Narrative Threads

The photo to the right is one of my narrative threads. If I choose to pluck a particular thread in the fabric of my life and unravel, there you will find this slightly odd thread. The woman in the photo in my late grandmother, in her favorite Mets shirt. The candle is St. Jude. Yes, he the patron Saint of hopeless causes.

I was raised by an atheist and a lapsed Catholic. We weren't even Easter-Christmas hypocritical Catholics. We never, ever, ever, EVER went to church. Though for some reason, I DID go to C.C.D. classes and make my first communion and even confirmation. And for some even MORE bizarre reason, my father likes all grandchildren to be baptized just to cover all bases . . . you know, "just in case."

But all my life, it was my grandmother and grandfather who dragged me to church. I loathed it. In summer, when I would rather be doing ANYTHING else, we went to church. I usually had to wear a dress. It usually had crinoline, which itched. (I loathed dresses almost as much as church). In summer, church was too hot. (Old churches had no air conditioning.) In winter, it was either heated until you couldn't breathe or so drafty you shivered.

I remember my grandmother saying to me, when I was 20, "After all God has given me, it doesn't seem like much to ask to go to church to thank him each Sunday." So I would drive her. Even after her open heart surgery, when the 20 or so marble steps up to the church doors were too much for her and she had to rest halfway up, I took her. Perhaps that was where I REALLY learned to pray. ("Dear God, she is so fragile, PLEASE don't have her fall down these ridiculous marble steps and break a hip.")

I didn't become a Catholic. I have an aunt who likes to think I'm going to hell. But I have this strange habit of visiting Catholic churches. I just go and sit. If it's Saint Patrick's Cathedral, I light candles for my grandparents. And I sit and chat with them in my head. When things are beyond stressful in my life, I talk to the Mets picture and light a candle all day and chat with my grandmother, asking her to watch out for my kids or my family or if things are really bad . . . me. And I have her crucifix on the wall of my bedroom, this agonized Christ on it. Sometimes I feel like perhaps it should have gone to one of my Catholic cousins (you know, the ones who AREN'T going to hell), but lately, I think it's right that it's on my wall since it seems to fit with the thread. A theme, if you will, there running through so many memories, and yet having nothing to do with my life . . . and yet everything. I would never attend a mass, but I will light the candles, which I buy in the Hispanic section of my supermarket. It's ritual, I guess. It's solace.

So I woke up at four a.m., and I realized the new character in my proposal needs to have had a short stint in prison to complete his narrative thread. That if he is going to break the law (which he is), that has to be a thread I can see woven from childhood.

And I suppose that is why some characters feel authentic. And some do not. A narrative thread, to me, can have tiny stitches woven in bit and pieces. It can be subtle. But characters don't arrive in any book without a narrative thread to their back story. And I believe the best threads have their roots in a theme that can be followed over the course of their entire lives.

It's like the theme of redemption. Yes, I suppose there are people looking for redemption from one lone act of stupidity or lapse in judgment. But most people need redemption for a life. Threads of selfishness and greed or cruelty were probably first woven many years before. When Julian searches for redemption in Freudian Slip, it's for a life lived without a thought for others.

A narrative thread is different from plot. A plot is what occurs in the book. It's your storyline. But each character, each main character, has a narrative thread to their life that is a big picture examination of their journey into your novel and how they will blend their threads with the other characters and come out the other side.

A narrative thread isn't a trait, either. It's like a chef who can trace his love of cooking to a single pudding he made with his great-grandmother in childhood, who can then trace his life through recipes . . . through the people who praised his cooking, until with great clarity, he sees it as his destiny in some way.

My new character breaks the law. It's what he does because he doens't respect rules. And now there is a more complete narrative thread for him, one that I see with clarity.

So what is the narrative thread for your main character?