For centuries there's been one path through fiction we're most likely to travel -- one we're actually told to follow -- and that's the dramatic arc: a situation arises, grows tense, reaches a peak, subsides. ... If you ask Google how to structure a story, your face will be hammered with pictures of arcs. ... But something that swells and tautens until climax, then collapses? Bit masculo-sexual, no? So many other patterns run through nature, tracing other deep motions in life. Why not draw on them, too?Alison correctly notes that there are other ways to organize a satisfying novel, and she attempts to categorize the alternatives in terms of naturally occurring patterns such as spirals, radials, and fractals. I was intrigued by her close reading and analysis of unconventional novels (W.G. Sebald's The Emigrants in particular), but was unconvinced that her taxonomy provided any insight.
The first few chapters cover stylistic elements that provide a story's texture: word length, sentence length, speed of reading vs speed of action, repeated images. I really liked the examples she provided, especially her rewrite of a Raymond Carver passage that removes the patterning of the sentences. These textural elements don't really fit in with the larger organizational elements she covers in subsequent chapters.
In the end, Meander Spiral Explode encouraged me to read closely and notice how the author achieves various effects -- for example, I have always been intrigued by the way Patrick O'Brian varies the speed with which time passes, and how Sebald writes allusive novels without using figurative language -- but also frustrated me with the way Alison tried to stuff her examples into abstract patterns,
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