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.