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What a Cathedral is Not

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Flickr Creative Commons: spec.B

Have you ever walked into a Medieval cathedral? Architecturally speaking, they are engineering marvels.  Heavy stone buttresses support soaring vault arches of many types: barrel, groin, rib, fan.

Cathedrals have many parts, each offering a different experience of the divine.  There is the narthex in which to grow quiet and prepare.  There is the nave in which to sit and kneel in common with others.  There is the choir from which celestial music emanates.  There are the altar and the communion rail.  Around the cathedral’s perimeter are little alcoves where one may venerate the Madonna or saints.  There is a baptismal font and a little curtained booth, partitioned inside with a tiny window between the halves, where one may confess sins and be forgiven.  Various notables may be entombed around the place.  In some cathedrals you may walk the Via Crucis, or Stations of the Cross, a darkly gruesome but ultimately redemptive story told in serial fashion.

When you enter such a Cathedral, though, what is the first thing that you feel?  Is it admiration of the way in which the load of the roof is distributed down to the ground?  Is it pleasure in the acoustics?  Do you intently study the map available in a wooden stand near the entrance, planning your tour around the interior?  If you are like most people, those are not the first things that you experience.  If you are like most people, the first thing that you experience is one gigantic and simple emotion.  You raise your eyes upward and feel…

…awe.

That is the way that the Church and its architects wanted you to feel.  The whole design of the cathedral is meant to give one the experience of faith, to grasp God’s cosmology, to reflect the tenants of Christianity and teach it precepts.  Above all, it is an emotional experience.  There are lots of little rooms inside the building in which to have more focused experiences, but the overall intent is for you to be blasted by awe.

When we talk about writing novels, why do we talk first and primarily about the buttresses and vaulted arches of the story?  Why do we rush to decorate the radiant chapels and alcoves, hurry the choir into song, zip to the baptismal font and scurry to the confessional booth before any sins have even been committed?

I have nothing against plot.  There is nothing wrong with scene structure.  Sparkling style, protagonist back story and arc are all fine.  And yet we labor to quickly put those elements into place, thinking that that if we get them just right then our readers will get religion.  But a cathedral by itself is not faith, it only contains it.  Faith is not a building but a feeling.  By the same token, for readers a novel is not the plot but the feelings that the novel evokes, which in aggregate produce (we hope) an experience of awe.

Therefore, in creating a novel I recommend giving thought early on not just to its architecture but also to its effect.  Not that I m against plot, shapely scenes, fine prose, back story wounds, redemptive arc or anything else.  Obviously not.  But I do think that the emotional effect of fiction is oftentimes the last consideration instead of the first.

In thinking about the emotional effect of one’s fiction*, there are big and obvious story components to consider: dark moment, catharsis, climax and so on.  Nothing wrong with paying attention to those big events.  However, there are many more opportunities in a story to stir readers.  These smaller, and often lost, opportunities are what we can call marker moments.

Fiction writers who eschew outlining may be familiar with this idea.  While pantsers may not wish to closely plan their manuscripts, it’s not uncommon for them to have scenes or story moments that they know must be included.  Like blue trail markers nailed to trees in a forest, they’re reassuring signs that one is on a path that leads somewhere.

Marker moments are not plot points.  They are emotional points, though events and emotions inevitably entwine.  The point is to create places on the page in wherein there are shifts in inner perception, understanding, certainty, security, or any other internal state.  When a market moment occurs it’s as if an anchor has pulled up from the sea floor in a storm, or conversely like when a steel piton is driven into a cliff face during a rock climb.  Characters—and readers–become in those moments unmoored or newly secure.

