Connecting the Dots
By: Kathi Macias
http://kathimacias.netfirms.com/

            So far in this train-of-thought writing series we’ve discussed the importance of finding and maintaining our focus by properly laying the track; “snagging” our readers with a cowcatcher; getting the piece moving in the right direction with the locomotive; and defining, arranging, and organizing our main points through the careful construction of boxcars. Now we’re going to talk about “connecting the dots,” or hooking these different parts together to form a smooth and fluid whole.
My husband and I once went to visit our beloved Uncle Arnold (on my husband’s side) when he was in the hospital in downtown Los Angeles. As the day wore on we got hungry and invited Aunt Carmen, Arnold’s wife, to go out to dinner with us. We didn’t know the area very well so we asked at the hospital’s information desk about a good place to eat. They recommended a nearby restaurant and said we couldn’t miss it because it was in a railroad-car-turned-diner. Sure enough, we had no trouble finding it, and the three of us enjoyed an excellent meal together. (We left poor Uncle Arnold behind to eat hospital food, but thankfully he made a full recovery in spite of it.)
            However, as much as we enjoyed our meal and our visit with Aunt Carmen, we never expected that railroad car to start chugging away and take us on a trip while we ate. We knew our dining car was stationary for several reasons:

• It was not sitting on a railroad track
• There was no locomotive anywhere in sight
• It was not connected to any other railroad car

Sound ridiculous? All right, maybe the example is a no-brainer. But even if our dining car had been sitting on a track at the train station, in line behind a locomotive and other railroad cars, it would never have moved if it weren’t connected to those other cars.
The same is true in writing. You may have several well-built boxcars, all aligned in perfect order, but if they’re disconnected from each other, they will never move your readers along on your word journey.
According to Webster, a coupler is “a person or thing that couples; specif., a) a device for coupling two railroad cars b) a device on an organ connecting two keyboards or keys an octave apart so that they can be played together” (emphasis added). Isn’t that interesting? We see in this definition a reference to railroad cars being held together, but also to music—“two keyboards or keys an octave apart so that they can be played together.” What an easy and natural transition it would be from music to writing if we defined a coupler as “a device connecting two paragraphs or words/sentences in paragraphs so they can be read with the same focus.”
One more note about couplers: There are times in a manuscript, particularly a novel, when you simply have to skip ahead in time. This is where a smooth transition is vital. You need to bring your readers along quickly without making them feel they missed something. As an example, let’s look at the opening paragraphs from one of the chapters in my novel Emma Jean Reborn, co-authored with Dr. Cupid Poe and published by AuthorHouse in 2005.

***
1Emma Jean still couldn’t believe she’d actually done it, though she hadn’t been able to think of anything else since her visit from Sadie Garrett. It was as if Sadie had brought her a gift, a tiny sliver of hope that maybe—just maybe—there really was something better for her out there. All she’d had to do was figure out where “out there” was—and how to get there.
            2After a few days of thinking about it, she’d decided that “out there” must be California. She’d seen a couple of television programs about California when she and her parents had been visiting at the Johnson home, and she remembered thinking that it was always warm and sunny there. And the people in the TV programs were all so beautiful and rich, she just didn’t see how anyone could be anything but happy in a place as wonderful as that.
            3And so she was on her way. Once the decision had been made, she’d waited for the first night that Gordon hadn’t come home. Then she’d quickly stuffed a loaf of bread and what few personal clothes and belongings she had into an old pillowcase, grabbed the $47.23 that Gordon had stashed away in an old shoe in the back of the closet—a place Emma Jean was sure he imagined she’d never look—and then raced out the door and through the woods that paralleled the road out of town. Emma Jean had also seen a television program where a young man had hitchhiked across the country, but she knew she’d have to put a lot of miles between herself and Crooked River before she dared to stand out in plain view on the road, begging for a ride.
***

Do you see how I covered several days in just a few short paragraphs? The highlighted, opening sentence in paragraph three—“And so she was on her way”—is the coupler or transition that moves the readers from the time of Emma Jean’s planning to leave home to the actual trip itself. This enabled me to set the scene during her journey, which is a major focus of the book, while not leaving the readers wondering how she finally got the nerve and the wherewithal to make the break. And it was accomplished without including any unnecessary detail.
If you have been following along with our articles each month, you may now have your own boxcars just waiting for couplers to hook them together and get your journey underway. As you begin this part of the train-of-thought writing method, you may find, as you work through your existing boxcars, that you don’t need a coupler or transition between each set of paragraphs, as some may already flow quite nicely. But pay close attention to the transition points between the actual boxcars and sub-points, which we discussed last month, as you want to be certain you don’t leave any part of your train disconnected from the rest. Then, when you’ve finished creating your couplers and hooking everything together, we’ll be ready to move on to the observation car, which will teach us how to breathe life into our train of words.

*Adapted from THE TRAIN-OF-THOUGHT WRITING METHOD: Practical, User-Friendly Help for Beginning Writers by Kathi Macias (AuthorHouse, 2005).