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scene one your heroine is childless and in scene two, the next day, she has six-year-old twins. You'll encounter other kinds of reluctances, later on. Whichever kind you are, you now have a solid beginning to your manuscript, and to your writing process. Now it's time to move on to the middle. STILL MORE EXERCISES FOR BEGINNINGS Pull out a story of yours that has at least the first few scenes completed. Write five different opening scenes for the story, each no more than three to six paragraphs, focusing on: 1. The description of some object of importance to the scene. 2. Your point-of-view character engaged in some significant, unexpected action. 3. An outrageous opinion held by the point-of-view charac- ter, expressed inside her head in her own words something she would never tell a living soul (everybody has these). 4. Six lines of dialogue between two characters (three lines each) who are arguing about something that will be important to the plot. 5. A description of the room where the first scene occurs. Focus on details that will have thematic significance and/or that tell us something about the owner's personality. Did you like any of these openings better than your original? Did writing them spark any ideas for the story? If not, go back to your original opening. PART 2 MIDDLES CHAPTER 4 THE MIDDLE: STAYING ON TRACK "IN THE MIDDLE OF THE JOURNEY of life," wrote Dante Alighieri in The Inferno, "I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost. Ah, how hard it is to tell of that wood, savage and harsh and dense, the thought of which renews my fear. So bitter is it that death is hardly more." Dante was having trouble with middles (a problem he even- tually did resolve, with a little Outside help). He isn't alone. Marty writers find themselves eager to begin their stories. They plunge right into their plot or setting or characters. Enthusiasm is high. The writer is still in love with whatever idea prompted him to begin a novel in the first place, and this is the honeymoon. Then he hits the middle of the story. Like Dante, he becomes overwhelmed. Things look dense, savage and harsh. Paths disap- pear. Guidelines don't seem to offer enough guidance. Discour- aged, the writer comes to agree with W. Somerset Maugham, who wrote, "There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortu- nately, no one knows what they are." What makes middles so hard? Sometimes you have so much vital information that you can't figure out how to include it all (especially in a short story). Sometimes you can't think of enough interesting events to get you plausibly to the ending you've al- ready envisioned (especially in a novel). Choices rush over you. In what order should the scenes occur? How many points of view can you use? How will you show that your character undergoes a genuine change? What about those two events that happen simultaneously in two different cities which should you show 60 The Middle: Staying on Track 61 first? The story seems to be self-destructing in your mind. You can't imagine why anybody would want to read it. You don't. The honeymoon is over. Does this all sound too gloomy? If so, perhaps you're one of those fortunate writers who doesn't have trouble with middles. You can breathe a sigh of relief and keep on typing. But if you have felt that savage wood, it's a help to know that there are lights in the forest that can help. DEVELOPING THE PROMISE The middle of the story can be defined (perhaps arbitrarily) as everything after the introduction of the main characters/conflict and before the climax. Note how slippery this definition is. In a very short story, the main conflict may be underway by the sec- ond paragraph, which may be part of the first scene especially if the story has only two or three scenes. The beginning seamlessly becomes the middle, with no real dividing point. On the other hand, a longer story often has a clear begin- ning, middle and end. For example, in Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game," the first three scenes maneuver the protagonist, hunter Sanger Rainsford, onto a remote island con- trolled by a madman who hunts human beings. The middle of the story details Rainsford's attempts to keep from being killed. The ending dramatizes the final clash between the two men, both of whom are hunter and hunted. Each section is clearly demar- cated by scene breaks. Most of the action occurs in the middle. In a novel, the middle may easily be most of the book. By the end of chapter six of Gone With the Wind, we have met the four major characters, we know what each wants from the others, we understand the obstacles to getting what they want, and we have witnessed the beginning of the Civil War. The climax takes up only the last chapter. Chapters seven through sixty-two which is 86 percent of the book might therefore be called "the middle." The middle, then, is an enormously important part of your story, even if the term is more amorphous than "beginning" or 62 BEGINNINGS, MIDDLES AND ENDS "end." Its function, too, is both important and harder to define. Up to this point, the definition we've used is this: The function of the middle is to develop the implicit promise made by a story's beginning. Now, that sounds straightforward enough. If the promise was Read this and be amused, then surely the function of the middle is to be amusing. If the promise was Read this to experience exciting lives you wish you led, then the function of the middle would seem to be to show us these thrill-packed lives. However, the trouble with that definition isn't that it's false (it's true), but that it doesn't offer much help to the writer. Be amusing how? Show us exciting lives how? We need more definition. Try this one: The middle of a story develops the story's implicit promise by dramatizing incidents that increase conflict, reveal character, and put in place all the various forces that will collide at the story's climax. In other words, the middle is a bridge sometimes a long, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
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