decision – Anjuelle Floyd

Of Actions, Integrity and Trusting Our Choices…

2 Comments / ... anjuellefloyd ..., Articles & Essays, Articles and Essays, Relationships / Anjuelle Floyd

In stating, “…mothers and daughters cannot serve as best friends to the other…,” Linda Perlman Gordon and Susan Morris Shaffer add in an excerpt from Too Close for Comfort: Questioning the Intimacy of Today’s New Mother-Daughter Relationship , that the …basic question… a mother must answer is: “…Do you trust your daughter to be an independent and self-sufficient woman? Can you support her in making choices and doing things differently from how you would do them?”

The answer a mother offers lies within her ability or inability to trust

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Of John Gardner, Writing and The Worm Hole Experience…

2 Comments / Articles and Essays, Musings / Anjuelle Floyd

“Any event that seems to the given writer startling, curious, or interest-laden can form the climax of a possible story.”

–John Gardner in The Art of Fiction

Climax is that place in the story or novel where the protagonist, the main character, reveals in action, that she or he has integrated knowledge gained through the experience of the journey.

Through thought, word, and deed, the central character shows she or he has been changed, transformed. It follows crisis.

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Of Peeling Onions, Surrender and Writing from The Zone…

3 Comments / Articles and Essays / Anjuelle Floyd

The stage of renewal in a story offers a second opportunity for rebirth. Unlike the crisis, the scenes of renewal focus on the inner life of the major character.

Through the action of deciding and choosing to share the good news of her or his triumph in both word and deed, the protagonist now heads down a road, the path and events of which are shaped and influenced more by internal changes than those physically committed.

Renewal signals the time in a story or novel where the central character surrenders to the nuclear fall out, so to speak, of her or his actions.

He or she has carried out the physical task set forth by the changes and upheaval leveled at the outset of the story.

At the peak of action she or he dueled her their enemies and/or central antagonist.

In the wake of triumph she/he has made decisions reflective of their survival and the wisdom granted by having battled through the crisis.

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Of Swords, Inner Demons and the Waters of Renewal…

1 Comment / Articles and Essays / Anjuelle Floyd

The area of a novel that follows climax brings renewal. Yet writing this part of the story gets tricky.

Rolling towards the finish line authors can easily lose control of the narrative. We must remain upon the horse of our story.

Climax has delivered a delayed and second crisis a second form of transformation, what some might call the aftershocks of the major earthquake of the peak crisis bringing everything to its head.

In this way novels can be seen to have three major crises or turning points from which others hurricanes or twisters of change spin off.

First comes the initial shake up, the initiating problem that rises from the dilemma rooted in back-story. Then comes the arc of action where the protagonist meets with her or his archenemy, that from which she or he has been running or pursuing the length of the story.

Then comes the crisis.

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Of Dilemmas, Alice in Wonderland, and Shifts in Consciousness…

1 Comment / Articles and Essays / Anjuelle Floyd

There comes a time in every story or novel when the main character stands in the midst of her or his dilemma like Alice does in Wonderland.

The protagonist ponders, How do present circumstances differ from my immediate past?

This place, like that of Alice in her wondrous, and yet frightening Wonderland sits between the time of order in the life of the main character, then shaken by chaos and the present time of having begun the journey towards adapting to the change required by the moment of upheaval and the need to survive.

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Of Cause and Effect, Twin Universes, and Sacrifice…

3 Comments / Articles and Essays / Anjuelle Floyd

The protagonist’s decision to act constitutes a cornerstone moment in the life a novel.

It signifies the shift from the beginning or set-up of the novel to the middle characterized as a process of action and reaction, better known as cause-and-effect. Still others term this area of the novel, and quite aptly, causality-and-build.

Cause-and-effect emphasizes the action and reaction quality representative of midsection of novels, the heart and lungs of the story.

Causality-and-build by its very words points to the uphill movement of the story towards crisis and climax that involves story and character arc.

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