The Beginning, Middle, and Shocking Conclusion

We all hear from many authors, mostly from bestselling ones, that there is no fixed formula on how to write a good story. Every author has his own way or method of converting his idea into words, and in some way I find this very true. Authors find their own avenue in constructing their stories from build up to the satisfying end.

I, myself, employ my own method of writing. I am not sure how I adapted this, but one thing is true: it is the product of my addiction in reading novels. At some point, in my early attempts in writing my first novel, I tried immitating the style of my favorite authors, but then eventually found my own unique voice.

In as much as some ideas overflow, I try to differentiate my style of writing for every project, depending on the idea and the audience it was written for. But this I have to admit: in every piece of writing I produce, I try to make sure that it will sell. I actually studied Oxford MBA as a Rhodes Scholar, and this somehow made me paranoid when I am writing my stories. Books, after all, is, in reality, a business.

I will never claim that my method of writing will work for everybody, as every person eventually develop their own way of narrating their stories. Every author has his or her own standard, and I deeply respect that. But for people who are curious about what is mine, you can now continue reading the rest of this blog entry.

I will group my system of writing into three elements:

Beginning;
Middle;
Shocking Conclusion.

I usually write my beginning with a confrontation scene about an on-going conflict that the reader will soon know about, and this will lay the predicate for the building of the middle, and as it progresses it will contribute for the build up into the shocking conclusion. For most of my works, an ending must be a shocking climactic end.

But then again, I use different styles in my writing, and this is just one of them.

x-------x

This blog entry is sponsored by Louis Vuitton.

Comments

How to Create a Richly Imagined World

For someone who likes fantasy and sci-fi fiction, most of the time, a lot of people ask me about how to create a richly imagined world. Fantasy and sci-fi elements rest heavily on how an author weave the setting and the world in which the heroes dwell in, and it helps to make the novel to be imagined vividly in the readers' minds. A convincing world should be relatable, something that we can associate ourselves with. For us to be associated with a world an author created in his mind, and wrote on the pages of a book, this world has to be close to the real thing. It has to be systematic, real and alive, and very convincing. A real world has certain elements, and an author must consider them in writing a vividly imagined world: Cartography - a fantasy or sci-fi world depend heavily on geography and maps, especially if the plot requires war and the belligerents occupy so much space in the plot. A convincing world has the world separated in territories, and every part of the...

The Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the post-Rupublican period of ancient Rome. As a polity it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, Northern Africa, and Western Asia ruled by emperors. From the accession of Caesar Augustus to the military anarchy of the third century, it was a principate with Italy as metropole of the provinces and the city of Rome as sole capital (27 BC - 286 AD). After the military crisis, the empire was ruled by military emperors who shared rule over the Western Roman Empire (based in Milan and later in Ravenna) and over the Eastern Roman Empire (also known as the Byzantine Empire; centered on Nicomedia and Antioch, later based in Constantinopole). Rome remained the nominal capital of both parts until 476 AD, when the imperial insignia were sent to Constantinopole, following the capture of Ravenna by the barbarians of Odoacer and the subsequent deposition of Romulus Augustulus. The fall of the Western Roman Empire to Germanic Kings, alon...

Theodicy

Theodicy means vindication of God. It is to answer the question why a good God permits the manifestation of evil, thus resolving the issue of the problem of evil. Some theodicies also address the evidential problem of evil by attempting "to make the existence of an all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good or omnibenevolent God consistent with the existence of evil or suffering in this world." Unlike a defense, which tries to demonstrate that God's existence is logically possible in the light of evil, a theodicy attempts to provide a framework where God's existence is also plausible. The German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Leibniz coined the term "theodicy" in 1710 in his work Théodecée, through various responses to the problem of evil that had been previously proposed. The British philosopher John Hick traced the history of moral theodicy in his 1966 work, Evil and the Love of God, identifying three major traditions: the Plotinian theodicy, named a...

Search This Blog