Playing with Form and Structure in Fiction
Happy 2024, y’all! Did you have a good New Year’s Eve?
I'm not a big partygoer, so last Sunday night, a friend and I stayed in, ordered Chinese, and watched a movie.
When Harry Met Sally, to be exact.
Can you believe this was the first time I'd ever seen it?! (I'll have to do three Hail Nora Ephrons for penance later.)
When Harry Met Sally is such a cornerstone of the modern romance genre, one of our foundational works, which has led to such tropes as Grumpy x Sunshine, forced proximity, and of course friends-to-lovers, so it felt like a crime to have put off watching it for so long. Even so, I'm glad I got to watch it for the first time as a writer in her thirties. With more than a decade in and around the publishing industry and with two books of my own under my belt, I have a pretty solid grasp of narrative structure, so as we watched, I caught on to something Nora Ephron's narrative was doing with the progression of their love story.
The second time Harry meets Sally—five years after they drive from Chicago to New York together as recent college grads—they're boarding the same flight. Sally’s in the early days of a relationship with a man named Joe; Harry’s engaged to be married to a woman named Helen. As Harry discusses his impending nuptials, it's with some not insignificant relief at being done with the whole “single guy” thing. He monologues about how all dating follows the same arc: an uncertain lunch together, followed by dinner, then dancing (and doing the "White Man's Overbite"), taking your date to bed, and then leaving before she gets too needy.
After he finished this monologue, I pointed to the screen. "Their relationship is going to follow exactly that story arc," I hypothesized.
And you know what? I was right!
When Harry and Sally reunite five years later, now in their early thirties, their relationship follows the stages of Harry’s dating timeline almost to the letter:
There's the lunch after they reconnect in a bookstore, fresh off their breakups with Joe and Helen.
There's a string of dinners that follow.
There's dancing at the first New Year's Eve party they attend together, though of course they don't kiss at midnight.
There's the clever nod to sex in the Katz's Deli scene and then actual sex when Sally finally breaks down and cries over the loss of Joe and Harry comes over to comfort her.
And then comes the movie’s dark night of the soul.
Mere moments after they've slept together, it's clear from Harry's face that he's wondering, as he so glibly monologued on a plane five years before, "How long do I have to lie here and hold her before I can get up and go home?" But this time, there’s conflict. He doesn’t just want to leave because he thinks Sally’s being needy; he’s scared of how this spur-of-the-moment decision may change their relationship. An awkwardness descends over their friendship in the days and weeks that follow, until they don’t talk anymore, even fight at their friends’ wedding; it seems that Harry's other truism, that men and women can't be friends, is fulfilled.
But Nora Ephron isn’t a romcom matriarch for nothing. (“Hail Nora, full of wit, pray for us now and at the hour of our meet-cute…”)
She must have known the script would be good, not great, if it only followed the pattern Harry Burns laid out for dating at the ripe old age of twenty-seven. In the film, Harry often speaks in jaded truisms, and he's convinced he knows everything about the world.
So then how surprising and fulfilling and wonderful is it that he breaks his own belief system to find a new end to the dating loop? The next New Year's Eve, which he's spending alone, he has a realization that Sally isn’t needy; Sally is a healthy person who wanted connection with little ol’ him. Conversely, he needs Sally. By falling in love with her through their friendship, because of and in spite of their flaws, he’s broken all of the anchors that held his universe up. He dashes to the party she’s attending, and with equal and opposing declarations of love and hate (which is really love masquerading as frustration at "What took you so long?"), they kiss.
Boom. Happily ever after.
Form Informing Fictional Function
(Say that three times fast.)
I doubt I'm the first or only person to notice this movie's nifty narrative framework, but paying attention to these things as writers enriches storytelling in ways our audiences notice. We can see such formal play in other tentpoles of the romcom genre, like Bridget Jones's Diary and Four Weddings and a Funeral.
I personally love playing with form and function in my novels. In My Big Fake Wedding, Bea's neurodivergent need to make structure out of the chaos of her life manifests, in fictive form, as humorous to-do lists at the end of each chapter. How to Keep a Husband for 10 Days hops between Lina and Brown's second-chance conflict in the present and the "happier past.” In my recent unpublished project, All the Ways It Wounds You, which I'm shopping around to agents (explanation of why I'm doing this now, after publishing two novels, forthcoming), I even have a chapter broken down into courses at a dinner date.
The most important thing we writers should focus on when we're playing around with formal structure is that we make sure it impacts the way our story is told. Formal play shouldn't just be a pretty centerpiece or gewgaw you can point to and say, "I did that!" In fact, I think beyond the initial drafting process, you can't help but assign narrative importance to it. It becomes one of the main ways your audience consumes your work. (Take early Christopher Nolan films like Memento and Inception. Would we process those stories in the same way with a linear or nonfractal story arc?)
Watching When Harry Met Sally on New Year's Eve and noticing this bit of film analysis got me really jazzed for 2024. I can't flip to the end and read the last page of the year like Harry does with every book he reads, but this reminder of the simpler pleasures of my craft, beyond all the business of writing, was necessary and vital. I can’t wait to see what it brings.
Cheers to the new year, everybody!
Cool and Nifty Things I Found This Week:
The IRS raised its retirement account contribution limits for 2024 to match the cost of living. Obviously it can be hard to max out contributions, but this is an important thing for us creative girlies and gays to think about—being kind to our future selves: https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/401k-limit-increases-to-23000-for-2024-ira-limit-rises-to-7000
Typewriter Tarot has a lovely New Year's spread up on their Instagram. I haven't pulled it yet, but I hope there's no statute of limitations on what the cards can tell me about 2024.
Spotify recommended SYML's instrumental album How I Got Home to me earlier this week. It's perfect for a short walk around the block; a great sound for anyone who likes both lo-fi beats and film scores.
I only just discovered @ed.people’s Instagram account. He’s this golden retriever in Belgian guy form, who travels the world and asks people to teach him their favorite dance moves. How sweet and wholesome is this video of him with the elders of various countries? (Tag yourself. I'm "I like an adventure" waltzing lady.)
Upcoming Events
Comp Title Book Club: Sarah Holz. January 13 at 2 p.m. Eastern. Register for the live discussion here.
Rebel Readers Book Club January 2024 meeting. Details to come.
I'll be attending AWP 2024 in Kansas City, Missouri! Let me know if I'll see you there so we can grab some barbecue and complain about the midwestern coldness.
I'm interviewing the Emily Rath for Jacksonville Public Library's Lit Chat series on Galentine's Day 2024. You can register here, though be advised priority is given to library card holders.
The following Saturday, February 17, I'm hosting a Writer’s Lab event (also with the library system) called Not Your Mama's Romance Novel, about how the romance genre has evolved, especially in the last decade.
