Hannah Sorenson’s Reviews > Write Your First Novel > Status Update

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so we may feel again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered?^

^Annie Dillard put it this way:
Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed. . . . Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries,

^Flannery O'Connor put it this way:
The Christian novelist is distinguished from his pagan colleagues by recognizing sin as sin. According to his heritage he sees it not as sickness or an accident of environment, but as a responsible choice of offense against God which involves his eternal future. Either one is serious about salvation or one is not.^

^Your success as a writer will probably not depend on how well you write so much as on how well you handle rejection.^

^As Henry David Thoreau remarked, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."^

^For the meaningful or satisfying ending, the protagonist doesn't change his basic character trait, but solves the problem through his own character action.^

^Here are four other factors to consider when you write your climax:
1. Be sure the scene is of emotional value.
2. Steer away from "come-to-realize" endings.
3. A believable ending is a planned ending.
4. The climax scene is the most important confrontation in your story.^

^Now that you have a grasp on the essence of setting, attempt to master the following five uses of this element in your fiction:
1. Create a mood
2. Reflect a mood
3. illustrate a moral force
4. Symbolize an idea
5. Advance a plot^

^Use weather to get your reader in the mood for something.^

^Five of these elements or "worlds" are discussed in this section.
1. The geological background
2. The weather factor
3. The biological world
4. The cultural-historical flavor
5. The social atmosphere^