quote:Originally posted by extrinsic: From starts to ends -- how about middles?
If you want. Let me pose this.
You can think of a book as a hook at the start, a endless walk in the middle motivated only by a desire to find out the resolution, then the only enjoyable part of the book, the thrilling conclusion.
Or? Or maybe the middle can be interesting and enjoyable and worthwhile. I want to know how we accomplish this. (And yes, Swain gives an answer, but I am not fond of it.)
And if that's possible, why do we need the hook and the dramatic conclusion?
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I, personally, am not a big fan of the "hook". At least not the kind of hook that has to be in the first 13 lines. I can only think off-hand of one book I've read because the first couple of lines "hooked" me. And that one was ultimately a disappointment. The rest of the story was . . . shapeless.
The beginning needs to grab the reader's interest, yes. But it's main purpose is to set up the story to come. The characters--and what drives them--and the story problem that will be resolved at the climax.
In most stories, that thrilling climax would fall pretty flat if we didn't have all of the middle to bring us to that point. To show us the character growth or change that enables the climax. To show us what it cost.
The middle may be where the real story happens. Maybe that's why middles are so hard.
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Aristotle and Gustav Freytag observe that starts portray a first cause of contention, that is, establishment of a complication-conflict crisis, that middles are effects of and further causes of complication-conflict and escalated efforts to satisfy complication-conflict, and that ends are complication-conflict satisfactions.
Emotional effect tension's setup, tension relief delay, and partial and full tension reliefs attend complication's motivation antagonism and causation's conflict forces.
Both as well observe that a start upsets emotional equilibrium, of a focal agonist (contestant) and through which readers' emotions flux, flow, and ebb; middles continue and further emotional disequilibrium; and ends restore emotional equilibrium.
As well, Freytag especially observes that a climax transpires midway through a word count, narrative time per Seymour Chatman (time to read), not per se midway story time (time elapsed within a narrative's milieu). Freytag asserts that a climax transpires when all that is needed is known and ready for fullest action about a complication-conflict, when efforts to satisfy a complication-conflict are greatest, when complication-conflict forces in contention are greatest, and when complication-conflict outcome is most in doubt.
This above is more a paraphrased synthesis than a verbatim recitation of Aristotle and Freytag.
Reader emotional climax follows Freytag's structural climax criteria, later, say, once emotional response appears to return, or fall, restore, toward emotional equilibrium, readers sense an emotional climax, due to a pendent tension relief.
If graphed, the structure arc's apex transpires midway, like a Bell curve, so to speak. The reader effect emotional arc's apex transpires near a three-fourths mark, like an ocean wave near shore observed side on, so to speak. Readers' emotional flux naturally follows behind a structure's dramatic flux.
To accomplish the two arcs' congruent fluxes, flows, and ebbs, Freytag suggests five parts and three dramatic turns. He misses four distinct turns, though. Often under- or unrealized, this outline formula, template, structure below applies to short and long prose as well as congruent tangible and intangible actions and counteractions, for fullest dramatic realization (also a basis for structure analysis):
Exposition, Part I
Outset dramatic complication-conflict introductions, not per se expository back story and drama-less, antagonism-less, causation-less, and tension-less summary and explanation preface or prologue, etc.
Turn I, outset emotional engagement and emotional upset (focal event, agonist, setting, pendent complication-conflict crisis introductions: rapport, empathy, sympathy, or pity or spite, and fear; suspense, and curiosity evoked)
Turn II, first dramatic incitement to act (first complication-conflict crisis realization, "inciting incident")
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I've read some stories that leave out one or more of the beginning, middle, or end by implying them in the part that is actually written. Such a thing is tough to do, partly because it depends on triggering in the part actually written the ideas and images that must be inferred by the reader in order to "get" what they read.
The more set-up needed in the beginning and build-up (and ups and downs and growth) needed in the middle to bring a satisfactory conclusion, the longer the work needs to be.
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Extrinsic, if someone looked at the start of Ender's Game with no preconceptions, I think they would see an interesting and likable character and an interesting premise. That's all.
