NOTES: Beginnings, Middles, & Ends (1992) 1/3

Notes on Beginnings, Middles, & Ends (1992) by Nancy Kress, part one of three.

• You have three paragraphs in a short story and three pages in a novel to capture the reader’s interest.
• You are making two promises in every story you write:
  • EMOTIONAL: Read this and you’ll be entertained or thrilled or scared or titillated or saddened or uplifted but always absorbed.
  • INTELLECTUAL: Read this and you’ll see this world from a different perspective
    • Read this and you’ll have confirmed what you already want to believe about this world
    • Read this and you’ll learn of a different, more interesting world than this.

Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. – Susan Sontag

BEGINNING

INTRO: Set Expectations, Makes Promise, Introduction of character and conflict

MIDDLE

COMPLEXITY: Builds on specifics and interest, Get to know the forces at play

ENDING

CLIMAX & DENOUEMENT: Inevitable Delivery (new insight, comfortable confirmation, vicarious happiness) Forces collide

The Four Elements of Story

Character

• Someone interesting and integral to the plot right away

Conflict

• Something is not going as expected
• Can be vs. nature/ character/ society/ others/ self… subtle or overt

Specificity

• Effective use of details, fresh and original… avoid the obvious
  1. Anchor story in concrete reality
  2. Set your opening apart from hundreds of others similar in plot.
  3. Convince your editor you know what you’re talking about.

Credulity

• Good solid prose
• Diction, economy (use only enough), sentence construction, sentence variety, parts of speech (strong verbs and nouns, minimal adverbs and adjectives, watch out for bad modifiers), tone (straightforward, take yourself out, don’t use devices like clever asides, grandiose, slang, foreign words)

The First Scene

Establish Character, Conflict, Specificity and Credulity within the first paragraph

There are 2 types of scenes

• Dramatic: Introduces change, or potential for change. Examples:
  • Expectation of task misread
  • Learns new, disturbing information
  • Arrives at someplace new
  • Meets someone significant
  • Event occurs
• Expository: Summarizes action that isn’t new enough or important enough to dramatize

Notes on Scenes

• The first scene CANNOT be expository.
• Ask: What is different at the end of the scene from the beginning.
• The last sentence in the first scene is a power position. Make it count. Evoke emotion.

The Second Scene

BACKFILL

Expository background can be straight from narrator; can be from a viewpoint character. Notes: Slows down the story, but if you had a strong start, it’s okay to glide.

FLASHBACK

Dramatic scene from the past. Make sure you:

1. Follow after a strong opening scene; it will root reader in the character’s present.
2. Bear clear relation to the first scene. Don’t make reader jump so early.
3. Don’t let reader get lost in time, be clear on how long ago your flashback is. Notes: Distances reader from the action, and can lose immediacy. Ask yourself if the flashback’s depth and clarity is worth it.

CONTINUATION

Dramatic action continues. Make sure you:

1. Carry the action forward
2. Control conflict levels
3. Ask yourself what these people want (motivation drives actions which drives scenes) Notes: May be too intense if action continues from the first scene. May cause first scene to lose gravity.

Scenes in General: How one reacts to conflict is how one portrays themselves

Every paragraph in your story should accomplish two goals:

1. Advance the story (plot)
2. Develop characters as real individuals: complex and memorable human beings (character)

• Actions they initiate (motivations)
• Reactions to other characters’ actions
• Dialogue
• Thoughts
• Gestures and body language
• Appearance (not so much physicality as things they control, like clothes, accessories, gadgets)

THE MIDDLE

The middles of the 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.

Staying on Track – Things you committed to after two scenes.

1. Whose story is this? (Main character, scenes that drive his/her story)
2. Who is the POV? (Viewpoint character, can only have scenes where he/she is present)
3. What is the through-line? (Protagonist, what happens to him/her, you may have sub-plots, but this is your guide)

The Through-Line

1. Use through-line to list ALL the events in your story
2. Cross out any scenes that are not in the presence of the viewpoint character
3. Analyze the remaining events. For each one, ask if it’s important and/or interesting enough to dramatize, or is exposition enough?
4. Scenes you spend the most time on should be those that relate directly to your through-line.

CLIMAX: Culmination of your though-line, point where something has to give – and does.

STRUCTURE

To keep characters organized.

Straight Chronological Structure

• One viewpoint character
• Show events in order it happens to protagonist, as it happens or when they learn of it.
• Stop at the last important event

POSTIIVE: Clarity, consistency
NEGATIVE: Lack of POV and range

Regularly Recurring Viewpoints

• Several characters as viewpoints; each get their “take” on the same time frame.
• Try not to feel obligated to certain viewpoints

Multi-viewpoint Chronological Structure

• Several characters as viewpoints; but the clock keeps running.
• Less sense of rhythm, anticipation and inevitability.
• No clear pattern

Parallel Running Scenes

• Alternating chapters of two stories that clash.
• Time and space can be apart, then meet.

POSITIVE: Maximum rhythm and anticipation

MAKING CHANGES BELIEVABLE

1. Reader must understand character’s initial personality and especially motivation: Why is he/she behaving this way?
2. Reader must see evidence that characters are capable of change
3. Reader must see dramatized a pattern of experience that might reasonably affect someone.
4. Reader must see a plausible motivation replace the old one.

• Boring, expected motivations are easy. Unexpected, uncommon ones require work.
• Common type of conflict is when the character wants two mutually exclusive things -> dramatize both motivations.
• Show dramatic scenes where change is capable
• Show values he holds that make changing his mind plausible.

COMMON REASONS FOR GETTING STUCK IN THE MIDDLE

Fear of Failure

• PROBLEM: Affects self-aware, intelligent people. They think their work is crap or they hold themselves to standards that are too high.
• SOLUTION: Simulation of a story, pretend that you’re writing a simulation of a story, with characters and plot. A mind-game on yourself.

Fear of Success

• PROBLEM: Procrastinators who don’t finish the story or mail it out because it’s not perfect yet.
• SOLUTION: Artificial deadlines on completion and shipping dates, let everyone know, hold yourself accountable to your reputation.

Literary Fogginess

• PROBLEM: Doesn’t have a clear-cut through-line, doesn’t know what’s coming next, writing on the fly.
• SOLUTION: Go back to the beginning and plan, scribble notes and think.

Wrong Direction

• PROBLEM: Has everything laid out and figured out, but it’s not interesting anymore. Or, your characters are refusing to “fit” into your plot/story.
• SOLUTION: Abandon through-line
  1. Go with characters
  2. Go back to last point of interest and start over