Let’s look at how the novella Ours Souls at Night is structured.
A few things to remember when
writing a story:
· Every great story is a spool of thread.
o
How will yours spool out?
o
What will readers remember about the
threads of your story?
o
There are many threads of tension
and interest in this story, which help weave together and strengthen the main
story: The thread of gardening, the thread of cooking and grocery shopping, the
thread of marriage complications (the
three main characters---Addie, Gene, Louis---all had problems in their
marriage), the thread of making big news in a small town, the thread of taking
care of a puppy, the thread of watching baby mice grow, the thread of learning
new information from agents of change (neighbor Ruth and son Gene), the thread
of beautiful scenes of nature and the thread of making the most of being
outdoors. These threads are woven together tightly and help the plot thicken.
They are not the main story but they support it.
· Every story has a beginning, middle and an end. A story is
almost always the told in three parts.
o
When you are writing, think of your
story as a play, told in three acts.
o
Write the beginning and the end, if
you know it. Then go back and write the middle.
· How can you, the author, describe Our Souls at Night in ten words or less?
o
A tragedy about older
people falling in love.
o
A love story, in a minor key.
o
A small town tragic love story.
o
A widow and a widower fall in love.
o
A love story, with complications.*
o
The end-of-life story of Addie Moore
and Louis Waters.
· You should be able to describe the plot
of your story in in one or two sentences:
o
An older
woman propositions an older man. They fall in love and are torn apart
by her only son.
*Let’s go
back to the idea of a love story, with complications. A love story, with complications,
is a great idea for a plot, but one that has been told many times.
So how is Our
Souls at Night different and why does it work?
n This story is about late-in-life love between man and woman,
complicated by the love they have for other people: Addie’s love for her son
and grandson, Louis’s love for his former lover and the love and guilty
feelings he feels towards his late wife, who took him back after he left her.
n But what gives this story
its power is that it is also about the collateral damage of decisions we make.
It is about the consequences of bad
decision making, decisions and
consequences that are not reversible: Louis’s decision to leave his wife was
a calculated bad decision, Addie’s decision to let her children play outside
was a random bad decision, Gene’s decision not to let his mother continue to
see Jamie if she also continues to see Louis was a calculated bad decision that
has devastating, irreversible consequences for Addie and Louis .
o
Note on structure: Stories
don’t have to have complicated, expansive plots to be powerful. Souls is a small love story about the limits of love and the limits placed
on love. But there is a great deal of tension simmering beneath the surface of
this simple story. Why do we continue to read this simple love story? Because Haruf keeps the prospect of life and death,
and love and the loss of it, simmering just below surface of story, and he
continually ratchets up the tension by giving the main characters more and more
decisions to make and more and more challenges. The decisions the
characters make have consequences and as the book progresses, the decisions
become more complicated and have more devastating consequences.
Our Souls at Night’s structure,
in broad outline:
1) Act 1: Small town, big news.
One way to write a powerful story
is to keep it small. Keep the relationships limited to two to four characters.
Push the complications between these characters as far as they can go.
In the first third of the
book, Addie and Louis begin a platonic friendship with romantic overtones.
The novelty here is that Addie is the one who chases Louis.
Structure notes:
1) In the first act, you must
answer the question, Why are you writing about today? In the first act, you also want originality,
surprise and tension.
a.
WHY TODAY: Haruf is writing about
today because today is the day that Addie calls up Louis and invites him over.
b.
THERE IS NOTHING NEW ABOUT A LOVE
STORY SO WHAT’S NEW HERE? Main characters are lonely, single, widow/widower,
who take the step of getting to know each other by sleeping in the same bed and
talking at night without having sex. That’s surprising and it’s an original
idea for a story: They establish emotional and physical intimacy, without
sexual intimacy.
c.