I wish Aristotle had said that the start of a story creates a likable and interesting character. The story itself is then true to the character. Ender writes a story that explores, follows, and is remarkably true to the character and the premise.
That would have been good advice for how to write a middle. Of course, Card does other good things. Of course, the start of a book can also establish a want, problem, or conflict, which might last the book or might not. The same could be said for any chapter.
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Aristotle, actually, avoids assertions that an agonist be likeable. Valid reason's why include likeableness might be counterproductive to drama needs and full real-world roundness of personas' natures, personalities, and behaviors.
Many commentators remark likeableness is overrated and overemphasized, especially among fan fiction culture. And some commentators observe that likeableness tempts writer surrogacy's self-idealization and self-efficacy flaws. Character flaws are essential and real and often the true causes and appeals of prose drama.
Ender's Game's prelude chapter starts from Colonel Graff and Major Anderson discuss Ender's setup for manipulation, in effect, establish a want motivation for the whole. That scene also intimates an emotional cluster, that is, pity and fear evoked for Ender's fate.
I don't especially "like" many, most, or all of the personas of the novel, nor any persona of any narrative; rather, in some cases hold respect, maybe rapport for personas like us and our misfortunate circumstances due to our moral frailties and flaws and external mischief done to us.
More often than otherwise, though, some aspect or several aspects of a persona's true nature cause me dislike or outright contempt for him, her, or it, albeit tempered by at least one other positive sentiment. I favor ambivalence to singular polarity certitude, might lean more toward one pole or another at a given moment, and subject to change throughout.
Maybe one entity of all Creation do I hold solely positive, maybe not, least of which myself. Providence does help those who help themselves; mindful, selfishness before all others utterly alienates all.
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quote:You can think of a book as a hook at the start, a endless walk in the middle motivated only by a desire to find out the resolution
It that were true, who would read fiction? If you went to a film that was interesting at the start and then nothing special till the end you would never see the end.
Ideally, every scene after the first begins with the protagonist's options reduced and their risk increased. If a given scene is at the same level of tension as the last, the reader is bored and leaves. So each scene rises in tension before ending with the protagonist having to accept that they aren't going to solve the current problem. If the tension rises too fast you end up with melodrama before the scene end, and they toss the book away in disgust.
To hold a reader's interest is a balancing act. The opening isn't, as you suggest, a hook. Every page must be one, to some extent, because unless we make the reader need to turn to the next page they won't.
quote:Originally posted by extrinsic: Ender's Game's prelude chapter starts from Colonel Graff and Major Anderson discuss Ender's setup for manipulation, in effect, establish a want motivation for the whole. That scene also intimates an emotional cluster, that is, pity and fear evoked for Ender's fate.
What is the want motivation? I mean, I read that start like two weeks ago, and it is not obvious what want you are talking about. But it's really obvious to me that it's an interesting character and interesting situation.
Pity? Fear? The opening scenes suggest he's very capable of taking care of himself. If Card was trying to evoke those emotions, he choose an odd way to do it.
What I'm trying to say is to me, you seem to be working very hard to fit Ender's Game into a framework that doesn't work very well. I invite you to change.
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quote:Originally posted by Jay Greenstein: [QUOTE] If a given scene is at the same level of tension as the last, the reader is bored and leaves.
This is both typical and incredible. You are saying that readers read a book just to experience tension. And that's the only reason, if there's no tension (or it's just the same as last chapter), they stop reading because they are bored.
I don't enjoy tension. Books can be funny, profound, surprising, interesting, insightful, heartwarming, gripping, emotional, awesome, and probably more. If a book has one of those, and I guess coherence and a story, I keep reading.
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tension can be formed in many ways on multiple levels. Look at the harry potter series, sure there is the battle against Voldemort, but you could just as easy make it a case of will harry escape his abusive family? Or will harry and Hermione finally get together? (no. Rowling got a lot of grief for that. Even said she regretted it now.) The different classes, the different spells, she wove in a hundred different things to keep the pages turning. It wasn't just founded on action but also in discovery and wonder, that's what makes her new stuff so lackluster.
