Naked in Ten Photos: Structure

updates on attempting to write a novel

Image description: two trees or a tree split in half with symmetrical branches with the backdrop of other trees, a white-grey sky and the sun.

The shape I am imagining for this novel is the frame with each chapter acting as a frame for each photo. I have taken a rabbit hole detour into structure, picking up a book from my voluminous shelves, Jane Alison, Meander, Spiral, Explode, Design and Pattern in Narrative. This book was recommended by dear friend, Liam Taliesin whose debut novel, Lithium Fire has just come out with Bookland Press. He worked on this novel for twenty years and has been discussing the challenges of writing the novel with me over that time period, as long as we’ve known each other.

Alison resists the commonly held belief that fiction has to follow a narrative arc and suggests alternative structures. I appreciate this very much because I’m not great at plot, frankly.

So I’m imaging each chapter as its own separate vignette based on ten individual photographs. I am also inspired by something Alison describes as a collage of fragments. This is typically how I write, nipping in  here and there to write a paragraph that strikes me at the moment as needing to be written. This works well for poetry but I haven’t used that method for novel writing, which tends to be written in a more continuous flow, then edits after to move stuff around. I find it intimidating to write a novel more so than any other form. There are just so many things to think of. It’s like trying to juggle while riding a unicycle and singing a song.

In her newsletter this week, serendipitously … Ottawa author and friend Kate Heartfield talks about resisting traditional narrative and recommends several books that do this well. She also discusses the use of AI tools by publishers to help them weed out books in the slush pile, how they are looking for work that adheres to Western plot conventions and how dangerous this is. I agree.

In life and in my creative work, I always face two conflicting desires: the desire to follow rules and instil order in my life, and to complete things for a sense of accomplishment, and the need to question convention and to play. I find myself struggling with this conflict in myself while working on this novel.

I couldn’t help myself, I began to write a chapter, inspired by the Francesca Woodman photograph that inspired the concept for Naked in Ten Photos. It raises all kinds of questions, and also that damn voice in my head has started up again, telling me that this is too complicated, too hard, that I’m not a good writer, that I can’t write dialogue for shit, etc. Figuring out how to quiet that voice is part of the challenge of writing this novel and any long form fiction project for me. With poetry, I feel more daring and defiant. I don’t know why this is, but it’s an issue.

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