WHERE IS THE TENSION? Where is the
tension coming from in the first third of the story? It’s coming from many places:
i. Tension is raised by the prospect of them either becoming more intimate, by having sex, or becoming alienated, and deciding to withdraw
from the relationship. We wait for them
to have sex or to break up. They don’t have sex until the end of Act 2,
which is great, because we are waiting and waiting and waiting. The longer we
wait for them to become intimate, the more anxious we feel that they won’t. As
they become intimate with each other, we become intimate with them, and the closer
we feel to them, the more invested we become in their relationship. We root for
them to become more intimate. Note on
structure: You want the reader to root for the protagonist(s).
ii. The tension also builds as we watch them react to how people response
to their love story.
2) In Act 2, their relationship is mildly challenged by
the reactions of the townspeople and Louis’s daughter but they
persist and prevail. The court of public opinion doesn’t much matter to them.
They choose to be unconventional and follow their hearts and minds, as all good
heroes and heroines do. Their love for each other and their belief in their
individual rights to happiness triumph. Structure
note: We feel heartened and satisfied by this early in the story triumph.
But it can’t last because every story needs disappointment and heartbreak.
3) How does Haruf inject disappointment and heartbreak? In the
second act of the book, Addie and Louis’s relationship begins to be fatally challenged
by intrusion of Addie’s son. Structure
note: You need new challenges and complications and “near death
experiences” (literally or figuratively) in the second act so that the reader
begins to worry about the protagonist(‘s) fates.
a.
New characters introduced. In the second
third of the book, two new characters are introduced and Addie and
Louis’s relationship is dramatically
and irreversibly challenged by the introduction of Addie’s son and
grandson. Complications ensue.
b.
Note on structure: Generate
challenge to protagonist, a challenge that will ultimately force protagonist to
make life-changing decision. Gene doesn’t like his mother being in a romantic
relationship with neighbor. He is immature and in the wrong and because he has
no leverage at this point, she dismisses him. Son’s challenge strengthens
Addies’ commitment to Louis. But this little hill of a challenge morphs into a
mountain by the end. Put another way: The seed of a challenge is planted and
turned into a life-changing tree.
c.
Note on structure: Small
challenge to protagonists’ relationship actually yields happiness: Grandson Jamie
sleeps in bed with Addie and Louis, postponing the possibility of their
love-making. However, this turns out to be not so terrible, since having boy in
bed with them brings them closer together as they play the role of grandparents
to him and in fact, challenge strengthens their relationship. Note on structure: Reader and
characters sometimes need a little happiness, an oasis, a scene of play and
beauty.
4) Act 3: Structure note:
Huge, new challenge in third act. Irreversible choices must be made. Unlikable
character son Gene threatens Addie with possibility of never seeing her
grandson again if she continues to see Walter. Structure note: Addie is
forced to make a life-changing choice. She must go through a door that will
shut forever behind her. She must choose between two loves: Her grandson and
her boyfriend.
a.
By the end of the book, Addie and
Louis’ relationship has been torn apart but continues, in a pathetic,
circumscribed, long-distance way, via superficial
telephone conversation, and under much scrutiny by a
petty tyrant (Addie’s son).
b.
This enervated, limited,
abbreviated relationship makes their story even more tragic than if they had
never spoken again. (Note: Small tragedies, like the death of love, can be more
dramatic and upsetting than large tragedies, like the death of a character.
Let’s take a micro-look at the structure
of Our Souls at Night:
The book is 179-pages long
and neatly divided into three acts. Every sixty pages, there is a
new plot development, a new challenge to the protagonists, a new door
that opens and once closed, cannot be re-opened. (In other words, the
main characters make decisions that cannot be reversed.)
Act/Part 1, Chapters 1-15;
Chapter 1:
On page one, book immediately answers
the questions the question of, why are you writing about today? Addie asks
Louis today if he will spend the night with her. This could be life changing,
we immediately want to know, will this work? We read to fund out.
Addie and Louis get to know each
other. They live across the street and have for decades and they live in a
small town, where it is hard to avoid
people, so if this is a one stand, it
could be life changing, they can't turn back. They go through the nonreturnable
door. I call this the exit ramp. They figuratively drive off the highway
together and settle into a new situation/destination. Their lives have changed
and for the better. So how will the author complicate the situation and make us
wonder what happens next?
