Bowen on Fiction 1 - Plot
Elizabeth Bowen with students at Bryn Mawr College, 1956.
In 1945, grumpy Anglo-Irish writer Elizabeth Bowen published “Notes on Writing a Novel,” a treatise as severe as her cheekbones. Her philosophy of writing is knife-sharp and unflinching. Some resist her rules but that she has attempted to construct rules—many very smart—to tame the elephant that is fiction writing in the first place is pretty gutsy. Similar attempts by E.M. Forster and John Gardner are canonical and more recent ones by David Shields and James Wood will certainly live on. But Bowen ought not to be ruled out. Occasionally, I will post her thoughts on (1) Plot; (2) Characters; (3) Scene; (4) Dialogue; and most strikingly, (5) Angle; (6) Advance; and (7) Relevance. Her writing is so precise it defies summary. So to the owners of her copyright, my sincerest apologies.
Let us begin with Plot.
1. Plot
Essential. The Pre-Essential.
Plot might seem to be a matter of choice. It is not. The particular plot for the particular novel is something the novelist is driven to. It is what is left after the whittling-away of alternatives. The novelist is confronted, at a moment (or at what appears to be the moment: actually its extension may be indefinite) by the impossibility of saying what is to be said in any other way.
He is forced toward his plot. By what? By ‘what is to be said’. What is ‘what is to be said’? A mass of subjective matter that has accumulated—impressions received, feelings about experience, distorted results of ordinary observation, and something else—x. This matter is extra matter. It is superfluous to the non-writing life of the writer. It is luggage left in the hall between two journeys, as opposed to the perpetual furniture of rooms. It is destined to be elsewhere. It cannot move till its destination is known. Plot is knowing of destination.
Plot is diction. Action of language, language of action.
Plot is story. It is also a ‘story’ in the nursery sense = lie. The novel lies, in saying that something happened that did not. It must, therefore, contain uncontradictable truth, to warrant the original lie.
Story involves action. Action towards an end not to be foreseen (by the reader) but also towards an end which, having been reached, must be seen to have been from the start inevitable.
Action by whom? The characters. Action in view of what, and because of what? The ‘what is to be said’.
What about the idea that the function of action is to express the characters? This is wrong. The characters are there to provide the action. [My note: Bowen extols bottom-up vs. top-down approach. Objective correlative.] Each character is created, and must only be so created, as to give his or her action (or rather, contributory part in the novel’s action) verisimilitude. [I.e., Keep that shit real.]
What about the idea that plot should be ingenious, complicated—a display of ingenuity remarkable enough to command attention? If more than such a display, what? Tension, or mystification towards tension, are good for emphasis. For their own sakes, bad.
Plot must further the novel towards its object. What is object? The non-poetic statement of poetic truth.
Have not all poetic truths been already stated? The essence of a poetic truth is that no statement of it can be final.
Plot, story, is in itself un-poetic. At best it can only be not anti-poetic. It cannot claim a single poetic licence. It must be reasoned-only from the moment when its none-otherness, its only-possibleness has become apparent. Novelist must always have one foot, sheer circumstantiality, to stand on, whatever the other foot may be doing. (N.B. Much to be learnt from story telling to children. Much to be learnt from the detective story—especially non-irrelevance). [My N.B. Here Bowen reveals her bias, no? She seems to lean toward the taut fairy tail, Aristotelian logic, the happy ending. But what to make of a Pynchon or a DeLillo or a Faulkner? Are their excesses ‘irrelevant’? What does she mean by ‘irrelevant’ in the first place?]
Flaubert’s ‘Il faut intérreser’. Stress on manner of telling: keep in mind, ‘I will a tale unfold’. Interest of watching a dress that has been well packed unpacked from a dress-box. Interest of watching silk handkerchief drawn from a conjuror’s watch.
Plot must not cease to move forward. The actual speed of the movement must be even. Apparent variations in speed are good, necessary, but there must be no actual variations in speed. To obtain those apparent variations is part of the illusion-task of the novel. Variations in texture can be made to give the effect of variations in speed. [Tone?] Why are apparent variations in speed necessary? (a) For emphasis. (b) For non-resistance, or ‘give’, to the nervous time-variations of the reader. Why is actual evenness, non-variation, of speed necessary? For the sake of internal evenness for its own sake. Perfection of evenness = perfection of control. [Beauty as balance? Truth not always beautiful.] The evenness of the speed should be the evenness inseparable from tautness. The tautness of the taut string is equal (or even) all along and at any part of the string’s length. [Throughline?]
