I've been reading a book about writing fiction, by Orson Scott Card, the author of the Ender's Game and Alvin Maker series. The book's title is Characters & Viewpoint. The subtitle is: How to invent, construct, and animate vivid, credible characters and choose the best eyes through which to view the events of your short story or novel.
Simply put, I wish I had read this book fifteen years ago. It was published fifteen years ago.
It is crucial to my understanding of what I'm doing as a writer, whether I want to get published, or because I just love writing and want to make my story the best I can.
Card uses The Lord of the Rings as an example for many of his points. So there's the necessary tie in. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]
Just to nail this down with some usefulness to you by way of example: the transition versus immersion versus lizardzone categories are of limited use because they don't really help you know how to write better. Card supplies four categories of fiction that really help you know how to write better. It's MICE. That's a handy acronym for:
M - milieu
I - idea
C - character
E - Event
Every story has one thread that holds the story that you're weaving together, and it's one of the four I've listed above.
LOTR is the best example of Milieu. You love the place! You want to go to Middle Earth. The story is about Middle Earth, and the characters and events and ideas that are there, but the thread is the Milieu.
Detective and Caper fiction (think the movie Bandits are examples of Idea fiction. Some problem (like a murder) occurs at the beginning, or a feat (like a bank robbery) is planned at the beginning, and the story is done when the murder is solved or the bank is successfully robbed and you celebrate with the robbers for pulling it off and getting away with it. (We were all sympathetic and cheered Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, and Cate Blanchett, did we not?)
Character is the story in which the character herself is the thread, and she is less than she needs to become, and by the end of the book you see how she has become what she needed to. This is typical modern fiction.
Event fiction is the classic kind. Something bad happens, or something bad always happens, and the protagonist of the story is the hero who must set things right, and get the girl while he's at it, and become king at the end, to boot. The modern romance is a good example of this story.
So now for the question: Which of the four MICE categories is the main thread tying together the story you're writing?
Whichever it is, it will help you to know how to START your story and how to END it.
If you want to know more details about this, borrow Card's book from the local library. Better yet, if you're a really serious writer, or want to be, buy it. I'm going to.
By the way, my story is Milieu. And now to go back and rewrite. [img]smilies/eek.gif[/img]
LMP
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