But if it was easy to get that perfect tension/conflict/wonder throughout a book we'd all be top 10 bestselling authors by now.
There is nothing easy about this craft and anyone that says they have a sure fire recipe is yanking your chain. It's a lot of trial, error, and feedback, to learn to put all the different types of building blocks together without it all falling down. Just keep reading, writing and submitting, constantly challenge yourself, and striving for the better word.
I'll leave you with Tennyson-
All precious things, discover'd late, To those that seek them issue forth; For love in sequel works with fate, And draws the veil from hidden worth. He travels far from other skies His mantle glitters on the rocks-- A fairy Prince, with joyful eyes, And lighter footed than the fox.
The bodies and the bones of those That strove in other days to pass, Are wither'd in the thorny close, Or scatter'd blanching on the grass. He gazes on the silent dead: "They perish'd in their daring deeds." This proverb flashes thro' his head, "The many fail: the one succeeds"
-Be the one that succeeds. There's power in words but their secrets are elusive.
quote: You are saying that readers read a book just to experience tension.
Yup. Think about a book in which a nice computer system rep meets a nice girl. They go out together and have a nice time. They marry and have a nice daughter. Every scene is pleasant, with no discord. How real is that?
What are the chances of that story selling? Zero. But...let's change it a bit to include a little tension. Let's move the nice courtship into their past, and pick it up when the daughter is a rebellious teen dating a lowlife. The nice man, it turns out, is actually, a covert operator for US Intelligence. The nice wife is bored, and thinking about having an affair with a slime-ball used car salesman.
Stir in an enemy agency that's smuggling a nuke into the US to set it off, and you end up with the nice man piloting a VTOL fighter-plane with his daughter clinging to the nose as it hovers by the office building where the nuke is. In other words, the plot of the film, True Lies, which is a lot more fun that the nice man marrying the nice lady and living a predictably boring life.
Readers want something to worry about. They want to use the writer's imagination to vicariously live, not just know about, a life infinitely more exciting than their own.
Force your reader to lower the book and take a deep breath because the excitement is too intense and you have a gloriously happy reader. Make them mutter, "Holy crap...now what do we do?" and they will—and must—turn the pages.
Readers want to experience tension? They feed on it. It's one of life's guilty pleasures.
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My theory of middles is that there are 15-20 things writers can do to make a scene interesting. Tension is only one.
If you want to claim that tension is the only one, then I just have to show that something else is useful. Don't you want to concede that?
Like, I could say that if two scenes have equal amount of tension, but one also has humor and a clever solution, that second one is better.
If I have a scene without any discord, just two people working together to achieve a goal, and it's funny and profound and there's surprises and interesting, it can't be a good scene?
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Tension is the emotional effects of drama, and emotions range from the several primals to further abstract emotions that number several dozens. Humor is a complex-compound emotion, for example. Interest and curiosity are emotional and related and likewise complex, suspense, too.
Often, a sequential cluster of emotions arise, sometimes rapidly flash and are as soon gone as felt and noted, for dramatic tension and for real-world drama, natural to humans overall. Plus, personality and emotional conditions cause or exhibit different degrees of emotion strength, clarity, and lacks thereof, or emotional affect (noun): flat, dissociative, empathy-less, wrath's vices, virtue and vice's several many affects, etc.
A strong case could be made that a narrative's course is more so an emotion-fraught journey than any other dramatic movement facet, irrespective of the emotion cluster sets and types.
A partial inventory of emotion topics per Wikipedia:
quote:Originally posted by extrinsic: Tension is the emotional effects of drama...
I'm not sure what you're saying. I'm comfortable with saying that tension is one of the emotional effects of a story. But just one. I assume by tension we mean tension (Mental or emotional strain. )
Jay: "Readers want something to worry about."
Walexander: "the battle against Voldemort,"
Jay: "Really, every scene after the first begins with the protagonist's options reduced and their risk increased."
