Yes, I am in fact aware I haven’t done any critiques since a week and a half ago. For those waiting, no your novels are not exceptionally bad. It’s just like in any good novel, in the last 2 weeks or so things got worse.

I hasten to point out however that unlike in a good novel, none of it made any sense, and I have no idea why. My best guess is “Probably a very mild cold or allergies” since I had to use a nose-unstopper for almost a week, to be able to breathe at night. And I’ve fallen asleep much earlier than usual and slept an unconscionably long time.

Why don’t I know? Well, at my age it could be anything, including the fact one of my meds changed. I’ve reached the point when, when I can’t word, I examine everything, particularly if it doesn’t get better. All of this is worsened by the fact that — the fruit of a sickly childhood — I’m capable of functioning under severe illness or pain and not noticing until something happens to knock my “ignore” order off. In fact, I’ve done it for years until something like surgery or another illness brought the initial ailment to the doctors’ and my attention. No, I don’t fully understand the process myself.

It is getting better, which is also lousy if this were a novel. Though novels CAN and have taken place over a week. Or a day. But there must be a consistent level of action, leading to a climax, and eventually a resolution, not just a sort of moraine of gray blahs that one morning feel better. Which is the point of this post.

Anyway, feeling better and hoping to resume normal working schedule today. But not pushing it, since I still don’t know what the heck stopped my writing, my critiquing, and even a good portion of my news-aggregating for the last weeks. For the record, it wasn’t just words. I also have let things like dishes go, and haven’t given this house a good cleaning in that time. (It will hold two more days.) About the only thing I did was the litter box, and that late, and only because frankly I don’t like pee in my shoe, which was their next stage of complaining. Now if I can train the cats to pee in my shoe when I haven’t written my chapters for serialization or finished a novel in a timely manner, they’ll have earned their keep. Since there are forces that will bring me back from the brink of death to do my duty. … The threat of cat pee being one of those.

Now: everyone has their shining morning — er… midday — face on? Number two pencils sharpened and wits un-dulled?

Good, because now that you have the first three pages of your novel ready to snag your reader by the brain and not let go till you’re done taking them on a wild ride, let’s talk about that wild ride.

When my erstwhile writers’ group — all in our thirties, all unpublished, and all green as leeks — was on the prowl for any pencil-think ray of light that might pierce the darkness of our profound ignorance, we would latch onto any shred uttered by a published writer. One of these was “things get worse.” I.e. in your novel, from the beginning, up to the climax (or at least the turning point) things get worse.

Being very young and notionally “smart” which actually means capable of untold stupidity that dumber people never think of, we careened off to make things worse for our poor characters.

I wrote the book known as “Keep dropping walls on the poor critter.” No walls actually dropped on him, but things just whomped him out of nowhere. For 200k words. Instead of having a seasoned hero at the end, I had one of those Merry Melody cartoons: a pancaked character with two confused blinking eyes. THAT book is very shelved, awaiting rewrite.

A friend, meanwhile — not sure if better or worse — never managed to finish the two chapters, in which his characters, having survived an Earthquake try to crawl out of a library. The obstacles kept getting bigger. More things fell, and I think by the end of chapter 1 they had multiple fractures each. By chapter 2 I think the characters by mutual consent refused to move or do anything — completely sane in the hands of such a creator — and therefore, the writer had to give up.

Now, while our lives sometimes seem to resemble this — or at least we all know people whose lives resemble this at least from the outside — it does in fact make for lousy fiction. Well, lousy or literary and award-winning (THAT kind of award) which at some point is covalent. I.e. “the oppressed metaphor has yet another rock dropped on her! while meandering in grey goo! Now with extra buzz words!” type fiction.

If you want to write that, I’m unqualified to help. On the other hand, if you want to write fiction that grabs, I can give pointers. As with everything else, please remember I’m just offering a map through unknown territory. It is not the only map. Some other maps might have fewer quick sand traps. Or more. You gets it for the price you paid for it.

Anyway, indeed things should get worse. If after your beginning, your character solves the problem you started him/her off with, and goes on for 100 and some pages to have parades of victory, desirable sexual partners and the bestest meals, it might be very fun for you, particularly if you’re in that kind of mood, but it is not a novel. It can be fanfic, but probably not widely read fanfic.

Speaking of fanfic, let’s dive into Miss Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. I read P & P fanfic while out of sorts, (It’s all over Amazon. I think several young women are making a living of writing one of these a month.) Which means, if I go through an extended period, I run out of Kindle Lending Library P & P fanfic by authors I like and trust, and start poking at the slush bin.

Some of these are illustrative for modes of fail for plot.

For those who’ve never read it — it’s a short book, but the narrative technique is outdated. If not willing to read it, I recommend a rainy afternoon and the A & E mini-series, all six hours of it. Cookies and cocoa optional. (Though if you’re a married gentleman your wife will love you for it.)

