Jason Harris on the Editorial Mentorship Experience
Since reading Jane Alison's book, Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative, it has become a pleasurable activity to read a text and try to find the design and patterns a writer chooses to govern the text. In addition to that, Alison has taught me how to read a narrative for its design, not just for the story itself. One type of narrative design that Alison shares with readers is that of radial narratives – narratives that are driven by a single source of energy.
Radial narratives, Alison writes, can move towards or away from its center "but linear they are not."
While reading eliza souers's essay – "Midwest Suburbia: The Heart of It All" – that single source of energy is Midwest Ohio; it is the people (those known on a personal level and those known only on billboards) that populate the suburban town our speaker is from; it is the speaker's orientation toward the world. In "Midwest Suburbia: The Heart of It All," souers's gravitational force is felt.
Radial narratives, Alison writes, can move towards or away from its center "but linear they are not."
While reading eliza souers's essay – "Midwest Suburbia: The Heart of It All" – that single source of energy is Midwest Ohio; it is the people (those known on a personal level and those known only on billboards) that populate the suburban town our speaker is from; it is the speaker's orientation toward the world. In "Midwest Suburbia: The Heart of It All," souers's gravitational force is felt.