Story is mostly told from Louis’s point
of view. Is this okay? Yes, it works. Addie’s opinions are conveyed through him
and the omniscient narrator.
Lovely descriptions of her from
Louis’s POV on pages 3 and 6:
Page 3: "She looked out the windows at the side yard where the night was
settling in and out into the kitchen where there was a light shining over the
sink and counters. It all looked clean and orderly. He was watching her. She
was a good-looking woman, he had always thought so. She'd had dark hair when
she was younger, but it was white now and cut short. She was still shapely,
only s little heavy at the waist and hips."
Page 6: "She stood and went out and walked back home, this medium sized woman
with white hair walking under the trees in the patches of light thrown out by
the corner street lamp."
Chapter 1 ends with the words, “Now don't get ahead of yourself,” which
of course both the characters and the reader already have.
Chapter 2:
The next day, Louis shaves, showers
gets ready to go to her age. Stakes are raised. They have a little wine, she
shows him around the house.
Chapter 3:
He looks at her wedding picture and
picture of her son, who will eventually complicate things. And a picture of her
daughter, who died as a child, a plot twist that has consequences in
retrospect, since it ultimately ruins the sex life of her marriage, the
relationship between her husband and son and in the story’s climax, all this
ruin ultimately ruins the relationship between her and Louis.
Louis and Addie get into bed but don't
have sex. (Tension is raised, and then muted. But now the expectation is set:
When will they sleep together?)
On page 12, while in bed, Louis
notes: "How strange this is. How new
it is to be here." (Note: As writers, we should always write
about the new and the strange.)They don't touch each other. He goes home,
works in his garden, naps. This is his quiet, oasis scene. Note: Every story needs peaks and valleys, noise and quiet, rituals and practices that help the reader
see and differentiate one character from another, and one scene from another.
Chapter 4:
Louis gets sick after going home.
Turns out he has a urinary tract infection. He goes to hospital, she visits him
in hospital. Their love story is stalled, we want him to get better and rush
over there!
Chapter 5:
Louis recovers after a week and goes
to sleep at her house. They go to bed, get to know each other a bit, he takes
her hand in bed but they don't have sex, she falls asleep, he wonders at her
ability to fall quickly asleep.
Chapter 6:
Complication! Challenge to relationship! Alarm
goes off! Louis has coffee with a group of friends and a man he doesn't
like outs Addie and him. Louis insults him, man leaves without paying for
coffee, he goes home, "...hoed for
an hour hard, almost violently..." Then he goes to Addie's at night. Note how he returns to his gardening
practice---the gardening is a thread that continues throughout the book. We
associate gardening with Louis and cooking and grocery shopping with Addie.
Chapter 7:
More complications, tension is
raised, Addie cleans house. Louis tells her what Dorian Becker said. We're no
secret anymore. Thread of small town, big news. They still don't sleep
together.
Chapter 8:
They exchange verbal intimacies and
we become more intimate with them in the process. Addie tells Louis about her
life. She got pregnant in college, got married to Carl. She tells him she got
pregnant with her daughter in the back seat of the car. He is jealous shout her
having sex with her future husband. (Note: When characters talk about sex with
other people, you know they’re getting ready to have sex with each other. We
share in their anticipation and anxiety.)
Chapter 9:
Complication, tension is raised. Addie
goes to visit old neighbor, Ruth. Where will this story line go? View of things
to come for Addie, old woman living alone? Addie takes Ruth grocery shopping,
store clerk insults Addie (page 33), Addie insults her about spot on her shirt.
Tension is raised: Thread of, "What will people say in a small town,"
spools out, big news, small town. Ruth tells Addie that Louis is no saint and
has caused his share of pain. We are intrigued as plot thickens. What kind of
man is Louis?
Chapter 10:
They continue to exchange intimacies,
Louis tells Addie about the other woman, Tamara. He leaves his wife and
daughter for her, then leaves her to return for his daughter. He alludes to
having great sex with Tamara. Thread of anticipation of sex grows tighter. This
is his trauma, his bid for intimacy. Maybe he still loves Tamara, if she's
still alive, a potential complication that goes nowhere.
