Beginnings, Middles and Ends

A story should always have a beginning, a middle and and end.

Or so we were all told at primary school. Actually, it's a lot more complicated than that in real life (or on the MA Professional Writing course), but that will do for starters.

Beginnings
I love beginnings. It probably says a lot about me (and my inner thrill-seeking tendencies). I'm addicted to the buzz of starting something new. A fresh idea always gets me excited, and this is the reason I often find myself burning both ends of the candle.

Middles
Alongside Waiting for Spring, the novel I'm writing for part of my course, I've also decided to resurrect my teenage fantasy novel Earthwitch, which has been sadly languishing untouched for several months.

Although this may seem like utter madness, there are perfectly logical reasons for this:
1. I'm stuck on Waiting for Spring. Having planned it all out in detail, I can't seem to get anything else down on paper. It will come, but in the meantime, perhaps writing something else will help.
2.While lying awake in the middle of the night going over plot outlines (doesn't everyone do this?), I came across the solution to the problem I'd had with Earthwitch. I'd been trying to figure that one out for months, and then BAM - inspiration strikes when you least expect it.

The middle part of any project is always the toughest. There's nothing else for it but to keep on going. It's a little like walking up a mountain - worth it when you get to the top for the amazing views and the sense of achievement of how far you've come - but a bloody hard slog getting there.

With that in mind, I'm going to plod on. Perhaps I'll try out some visualisation techniques. Athletes use them all the time. It's been scientifically proven that by imagining not just winning the race, but the entire process athletes can actually increase their performance.

I wonder if it works for novelists?

Ends

Welcome to the dark side

Recently I have noticed a change in my writing. I'm drawn to the dark side.

It's ironic, really, as I've always been a sucker for a happy ending. But the twist, now there's the rub. The way a story hooks you in, and then dashes your expectations when you least expect it. I'm beginning to see how to use this, to play with the emotions of my readers. It's not a nice, safe world out there. There are monsters under the bed (although they may actually be more afraid of you than you are of them) and things that go bump in the night. The latter is usually just me tripping over the crap strewn around my room in the dark.

I've also been reading a lot of Angela Carter and Neil Gaiman. I love the way they take myths and fairytales and subvert them. We've been looking at narrative and genre recently in our Writers' Toolkit sessions doing a similar sort of thing. The idea is that you take the kernel events from a well-known story and then use them as a jumping off point for your own work. It was amazing how few markers we actually needed to identify stories that everyone is aware of, such as Little Red Riding Hood. We are all so familiar with the story that it takes very few references to realise we are reading a version of this tale. It's a great way to start thinking about stories.

Carrying on with the theme of cannibalism from one of our Writing Structure seminar, this week I've created a dark tale based on the Hansel & Gretel story. By using well-known tales as a starting point, the challenge is to weave the references from the original into the new version. I was amazed by the number of very different, inventive and engaging versions of the Icarus myth members of the group came up with. Makes you think....

That's what it's really all about. Anything that makes you think, makes you look at things in a different way. The possibilities are endless.