Lesson
63
Plotting
and plodding
I paid full price for Beyond Belfast: A 560-Mile Walk across Northern Ireland on Sore Feet, the 2010 winner by Will Ferguson. He came to the church for the Ottawa Writers Festival, and I had a chance to get a book signed if I bought it on-site.
After a brief exchange, he wrote out
his signature, a salutation, and the note, “Funny is as Funny does.” I read a
lot into that comment, probably more than warranted, because I associate it
with something he had told the audience that night. Earlier in the evening, Ferguson had said he doesn’t like stories that feature
introspective personalities and that he always tries to reveal character
through dialogue and action.
“I believe deeply that our character
is decided by the choices we make,” he said in reference to his Giller Prize-winning
novel, 419. “I think character in
fiction and in life is defined by the actions that characters do and not who
they think they are or the slights and the grudges and regrets that they dwell
on.”
The comments echo standard writing
text advice to tell stories through vivid experience, action, and deeds. If you
wanted to extend that to writing humour, you might express it as “funny is as
funny does.”
When I got home that night, I looked
down at the scribble in the front of my new book and broke another pledge. I
started reading this 2010 winner out of chronological Leacock Medal order, keen
to find words that would illustrate Ferguson’s point and to make that the theme
of my review of his book. I saw a few examples, but not enough.
Beyond
Belfast follows Ferguson on a solo journey along the Ulster Way, the long,
looping footpath around Northern Ireland. The book documents action: the action
of walking across streams, up mountains, along cliffs, and over dung-filled
pastures; and it presents dialogue: in dank pubs, dank B&Bs, and dank city
streets. The book makes the slipping and sipping experiences pretty funny, but Beyond Belfast also contains more than
just a little dwelling and thinking, too.
Fewer people had completed the
sore-feet feat than had climbed Everest at the time Ferguson set out on it just
over a decade ago, but he was not motivated entirely by the physical challenge.
He wanted to understand his ancestry, which he saw not in the Fergusons, but in
the Ulster line leading to the single mother who raised him in Fort Vermilion.
I don’t think that 
Ferguson could suggest that this book kept entirely clear of
introspective thoughts and feelings.
He mused not only about his orphaned
grandfather but also about the history, politics, and religion of Northern
Ireland. In the front end, he frames his journey with the basics of William of
Orange, the 1916 Easter Uprising, and the 1969 events that sparked the more
recent terror.
Although Ulster issues defy understanding, Ferguson wades in, perhaps feeling he had earned a connection with his blisters and his research on family history. As he flops his dung-covered hiking boots around Northern Ireland, he passes all the points of sadness: Armagh, Derry, Enniskillen, and, of course, the starting and ending point, Belfast.
Although Ulster issues defy understanding, Ferguson wades in, perhaps feeling he had earned a connection with his blisters and his research on family history. As he flops his dung-covered hiking boots around Northern Ireland, he passes all the points of sadness: Armagh, Derry, Enniskillen, and, of course, the starting and ending point, Belfast.
I don’t know what kind of person could
avoid introspection on that r
oute and I don’t blame Ferguson for failing to provide me with an easy, exemplary book of telling by showing.
oute and I don’t blame Ferguson for failing to provide me with an easy, exemplary book of telling by showing.
Still, I felt a little dejected. As I
pondered this hurdle, I thought about my decision to buy a new book just
because of the convenience and wondered if I was giving up. Having read the
2010 Leacock Medal winner out of sequence, I knew that when I put Belfast down, I would be slipping back
to 1992 and would be facing twenty more books.
Maybe in part to put off the backward
slide, I started flipping through Beyond
Belfast again and I took greater notice this time of the maps and charts
that introduce each section, thought about the plans and preparations and the
plodding along in the pastures, and remembered something else Ferguson had said
in the Ottawa church.
He told the pews that he puts more
time into planning and working on the plot for his books than writing them. He
spent over a year and a half on the outline for 419.
“I should have brought the actual
outline--it’s about eighty pages,” he said. “It’s a scene-by-scene breakdown.
The trick is to outline and outline and outline . . . before you start.”
Ferguson said that he thinks a
detailed plot ensures that a writer doesn’t follow ideas into a corner or get
swept up into the fog of endless possibilities. He told the audience that this
applies equally to fiction and travel writing.
“My sister is a sculptor; she prefers to work in marble, but it is quite expensive and so she also works in clay,” he said in what seemed like a non sequitur. “She says with clay, you build something up . . . with marble, you cut something down.”
“My sister is a sculptor; she prefers to work in marble, but it is quite expensive and so she also works in clay,” he said in what seemed like a non sequitur. “She says with clay, you build something up . . . with marble, you cut something down.”
Ferguson said travel writing like Beyond Belfast is like sculpting in marble
because you typically have this huge block of experience, history, and
destination information. You have to make choices and cut away.
“But with fiction, it’s like writing
in clay . . . you are building things up from something," Ferguson said, adding that you can be overwhelmed in either of them--in one by
information, and in the other by ideas. Then he repeated that a detailed plot
can be the answer.
“With a good plot outline, you can skip ahead
and work on a scene out of sequence and then come back to your plan,” he said.
“Don’t worry about themes--themes come out of the story” if you stick to the
outline. Maybe I jumped ahead in reading Belfast,
but I did it within an outline: my Leacock Medal book reading plan. Now, I just
need to do the same kind of planning with my writing.
So, I plodded along, thinking back on
Ferguson’s varied advice, his 560-mile walk, and my book. I visualized his
sister’s work with chunks of marble, the towers and castles of Ulster, the rock
of the Mourne Mountains, the stone walls of the Ottawa church, and then the
craft of writing. A unifying theme emerged: “This stuff is hard.”
Writing Exercise
In 560 words, plot a
travel adventure story based on the circumnavigation of Prince Edward Island in
a canoe.