crisis – Page 2 – Anjuelle Floyd

Of Kings, Strategies and Tactics…

3 Comments / Articles and Essays / Anjuelle Floyd

Capture of the King in chess ends the game. And thus the role of each piece or character’s movements works towards the larger goals of protecting the King of the same color and capturing the King of the opponent.

The players move their characters and/or chess pieces towards accomplishing these two tasks.

In this way process of playing the game of chess resembles that of writing a book. While writers do not move our characters around the chessboard of our stories like the pieces of a chess game, each character of a novel or short story carries her or his own role, both in the narrative line and the structure of the plot.

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Of Knights, L-Shaped Movements Crisis and Climax…

Leave a Comment / Articles and Essays / Anjuelle Floyd

In the game of chess, the Knight is the only piece or character on the board that can jump over another pieces even those who are friendly.

The Knight moves in a “L”-shaped pattern. The Knight does this by going 2 steps forward, or backward, horizontal or vertical and then 1 step left or right or by going 1 step north, south, east or west, and then 2 steps left or right.

The Knight can also be seen as moving 2 spaces diagonally and then horizontal or vertical to the next space.

For this reason the Knight’s path of movement has never been well-defined.

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Of Bootstraps, Climbing and The Eye…

Leave a Comment / Articles and Essays / Anjuelle Floyd

“Every piece of writing is a bootstrap affair whereby you use the crisis of the next sentence to get to the one beyond.”

–Kris Saknussemm ( Write what you know–and be sorry) The Writer Magazine May 2010, author of the novels, Private Midnight and Zanesville

The word bootstrap usually conjures ideas of a man-child walking in the snow for miles on his way to school, alone and persevering against the elements.

How many times have we heard a parent or grandparent extol how the challenges he endured as a child made him the adult he presently is?

Many jokes center on the extrapolation of one’s difficulties that either did not exist to the degree described or simply sprang from tales spun to inspire awe and respect.

And yet writer, Kris Saknussemm aphorism touches on an all too apparent truth that many of us writers miss or choose to avoid.

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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 »