never get to stop grabbing trapezes.  What bothers me about her books is that it feels as if there's been a deliberate decision not to emphasize or fully show the feelings in that instant of flight (maybe as a reaction to books that she feels overdo that instant or books that show that instant in situations where it isn't earned?).  For me, the difference between a likable, engaging enough book and a book I love and give to my friends and buy twice so I can give away and talk up to others is all about that instant between trapezes.