The other day, I was reading a book first published in 1824. It was by a man who lived not terribly far from where I live today, on the other side of Pittsburgh from here. Only when he lived there, life was a lot different from the way it is now. Not only didn't he have a computer, but he had no electricity, running water, roads, or even a nail to his name. Their houses were put together without any metal of any sort, imagine that. The book was a fascinating account of everyday life in late-18th-century western Pennsylvania/Virginia (they were still arguing about the borders). I found it riveting, but I won't bore you with it. After all, if you aren't from here, you might not be interested. You wouldn't keep running across references that explained your grandparents.

One thing I had to look up was a word he used for their homemade cloth: linsey. I had to find out if it was the same as 'linsey woolsey', which is the way I heard it. Apparently, it is. Linsey-woolsey was a kind of homemade cloth with a linen warp and a woolen weft. It was coarse and extremely uncomfortable. It was also expressly forbidden by Mosaic Law, making it not kosher¹. Somehow, that never bothered the Scots Presbyterians on the frontier.

What I wanted to say was that our writing should be like linsey-woolsey – no, not horribly uncomfortable (unless you need it to be). It should have one kind of warp, and another kind of weft. Look at this picture. There's a pattern there. We should aim for patterns in our work.

What differentiates good writing – whether purely factual or wildly fictional, that is, completely made up – from the junk you read everyday on the internet – you know, rants disguised as 'comments' – is that good writing is supposed to be thoughtful and edifying. Some work went into it. Stringing together a bare narrative ('The ghost got them. Boo.') is not edifying. It is not writing. It is typing. Nor is a listing of factoids ('Here are the Top Ten most popular movies in Lithuania in 1958') something we want to dignify with the name of writing. Leave those activities to the hacks, or for when you're actually getting paid to fill up space. For good writing, learn how to use your warp and weft.

Okay, Explain the Metaphor to the 21st Century

For those who have never seen a loom, here's one. Yeah, it's just a potholder loom, a kid's toy, but it works exactly the same way as the big-kid looms used by weavers in the millennia before the Industrial Revolution. Those pegs are to put threads on. In the case of potholders, the threads are loops of old, stretchy rag fabric, which we will now proceed to put on.

This is the warp. The warp goes on first. The warp is fixed in place. In linsey-woolsey, the warp is the linen. In a narrative, the warp is the setting: the who, what, where, when and how of life. The warp is the part you have to work with. You can move it around a bit, but you can't change its location or direction. It's there, and it's not going away.

What is the warp of a narrative set in our yesterdays? The events of the past. Attitudes of people, that can only bend so far and no further. The realm of the possible within that time frame. The horizons of those who lived in that other country. The warp includes people, events, material culture, and philosophical attitudes. The warp is going to vary a lot. Imagine setting a story among the 19th-century Amish. Now move that story to modern Japan. See?

What is the warp of a science fiction narrative? Human nature. What we know, or can speculate, of reality itself. The philosophical constructs our minds live in. Yes, the warp you start with varies: Paigetheoracle, Freewayriding, and I are all warped in completely different ways.

Noticing that warp is important. The more you incorporate observations about that warp into your narrative, the more the reader will feel informed and enlightened. The warp is more than your background. The warp is the basis for your weaving. In writing, this means your story both interrogates and illuminates the warp of the narrative. You point out flaws in its logic: you throw assumptions into stark relief.

How do you do this? You use the weft.

In linsey-woolsey, the weft is made of wool. That's the scratchy, uncomfortable part. It's also the part that moves the most. See that picture? To make a potholder, you manoeuvre the hook over and under the warp until you reach the other side. Then you grab the weft loop and pull it through the path you've made with the hook. Then you fasten it on the other side. Now you have the beginnings of a pattern.

You can see how this applies to storytelling, can't you? First, you manipulate people and events in and around your established setting. You poke this part down and bring this part up. You put in the threads, piece by piece. A story emerges.

To make it easier to see, I've used a contrasting loop colour. Patterns develop. You can make lots of patterns that help readers see what they're looking at. That's your job as a writer.

Back in the pre-industrial days, people told their own stories. They also made their own cloth. There was a similarity in the methodologies. You wove in and out of the possible. Weaving was important. Do you know the song?

If it wasna for the weavers, what would you do?

You wouldn'a hae a cloth that's made of 'oo [=wool]

You wouldn'a hae a coat of the black or the blue

If it wasna for the work of the weavers.

Yeah. Like that.

Okay, What Does It Look Like?

Elektra wanted another potholder, so here's the finished product. Write your own story.

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

03.02.20 Front Page

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