novel – Page 13 – Anjuelle Floyd

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 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.

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Of Blogs, The Umbilical Cord, and the Internet…,

1 Comment / Articles and Essays / Anjuelle Floyd

Connecting with the godhead, that part of the divine that lives within all, the Imago Dei, coalesces the disparate parts of the soul, mind and brokenness of heart and spirit.

Writing or revising and editing this part of a story or novel can and often dispenses healing to the writer whose words later transmit this to the reader.

The writer undergoes a trial or test of sorts each time she or he sets out to craft a work.

Of Blogs, The Umbilical Cord, and the Internet…, Read More »

African Bushmen, God, and Reality in Writing…

Leave a Comment / Musings / Anjuelle Floyd

There is a Dream dreaming us.

–African Bushman

(The Mystic Vision–Daily Encounters with the Divine, Compiled by Andrew Harvey and Anne Baring)
How often do I create characters, work with them in uncovering their stories and personalities as I put write them on the page only to then meet a person who within seconds I recognize as one of my characters in a novel?

Very.

Of course these people have most often been around since long before I wrote or even conceived of the story to my novel, and its characters. I have not breathed them into life. And yet a connection exists between what we write and the life around us.

Let’s say for instance that the people I meet who remind me of characters I have created or who have emerged in my stories, have risen in some sense, from my novels.  

What would that mean, that we as writers create characters whom we will then encounter in the physical form of human individuals through engagements and interactions and life?

And let’s say these people do not know, have no understanding or awareness that we are their creator.

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Of Crises, Experience and Goals…

Leave a Comment / Articles and Essays / Anjuelle Floyd

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.

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Writing, The Enemy of Good, and ‘Goldilocks’…

Leave a Comment / ...the writing life..., Musings / Anjuelle Floyd

What draws us to write is often comprises that which presents our greatest challenge when writing a story, or novel.

The psychic and emotional wounds that compel us to write present the greatest, and yet oftentimes, most invisible obstacles we encounter throughout the process of crafting and refining our stories for public consumption.

So what are these demons that lay in way upon the trail we hew in seeking to manifest our dreams, the demons that rear their heads, beautiful and ugly that can distract and pull me from the path as ordered by my heart?

They come in many sizes and shapes.

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