A story is like weaving on a loom.
The warp is the characters (hero, heroine, villain, sidekick, misc.) and the weft is what happens, the plot elements. So you start with a loom and on it are strung vertically the warp-- although you can add warp into the design as it develops.
A shuttle carries the weft across the threads or yarns and designs become obvious. You can add colors going vertically also as the design requires.
With a book, it's in a basic frame with these important people, some introduced immediately and others as the story goes along. They are influenced and changed by what comes at them both through their own decisions and those of others.
In the end, you have a whole, the rug or cloth and all the elements fit it. If they don't, the weaving was unsuccessful and you might tear the whole thing apart.
I thought about writing this down but at the time just let it be with the idea sometime it would work for a blog here. Well and also be sure my own story weavings were consistent, with strong and interesting designs.
Then last night, I had a dream which when it had ended gave me another metaphor.
A story is like a picture puzzle.
You start putting together the pieces and guessing how it will turn out, what fits there, what does that piece seem to be saying? Sometimes you begin seeing a box photo of where you are going but sometimes you just start finding pieces that work to create a satisfying design. If a piece doesn't fit or is missing, the puzzle is a frustration.
So in writing a book there is a goal, a set of pieces that will be put together to satisfactorily meet the needs of that goal. A reader will be happy when they finish a book where all the pieces worked together to create something the reader had never seen the same way before.
Just for the fun to add to this, I'll tell you the general story. I don't see it as becoming a plot for one of my books, but it was a very enthralling dream movie.
The hero and heroine are married and working with government forces in a strange country. This is what they do. They are living in a very big home, well set up structurally, and not living with the main body of military personnel which says they were probably CIA or something like that. The country is in turmoil.
I think there were at least three scenes that mattered, that were important parts of the puzzle. In a way my characters were also putting together a puzzle. There were others in their home off and on who were working for the same goals regarding this country.
The folloowing section was when I saw the analogy to writing most clearly. Things had gone wrong and worse the government body with which they worked wasn't really effective. It looked like it would all fall apart and the mission fail when the hero basically got together some of his friends, told them to come to the home and they were about to start their own military action.
The next pieces of the story would be gathering the personnel and tools together to win something that all the bigger bodies were about to lose completely.
There wasn't much romance because this couple were already together and had no marital problems. They were an enjoyable couple to watch; so it had plenty of interest as they were both good at what they did-- paramilitary fighting (think Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt). Fun dialogue to write, and put together how they would win in the end with a small force. But not a romance.
It was however a great metaphor for putting together a good story or how you feel after you have read one. The tiny piece that didn't seem important when you looked at it is often a key element to making the puzzle work.
My father used to like to play tricks with puzzles. He would hide one piece; so that when we got to the end, we'd know something never seemed to be there. Then he got to put it in. There is a real satisfaction when writing a story when the last piece goes into place and you may not have even seen it mattered but suddenly you know it was the key to it all.
