Tag: decision
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Of Actions, Integrity and Trusting Our Choices…
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…
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Of John Gardner, Writing and The Worm Hole Experience…
“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…
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Of Peeling Onions, Surrender and Writing from The Zone…
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…
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Of Swords, Inner Demons and the Waters of Renewal…
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…
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Of Dilemmas, Alice in Wonderland, and Shifts in Consciousness…
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…
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Of Cause and Effect, Twin Universes, and Sacrifice…
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…