In taking about what we try to accomplish as writers, I think I tend to call it suspense. Is that the same thing? I just can't imagine someone actually wanting to be tense and worried. In real life I might call it anxiety. But fine differences in definition don't seem to be the issue here.
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quote:Originally posted by extrinsic: A strong case could be made that a narrative's course is more so an emotion-fraught journey than any other dramatic movement facet, irrespective of the emotion cluster sets and types.
One might claim that the only positive thing we do in writing is emotions.
That would raise the issue of emotions in the characters or emotions in the reader. Which I wish more people mentioned.
I'm not sure how to list emotions. Your list doesn't have irony, which you like; it doesn't have anything about profundity, which I like. Then there is character growth. (The list doesn't have eroticism, but that problem's easily fixed.)
So I abandoned that possibility. Actually, it's in my unwritten list of good things authors do. As author, I am happy to elicit disgust. Boredom is trickier, right? I would want my reader to feel my character's depression, but not actually be depressed.
So it's a really interesting thing to talk about.
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Wikipedia's partial topics list -- not my list. I attempted once to create a more comprehensive emotions inventory and gave up due to the sheer quantity burden, let alone quality.
Irony isn't in itself an emotion, rather, a phenomena set that evokes emotions, likewise satire and sarcasm, rhetoric overall.
The inventory does list lust, a broad category that could include eroticism. "profundity" is similar to irony, that is, a cause and perhaps antagonist of emotion, rather than an emotion. Tension's emotional valence is a matter of whether an expression is positive, neutral, or negative, for narrative arts, whatever natural emotional cluster and valences attend, positive and negative, as a situation may want. Likewise valenced, Antagonism's motivators, Causation's stakes risked, and Tension's emotional effects and affects perform in tandem: ACT.
Character growth, or psychological, personality-emotional-moral maturation, is likewise a cause and antagonism, effect, too, motives and stakes as well.
Boredom is "tricky" only if ineptly managed, all too often too much boredom portrayed and developed for readers by nonconscious writer error and drama misapprehension.
Depression wants a cluster of emotions, at least one added contrary emotion. Many depressed personas show a happy or content, comfortable façade. Maybe that's a challenge to portray, or an all too easy default choice. Instead, an emotion contrary to depression, equally a polar opposite, could be fortitude (self-confidence in the face of adversity, pride as virtue rather than vice, and diligence).
Polar opposite emotions? Huh, conflict's stakes risked forces in polar opposition! Vice and virtue conflict potential attends tangible and emotional intangible conflict, too: depression-sloth and fortitude-diligence stakes risked. Not to mention, a cruel observation is factions of society believe depression is a moral disease and can be treated as such. Nope. Instead, coping strategies developed, or Providence be praised, transcendence strategies.
See changingminds.org/emotions. The changing minds' site is broad and deep, though attempts comprehensive strategy survey coverage of persuasive external and internal forces and doesn't attain fullness, and does not distinguish between manipulation and persuasion, between forced and persuaded adjustment, between identity rape and seduction, nor emphasize the best practice: self-adjustment. No one transforms unless self-want is sincere and strong and pursued, least of all because outsiders want an individual adjusted. Transformed for whose sake? Hypocrisy and dysfunctional caretaker and enabler codependence too often attend external transformation coercions.
And changing minds misses or misapprehends more than a few principles of transformation. Yet the site is worth perusal, mindful of flaws and errors and flat-out pointlessness, and grammar errors, as much as insights.
quote:Originally posted by Meredith: In most stories, that thrilling climax would fall pretty flat if we didn't have all of the middle to bring us to that point. To show us the character growth or change that enables the climax. To show us what it cost.
The middle may be where the real story happens. Maybe that's why middles are so hard.
That is a brilliant observation.
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I'm even more convinced about the importance of distinguishing character's emotions from reader's emotions. And I'm surprised by how much each emotion is different.
