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8. Turning Points The concept of life as a highway is hardly original but it's a good metaphor just the same. And as you travel along it, you see other paths turning off. If only you could look ahead. Those side roads look enticing but they pose so many unanswered questions.Where will this lead? Should I take a chance? Maybe ..These are phrases that are good to pin above your desk because when you apply them to almost any situation they can lead to a story. In real life, it's often easier for us to stay on the high road. Fiction is different and that's part of its appeal. In fiction, through the persona of a character, readers can vicariously explore those other routes and all those risky activities without the risk of ruining their lives.However .. those characters must have a good reason for leaving that familiar track. If they decide to do something on a whim, just for the hell of it, the result is what one American editor called the Nancy Drew Syndrome. In this country, we might call it the Famous Five Syndrome: ‘Gosh, Julian, there's a suspicious-looking character. Let’s follow him and see what he’'s up to.' That's not a motive. That's curiosity and curiosity won't cut it with adult readers.
How do we give our characters a motive? We create a situation they cannot ignore. We either make the alternate road so inviting that they just have to go down it. Or we put a metaphorical bar across their path so they have no option but to alter their course.The following extract from Susan Dunlap's Diamond in the Buff is an example of the latter. Set in Berkeley, California, it talks about Berkeley Syndrome, a phenomenon that occurred among university students who decided to switch on, tune in and drop out - until change was forced upon them:Berkeley syndrome had blossomed in the Sixties and bloomed well through the Seventies. By the mid-Eighties, the syndromees were well into their forties. Eyes that had peered into blocks of stone and seen visions of beauty now needed bifocals; teeth that had chewed over the Peace and Freedom platform required gold crowns that part-time jobs would not pay for. And the penniless life with one change of jeans and a sleeping bag to unroll on some friend's floor was no longer viable. The need of a steady income became undeniable. And so they scraped together the money, took a course in acupressure, herbalism, or massage and prepared to be responsible adults.That need to pay for their health is a turning point for a whole group of people. If they want to survive into comfortable middle age they have no choice but to change direction. And from the moment they do so, their lives will never be quite the same again.Here are some more examples to get you in the mood for thinking of turning points:◆An unmarried young woman finds out she is pregnant.(Roddy Doyle, The Snapper )◆ A young hobbit inherits the Ruling Ring of Power whose evil can only be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom. (J. R. R. Tolkien. The Fellowship of the Ring )◆ A one-hit writer, stifled by small town life, has to decide whether to stay with his wife or follow his dream of moving to New York to make his mark at a prestigious magazine. (Garrison Keillor, Love Me )◆An ambitious young doctor has the chance to work in a medical centre that claims a 100 per cent remission rate for a particular kind of cancer.(Robin Cook, Terminal )Do a creative search using turning points as a trigger. You might start by using some of the events and opportunities in your own life and those of your friends as inspiration. It doesn't matter whether these things actually turned out to be life-changing. What matters is that they might have been. Let your imagination run riot.When you've finished and your page is full of possibilities, choose one of those turning points. Now, write a piece in which you describe the turning point and how a character you have created reacts to it.Alternatively, you can do it the other way around. Create the character first and do a creative search to explore all the things that could happen to that character to initiate a turning point. Then write your scene.
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发表于 2023-1-13 15:25:36