To create marker moments, try out a few of the following prompts:

  • What blows my protagonist’s mind is…
  • Things become serious when…
  • There’s no turning back when…
  • The stakes hit home when…
  • The task becomes impossible when…
  • Self-doubt becomes unbearable when…
  • My protagonist’s greatest fear comes true when…
  • The greatest cost to be paid is…
  • The greatest betrayal is…
  • The most unexpected help comes from…
  • There’s more going on than we know when we learn…
  • The secret mastermind or hidden antagonist is revealed as…
  • The death we don’t want is…
  • What my protagonist doesn’t see coming is…
  • What my protagonist denies and resists is…
  • The harshest self-truth to accept is…
  • The antagonist is right about…
  • A non-human force working against my protagonist is…
  • Human nature is unstoppable when…
  • My protagonist goes ballistic when…
  • The tide turns when…
  • It matters most when…
  • The greatest understanding gained is…
  • What my protagonist lets go of is…
  • Something that changes unexpectedly is…
  • My protagonist can never be the same again because…
  • A reward beyond expectations is…

Plot events have emotional impact.  Emotional changes, in turn, can suggest plot situations.  As I said, events and emotion entwine.  We readers cannot help but feel things when there are plot surprises, setbacks, disasters, reveals, and triumphs.  Similarly, we experience a sense of movement—without moving—when a story hits us with sharp points of self-reproach, fury, illumination, despair, resolve or reward.

What is therefore important and worth working on, ask me, is not only the plot architecture but also what cannot be built out of stone: the many moments of recognition, understanding and empathy that for readers sum up to a profound and transforming experience of awe.

(*Discussed at length in my book The Emotional Craft of Fiction.)

Tell us about a marker moment in your WIP.  What is one thing that’s essential for your protagonist to go through—and for us to experience, too?

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About Donald Maass

Donald Maass is president of the Donald Maass Literary Agency. He has written several highly acclaimed craft books for novelists including The Breakout Novelist, The Fire in Fiction, Writing the Breakout Novel and The Career Novelist.

Comments

  1. Don, your posts are always so timely. I’m guessing that’s because there’s never a time in a novel when emotions don’t matter. I’m revising a scene in which my Protag confronts her real-life dragon. She’s chosen a course of action, but in the heat of it, she’s confronted with an even harder choice that forces to re-think her notions of betrayal, loyalty, and justice. Before I came in to check my e-mail, I was out walking in the woods, which are my cathedral. Changing leaves with the sun filtering through them, the path like an aisle, all the overgrown places like little alcoves. There’s even a stream singing over the rocks! I feel awe when I go there. Thank you for your wisdom today!

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    • Creating awe in readers means creating emotions, you got it. Putting characters into their own crucible is without a doubt the best way to generate that stab of feeling.

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  2. This post feels closely aligned with your earlier post, “Words When There Are No Words.” Writing the moments of recognition and understanding are an expression of the ineffable. If the character is poleaxed by a betrayal or a death or the dumb wonder of love, we will be as well (we hope).

    In the book I recently completed I knew very early on that one scene was the heart/soul of the book. If that scene didn’t work, the book wouldn’t work. I also realized very early on that a character I loved dearly would have to die for the protagonist to transform. Now that I’m working on a new project I can see the same kind of marker moments appear, though I’ve not yet begun writing in any formal way. The plot I initially conceived is the same, the emotional journey, as it seems to be turning out, is a bit different.

    Thanks, Don. You always inspire me to look just a bit deeper, work just a bit harder, than I think I can.

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  3. Beautiful post…it reminded me of our little church that just two days ago was filled with the tenderest moments of Pie Jesu to the trembling of Dies Irae (Faure’s Requiem Mass). Faure wrapped death in a blanket of beauty. This is what all art demands. Thank you for helping us get there. Your books are wonderful.

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  4. Your post holds tons of truth, as always! I write genre fiction and I’m getting ready to try my hand at cozy mystery and, as a consequence, I’ve been reading a ton of cozy mysteries. One of my favorite authors is Susan Wittig Albert and I think your post is the exact reason why. There is the mystery that is the main plot thread, but then there is this rich sub-plot world that includes so much of what you talk about above. I’ve been trying to figure out how to do that myself, so I think you just gave me an exciting road map. Thanks!

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  5. Don – Susan mentioned timeliness, and it is funny, though the providence of timeliness has been mentioned so often it’s become perhaps the biggest cliché about WU and your posts here. But it’s funny that I’m hearing about marker moments for the first time, after over a decade pursuing the ins-and-outs of this staggeringly complex aspiration. And I sit here in (…wait for it…) awe.

