protagonist

Of Envy, Doubt, and Still More Risks…

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 »

Of Agape, Climax, and Transubstantiation…

With the passing of crisis come celebration, perhaps a love scene. Survival or resurrection from death provides the central character a wider scope of consciousness.

Personal concerns no longer drive the protagonist. Those of the community dominate her or his thoughts and actions instead. Agape love now influences their choices and behavior.

Personal suffering has yielded a greater respect and understanding of those aches and pains that affect, and beset the collective. From this emerges empathy guided by the wish to heal.

Of Agape, Climax, and Transubstantiation… Read More »

African Bushmen, God, and Reality in Writing…

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.

African Bushmen, God, and Reality in Writing… Read More »

Of Illusions, Diamonds, and The Imago Dei…

Crises consist of many obstacles, the least of which include illusions, and deceptions. Illusions held about life, and deceptions by others, and self fiercely clung to often comprise the nets limiting awareness.

Reaching the peak of crisis, and fighting the battle that awaits requires perseverance and remaining focused on the task at hand.

Doing so generates the strength and acuity to cut through the gales of misconceptions and shatter intricate pillars supporting half-truths, and lies of omission.

To the degree these inconsistencies are destroyed the protagonist gains a depth of insight nearly parallel or akin to prophecy.

In reality their vision to does not extend into the future.

Rather they are more able to behold the events and consequences of actions that stand before them.

Climbing the summit of one’s dilemma’s and problems, meeting the physical obstacles tied to inner demons and slaying the monsters of betrayal, and self-delusions grants clearer vision, both within and around one.

Experience and knowledge sows seeds from which sprout the gifts of truth and honesty wrapped in a bow of fortitude to remain committed to what is, and not turn away, when our wishes are not immediately granted.

Of Illusions, Diamonds, and The Imago Dei… Read More »

Of Crises, Experience and Goals…

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.

Of Crises, Experience and Goals… Read More »

Of Romance, Truth, and Purging the Hidden Pools of Consciousness…

Many things can happen during the approach towards the heart of a story, or novel, both for the protagonist, and the writer.

The blossoming flower of romance provides a mainstay in many stories that tug and keep open the hearts and minds of readers, wherein new possibilities enter for them to ponder both in the narrative line of the story, or novel, that perhaps offers a mirror into their own lives.

We come to books, and read not only to know that we are not alone, but also to solidify, validate and unconsciously prepare ourselves for the one constant in all of human living–change.

Of Romance, Truth, and Purging the Hidden Pools of Consciousness… Read More »

Of Intermediate Regions, Hunger and Thirst…

There stands an intermediate region in the life and structure of a novel, that place between crossing the border of the opening and beginning and entering into a series of actions that lead to the penultimate center of the journey.

It lies between the edge of that vast new world of survival that constitutes the protagonist’s path of growth and transformation, the steps she or he makes towards achieving their goal. It is a land filled obstacles of varied sorts, and the ultimate crisis that manifests profound change.

This area operates much like the night before that big game, the minutes ticking up to giving one’s debut concert. For writers this can function much like reading one’s novel for those last times wherein we institute final edits towards bringing the work to its brightest hue

Of Intermediate Regions, Hunger and Thirst… Read More »