The Istoriaphile’s Corner

Think about yarn for a moment.  If you look at it under the microscope, you’ll see that it’s a series of fibrous strands that have been woven together so tightly they seem to fuse into a single cord.  Little ends of the strands edge free from the cord and catch the light that shines on the weave. Story yarns are the same: a woven rope of characters, narrative and plot points pull the entire tale together while, here and there, a strand can catch the light.  Some story yarns are so strong that other writers can spread out their elements, and then reweave them into another pattern that shows what you didn’t see before.  Gregory Maguire did this with Wicked and Joan Aiken rewove Jane Austen’s Emma into her own Jane Fairfax.  I love this technique but the one I love even more is when a writer pulls one of the glinting  ends at the edge of a story and teases a whole new tale from that thread.  T. K. Thorne did this in 2011 when she pulled the bright thread of a character from the book of Genesis and created a tale named Noah’s Wife.  At last, the Lady…