When I was a kid I had a job as pin boy, which was in the basement of a local church. A pin boy, for those younger than I, was the kid who set up the bowling pins in a bowling alley. (This was long before the job was handed over to robots.) It was tricky and sometime dangerous work, because pins could and did fly in wild directions.
One my tasks was to make sure the pins were spotted exactly right. If not, the bowler, looking down the alley, would shout, “Hey pin boy. Pin six. Get it right!” If I didn’t get it right, the bowler would have a harder time knocking down all the pins and thereby achieving a “strike!”
I thought about that today as I worked on my new book. Sometimes when I write, I have the plot more or less all worked out in my head. It’s never that simple of course but sometimes I know, sort of, where I am going. Other times, such as at this moment, I’m not at all sure. As I result I go back and forth, this way and that. Here I am, one hundred and fifty pages in, and I write a new chapter one. And then some.
What I am doing, if you will, is setting up the plot pins. If I don’t get the plot right, line it up, space it just correctly, the reader won’t be able to knock them down. Dangerous work, setting down plots.
2 thoughts on “Setting the pins”
Great metaphor with the pins. It’s got to be a bit disconcerting to have your story “pins” flying in “wild directions.” Did that happen when you were writing Sophia’s War, too? I really liked the balance you achieved between realistic detail and movement of the plot. You make setting “pins” look easy but I have a feeling I would be surprised at the number of decisions you have to make to craft a story that seems effortless and natural.
George B. Shaw said “Hard writing makes easy reading.”
How true!