    As I try to pull together the various threads of what I hope can be called a truly epic tale, I’ve largely fallen back to my original pantser ways (writerly original sin?). I mean, the structure has long been clear in my mind. I know the underpinnings of the construction so well, they’re no longer a front-and-center concern. What *does* concern me is taking another human soul to church. And I can see just by the notes on my desk that I am utterly reliant on marker moments. I can see the stones that lead across the pond. And if I skip a single one, those I expect to follow will end up getting wet, and left cold.

    What’s also funny to me is that I’ve long seen the cathedral. It’s what keeps me going. I see it, feel it. I’ve spent years stripping it all back, hoping to learn how to create it for others. I’ve seen the flying buttresses from without, and sought to learn the bearing capacity of combining arches. But long before I began that undertaking, the religion of it reached out and touched me. And the mystery of it has long stymied me. I realize today that I’ve been yearning for the means to reveal it—-to others, yes, but perhaps to myself most of all.

    My cathedral remains unfinished. But the shape of it is already etched on the horizon. I hope these final marker moments will provide enlightenment. But whether it stands or not, provides awe or not, I doubt I’ll ever be cured of that original imbuement. Even if I end up dwelling in lonely ruins, I doubt I’ll ever lose faith that this story was meant to be grand.

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    • You know, Vaughn, when you create a world and storyline as big as yours it can take many years to see the whole cathedral in your head. Sometimes it is never finished. That’s true of actual churches, so why not of epics as vast as the one you’re building.

      (BTW, check your e-mail, just sent you a message.)

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  6. I love this post, Don.

    I like to remember this wonderful advice in basic terms. WHAT you write is plot. HOW you write is prose. WHY you write is emotion. Great writing combines many concepts, but as you’ve noted in this post, the WHY might be the most important.

    Thank you, Don, my Yoda.

    Yours,
    Dee

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  7. Thanks for the concept of marker moments, Don, and for your fantastic prompts. I’m looking forward to trying this one first: “The antagonist is right about…”

    I was just working on a flashback (MC’s memory) that starts out as a sweetly nostalgic scene. After some subtle (I hope) hints that build, the MC becomes aware of the uncertainty, risk and even danger underlying the scene that she hadn’t recognised at the time.

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  8. Don, I admire that notion that books that have transcendent moments and emotional peaks (and perhaps of necessity, partnered dark valleys) take the reader to memorable places. That’s a dandy list of prompts that can push us to push the story higher.

    I was on a media trip to Germany last year, and spent some time in medieval churches and cathedrals. There are some beauties in the town of Esslingen (outside Stuttgart) where I was dazzled by the imposing heights of the vaulted ceilings, the giant panes of stained glass, the weathered wood, the presence of age. Wow.

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  9. Marker moments–yes! So that’s what those scenes that bulked up my notes before pantsing my way through the latest are. You’ve nailed it.

    And I agree that the primary goal for fiction is to evoke emotion. However . . . “awe?” Most novels I read don’t clear that hurdle in me, nor am I certain that was the aim of the author. For example, in my case I’m hoping the concluding emotion for my WIP is enjoyment.

    So far, that has been the consensus of beta readers. I have yet to hear from one, and hope his response is in the same ballpark.

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  10. “Like blue trail markers nailed to trees in a forest, they’re reassuring signs that one is on a path that leads somewhere.”

    Don, I especially love this sentence because I’m just taking a break from my NaNoWriMo project, which is the story of two sisters on a hike in the Porcupine Mountains, and as I leave them to go eat lunch, they have just missed a turn and followed the wrong trail. :)

    I appreciate your metaphor of the cathedral in this post. It’s the perfect physical manifestation for what you’re talking about. Because I have my characters in a real place following real trails, I have a skeleton outline for where they will be when certain things happen in this novel, like the blueprints of your cathedral, perhaps. But most of what will actually happen will be internally and with the sisters’ relationship with each other. Anyone who’s gone hiking knows that it’s mostly lots and lots of trees, with a few special features like waterfalls or wildlife thrown in. So much of what makes up this story is not plot but personal change.

    And thinking of your marker moments, the first one that I wrote that took me by surprise was when, after a grueling day and night of driving through very bad weather and passing an accident that reminded her of her parents’ death in a car accident ten years prior, one of my MCs, Olivia, finally gets them to the little motel/cabins they are staying in the night before the hike starts. The couple who owns the place stayed up late to check her in and they indicate how relieved they are to see that she and her sister have made it safely. And the combination of this couples’ concern for her and the relief she has of simply getting off the treacherous road to the place where there is a bed waiting for her has her fighting back tears which she doesn’t understand at first, until she realizes that the couple is about the age her parents would be now and it’s been so long since anyone expressed any loving concern over her well-being.

    I hadn’t planned that emotion at that moment. It just arose naturally from the situation I had planned, from the story cathedral I was building. :)

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  12. As always, excellent post. I can’t tell you how many of these I’ve copied and pasted into my file of ‘character interviews & novel questions.’ This is extra helpful just now as I’m using Story Genius (great book!) and these marker moments you speak of work perfectly with character misbelief. Thanks!

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  13. Don, I’m adding these nuggets to my collection from Writng 21st Century Fiction because they fit so well with the scores of challenges you posed there. Again, here, you exhort us to go deeper, strike harder, push faster, to grab the reader by the emotional lapels and pull them into an awe-inspiring world of our creation.

    So often we get caught up in the flow of plot, the cadence and rhythm of the story arc, that we forget the simple, often terse, line or phrase that can bring a character vividly to life. Thanks for the reminder to slow down and provide roses for that reader journey.

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  14. Don –
    Excellent as always. Thanks!
    Your cathedral reference brought back a fascinating novel about these marvels. Likely you’ve read “The Pillars of the Earth” by Ken Follett but for any who have not it reveals the blood, sweat, and wonder of how the cathedrals were built.
    Awe-inspiring…

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  15. Your description of a cathedral reminded me of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. When I visited, the light was just right, and shined through the stained glass to create an effect that was magical. Great literature is like this. A trip to an unfamiliar place, will words that take your breathe away. As always, thank you.

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  17. Hi, Don:

    Sorry, day late. But not a dollar short — I enjoyed this post so much I’ve written a response to it that will come up next Tuesday. We can bat the matter back and forth then.

    But thanks for this — as always, incredibly insightful and eminently useful.

    David

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  18. I’m a week late, but the timing is perfect. I’m taking a break from writing thrillers to participate in Nanowrimo. I’m cranking out a fantasy after a trip to Scotland where so many writers have found inspiration. I plan to be done by Sunday before my relatives arrive. *crosses fingers*

    Like you said about pantsers, I have plot points in mind, a few twists, and a betrayal, but I’m letting my imagination do most of the work. I love your idea of using emotion to provide unforgettable moments. Thanks for the list!

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  19. Awe. That would describe how I felt reading your post today, Don. There were a few typos, but I remained, as always, fixated on the power of your message, the whole of it. The rest became secondary.

    Case in point: no amount of nitpicking and obsessing will force a novel’s stones to configure just so to emulate the vesica piscis. That part comes from somewhere else, and a writer’s true skill lies in channeling it. Some do well by way of training. Some over-train thinking that is the way to the divine, and come away with nothing but broken fingers and scaffolding accidents.

    It’s a frustrating business for the builder. How to know that the brick and mortar will add up just right? There is faith, and you write on, and keep improving. But knowing the difference between being in awe of your own work and creating awe that will sweep through others — now that’s the toughest thing any writer can have to do, tougher than multiple subplots.

    “It’s working for me, but is it working for you?” That’s a hard question to ask, and means laying down all ego. After all, it’s not about us at all. It’s about those who will enter the cathedral and be swept away. And for that reason, we keep trying, and don’t give up.

    Thanks for this moment to catch my breath (or was it swept away?). Back to writing!

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