Take surprise. If my character is surprised, I could say that, or try to Show with nonverbals or whatever. If I made the reader surprised too, that could add to the reader being immersed in the story.
But being surprised, if well done, is enjoyable to the reader.
Which could be a different way to think about writing. Jay would say something like "I don't want my readers to know my main character is surprised, I want them to feel that surprise." But a focus could be on simply surprising the reader, even if the character isn't surprised.
If my main character is depressed, I can say that, show that, or even try to get my reader to feel the character's depression. But I don't want the reader to be depressed.
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That was useful. I think a reasonable goal is to sell a book and make money. But another goal can be to create a Worthwhile Reading Experience for each scene. (I don't know what else to call it.) The book I am reading now is a joy to read (I am in the middle); the previous two books I was reading where just dead in the middle.
Jay (and Swain) suggest a third goal, getting the reader to keep reading. We can talk about how well their suggestions work towards that goal. I assume they are not claiming that I actually enjoy reading about constant failure.
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There's also, I think, an unthought-about assumption that the main enjoyment of a book is to enjoy the ending. Meridith doesn't say this, at all, but Meredit's suggested value for the middle is to make the end better.
I have held all of these assumptions. But it's important to make them explicit. And you can see Jay, for example, talking about other values. But not systematically.
There is talk above about having the reader "feel" what is happening. But why do we want the reader to feel rain? Or the boredom of the main character? And as I tried to point out, do we want the read to feel the surprise of the main character, or do we want the reader to be surprised? There's a difference.
Whether this restarts the discussion or closes it, I'm fine. I want to talk about how to make the middle a worthwhile reading experience, but I learned from this thread and I can think about it from here. Thanks all.
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A prose narrative, any prose narrative's main recreational function is persuade emotional movement. Start, middle, end, all parts between bookends, personal and emotional stimulation motion is prose's forte and domain, as compared to other metagenres' impersonal and unemotional persuasions.
A middle's emotional arc need only escalate overall emotional movement, albeit, by leaps and bounds between moments of stalls and delays and incompleted tension reliefs, and complication and conflict forces rise to greatest contention, complication-conflict satisfaction efforts rise to greatest force, and outcome further and furthest in doubt, yet the complication-conflict become fully realized and known.
Subsequent to that recreational function, foremost through subtext, prose's social function is expression of moral aptitude, as much from values and mores' rapport as moral facets humans love to hate, and through which reader persuasive moral aptitude transformation transpires, if at all.
How a given writer approaches those two functions is of near infinite variety and disparate proportions. After those first principles, the decision tree and event sequences branch exponentially and, after midway, taper as well toward an outcome end, as like a lidded eye, the profile of a convex-convex lens viewed from the side: -oOo-. Writer-narrowed focus and self-definition, plus a target audience defined, determine the limbs, branches, foliage, and roots' variables. The "roots" part equates to a subtext set. A tree without roots is dead-felled timber; a narrative without subtext is personally, emotionally dead-felled timber, too. Likewise, a tree root without a tree above is dead and impersonal.
A reader need not "feel" rain, only needed that readers share and appreciate the personal and emotional import of the rain at the moment, that the writer intends, and is of the subject viewpoint persona's sensibilities. This is the sixth sense of prose sensations, and the most significant essential: emotional stimulation, from which readers relate and, thus, provide personal experiences from their own, individual imaginations and emotional experiences, and, thus, imagine: visualize, auralize, tactilize, olfactorize, gustatize, as each may want, and emotionalize a rain scene's full reality realization.
A middle's emotional arc need only escalate overall emotional movement, albeit, by leaps and bounds between moments of stalls and delays and incompleted tension reliefs, and complication and conflict forces rise to greatest contention, complication-conflict satisfaction efforts rise to greatest force, and outcome further and furthest in doubt, yet the complication-conflict become fully realized and known.
... the decision tree and event sequences branch exponentially and, after midway, taper as well toward an outcome end, as like a lidded eye, the profile of a convex-convex lens viewed from the side: -oOo-. ...
