This month's book selection for the Monday's Plot Book Group for Writers is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.
By: Martha Alderson, M.A.,
on 9/21/2011
Blog: Plot Whisperer for Writers and Readers (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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Three plot consultations with three separate writers, all with similar strengths and the same weakness. Each story has well thought out scenes that draw the reader into the Beginning 1/4 of the project. Each one develops character emotional development through dramatic action in the Middle 1/2. In other words, for these three writers, three quarters of their projects work, at least on a structural plot level.
At the end, these same three projects falter with little or no real Climax to top off the entire work. In each case, the protagonist is reawakened by the Crisis. They are shown struggling to take full ownership of their newly discovered consciousness. This is all good.
Trouble is, in none of the cases does the character show herself fully healing this schism at the Climax.
One writer wrote the Climax as the grandmother in the story dying. In this young adult novel, the protagonist is, necessarily, a young adult person and not the grandmother. The answer presented itself. In the Grandmother dying, the Climax takes on a deeper relevance as the protagonist of this young adult novel is given the opportunity to assist her grandmother's spiritual departure. Such an action demonstrates mastery at the thematic level. That death is looming sends the conflict, tension and suspense higher and the energy of the Universal Story soaring. The clock ticks. The sense of everything coalescing in the final minutes builds.
The middle sets up the scene of the highest intensity in the story so far ~ the Crisis. This scene shows the character’s consciousness of the shift or reversal inside her.
The End sets up the crowning glory of the entire story ~ the Climax. This scene shows the character fully united with her new self-knowledge, new understanding of the world, new sense of responsibility through her actions and her words.
The Climax is the crowning glory of the entire book. Once you write that most important scene all the other pieces begin to fall into place.
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nice post! liked it !
Thank you for it ! Really intreresting! It have been always interesting to read shuch news!)