Chapter 11:
They exchange intimacies, Addie tells
Louis about day her daughter was hit by a car. Tense, sad chapter, death, loss,
this reveal brings Addie and Louis closer.
Chapter 12:
Complication, tension is raised,
Louis's daughter Holly is coming to town so Louis can't see Addie. New
character, new complication.
Chapter 13:
Complication, Holly gives father
Louis hard time, what are you doing with Addie Moore? Reveals herself to be
tough character on page 53, asks
'friend' who tells her about Louis and Addie if her husband is still fucking
sheep,
Chapter 14:
Louis tells Addie about Diane's
women's lib meetings, Addie tells him that she didn't really work, neither did
Diane
Chapter 15:
Bid for intimacy, Louis suggests that
he and Addie go have coffee together in middle of town at busiest time of day
and take their love public by having lunch at Holt cafe. So that tension is diffused.
This is the end of part 1.
Part 2: The middle of the book brings
us more characters, more complications and this love story is tested.
Chapter 16:
Challenges, complications: Addie's
son Gene separated from wife Beverly, has to close his store and also having
financial issues. Gene comes to town and complicates things for Addie and
Louis, bringing his son Jamie to Addie. Their love is tested by their competing
loves for family members. Addie has to give emotional and financial support to
her son. Will it be at the expense of her love for Louis? Prospect of real loss is introduced at the beginning of act 2. We
see Addie as loving grandmother to Jamie. Jamie is worried grandma will leave
him. Now we start to worry on behalf of Jamie.
Chapter 17:
New character complicates lives of
the main character. Our concern for grandson Jamie deepens, he goes to Addie's
room crying, p.68, "In the night he
came as before into her dark room crying.." Louis comes over, shows
him a nest of just born mice, page 68, and Louis teaches Jamie to garden, p. 69
Chapter 18:
Complication: Jamie sleeping with Addie
so Louis can't. Louis and Jamie look at mice again and garden again. There is
intimacy forming between them. Is there love? Page 76, Louis brings Jamie into
bed with them, "Louis took the boys
hand and held it and the three of them lay together in the dark." Lovely union, they are making a little family
together.
Chapter 19:
Ruth provides more info: Louis takes
Addie, Jamie and Ruth out for lunch and to a softball game, Ruth tells Addie to
sleep with Louis already, p.81.
Chapter 20:
New thread introduced: The dog. Louis
suggests getting a dog for Jamie, they get one from a shelter. Dog had toes
amputated, p. 87, they are all wounded in some way. Dog sleeps with Jamie and
Louis gets to be alone in bed with Addie again. They still don't have sex but
she says, "I love it," when
describing how she feels about him coming over. (P. 92)
Chapter 21:
Intimacy continues: In bed, Louis
tells Addie that he wanted to be a poet or short story writer. Beautiful last
line of chapter: "In Addie's bedroom,
Louis put his hand out the window and caught the rain dripping off the eaves
and came to bed and touched his wet hand on Addie's soft cheek."
Chapter 22:
Thread of mice progressing, mother mouse
has left nest, book is half over, baby mice have to fend for themselves.
Chapter 23:
Ruth has them all over for dinner,
again provides new information. She tells Jamie about town council cutting down
all the trees at night to let light from street lamps come through. Everyone
seems happy, we are starting to get attached to this little family unit.
Chapter 24:
Oasis, “stop and stare” chapter.
Louis, Addie and Jamie take dog Bonny out for run on a summer day. Short
chapter, beautiful writing about nature and heat: "The sky unclouded and the wheat in the fields alongside the road
already cut, the stubble all neat and sheared off square, in the next field the
corn running in straight dark green rows. A bright hot summer's day."
(p. 106.)
Chapter 25:
Alarm goes off. Ruth dies suddenly in
the bank. A major loss in middle of book.
Note its placement. Loss is powerful. We mourn her. Snatch a character we've
become attached to away from the reader and this further invests the reader in
the story, "Just collapsed in a
final frail bundle on the tiled bank floor and stopped breathing."
