central character – Page 2

Of Rooks, Guardians of the Threshold and Boundaries…

1 Comment / Articles and Essays / Anjuelle Floyd

The chess piece or character known as The Rook, which is also called The Castle or as I like to say, The Tower can move as many spaces along a row or column on the chessboard.

The Rooks (each player has 2) combined with The Queen, form the major chess pieces. In this way they operate like Guardians of the Threshold preventing the opposing player’s pieces from gaining or capturing a player’s King.

Guardians of the Threshold in a novel hold the boundaries between the protagonist and her or his goal.

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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 Narrative, Journeys, and What Compels Us to Write…

1 Comment / Articles and Essays / Anjuelle Floyd

“Make up a story. Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created.”

–Toni Morrison, Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning author

The protagonist, in reaching home, during this last chapter of the journey, must evidence that she or he has traveled, not simply waited steps beyond home, seconds beyond the gates of the home native city and after sufficient time to have journeyed far, they reappear with their tale.

Just as the central character must evidence the crisis has transformed her or his way of thinking regarding making decisions, so too, when reaching home again, she or he must demonstrated they have traveled, that they have truly been away.

Often when we travel we bring back gifts for those we love.

The gifts come from the places we have been, where our itinerary of travel has taken us.

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Of Spirals, Parking Garages, and Points of Entry and Identification…

Leave a Comment / Articles & Essays / Anjuelle Floyd

The road that led your protagonist away at the opening of your novel or story brings her or him home again during the final stage, but at a new level of awareness.

And since time has moved forward, while the central character has been gone, we could entitle the journey, Back to the Future and Home Again.

The central character of the story has traveled in a spiral, moving both vertically and horizontally.

They have broadened their perspective. This encompasses the circular motion of the spiral. Read the rest of this entry…

Of Spirals, Parking Garages, and Points of Entry and Identification… Read More »

Of Spirals, Parking Garages, and Points of Entry and Identification…

3 Comments / Articles and Essays / Anjuelle Floyd

The road that took the protagonist away, during the final stage of the novel, brings her or him home again, but at a new level of awareness.

And since time has moved forward, while the central character has been gone, we could entitle the journey, Back to the Future and Home Again.

The central character of the story has traveled in a spiral, moving both vertically and horizontally.

They have broadened their perspective. This encompasses the circular motion of the spiral.

Of Spirals, Parking Garages, and Points of Entry and Identification… Read More »

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 Envy, Doubt, and Still More Risks…

Leave a Comment / Articles and Essays / Anjuelle Floyd

Following crisis, the protagonist must choose, decide and act. Will she or he return to business as usual, keeping secret what they have learned, or will they share it with others?

Will they share the healing they have undergone with others, or will she or he choose the safe path of saying little or nothing about the internal changes that have reshaped them?

Risks come with sharing the good news of our survival of any upheaval or time of broad sweeping changes. We face the possibility of those we tell refusing to believe us.

Those who do may grow envious, and then exploit the doubts still others hold and turn who groups of people against us.

Of Envy, Doubt, and Still More Risks… Read More »