Surviving a crisis bestows special knowledge garnered, and held by few.
It also grants admittance into various orders of wisdom yielded by experience.
Every novel or story a writer crafts tells the life of a certain crisis, and chronicles a central character’s survival of that crisis. The process of writing that novel flows out of an upheaval, the completion of which involves many obstacles that reach a crescendo of conflict and tension.
Like the surgeon making that first incision in an effort to alleviate pain and suffering, and ideally granting a cure, so to the writer/author opens her or his narrative seeking resolution to a problem–that of the protagonist–and another borne by the author.
The writer and her or his character(s) travel parallel journeys, each informing the other, both seeking answers connected to their survival.
Ideally, the protagonist emerges from her or his crisis with greater insight into the complexities of life as presented through the particularities unique to the circumstances and situation of her or his dilemma.
The will and desire to survive and thrive sit at the bottom of the specific goals they seek to achieve and attain. The more physical and tangible those goals, the more the reader can identify with the protagonist’s struggle.
Oftentimes the author must look within her or himself to distill and clarify what it is that their main character truly wants.
In this way the story asks the writer to clarify her or his goals in writing the novel.
What is it we hope to gain in crafting and refining our piece of writing and making it public?
Do we want a publishing contract?
Are we hoping to land an agent?
Or do we simply want to write the best novel we can craft and then sell as many copies as we can of the work?
No answer is wrong or right. Rather it is clarity of mind and purpose that we must develop.
In so doing we hew the path, or shall we say, uncover and reveal the narrative line that serves as the back bone of the story, thus linking and pulling tight the various scenes of action, both external and internal.
The rise and fall of action moves towards what seems an insurmountable cliff. Once there the major character faces her or his greatest archenemy.
They enter the battle, and fight.
They attain their goal, or at leas the first part of it.
The action slows.