Death of a beloved character and a funeral are always good for a story. Addie
asks Louis at the end of the chapter, p 109, "What's going to happen to us---to you and me?" Reader wants to
know the same thing. But death usually leads to further
connection/communion so they'll probably have sex soon.
Chapter 26:
More intimacy. P. 111, Addie tells
Louis that she and Carl stopped making love after daughter died, "Of course it wasn't love at all. He made me
feel worse. I quit trying to fix
things and we settled into our long polite and quiet life." "We had
that long time of joined life, even if it wasn't good for one of us. That was
our history." P. 113
Chapter 27:
Thread of beautiful outdoors. Louis takes
Addie and Jamie camping, shows Jamie how to pitch a tent and roast
marshmallows, multiple passages of beautiful writing about nature:
P. 115, "The clear icy water, with brook trout holed up in the hollows
below the rocks. There were tall fir trees and the big ponderosa and aspen
along the creek and back in the hillside."
P.116: "The air was cool and fresh, a mountain breeze
blowing up. They didn't talk but looked at the fire and at the stars just above
the mountains. They could see the bare peak of Mount Shavano shining in the
night sky to the north."
P.118, "There was
the sharp pine smell of the trees."
Louis teaches Jamie how to follow a
river, go for a walk himself, pee outside, and basically, how to become a man.
We are getting attached to this little family unit. P. 118, Addie says, "Isn't it nice like this?" Yes it
is, but a good writer lets characters get a little complacent only so s/he can
change everything for them.
Chapter 28:
Complications, alarm goes off. On
page 123 begins last third of the book, beginning of the end, Gene comes to
visit, won't let Bonny the dog sleep in bed with him and Jamie, he asks Louis
outright why he's sleeping at his mother’s, everything changes, for the worse.
Chapter 29:
Intimacy: Louis tells Addie about his
wife’s death from cancer , the end is nearing.
Chapter 30:
Thread of nature and country
life: Holt county fair, lovely
description of parade and country life
Chapter 31:
Complications. Jamie calls his mom, she says she's coming home, things about to change for Jamie.
Complications. Jamie calls his mom, she says she's coming home, things about to change for Jamie.
Chapter 32:
Oasis and beautiful writing about
nature: They go restaurant, meet Stanley, successful wheat farmer, the
sweetness of their union is recognized. On page 138, "The sun was going down and the stubble was beautiful in the lowering
light."
Chapter 33:
Intimacy. Addie tells Louis about
Carl’s death.
Chapter 34:
Intimacy: Addie and Louis talk about going to see a play
together, on page147, they bring up the idea of having sex. Addie asks Louis if
he wants to. Finally! They come close to saying they love each other.
Chapter 35:
Complications, loss, departure. Gene
comes to take Jamie and Bonny the dog home. Jamie wants to say goodbye to
Louis, Louis not there. A loss for Jamie. Addie and Louis kiss.
Chapter 36:
Intimacy and complication: They go
through the final door of intimacy, they have sex. But Louis is impotent.
Chapters 37-41:
Complications, change agents, terrible
choices, finale.
Gene reveals himself to be an angry,
vengeful son. He doesn't like anything his mother has done, he doesn't want his
mother finding new love when he has lost his old love.
Gene is an unlikable, miserable father
who punishes his son: He doesn't want his son finding new love (dog) or sleeping
with new loves (dog and Addie) when he isn't sleeping with or loving anyone.
Gene is a miserable character and an
agent of change who forces his mother to choose between her lover and her love,
a terrible choice but a great plot point. When characters have to make terrible
choices at great sacrifice to themselves and to other characters, the reader is
miserable, powerless to help, and overwhelmed with feeling. But we want to feel
overwhelmed with misery. If only we could have made a difference!
Last page, page 179.
Wonderful sad last lines told from
Addie’s point of view:
She looked out the window. She could see her reflection in the
glass. And the dark behind it. Dear, is it cold there tonight? Both benign and banal. They are reduced to having the
superficial conversation of near strangers.
