For those of you who have been
following the ‘number of pages’ updates at the bottom of each post, get
excited. Because today I am finally going to clue you in. How I got to this
decision is a story in itself. As Keane has so often stressed the importance of
drama in a story, let me tell you it with a Keane-esque attention to drama.
I was sitting on my bed, a nice
indent forming where my butt sunk into the mattress, when the light began to
flicker. I pulled the book closer to my face and squinted, nose scrunched up.
It was 11:26 pm and I was tired. The words were tired too, and seemed to slump
off the page every minute or two. My head would sag on my neck before I’d blink
my eyes open and sit rigid once again.
The last page felt thick in my hand
as I turned it slowly. One more paragraph. I could see the end and covered the
last line with the edge of my hand. I was an avid end-ruiner, and I had made it
thus far without reading the last thought the author had kissed onto the page.
I couldn’t spoil it now, but the light bulb wouldn’t last for much longer; I
trudged on.
“But now I must sleep,” Ian McEwan
wrote. I imagined him in a room filled with books, because authors were always
surrounded by books, typing each letter with a staccato diligence. I was done. I
couldn’t help but smile at the thought of it: I had finally finished reading Atonement.
To McEwan’s credit, Parts Two and
Three of the book moved with a much quicker pace than the one hundred and
seventy-five paged Part One. After setting Atonement
on my bedside table at 11:27 pm, immediately Keane came to mind, and his nine
point plot structure that I wondered if McEwan knew about. And so, to kill two
birds with one stone as they say (although I’ve never felt the urge to kill a
bird before), I will attempt to mesh Keane’s idea and McEwan’s story to create
a literary mutant in a Frankenstein fashion.
So number one: The Basic Idea
(again, keep in mind that Keane likes to be a bit dramatic. This should be no
more than a couple sentences on what your story’s about, Keane says. In
response to this, McEwan would most likely have said, “Atonement is about a crime committed by a young girl and follows
the lives of everyone effected by this.” Easy enough.
Number two: Backstory. This is the
part where McEwan went a little overboard. While I agree that it was necessary
for McEwan to introduce us to each character before anything too important
happened, I felt like I was in an awkwardly long handshake that I couldn’t get
out of. Lesson learned: one hundred and forty pages of backstory is probably
too much. Even if McEwan argued it was crucial to the plot, I still skimmed the
majority of it anyways, so his point becomes irrelevant.
Number three: Exposition. Keane
emphasizes the importance of relaying the essential information to your reader
slowly and dramatically (of course). Maybe this was the intent of McEwan’s one
hundred and forty paged backstory, because if so, it worked. I was so eager to
get to the essential information that, despite the “nerd status” that this next
comment will give me, I have to say that I could not put the book down. So, I
applaud McEwan for his ability to make his greatest weakness one of his
strengths as well.
Number four: Pace. When reading Atonement, I felt like I was a surfer
lying flat on her board, waiting for the next wave to come. Even if the
beginning was a bit drawn out, I could feel the rumble of something coming
beneath me. And as the top of my board began to rise, and the wave finally
came, my face was so close to my book that it looked like I was trying to
inhale the words right off of the page. Although I’m sure Keane would
recommended a story with a series of smaller waves, the semi-tsunami suited me
just fine.
Number five: Plot or turning points.
In this rare case, I think many would argue that quantity beats quality. If I’m
going to sit through a three hundred and fifty one page story, I want to be
able to point to multiple instances that I felt were important to read.
However, in McEwan’s story, I regrettably must say that the only one that comes
to mind, a mere eight hours after finishing, was the moment in which his main
character committed a crime. Yes, other things happened in Parts Two and Three,
but it mostly seemed to be after-shock from the wave that already passed (too
far?).
Number six: Hurdles, the obstacles a
writer must use to trip their poor main character that we come to love in the
Backstory. While I think it’s strange that Keane gets enjoyment from seeing a
man fall flat on his face, I reluctantly get his point. Like the mecca for this
book, the crime committed in Part One seems to be the main hurdle that the
characters keep having to jump over, turn around, and jump it again. However, a
tangential episode, or Part Two, when Robbie is trying to get home from WWII,
was a welcomed change in theme for me. Because of this, I give McEwan a thumbs
up for his ability to “kick a man when he’s down”.
Number seven: I know you’re probably
thinking this is too long, and when is it going to be over??, but if you can
count, you know we’re almost there! So number seven: Dramatic Irony. This is
when “the audience knows something the characters do not”, Keane explains, and
not because said audience read the last paragraph of the book, either. I’m
tempted to write Keane a letter and tell him that if he ever needs an example
of dramatic irony, he should give McEwan a call. This entire story, told from
three perspectives, is precisely about what each character does or does not
know. As the crime is a result of misinformation, I would hope that McEwan has
a knack for dramatic irony, and he certainly does.
Number eight: Climax; the point in
the book when you say YES! All this reading has not been for nothing! I can
assure you that I was saying this to myself at the end of Part One in Atonement. However, McEwan surprised me
by having a second climax, if Keane
will allow it, at the end of Part three, in which all three characters affected
by the crime finally meet again. I knew the moment was coming the entire novel,
yet it still hit me with force when the real criminal apologized to the wrongly
accused. The punch in the gut feeling this second climax gives its un-expecting
reader was definitely Keane-worthy.
And finally, number nine:
Resolution. In an epilogue that is entitled ‘London, 1999’, McEwan wraps up his
story. The characters are paraded across each page like the cast at the end of
a Playhouse Theaters production. However, I found myself furiously flipping the
pages instead of breathing in each “where are they now”. Maybe its because I
don’t like to read as much as I think I do, or because I never forgave the book
for those first one hundred and forty pages, but the resolution only made me
wish I could experience either climax a second time.
If Keane and McEwan walked into a
bar, and no, this is not the beginning to a very bad joke, I think Keane would
pat McEwan on the back. Atonement’s
success can be attributed to the sound story structure that McEwan built for
his story. However, because of a Keane ‘faux-pau’s, I doubt Keane would have
bought McEwan a beer.
MOVIES WATCHED: 1
SCREENPLAY PAGES WRITTEN: 9
NOVEL PAGES WRITTEN: 48
PAGES LEFT IN HOW TO WRITE A SELLING
SCREENPLAY: 235
PAGES LEFT IN MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR
PECULIAR
CHILDREN: 314
ATONEMENT: COMPLETED
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