Tag: tension
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Of Books, Tension, and The Mind on the Page…
Presently I am reading Anuradha Roy’s novel, An Atlas of Impossible Longing . As with any good novel, interactions between the main characters are strained. Tension abounds, but not in a melodramatic way. The story moves with a nice speed for an opening. I look forward each evening–a hallmark that I have found a jewel…
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Protected: Of Pacing, Tension and the All-Important Artistry of Holding the Reader’s Attention…a
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
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Of Reversals, Plausible Endings and the Artistry of Thwarting Expectations…
“A successful resolution thwart the our expectation; it doesn’t (fully) satisfy them.”—-Peter Selgin, 179 Ways to Save a Novel: Matters of Vital Concern to Fiction Writers Reversals sit at the heart of a successful resolution. And since novels consist of a continual list of crises fostered by a string of obstacles, both physical and human…
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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…
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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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The Holidays and Traveling Slowly…
Words for opening of the next scene came to me as I lay in bed. Fearful that i might lose them, I turned on the lamp beside my bed and wrote them by hand.
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Who Am I: What Do I Really Want?
According to Jungian theory, the shadow aspect of one’s personality contains any, and everything that falls out of alignment, stands apart, from the ego ideal. The writer must examine the central character’s values, those held by her or his family, mother, father and culture, to gain a sense of how the Shadow archetype might manifest…