The Psychology of Three

Writers and readers don’t necessarily experience fiction the same way.  Novelists usually love the set up, where they got the idea in the first place! Ah, the climax. It aptly rewards or disciplines, restoring moral order and communicating theme. Not to mention the relief of typing “The End.”

Readers might disagree. Because the characters are still unfamiliar, the stakes must be swiftly and enormously high. Theme is enjoyable only if subtle, credible, and deserved. If readers love a book, they rarely want it to end. Hard to say goodbye. The next novel might be less appealing.  Many readers, then, favor the middle. There the conflict escalates, the characters breathe. Choices surprise, while events seem motivated yet unpredictable.

Perhaps the middle causes more trouble for you than your characters. What’s the strategy?

~Accelerate the inciting incident.

Start with a symbolic Big Bang. An explosion like that will organically engender a chain of events that force your protagonist to learn the requisite lessons for a happy ending. Deliver the inciting incident immediately, and choose one you needn’t explain.

~ Look ahead.

Be willing to discard your homework. Why does the protagonist hold grudges, despise autumn, or refuse to own a poodle? It’s great for the writer to know all of this backstory —and more. Just so the reader needn’t endure what amounts to someone else’s notes.

~ Explore plot templates.

The web offers numerous reminders of what the mid-section must accomplish. Among the best choices? Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey or Randy Ingermanson’s Snowflake Method.  Pick a recipe that suits you, and use it flexibly rather than dogmatically.  

~ Streamline.

At the first sign of a sagging middle, the average novelist rushes to fill the gap, usually by reaching wide instead of deep. Rather than adding new subplots or minor characters, focus on what’s already there. Intensify and intertwine. Too many ingredients spoil the soup.

~ Fall in love with how your protagonist earns the ending.

If you’ve done your job right, your main character worked as hard as a team of dogs to enjoy that happiness, victory, or moral triumph. As Ursula K. Le Guin observed, “It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.”

Tip: The development of the opening sets up the finale. Revere your novel’s start, middle, and end.

Types: Stereotype, Archetype, Trope

Archetypes, stereotypes, and tropes are about equally elusive and significant. Does it matter if you’re sure which you use?  Classification’s unimportant. What matters? Lay a foundation with archetype; use trope to speed pace; avoid stereotype whenever possible.

~ Stereotype.

The etymology says it all. The word comes from the mold that made identical copies of the original. In life or the novel, stereotypes feel clichéd—uninspired. Worse still, generalizations about ethnicity, religion, size, education, hair color and so on ignore individuality. Stereotypes are misleading and harmful. How useful can they be in fiction?

Stereotypes are contrived writing solutions, while archetypes are the platform that tradition offers.

~ Archetype.

The archetype is the original mold used for the stereotypes that follow it. According to Carl Jung, roles like the Hero originate in the “collective unconscious.” We’re all in it together. (For more on this, check “The 12 Common Archetypes,” by Carl Golden.)

In The Writer’s Journey, Christopher Vogler analyzes archetypes as a source of plot from inciting incident to climax. Archetype underlies the classic plot: coming of age, abuse of power, love changing identity and history. Yet without your own original twist, the situation and its characters will seem stereotypical.

If the distinction between archetype and stereotypes is a bit fluid, trope is even more so, because it’s used in several different ways.

~ Trope

It can be a symbol (a rose equals love), a genre convention (“once upon a time”), a shortcut conveying plot or character (a stranger came to town), or an over-used device (the bossy, bespectacled librarian). Tropes range from very, very useful and efficient to very, very the opposite. While archetypes are universal, tropes often refer to a particular genre, like YA, Horror, Cozy, Western.

What does all this boil down to?

Tip: Tradition can both bring forth the richness of allusion—or the poverty of cliché.

How to know the difference? The easy answer is to solicit feedback. A wise, objective reader will let you know if you’ve united the benefits of both convention and innovation.

The harder answer lies in the details. Obviously, the over-familiar is tedious, manipulative, or facile. The “novel” part of the novel demands “something new under the sun.” Build on the conventional: archetype, trope, allusion.  Add to that dimensionality, mutability, individuality, and universality. You’ll have something good—maybe even great.

Time, Tides—and Writers

Waves and tides ebb and flow, occasionally punctuated by unpredictable upheavals, as anyone knows from standing in the surf or gliding across it.

Tip: Pleasure comes from both patterns and unexpected disruption of them.

Most writers discover the rhythms of language one at a time. The most obvious one escalates from conflict to climax. But like those varieties of ocean waves, novels offer many interacting rhythms.

~ The protagonist’s journey

Christopher Vogler famously argued that the rhythm of all fiction, from screenplay to novel, comes from a hero reluctantly agreeing to confront a troubled world and change it. Ideally, this rhythm climaxes with self-knowledge for the hero and justice for the world.

~ An arc for each sub-plot.

The best novels intersect several interconnected journeys. For each of these, relief disappears over and over until the final pages offer resolution—or failure.

~ Scene versus sequel or summary.

Regardless of what you call whatever’s out of scene, every novel has a basic rhythm of drama, condensation, drama, condensation. The trick is creating seamless flow.

~ Rhythm within the sentence, paragraph, scene.

Humans appreciate three-part structure: issue, development, resolution. Happily, you can employ this to revise fiction at every level.

That’s lots of patterns. Now what?

·         * Notice. Just considering the relationships between patterns helps you see your manuscript more clearly, so you can revise it more effectively.

·         * Vary. You want tension on every page, yes. But do you want all tension all the time? No.

·        *  Accentuate. The fun of patterns is enjoying relief until—whoosh—a monster wave changes the landscape. That gets everyone’s attention. Use emphasis to reveal significance.

·         * Surprise. The reader didn’t see that breaker coming any more than the character did. Astonishment is among fiction’s greatest joys. But not by cheating. Every gigantic groundswell must feel probable. In fiction that means you provided a clear yet subtle hint a while back.

Pattern-recognition originally helped the earliest humans distinguish tall grass from predator, something to eat from something to avoid. In fiction, pattern and disruption control everything from aesthetics to momentum, tension, and empathy. Use the rhythms of your fiction to make waves.