An Alphabet of Better Writing # W

W is for...Warp and Weft

...and weavers, who when they are working (so much alliteration), stretch one set of threads across their looms (the warp) so that a second set (the weft) can be woven through it.  When you are weaving this creates fabric, when you are writing it creates texture and tension.

The key thing about warp and weft is that they are going in different directions.  This is what creates the tension. When you are writing something sad, you can give it added depth by locating traces of humour, the faintest watermark, within it. You can counterpoint a high voltage action sequence with a split second of revealing reflection. Within the warp of dialogue, you can have the weft of silence. 

It's not simply a question of contrast - one thing  followed by something sharply different - it's finding a way of integrating two opposites, superimposing comedy on tragedy, or the interior world on the exterior, or whatever.  That's how you achieve texture.  The end result should be like shot silk.

What You Can Learn from John Lanchester...

Well, loads of things, of course, he's a brilliant writer.  But having just read Capital, which is set in a single London street and anatomises the effects of the 2008 financial crisis on its inhabitants, what struck me most was the way in which he was able to accentuate the foibles and of fallibility is of his characters, while still making them seem sympathetic.  It can be a difficult trick to pull off, but it has the effect of giving greater depth and subtlety to characterisation.

I'm always intrigued by any tension in a narrative.  I don't mean narrative tension or suspense, but something at a more structural level:  the sense that the warp and weft of the story are pulling in slightly different directions.  It adds timbre and texture.

In John Lanchester's case, Capital's hot shot banker Roger is lazy, greedy, selfish, concupiscent and utterly lacking in self-awareness, in other words the perfect vehicle for all our prejudices about city high flyers. But at the same time, he is disarmingly human: he does enough, more or less, to get by; he tries to please his insatiably avaricious wife without much success; he lusts after the nanny but is unable to seduce her; whether or not he will get his coveted bonus is open to doubt.  There is something forlorn and disappointed about him; he has shortcomings we can recognise, in spite of ourselves we feel sympathetic.

Lanchester portrays most of the other inhabitants of Pepys Road with similar ambivalence and ambiguity. I think it is part of the alchemy that lifts them from the page and transforms them into credible, complex beings.  It's something to think about in your own work: people are never wholly admirable so, when you are writing, see if you can conjure up a character who is just about likeable, warts and all.