A lesson from Weaving

How texts are made 

I’ve just read ‘A Single Thread’ by Tracy Chevalier. Like all of Chevalier’s novels it’s a gorgeous, delicate read, full of immersive detail and subtle characterisation. She has a tendency to go deeply into a subject – here it’s embroidery - until you feel you are sewing alongside the Winchester Cathedral broderers who feature so strongly in the book.

It struck me how often we use metaphors drawn from sewing and weaving in order to describe writing. My editor sometimes tells me off for not ‘weaving’ details fully into the story – or for having ‘loose threads’! In fact the word ‘clue’ takes its origin from a word which was used to describe a ball of thread– hence one used to guide a person out of a labyrinth – and, in writing, to guide our readers through our narrative.

I generally structure my novels around two sets of characters, whose lives continually cross and separate throughout the story. I think of their narrative arcs as threads which need to be bound together. Too much of one thread and we lose sight of the other. It’s a balancing act, which, done well, makes the ‘material’ of the book beautiful and satisfying.

The Ancient Greeks believed in the Fates, three gruesome sisters who are responsible for spinning the stories of our lives. Once they decide our time is up, they snip the thread! It’s a chilling thought but actually as writers that’s what we do. Sometimes characters have to be killed off – either because they are villains, or because they’ve served their purpose in the story. In the woven whole of the novel, their particular thread comes to an abrupt stop, but if we’ve done our job well, the other threads close in around it and the text is still well woven, and our novel a beautiful piece of material.