Complicating the Matter

Are you wrestling with your writing? Are you struggling with structure? No matter if you aspire to write short stories, novels, or are just plain blogging, you are likely to encounter roadblocks in plot development.

Plot development can be elusive, in that it incorporates many elements that engage your reader and keep them glued to the pages of your story. The short story is a great model, because we can examine it quickly and easily dissect it into component parts.

Four main divisions exist in the short story:

• Exposition: introduces problems or conflicts that familiarize your reader with your characters, the timeline of your story, the setting, and the circumstances.
• Rising Action: adds drama to the circumstances that immerse your characters and either endears them to your reader or alienates them from your reader. Either way, the reader wants to learn what happens to them next.
• Climax or Turning Point: is the pivotal point where your reader realizes their expectations of what happens to the protagonist or you can incorporate unexpected twists to shock and surprise.
• Conclusion: the falling action and carries the story to resolution or conclusion of the conflict.

Do not leave the reader flat with a conclusion that is underdeveloped. Construct a satisfactory balance for the reader that mirrors the exposition, not necessarily in length but in plot parallel. The conclusion should contain elements of surprise and careful interaction of the characters and their circumstances.

Three Strands

There are three strands of hair on the pillow
That nestled your head as you slept.
Tresses that no longer lay mellow,
Along the smooth line of your neck.

Each one a remembrance of airy, sparkling days,
And of warm, cherished moments as we sat and we gazed,
At the boats as they sailed to and from austral docks.
No worries for season schedule or clocks

Now I stare at the pillow, so cold and so bare
A slate of bone-white except for the hair
I dare not disturb ‘cept to whisper this prayer

Into the night…

In this dream - these strands - live my heart, soul and thought.
Clutching your promise, eyes tight, I fancy you'll be wrought,
So once more, I might brush that sweet curl from your brow.
Overlook. Through tears, a sweet pledge – avowed.

Into the light…

Now each day you're gone, my world comes apart.
Each day I collect the bits of my heart,
Begin to patch the wraith that dwells in recall
With three strands, to plat, intertwine – never pall.

~ By E.M. McKay