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Showing posts from April 3, 2009

Moment of Hope (Part 2 of 2)

Yesterday, I wrote about the Moment of Hope . That’s my name for it and you won’t find it in a text book—that I know of. The Moment of Hope is that moment in a novel when we get a surge of hope that the protagonist will succeed. It’s like when you’re watching a young child reaching for a cookie. It’s just out of his reach. If his arms were only a centimeter longer it would be his, but then you see his mother come into the room and you know she’s going to tell him he’ll spoil his dinner. She lifts up the plate and moves it closer to him. Not ever novel has a Moment of Hope and not every novel needs one. The Moment of Hope is like a pressure release valve. We’ve strung the tension pretty tight and we’re still cranking on the strings. The reader is flipping pages like crazy, wanting to find out what happens next, but he can’t catch his breath. Page after page we build and build and keep building. Then comes the Moment of Hope , giving our reader something to get excited about. The Mome...