It starts with the Bennets who have a problem. Well, two problems. It starts with their family estate being entailed away from heirs female. In an effort to solve that problem, the Bennets have had 5 children… all of them female. (Things got worse indeed.) So, now they are up a creek without a male paddle. I.e. when Mr. Bennet dies, the entire family can be turned out to starve in the hedgerows. (This is somewhat exaggerated, as they would have about 200 lbs a year, which if you look at what maids and companions subsisted on… But still, a drastic come-down in life, and probably no hope of marriage or a life for any of the girls.)

Into this at the beginning of the novel enters a young man of large fortune renting the nearby estate. Salvation! (For the record, Austen is not precisely romance. It’s comedy of manners, but though true love is much talked of, there are all sorts of real repercussions in a society that compared to us lives very close to the bone and where the “married state” is the only honorable profession for women of a certain class.)

Of course, for one of the Bennet girls to capture this man, she must out compete a neighborhood of single women. (During the Napoleonic wars, lots of women were single through lack of opportunity.)

We have Jane, the beauty, Elizabeth (Lizzy) the wit, Mary the moralizing, and two plot devices called Kitty and Lydia, “the two silliest young women in England” according to their father. (Who is probably exaggerating just a little. He hasn’t met every young woman in England, after all.)

In the first meeting, Mr. Bingley (Single man of large fortune) seems very struck with Jane, but Lizzy is insulted by Mr. Darcy (single man of larger fortune) his best friend. And Mr. Bingley’s sisters don’t look on Jane with an approving eye. But at any rate, from problem — how to capture Mr. Bingley — to small triumph, but with the seeds of another problem.

Fast forward to Jane getting invited by the Bingley sisters to visit when Mr. Bingley will be away. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, she accepts. Her mother, not one to stop beating a dead horse, sends Jane on horseback, because rain is threatened, and this means she’ll have to stay overnight, and see Mr. Bingley. The result of this is Jane catching a very bad cold. Before she collapses, she spills the beans about — gasp — their unstylish relations in TRADE!

When getting news that Jane is ill and abed at the Bingleys (and not in a fun way) Lizzy walks there to nurse her and arrives with her pettycoats six inches deep in mud. Which earns the derision of the superior sisters and disapproval from Mr. Darcy. She and Jane spend a very uncomfortable time in the house, though at the end Jane has a few happy moments with Mr. Bingley. Also Lydia extracts the promise of a ball. So things get worse, but a little better too.

Meanwhile — dun dun dun — in what seems like a good thing, a militia regiment has come to town. Bringing with it Mr. Wickham, a young man of no fortune, but immense charm and, quoth the plot devices “A whole camp full of soldiers.”

Mr. Wickham immediately becomes a favorite and bonds with Lizzy over maligning Mr. Darcy. And because Austen is good at curses that seem like blessings — and because though Lizzy likes Mr. Wickham she’s too sensible to fall for him and we need some tension — Mr. Collins, the heir apparent to the entail comes to visit with the goal of choosing a wife. So things get better, right?

Well…. Mr. Collins is not only boring but very full of himself, and he wants to marry Lizzy and won’t take no for an answer.

While she’s busy evading him, listening to Mr. Wickham’s mutterings, and thinking worse and worse of Mr. Darcy (who has started thinking way too well of her) the ball happens.

In a way it is a triumph. Jane seems to have completely enraptured Mr. Bingley. BUT that is its own problem, since his sisters and friend are not happy. AND Mrs. Bennet is way too happy and brags loudly of the soon to happen marriage, as well as Lizzy’s and Mr. Collins. The rest of the family behave very badly indeed. Mary exhibits poorly, and the plot devices behave like complete lunatics. Mr. Wickham is inexplicably absent.

The next morning, Lizzy refuses Mr. Collins, who immediately proposes to and becomes engaged to her best friend.

Bingley, Darcy and the entire party leave the neighborhood and a letter indicates they don’t intend to return. Jane is heartbroken. Mrs. Bennet is in despair. Mr. Wickham starts courting a freckled girl of fortune. It’s winter and all hope is gone for the Bennets.

But Lizzy suggests Jane go to London, where she might call on Mr. Bingley’s sisters. She does, but is ignored/shown that her friendship is not welcomed. She never sees Mr. Bingley himself.

Meanwhile Lizzy goes to visit the Collins’ at her friends’ behest (which she accepted earlier, reluctantly) and there she meets again Mr. Darcy as well as Mr. Darcy’s personable cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam.

She likes the Colonel better but — to her out of the blue, though the reader gets a bit more clue — Mr. Darcy proposes to her. She refuses him in the rudest most accusatory way possible, accusing him separating Jane and Bingley AND of maltreating the very engaging Mr. Wickham.

