An Exclusive Writing Lab post on inner and outer arc, Grace Paley, and a working example from the opening post “getting to know you.”
Welcome into Flight School:
This quote lives in my office out at the cabin and I refer to it often in class. It’s one of my primary “go-to” teachings to keep myself on track.
There is always an arc in a story because there is always a beginning and an end. It may meander, it may rise and fall, but a story arcs due to the nature of time.
The outer arc usually has to do with the simple movement of time: A leads to B. For example, the protagonist wants a cup of coffee and goes to get one. Desire (for coffee ) leads to attainment (coffee in hand ).
Plot, or tension, or antagonistic forces enter when something blocks our protagonist from getting that cuppa…but again…let’s not get into the weeds quite yet. (Now I want coffee!!)
The inner arc, or what Paley refers to as the one “bubbling beneath” is what drives the underlying emotions at work, or the blind spot within the protagonist.
Is our protagonist a caffeine addict?
Does this protagonist not get enough sleep?
What’s going on with that addiction to that daily cup of Joe?
The outer and inner ping off each other (as noted in my extremely rudimentary drawing).
Memoir writers are inclined not to think in terms of arc because they instead lean into cataloging. “This happened, that happened, then that other thing happened and then that happened.” I also call this “reporting”. Or documenting. Or testifying. And that’s normal. But, we can harness our documenting brain for drafting, which will come in a later post.
Learning, understanding, and then practicing arc teaches us to go in two directions at the same time…linear (outer) but also vertical (inner). It helps us become better writers, too.
As an example, let’s look at my post from Feb. 20, Getting to Know Each Other, and study my opening story. Note the OA (outer arc), and IA (inner arc). The BS isn’t what you think. Lol. That’s backstory, but more on that in a moment:
OA: Back in the late nineties, I was newly married for the second time. BS/IA I had married the first time at nineteen but hit the eject button at age twenty-three. This time, at thirty, I wanted—badly—to make the marriage work.
BS/Context/him: Husband number two, Steve, was a traditional guy who believed—like religion—in following the societally expected trajectory for a happy life. You know, marriage, home ownership, a couple of reliable cars to get us around, steady jobs that generated enough money to live in comfort while banking a bit for retirement…and kids.
OA: All this sounded great until we arrived at “kids.” Kids? Eeks. No.
BS/Context/her + IA: I came from a pretty rugged childhood, moving twenty-seven times during my college years and living with several sets of parents who…(well…let’s hold off on the specifics here)… did little to prepare me for being a mother, which I felt was pretty important work. I mean, you’re in charge of a human being for like what? Twenty-plus years? That’s a mighty job, right?
BS/Context/him + IA: Steve, on the other hand, enjoyed a relatively steady upbringing, living in the same house all of his life, and with parents as reliable as the seasons. They planted a big garden, canned most of their food, and worked hard at their respective jobs. His life had gone so well, making a family was as natural to him as the sun rising in the east.
OA: For a while, I pushed back. I mean, come on, why have kids? It was so predictable, so tie-yourself-down. “Why be like everyone else?” I’d ask. To this, Mr. Steady would say, “Um…because that’s what people do.”
A different woman might have said, “Well, okay. This is where we part ways,” but remember that second marriage part? I really, really, really wanted this to work. Plus, I loved the guy. He was great looking, funny, fun, and hard-working. All the good stuff. He was a keeper.
I finally agreed…OA collides into IA…with one caveat. If I were going to become a mother (and let’s face it, that meant I’d be doing most of the boots-on-the-ground work), I needed to figure a few things out about myself.
Okay, so again, BS = backstory, also known as exposition, telling, or context for the outer arc while also providing the material that exists within the inner arc. Her (I’ll refer to Jennifer as her here, for the sake of teaching) choice to be with a guy who wants kids, and to bend to his will about having them reveals an interior conflict (IA) bubbling under the surface.
In the end, agreeing to have kids, and adding the caveat of “figuring a few things out” about herself, via writing a memoir, is where the outer and inner collide. Outer meets inner and thus exposes inner too.
If we were in Studio together, here’s where the hands would pop up and I’d tackle your questions. So, you’ll either hit the comment box or go back and re-read the example.
Another way to learn is to go look at the stories you provided about yourselves in the comments of the Welcome post on 2/20/22. See if you can track your own outer and inner arc. Did you have one, or did it move into reporting of events in that “this happened, then that happened” take over?
NOTE: Don’t think for one minute anything is wrong with how you wrote your comment. No. No. No. It’s all perfect. My point is that you can imagine your life in a series of outer/inner arcs as well.
If you feel particularly ambitious, go lay OA/IA against The Fisher King where, if I’m doing my math correctly, there are six mini outer/inner arcs as well as the grand arc that frames the whole of it. (I might do a post for that, just for fun).
And finally, expand to look at the stories you are reading, the shows you watch with your family, or even what someone says to you. While your kid is telling you something about their day, something that happened, you’ll notice that there is an arc.
I’ll be curious to see your comments on this exercise.
Thanks for being here and see you soon,
~ Jennifer
Thanks for this, Jennifer! Having written first "shitty draft" of my memoir, my first editor noted that I must go deeper into my emotions on a lot of the chapters. I "tell the story" but don't tell the inner arc very well in some pieces of it.
Why can it be difficult? I think it's because it's the "being vulnerable" part of writing your story. Yes, we can go back in time and describe the events that we remember, but why do we remember them? Maybe (probably?) because there is an emotion behind the memory. We have to dig around a bit for that emotion to come back to us--what were we feeling, really feeling, about that memory that makes it worth sharing? THIS is, I think, why I was compelled to write my story: to dig around, loosen those emotional pieces, bring them to light, and make sense of them.
I've written in terms of The Heroine's Journey, but I love thinking of writing with the inner and outer arcs, bringing them together in the end.
You make something so difficult so much clearer. My agent had to really push me to dig deeper in my proposal, in the sample chapter and chapter summaries. It's so hard not only to share the vulnerability but to even get to a place where you uncover it. Your explanation of the inner arc and outer arc make for a really tangible "formula."
As I was reading Tracy's comment about why we remember certain things, I thought about a scene in my book where my dad said he almost got carried off his front porch during a flood. I mention it in my book but I don't do an inner arc, and I've never really gotten to a point where I know what that inner arc would be. But reading Tracy's comment, I realized it aligns with a main theme in my book... that my dad was always about to slip away. The flood was one of the first times it felt like my dad could just vanish. I'm so going to add this realization to the scene!