Greetings, writers—
I’m writing this on my phone as we circle the Costco parking lot, looking for a place to park—God I love Black Friday!
No, no, not really. Today’s a day for staying put, for wearing a hat and a Poler poncho inside because heating the house to an actually comfortable temperature (74!) is environmentally irresponsible/fiscally extravagant; for refreshing The Oregonian online to find out if my children will ever go back to school; for working and reading and coming up with a writing prompt; and then later, for taking a cold sunny walk or else a long, boring jog while hate-listening to Smartless.
The last time the kids had a bunch of time off, it was summer vacation and I was reading Maggie Shipstead’s fun and fizzy debut novel, Seating Arrangements. Think Cheever-esque summer island; think gin-soaked bluebloods; think simmering resentments, erotic tensions, betrayal, heartbreak, and a truly disastrous wedding toast.
We see most of the novel’s action through the eyes of Winn Van Meter, the father of the pregnant bride, but Shipstead smoothly and elegantly slides into others’ POVs as well, often with only the a double-return to mark the transition. Writers are often told that mid-chapter shifts in POV are confusing, and that if you’re telling your story via multiple sets of eyeballs, said eyeballs should get their own discrete chapters. Seating Arrangements is proof that that’s not true. You can do pretty much anything as long as you do it well.
Another old saw Shipstead thumbs her nose at: Readers should like your characters. I’m pretty sure I’d loathe Winn and his whole crew if I met them irl, but they were pretty entertaining to read about.
There are many funny moments in the book, but there’s one that seemed so ridiculous that I marked it, thinking that in some distant month I might want to write a post about it, and now that month has come. It’s part of a conversation between Winn and his younger daughter, the one who isn’t getting married. She speaks first:
Although the novel’s tone is lightly satiric, its events are fundamentally realistic—and yet we get an exchange like that, which is bonkers.
Today, go a little bonkers yourself. Write two sentences that seem highly improbable when put next to each other. Then construct a scene around them that makes their juxtaposition perfect and sensical.
Happy writing—
Emily