The next morning, he gives her a letter which thoroughly exculpates him, points out her family’s deficiencies and makes her feel how wrong she was.

This is not so much the black moment, as the mirror moment. Lizzy sees herself as she is, and realizes she was wrong, wrong, wrong, as well as pursuing the wrong goal. And now, when it seems impossible, she longs for the return and affections of Mr. Darcy.

She returns home and things get yet worse, or at least more worrisome since Lydia, the silliest of the plot devices, goes to Brighton with the camp full of soldiers, and their commander, as a guest of his wife.

But things look up, since — as foreshadowed before — Lizzy gets to go on a visit to the North with her aunt and uncle. Who visit Mr. Darcy’s estate. Mr. Darcy is obviously smitten and things get very very much better.

Only to be dashed by a letter announcing the plot device has left with Mr. Wickham.

Doom, loss. Lizzy will surely lose Mr. Darcy. Worse, the Plot Device is lost. And her sisters’ reputation with her. Nothing stands between them and poverty and dire old-maidenhood. FOREVER.

Except Mr. Darcy was with Lizzy when she got the dire news. Something not mentioned in the search for the Plot Device who has not gone North or gotten married. And who is not found. Not.

Alas and alack, all is lost. Till a letter arrives. The plot device has been found. Mr. Wickham (Miss Austen was VERY naughty with names) will marry her, provided his debts are paid off, and a commission purchased for him. Money is not, however, asked of Mr. Bennet, which is when the reader should perk his/her ears. The Bennets assume the uncle in trade took care of it.

However while visiting the new Mrs. Wickham gives away that Mr. Darcy was somehow involved in her happy ending. At which point Lizzy ascertains he has saved her sister.

Mr. Bingley comes to the neighborhood, brought (?) by Mr. Darcy and proposes to Jane. But Mr. Darcy seems distant and cold, till his aunt, Lady Catherine tries to berate Lizzy into giving him up (????) and she refuses. Then Mr. Darcy comes back and proposes.

The girls marry. The Bennets are saved, now having both large fortunes and CONNECTIONS at their disposal, which will ensure the marrying of the remaining two girls. Joy and happiness forevah.

I do enjoin you to read that plot. I soft pedaled on important thing: the turns are brought about by Lizzy. Mr. Darcy proposes because she refused to give him up. The going away was brought about — probably — because she was rude to him at the ball, etc. You’re allowed some “things just happen” but they must at least initially present as obstacles. Or at least neutral. But your character should have/has agency. Even if how he or she made things worse initially might not be immediately obvious.

If you diagram the plot, with the highs being things (usually through effort of your character) get better, and the lows being the disastrous moments preferably brought about by the unforeseen consequences of their actions, it would look something like this.

The dark moment is the deepest low. Sometimes the Mirror Moment coincides, sometimes it’s the next low peak. The mirror moment is when your main character corrects course, and becomes able to actually climb up.

Anyway, here’s the thing: I’ve read more fanfic than I care to mention where either Darcy never insults Lizzy, or he immediately apologizes, or she understands he didn’t mean it, or—

And then the rest of it is a happy dance, where each of the Bennets problems is fixed. Jane and Bingley get married (unless the author is exceptionally silly and holds Bingley’s youth and malleability against him – look, he’s perfect for Jane – and marries her to an Earl or Duke, where she’ll promptly collapse) and the plot devices get sent to schools to become proper ladies. Mary poor thing gets taught to be actually smart and not just pious. Sometimes the entail is broken through Mr. Darcy’s clever lawyers. And/or Mr. Bennet saves a lot, and becomes rich, rich I tell you. (My most amusing dive into this was the writer who seemed to have forgotten the plot halfway through and just give us financial reports, and investments, and why the investments did well at that time, and–  It was a lousy story, but I think I’d like the writer if I met her.)

Are those compelling as fanfics? Somewhat. BUT ONLY BECAUSE WE KNOW THE ORIGINAL. So the fanfic is soothing the hurts we endured along with the characters.

However, if you aren’t writing fanfic, you can’t do that. They must hurt so that they can triumph. And the hurt must be the result of their actions, not random walls falling on them. Or at least they must understand why the walls fell and how to fight back.

And things must get worse for a while. But not unremittingly. There must be claw backs on the journey down, even if you go down every time some more.

There must be a structure of descent, and then ascent. Because the reader is going along with you. And that turn around is cathartic. It’s what he’s looking for. It’s what life rarely provides. (And half the time in life the “why” isn’t even understandable to us.)

So, you must provide that experience.

Now go and diagram your favorite novel with peaks and valleys, the way I did to Miss Austen’s masterpiece.  And go figure out WHY things get worse. And how they get better in the end.

Then figure out how to apply it to your plot.

Because that’s how you get back up from the valley of despond, the dark moment. You look in the mirror, and find your way up.

Go write.