An idea occurred to me just now. I was scheduling the story “A Finger in the Stream of Time” by Mike Lee to appear later today in The Chamber. In one phase of the story, the main character and others are shooting pool. I used a photo of a pool player lining up a shot of the eight-ball into a corner pocket as the usual illustration. I was thinking about stories and time and how the balls bounce around on a pool table. Then something occurred to me.
Imagine our lives as balls bouncing around on a pool table as shown by the squiggly lines in the diagram above. A story is a section removed from that diagram (the red box) showing where the lives (or story lines) of the characters intersect.
In many instances, the trick of an excellent story is to show how the lives inside the box connect to their courses and their progression outside the box.
Too simplistic? Granted, I have only just now come up with this idea, but some vague feeling in the back of my head intuitively tells me that the more one thinks about it, the more profound it will become. For example, how would you connect the events in the left end of the purple line to the events in the right end of the dark blue line without leaving the confines of the red box? How would you connect the events in the right end of the cyan line to the events in the right end of the brown line? That would be a parallel storyline, right? But you must stay within the confines of your story in the red box.
Confused? I am too. But I have a nagging feeling that there is more to this than meets the eye. So, I had to get it out of my system and write it up.
Of course, maybe all this means is that I haven’t had enough coffee this morning or enough sleep last night.
What do you think? What ideas does this diagram stimulate in your head?
Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher 