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Rising/falling action, hook, inciting incident, catalyst, climax – these are all part of something called the story arc. Remember the aimless meandering under plot. No one wants to read a story where the character just plods along until the reader falls asleep. Stories start with a ‘hook’ something that draws the reader into the story, some incident, something about the character, even something about the setting. The story continues with rising action toward a climax, and then falls quickly, though sometimes there is an epilog to resolve items left untouched by the climax. In some cases, particularly the horror genre, the climax is the ending of the story.
Showing Versus Telling – dialog in a story is showing. Narration is telling, but it can also be showing depending on the narrator. You can tell in dialog, but avoid the dreaded information dump. What is an information dump in dialog? And the captain said, “The third trans-orbit state of the vacuum is processed using the second stage plasma vortex accessed by a multi-lateral processor based on the upward minimum…” and you thought the yeoman’s eyes were glazing over? So were the readers’. You tell what needs to be told to move the story along and keep it flowing, tension rising. But you tell only what needs to be told. Readers are not stupid, they can make inferences and you often want them to make inferences. So you need not spell out everything. This is especially true in the horror genre that depends so much on shock for the ending. Don’t explain that Uncle Harry turned into a creepy worm and why. The reader can infer that (especially if he had a creepy worm character to being with.)
Exercise 5: Using the first four exercises combine them to form a paranormal mystery story. Write a synopsis (at least a paragraph long) of the story.
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