Sunday, January 22, 2012

Climactic Pauses




I think I've started to notice that part of my struggles with writing come from something I'm now going to call "the climactic struggle". It seems that the nearer and nearer to the climax of a story I get, the slower and slower I write.

I'm currently working on the last story of the Shades anthology, and I'm now at the point where the protagonist struggles to survive her encounter with the above pictured menace. And I'm now at the point where I'm literally writing "sentence by sentence". Every sentence, every word, is being measured and weighed...and often deleted and restarted. Last night, I worked for four hours to complete just one double spaced page of writing.

I think it's because of the emotion of the situation. The climax is the emotional highpoint of the story, and that's where I start getting very cautious.and critical...maybe overmuch. But if a story is going to work, the emotion desired has to be achieved. Whether it's fear, joy, sadness, or laughter...the story has to deliver.or both the reader and the writer have wasted their time.

Come to think of it, the climax is kind of like the package that the hook promises to deliver. You use a hook to draw your reader into the story, and the climax is the highpoint that convinces the reader that a further relationship with the writer is worthwhile....

...hmmm.

Okay, I'm heading into metaphors I think I'll just leave alone.

Anyways, hopefully sometime this coming week I'll be announcing that the rough draft of Legacy of Flies is finished and I'll have be ready to write my introduction and move on the the next phase.

Go me :)

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