I have just been through a once-in-a-lifetime experience with ballerina shoes and I want to share it as a story-writing advise. I call it the ballerina shoe writing technique. Read on!
The ballerina shoe technique for story writing is an ingenious, though premature idea, originating from the actual physical experience I mentioned and a stray notion that hit me earlier today. Namely: People get bored from encountering the same storyline over and over again, so in the long run they might feel deceived and stop liking reading eventually. Therefore, what a storyline needs, is a kink.
Let’s get into the details now. I have been working with a story lately that was very skimmed it its initial release, while the potential of the protagonists is significant. Therefore, I decided to add more scenes between the lines, so to speak, to put more stories along with the characters, in other words to add the colours on the pencil sketch and bring the story to life. Some call this process “the snow-flake method” of writing. By the way, when I understood they call it that and the whole definition of it, I was sure I never want to write fiction again it this is how it should be done. Luckily I read about “the beat method” of creative writing right after and that was much more like it. To be honest I even put together a beat-by-beat scene scheme for the story I was expanding, wrote some of the scenes according to the plan as well. Until I lost the rhythm, speaking of beats. And here the “Ballerina shoe technique” kicks-in to shed the light on the issue.
When curiosity pulled the elastic strings of the ballerina shoes out, I was honoured with the unique experience to put them back in the tight channels. And here comes the analogy (So in case it didn’t quite make sense so far, now is the time to start the reading consiously).
When expanding a story, the writer has a storyline (shoestring) and a premise (the channel it goes into that ensures that both end meet). So starting the job is remarkably easy: knowing the story premise, you put on the scenes that fit perfectly in between what is, i.e you put the string in the channel, push it and watch it slide forward. Until it bumps into something and stops (usually the heal of the shoe, in other words the turning point of the plot). Here you push harder, navigate the string and even try to make more space for it, push from one side and pull from the other. And it progresses with a mm after a 15 min of efforts.
Ends need to meet.
Pulling out the string and starting over does not make sense – the end is near and all fits perfect so far. What can I do? Push and pull the string until the end, while watching it creep slowly within the channel is a torture. What else can I do?
Break the premise.
Make a cut, just enough to pull the string out and back in again. Than it makes a kink. Pushing forward is way easier though. The kink stays until ends meet. The storyline is unchanged, it fits the premise, there was only one moment in time (thank you, Whitney and song-writer) when the story is more than you though it could be – to let the string out of the channel.
Let the story line get in touch with chaos before getting back in the story premise. It will twist effortlessly.
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