{"id":28896,"date":"2015-04-30T10:29:40","date_gmt":"2015-04-29T22:29:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=28896"},"modified":"2015-04-30T10:29:40","modified_gmt":"2015-04-29T22:29:40","slug":"scaffolding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2015\/04\/30\/scaffolding\/","title":{"rendered":"Scaffolding"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By way of random, writing process-related thoughts, I&#8217;ve been reflecting on how the first draft of almost everything I write (accepting that it may well be different for other authors), whether novel, short fiction, or poetry, always contains elements of what a friend, <a href=\"http:\/\/jopre.wordpress.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">poet Joanna Preston<\/a>, calls &#8220;scaffolding.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Exactly as with physical construction, literary scaffolding provides a framework that allows me, as writer, to come to grips with the structure of what I&#8217;m building \/ creating.<\/p>\n<p>For example, with a short story, I may spend the opening sequences &#8220;building the scene&#8221;, only to realize later that all that careful work was scaffolding, allowing me to work my way into the story until I get to the point where I no longer need it. But with the scene set in my mind, I may then be able to cut straight to the subsequent action without losing the story&#8217;s sense of milieu.<\/p>\n<p>A big part of any second draft, therefore, is to identify what is scaffolding and what the &#8216;real deal&#8217; of the creative work &#8212; and diligently remove the former.<\/p>\n<p>I never regard the scaffolding as wasted words or effort, however, since without their help I might never have come to grips with the &#8220;real&#8221; poem, story, or novel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By way of random, writing process-related thoughts, I&#8217;ve been reflecting on how the first draft of almost everything I write (accepting that it may well be different for other authors), whether novel, short fiction, or poetry, always contains elements of what a friend, poet Joanna Preston, calls &#8220;scaffolding.&#8221; Exactly as with physical construction, literary scaffolding [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28896"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28901,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28896\/revisions\/28901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}