Craft Book of the Month: February 2011 "Beginnings, Middles & Ends"

(Hey, it looks like they're issuing a new edition of Nancy Kress's book, available on my birthday, March 21. Universe, are you trying to tell me something?)

Okay, so we've come to "The End." The culmination of the promise of your beginning and the gathering complexity of your middle. Nancy Kress: "We can just feel these forces gathering... Something has to give. Then a peaceful compromise is found and the story is over. Huh? Well, why? Aren't compromises sometimes found in real life?... Why can't a story end that way? Because your story showed us forces in opposition to each other. Forces we expected to see collide in some way: quietly in a quiet story, noisily in a more dramatic one. But a collision of some sort we surely must have. You promised."

This collision is the story's climax. Kress says the climax must achieve four things:

1. The climax must satisfy the view of life implied in your story
2. The climax must deliver emotion
3. The climax must deliver an appropriate level of emotion (for e.g. a quiet domestic drama that ends with the character blowing out his brains won't work because it will feel contrived.)
4. The climax must be logical to your plot and your story (and end not with the arrival of some new, outside force "deus ex machina"; nor with a coincidence.)

Here's her litmus test for the right ending: "Ask yourself this question: If my protagonist were a radically different person, would this story still end the same way? The answer should be NO." As she goes on to say, in a plausible climax, the "choice fits with the protagonist's character, not the author's plot needs."

Craft Book of the Month: February 2011 "Beginnings, Middles & Ends"

The Muddle in the Middle

Nancy Kress begins Chapter 6 by asking if you are one of those writers who finds writing middles exciting. After you've launched your characters and charted your plot, are you skimming across the waves under full sail?

Her answer? "I don't know any of those people. For me, as for many other writers I know, middles represent a genuine psychological problem: We get stuck."

However, if you study part 2 of her book, you will come up with several strategies to do more than muddle through the middle of your novel. You will be able to use the middle "to set up the ending--to make it a plausible, satisfying fulfilment of the implicit promise. The middle does this by clearly dramatizing those forces that will collide at the climax, including any potential character changes."

Kress believes (and I do too) that in fiction your protagonist must undergo a significant change, a change that the reader will buy. To do this, she lists four things that must happen:

Craft Book of the Month: February 2011 "Beginnings, Middles & Ends"

Beginnings: Part 2
It's been a busy week here at The YOWD (that's how I refer to my blog when in a hurry.) I've been posting more than usual, and have been working on my novel's own beginning, using all I've learned from Nancy Kress and the Bransford contest. Phew! I guess it's true what they say: a writer's work is never done.

But let's return to Nancy Kress. After applying all we learned last week we have, as she says, three brilliant paragraphs. Genuine character on the page. Hints of conflict. But, she asks, "what do you want that first scene to accomplish in terms of your story. Put another way, what should be different at the end of the scene from the beginning of the scene?"

Here's her answer:

Craft Book of the Month: February 2011 "Beginnings, Middles & Ends"

I have long admired Nancy Kress, whom I first read in the pages of Writer's Digest magazine. She writes lucidly and succinctly both in her columns and in our February book choice, Beginnings, Middles & Ends--part of the Elements of Fiction Writing series published by Writer's Digest books.

This book is very topical, given the fact that Nathan Bransford is just finishing up his Stupendously Ultimate First Paragraph Challenge on his blog (only a few hours left before the polls close, folks. And this time there won't be any of those hanging chads...) Over 1500 writers participated in this, and it is interesting to see the six Nathan chose as his finalists.

Nancy Kress delivers on her title, showing how to launch a successful beginning, craft a powerful  middle, and deliver a satisfying ending. This week, I want to focus on what she says in her first chapter: "The Very Beginning."