Filler

I’ve been playing the chess game that is kitchen and bath cabinet design this month. After twenty-eight years, we are finally renovating our bathrooms and kitchen. Cha-ching! (For younger readers, cash registers used to make that sound after a sale.) Our money now flies through the economy. No wonder the stock market is picking up. But that really isn’t the topic of this blog—it’s all about filler.

When I first laid out the kitchen, I tried to squeeze cabinets into every square inch of space fitting as small as six-inch cabinets into the design without fillers. Since I have a small kitchen that thinking made sense to me. It was the most efficient way to utilize the kitchen’s space. Filler is waste, right?

Wrong. Filler is necessary. Besides the fact that small cabinets (per square inch) cost twice what larger cabinets cost, there were other important reasons not to utilize all available space. Fillers provide installation space, symmetry and fill gaps between cabinets. Perhaps because of my design obsession, I started looking at novel filler and wondering what function it served in novels.

Filler:

·      Connects

·      Provides contrast and changes pace

·      Adds symmetry and parallels to structure

Filler has no structural integrity. It’s not designed to support weight and joins two structurally sound cabinets providing a smooth and uninterrupted transition. Filler in novels is much the same—it doesn’t stand-alone. In Margaret Maron’s new novel, The Buzzard Table, she uses filler to transition between active and pivotal scenes. Although filler doesn’t further the plot, it also can’t bore. Maron uses restaurant dining as filler, but she discusses the food on the menu, which makes the filler (sorry) appetizing to the reader. We learn that in Deborah Knott’s area of North Carolina, oysters are readily available and adding onions to cornbread is the custom.

A larger cabinet’s function increases when surrounded by filler because it is stationary and provides distance between cabinets allowing for movement. In novels, too much action overheats a story and lessens the impact of pivotal scenes. Lowering the action by using filler emphasizes those scenes. After a dinner meeting at which a character reveals vital information to the investigators, Maron switches to a domestic scene that comes naturally in the story, but it also puts distance between the revealing scene and its application by investigators which follows in a later chapter.

In cabinet design, lining up similarly sized wall cabinets and base cabinets provides symmetry. Fillers can equalize space so that upper and lower cabinets are parallel. In novels, filler does the same thing, if you equate the upper cabinets as the plot and the lower cabinets as backstory. A theme in Maron’s work is the concept of discretionary authority at the local level, a particular favorite of mine. In Deborah Knott’s courtroom, Maron presents typical cases that are tried there, such as the barroom brawl, which have nothing to do with the plot. In The Buzzard Table, Deborah’s judgment in a case unrelated to the plot is harsh, the reasons why are explained, but her discretionary authority is illustrated and paralleled to her husband’s own discretionary authority in the plot when he chooses not to arrest a murder suspect. He fears Deborah’s disapproval, but the reader knows she will understand his reasoning because she has used discretion in the courtroom.

Can you spot what is wrong is this cabinet design?

Filler must not be used too frequently. If overdone, filler throws off the novel’s design jumbling the symmetry and structure. Maron’s secondary characters provide filler when a granddaughter and her dying grandmother go through her jewelry boxes, designating who gets what and telling the story of each piece. The history of the jewelry isn’t important, but the characters’ backstory is important because it explains relationships of primary characters and connects the structural elements of the story. Maron doesn’t use too much filler, but what she uses is natural and transitions the story from one scene to the next and back and forth through the multiple POVs presented in different chapters.

After my initial over-zealous design efficiency, I’ve come to appreciate fillers. Filler is necessary and welcome even though all the space isn’t being maximized because it enables those structural elements to work better. Kept to a minimum and provided they add interest, fillers help pace novels, emphasize more pivotal chapters by contrast, provide parallels, backstory and insight into characters. Like fillers in cabinet design, novel fillers are planned and included to help the overall design and symmetry of novels.