Unity - All Together Now! by Marian Allen
Writer R. V. Cassill, in his wonderful book WRITING FICTION, says that Unity "…is the conception that tells the writer* What to include
* What to leave out
* Where to start
* When to round out his conclusion.
It must guide him in the selection and manipulation of all the elements of fiction from which he hopes to fashion a story."
Unity is the shape the writer imposes on raw material, in order to produce the impression of a satisfying whole. Dialogue and character and tone and plot must all work together – that's unity. In Real Life, all your stories are mixed up with each other: the story of what you cooked for your family's meals, the story of all the jobs you've had, the story of your relationship with your mother, the story of a car wreck you had and your recovery…. Writing an article or a piece of fiction or a poem imposes some kind of focus or order on all your experience or all your possible imagined experiences.
Like a spoked wheel, all the elements in your piece will be centered around a unifying core; what that core is, will guide your all your other choices, and the end result will be a smooth and convincing piece of work.
Unities of time or setting are natural unities: "What I did on my summer vacation", from courtship to marriage; the duration of a stay; the duration of an absence; the duration of a journey; a life; a feud; a disaster; from the conception of a goal to the attainment – or the acceptance of not attaining it.
On the other hand, a story can be unified around a theme, a tone of voice. Restricting your point of view to one character imposes a unity on events. A unified set of symbols used to represent something the author does not want to state directly can hold together seemingly divergent pieces of a book, like the symbol in THE GOLDEN BOWL of the artificial thing of beauty with a self-destructive internal flaw.
That's not to say you may never outrage unity. James Thurber did, in "The White Rabbit Caper: (As the Boys Who Turn Out the Mystery Programs on the Air Might Write a Story for Children)": "Fred Fox was pouring himself a slug of rye when the door of his office opened and in hopped old Mrs. Rabbit."
Still, unless you have a particular reason for breaking unity, and understand the effect you'll be creating, work to make all the elements of your book consistent.
