Thank you Shaelin! This is so good, logical, and handy! Procrastinating in the 'dreaded middle' suddenly seems cherry-pie, quitting because the importance of the III act became the next 'cool stuff' to try 😂
In the last part of the video Shaelin talks about how third act could be hard to write. From what I have been reading over the internet, there are some advices that recommend to start from the ending before everything else. If I want to follow this advice, should I start from outlining the resolution and denouement first and then work backward?
Thanks Shaelin! Anyone have thoughts on how to handle the larger story in a series? I know each book should have its own climax and resolution, but my story will continue on with multiple books. Plus, I'm trying something kind of... cute at the end of my first book where the MC is kind of deus ex machinad out of the situation, but I hope it's done well, and then someone basically says, "Did you really think this story was all about you?" Any thoughts on how to balance the plot threads that continue on versus those we should resolve? (Especially, for example, I have another group of characters we follow much less in the first book...)
*Some books lie like dried up stream beds until seasonal floods fill them. The phase of the moon, the quantity of rain, the volume of water taken up by crops upstream: all those might dictate when a river runs full again, or a book breathes with meaning again, along with the voice, or the moan, of the woman who made it: her blood, her moan, her meat.* Sofi Thanhauser. The Book is the Lover. *Why We Read 70 Writers*. Penguin 2022. Edited by Josephine Greywoode.
The bigger narrative questions have to be answered but I like some ends left artfully loose. Why did she do it? Why did she walk away from a real chance of happiness? Readers love wonder, mystery, awe. Jonathan Haidt said that *a wide variety of experiences count as awe as long as they have two features 1) the perception of vastness 2) something in the experience that can't be accommodated within one's current mental structures; those structures must be changed, expanded or rebuilt. But there's a subtype of awe, sometimes called epiphany ... *
There is a novel by Michael Ende, *The NeverEnding Story*. The young protagonist wonders what all the storybooks in the library are doing when no one is reading them. At times I say, 'Time to read Isak Dinesen again: *The Winter's Tales* or *Out of Africa*. Time for *Ring of Bright Water* or *Rebecca*.
