If only it were simply a matter of words and adding one word to the next to the next, anyone could write a novel. Yesterday, we started with obscure beginnings. Today I’m covering what Jane Smiley had to say about taking those words and building them up into novel of your own.

Here is Jane Smiley’s Novel-Writing Pyramid of Skills from 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel:

We started with words so it makes sense that the base of the pyramid would be made up of punctuation, grammar and spelling because these come into play in every sentence that you write.

“It is through employment of grammar, punctuation, and spelling that we signal ourselves and the reader to prepare for a certain experience.” – Jane Smiley

On the next layer is diction which is driven by our familiarity with words and expressions. According to Smiley, “Though choosing the right words is an effort, the right words are inspiring.”

The next layer of pyramid is story & character (or plot & protagonist if you prefer). 
“The balance between story and character is unique to every novel, and the balance between action and meaning is different for every author, but every novel has both. The proper balance between action and self-revelation is hard to find.”

“Fiction is not so much about what happens as about how it happens; how it happens is intimately bound up with who does it.

Setting & theme make up the next layer of the novel-writing pyramid. Jane Smiley also refers to this layer as the specific and the general. It seems to me that this is where the novel writing gets innately personal as the writer begins to develop – and expose – their own particular style.

“Style is the evidence of how the author’s mind works. How he selects, arranges, and presents his particular is the closets we get to who he is. As you write your story you will inevitably reveal yourself.”

At the top of our pyramid is complexity which seems somewhat intuitive since, “Life itself is complex.” But even the discussion of complexity can in itself become complex.

“Any individual activity contains as much complexity as the brain contemplating it is capable of.”
“More complexity is more fun as well as more true.”
“Any aspect of a novel may be made more complex, but not every aspect.”

I’ve never before seen novel writing broken down in this way, but like the idea of the pyramid of skills you need in order to write your novel. Of course there’s no perfect answer for how to put them all together. As Smiley writes, “There is no proper way to write a novel because there is no way to perfectly balance all the categories in the pyramid. The novel is a linear form because prose happens sequentially, but the parts of a novel, as analyzed in the pyramid, are spatial.”

All quotes are from Jane Smiley’s 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel. 


lara
My Story Writer
www.mywritingsoftware.com


Miss a post from the 13 Ways series? Find it here:
Kickoff: The 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel | The 13 Ways | I Hate Introductions | What is the Novel? |Who is the Novelist? | Origins: Where did the Novel Come From? | The Psychology of the Novel | Morality of the Novel | The Art of the Novel | The Novel and History | The Circle of the Novel | The Novel's Greatest Tradition: Obscure Beginnings