by Alison Dasho
My mom is an inveterate rearranger. Furniture is practically nomadic in the house, migrating from room to room, clumping in varied seating areas, fluctuating between focal points depending on time of year -- the fireplace, the big windows, the piano, the Christmas tree. Nothing lives in the same place for too long. We used to joke that one should never try to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, as there is a high likelihood of stubbing a toe on an end table that wasn't there before bedtime.
But I love this trait of my mom's (and may have inherited a milder form of rearrangitis myself) -- she showed my sisters and me that though we lived in a stable home, it didn't have to be boring. Change was a part of every day, in a real and obvious sense, in our home environment. And an old sofa could take on incredible new life when moved to another room, next to a rocking chair and an uplight. (Okay, maybe I should give Christopher Lowell credit for the uplight ideas.) And no matter how large an unwieldy an object was, Mom could find a way to move it between rooms.
Like the time she took the closet doors off the closets and positioned them to help her -- by herself -- slide the large screen tv down the small flight of stairs between the green and white rooms. Here, my sister made a little model of the green room when she was working on her thesis. That set of six wide, carpeted stairs are what my 5'4'' mother slid a massive, I mean massive (before they were all flat-screen), large screen television down. On its back. Using hastily placed closet doors. By herself.
I won't even talk about the baby grand, I still don't know how she manages to get that between levels. (WinGARdium LevioSA?)
Anyway, what's this got to do with writing? Well I'll tell you!
Sit back for a second and think about what what happen if you rearranged parts of your manuscript. I'm not talking about a line here or there -- although I understand if you want to start small. I mean big, baby grand chunks of text. What happens if you put the making-him-dinner-at-her-place scene before the meet-cute-in-the-grocery-store-and-propose-a-date scene? Readers will know, during the grocery store scene, where the frozen food aisle flirtation will end up. They'll have foreknowledge that could add depth (and poignancy, if the date goes bad) to the second scene. Or, it could end up being a boring disaster -- but with the ease of cut/paste, is it worth a try?
Or think about your introduction scenes. Who does the reader meet first? The protagonist? Antagonist? Some poor schmuck who's about to be the dead body that catalyses the action of the story? A cat? What if you were to rearrange a bit, move some scenes around. Introduce the antagonist first, in a way that doesn't make it clear that he's, you know, out to do bad. Get readers in his corner a little, then introduce the protagonist and the antagonist's bad side, and you'll have created some investment and conflict through the structure of your story, not just your prose.
Now, I realize rearranging isn't for everyone. Some people have a couch and a chair and they like where they sit, and don't ever see the need to change it. That's absolutely fine, of course. But don't be afraid to move things around, create new views, toss in some festive uplights.
It's a wonder what a good rearrange can do.