In a way, those sections of your response describe the middle as the bridge between the start and the end.
You could have easily assumed that the middle was the most important part of the book, and the start is just a way to get to the middle, and that the end is just a way to leave the middle and end the book.
For example, the start to Ender's Game does not create a clear conflict. Or a problem or danger. It is EASILY seen as a precipitating event, getting us to the brilliant middle.
13 Reasons Why is another good example.
Of course, a book COULD state a conflict at the start and resolve it at the end. That would be on my list of good things a book could do. And some books do that.
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A start could be a bridge to a middle; as well, an end could be a bridge from a middle. Novels more so than short stories start from a bridge scene or several and, likewise, long essay creative nonfiction. Donald Maass, Writing the Breakout Novel, and the companion workbook, describe a "bridging conflict," though the "bridge" Maass describes is a complication-conflict bridge, greater overt emphasis for complication than conflict, which lends itself to covert, intangible intimation, of course.
Bridge scenes set up a main action, occasion viewpoint persona characterization development, as well as pre-stage a main event and setting milieu setup and development. Bridge scenes lend themselves to interlude and prelude segments, and are a stock start method for thriller and mystery narratives, and occasional "literary" genre narrative experimentation, especially nonlinear timelines, per Donna Tart, The Secret History, and Charles Frazier, Thirteen Moons.
A challenge of a bridge scene is each requires its own distinct setup and developments and a main action then does, too. Many mystery bridge scenes start from a crime victim's victimization and entails a middle to remote narrative distance, bald reality imitation, absent a central viewpoint persona's introductions, the "detective," as it were. For example, Jonathan Kellerman's Gone.
Mickey Spillane's crime novels do not start from per se (inherent) victim bridge scenes, rather, from Mike Hammer bridge scenes. Bridge scene starts are a common method across the genres: romance, mystery, thriller, science fiction, fantasy, western, and literary.
Several bridge scene interludes, sequenced before a main action start or sequenced between main action segments, are less common to all except literary prose. The multiple bridges type is invariably episodic and suits the noir and picaresque forms' episode natures. For examples, mystery, thriller, noir, Jonathan Kellerman, Gone; western, thriller, picaresque, Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men; literary, picaresque, Peter Matthiessen, Far Tortuga; science fiction, picaresque, Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game; fantasy thriller, picaresque, J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings; thriller, picaresque, John Le Carre, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold; romance, picaresque, Jacqueline Susann, Valley of the Dolls.
Examples of inept-inapt bridge scene starts: fantasy, romance, Stephenie Meyer, Twilight, as published and as first submitted; of inept-inapt multiple bridge scene interludes, literary, Marxist thriller, Upton Sinclair, The Jungle; literary, science fiction, capitalist thriller, Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged.
A conflict resolution form does, indeed, establish a "conflict" at the start, with attendant complication development foremost, and the outcome "resolves" the complication-conflict. The middle explores the complication-conflict realization, and efforts to "resolve" the complication-conflict escalate while the complication and conflict forces escalate. The graphed causation-tension shape resembles a tall suspension bridge's roadway run-up and run-out, low height support anchors and ramp entry and exit, and a suspension pillar's tall height: _.-I-._
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How is Twilight an inept-inapt bridge scene start? As published, and I assume ignoring the prologue. I had it as clever. ( here)
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Twilight's first chapter, labeled "Preface," is a nonlinear timeline interlude excerpted from later in the action. If the timeline were linear, the chapter would be categorized a prelude, though is not, is a "postlude." The chapter is a gimmick cooked up by the publisher to adjust an otherwise slow start, which Meyer regrets.
Arguably, the chapter is a bridge scene though abrupt entry, setup, and exit transitions, which do little, if any, to introduce the true meaning of the narrative and set up the next chapter's action: Isabella Swan is an ugly duckling wallflower ripe for metamorphosis to the popular, social elite "swan beauty" she desires to be, and is altogether unrealized. The title is at least apt, the Twilight (dawn-dusk) of a young woman's elite social apotheosis, indeed.
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